The Mexican Mafia or La EME
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The Mexican Mafia, or La EME (the Spanish phonetic for the letter M), is one of the oldest gangs in the United States, originating in 1957 when several east Los Angeles inmates from the barrio formed the "gang of gangs." Once a protection group for gang members, the Mafia expanded to include extortion, gambling and homosexual prostitution. As a result, many of the drug-dealing Chicano gang members wind up in prison, where the barrio economy becomes a prison economy: it turns on a sophisticated matrix of barter activity. This paper will focus exclusively on the Mexican Mafia and will use statistics where available. As with any illegal organization, few are willing to talk; even fewer are willing to give names. However, the Mafia is run not unlike any legal, nationwide corporation with constitutions, recruiting, marketing, personnel hierarchies and individualized duties. The Mexican Mafia recruits its members through what is called the "homeboy connection;" the recruit is known by one of the existing gang members as a childhood friend and agrees to sponsor him. The gang "chairman" then performs extensive background checks on the individual until he is deemed a "clean" candidate. Before the recruit is formally accepted, a unanimous vote is taken by the entire gang. However, occasionally the Mafia loosens its standards and grants entrance to a recruit based solely on the "homeboy connection." A candidate may be required to perform any of a number of initiation rit
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riginated in California in the late 1950s, its Texas prison branch got started in 1984--as of 1990, it had 351 members.) Because of the general secrecy surrounding La EME, how well the higher-ups uphold constitutional democracy when issuing orders and "hits" is difficult to tell. Because weapons are difficult to come by on the inside, most hits are the result of stabbings.
Within the prison system itself, the Mexican Mafia is responsible for a large number of murders and contraband trafficking. In the American penal system, the Mexican Mafia has 400-600 members: La EME controls narcotics distribution, gambling and prostitution at many state prisons. Since the 1980s, the American judicial system has unwittingly helped free the Mexican Mafia to organize itself profitably within prisons under the guise of constitutional rights for prisoners. Prior to 1980, for example, the Texas Department of Corrections worked under what is called a "tender system," which works like an in-house employment provider for inmates. The tender system allowed inmates to earn a low wage to buy goods such as cigarettes and used "building tenders" both to watch over the inmates and to provide internal intelligence to prison officials. But in 1980
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Approximate Word count = 1616
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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