San Jo Bangin'
It is Starting to Feel
Like the 90's Again
Story by Hector Gonzalez
Illo by David Madrid

I'm seeing a lot more color in San Jose these days. Kids are back to wearing the blue and red outfits, and are representing their affiliations. It reminds me of the early 90's when I was a youngster.

You can hear it in the music coming out of the cars, and the clothes people are wearing. Back in the 90's gangsters were riding to NWA and wearing sporting gear to represent. But instead of football jerseys and NFL hats, youngsters are gang-banging with soccer jerseys and hats, while riding to Banda.

In 92', eight-year-old Melvin Ancheta was killed by a 15-year-old. The case was on the front page for weeks, and was used to justify the creation of proposition 21, which allowed minors to be tried as adults. Once again, with the deaths of teenagers Diego Gutierrez and Miguel Romero, we have been having major youth on youth cases capturing headlines again. I wouldn't be surprised if a new proposition was proposed to further threaten our youth.

Gangs have influenced every San Jo neighborhood that I lived in. Through the past few years I have seen San Jose gang culture getting smaller, but now all signs seem to point to a rise in gangs. The early 90's gang scene has been resurrected. The media is framing this as a Latino issue, but this is San Jose, where life here has always been multi-ethnic, and gangs are no different.

Back in the day, gangs ran deep and gang culture was blatant. Young Chicanos were "flamed up" with red caps, red shirts, 49er gear and Cortez's. At the same time young Asian kids were "trued up" with blue gear and Dallas Cowboy jackets. This not to say that there weren't any Mexican Surenos or any Asian Bloods, we also had plenty of those.

Back then, I used to chill at the 7-11 on Berryessa and King in East San Jose. The whole shopping center would be filled with C-dubbs -- CWA(Cambodians With Attitude.) I would go there to play arcade games at the 7-11 and in the laundry mat. They would chill there, smoking, cigarettes, drinking, and gambling. CWA is still one of the most active crip gangs in San Jo.

While this was going on at Berryessa, the Nortenos would chill at the 7-11 on El Rancho Verde and McKee. On Saturday nights Story and King would be packed with Nortenos, everywhere you looked you saw a mob of folks in low rider cars. The bus stop at Eastridge Mall in the East Side was a meeting spot for Nortenos all over the city. Crack was being run on El Rancho Verde, Black Crips were the ones that ran that neighborhoods. At the Verde Laundry Mat, people would hide the crack in their boom boxes.

Filipinos were getting in the mix too. Twenty-six-year old AM(an alias) used to get caught in the middle of the rivalries in his Filipino community as a teenager. He says, "In the early 90's you had two groups of gangsters in the Filipino community that were rivaling each other. You had the middle class Filipinos who were more Americanized and you had the more recent Filipino gangsters who were adapting to the American lifestyle." He points to examples like the San Jose Boys, who were a more Americanized gang, and the Out Law Brothers, a gang mostly composed of more recent migrants of the Philippines. Both are Crip gangs. "You even had Tagalogs fighting Ilocanos," he says shaking his head. In his mid-twenties now, he educates his community about the history and struggle of Filipino Americans.

Some of the guys who were bangin' back in the early 90's say things are getting worse now. "Back then there used to be a lot more fist to fist combat. Now you have people shooting each other just because they've seen it on TV," says B. Doctor, a former member of Asian BoyZ, a gang that originated in South California as AB and was expanded to northern Cali as ABZ.

Back in the mid-nineties I was at Piedmont Middle School, and the word was that Independence High School, the school we would be entering, was packed with gangsters -- Nortenos, Surenos, Crips and Bloods. Not to mention all the tag banging that was going on at the time. By the time I got to Independence, gang culture was declining. It was a turning point. I just remember there were all kinds of programs for young people to get into. San Jose had discovered that the best answer to gang activity was youth prevention, and by the late 90's things were calming down.

But there is a clear difference from then and now -- the economy. No money is going towards programs.

AM remembers the notices the same thing, which worries him. "One of the main reasons that gang activity dropped was because of all the after school organizations that started poppin'. Students had other recreational activities to do besides going to the streets, but now with all the budget cuts, many of these programs are going to shut down or not be as effective."

Perhaps things will temporarily get better again like they did in the late nineties. But unless our youth are taught about self-identity, self-respect, and gang prevention becomes a priority, I am afraid that the cycle will continue. People of color in San Jose will fight amongst each other and stay poor, just like its always been.