Norteños

In 1968, American Mexican prisoners in California prisons were divided into two competing groups - Norteños (northerners) and Sureños (southerners), according to the location of their hometowns (the dividing line between north and south was near Delano , California ) ^[6] .

Norteños, affiliated with the Nuestra Familia , were the prison enemies of the South Latins, which consisted of members and branches of La Eme, better known as the Mexican Mafia . While the Mexican Mafia was originally created to protect Mexicans in prisons, La Eme participants showed a high level of hostility towards imprisoned Latinos from rural areas of Northern California ^[7] . The event that led to the long war between Norteños and the Mexican Mafia is considered the alleged incident of theft of a pair of shoes by Nortenios by La Eme. These circumstances led to the longest running gang war in California prisons and the formation of the Nuestra Familia ^[7] .

Norteños are involved in various criminal activities, but focus mainly on street drug trafficking, in particular methamphetamine , cocaine and marijuana ^[8] . Norteños also smuggled drugs across the Mexican border. They were accepted by other members of Norteños - the Sinaloa cartel ^[9] .

On January 9, 2005, in Ceres , California , Stanislos County , Officer Sam Ryno was the first to answer a call from a man with weapons aimed at a man named George Liquor. Andres Raya, a U.S. Marine on vacation after serving in Iraq , was armed with an SKS rifle . He opened fire on officers, injuring Officer Reno and killing Sergeant Stevenson. Paradise was shot dead some time after he opened fire on members of the special forces ^[10] .

Law enforcement officials claimed that Raya had been in gangs for many years before enlisting in the military. During the shooting investigation, Modesto authorities discovered information that proved that Raya was a member of the Norteno gang, which did not participate in the fighting during his military service in Iraq. The joint efforts of local law enforcement agencies, federal and military departments have revealed a large amount of information about Paradise in a short period of time ^{[11] [12]} .

There are several Norteños gangs in Sonoma County , including the Varrio Santa Rosa Norte ^[13] , with more than 300 members, and the Varrio South Park gang. In 2013, federal law enforcement agencies accused seven members of the Varrio South Park gang of attempted murder , drug trafficking, robbery, and other gang-related crimes ^[14] .

Federal law enforcement agencies, which for a long time could not penetrate the formation, began to intensify investigations in the late 1990s. In 2000 and 2001 , 22 gang members were accused of investing capital received from racketeering (under RICO law ). Including several people were detained who were supposedly high-ranking gang leaders while in the Pelican Bay Prison in Northern California. Thirteen defendants pleaded guilty. Two defendants face the death penalty for murders related to drug trafficking. According to the operation Black Widow , the gang is guilty of more than six hundred murders over the past 30 years ^{[ when? ]} . The Black Widow was the largest federal law enforcement operation against Our Family. After the operation, the five top Norteños leaders were imprisoned in a federal maximum security prison in Florence , Colorado . Sentences on such crimes are handed down to gang members to this day ^[15] .

Nortenios' Written Constitution stipulated that gang leaders reside in the Pelican Bay area of California ; the displacement of gang leaders caused confusion among gang members and a power war between potential leaders. Three people reached the highest rank in Pelican Bay, although later two of them were "demoted" after his achievement; only David Cervantes (also known by the initials “DC” ) remained as a member of the gang of the highest rank in California. Cervantes became the first Nortenios leader to be in charge of the entire criminal organization. Other Pelican Bay leaders are Daniel “Stork” Pérez, Anthony “Chuco ” Guillén, and George “Puppet” Franco “Puppet” Franco ). All the “soldiers” and “captains” of northern California are expected to follow Cervantes’s orders, but a small percentage of the gang remains loyal to the former “generals” and “senior captains” in the Colorado state prison ^[16] .

In September 2018, a ten-month operation called the “Red Reaper” began, as a result of which 54 people were arrested, 53 pieces of firearms and more than 16 kilograms of drugs were seized in Kings and Tulare counties. According to court documents, senior Nuestra Familia members Salvador Castro, Jr. and Raymond Lopez used smuggled phones from Pleasant Valley Prison Valley , Fresno County , to arrange for drug trafficking from sources to California and Mexico at Kings County Repository ^[17] .

Norteños is based in the city of Salinas , California and much of Northern California. They are also present in many other states with a particularly strong presence in the eastern state of Washington (defined in Yakima County ), and Oregon in the south ( Medford and Jackson County ).

Norteños use the number 14, which is the fourteenth letter of the English alphabet N ^{[18] [19]} . Sometimes it is written in Roman numeral as XIV , or a hybrid of Roman and Arabic numerals X4 . Norteños emblems and clothing are based on red ^[20] , sometimes black - red belt, red shoes and red laces. They also prefer clothing from sports teams that showcase their nationality through symbolism, such as Nebraska Cornhuskers, UNLV Rebels, and San Francisco Forty Niners. ^[18] Some gang members get a four-dot tattoo on themselves. Norteño derogatoryly calls Sureño "crowbar" ( Spanish. Scrapa ) or "Sur rat" (southern rat). Norteños also use images of the American-Mexican labor movement , such as the sombrero , machete and the United Farm Workers logo, which is a stylized black Aztec eagle ( Huelga bird ) ^[21] . Norteños, as a rule, refer to each other by the term "Ene" .

The allies of Norteños are Nuestra Familia , Bloods and the Black Partisan Family . The opponents of Norteños are Sureños and the Mexican Mafia .

• US street gang decals