What is a Gang? The Changing Nature of Organized Youth Violence

If a child is shot and killed, does it matter what we call the group that did the shooting?

In one way, yes.  When police or the military commit acts of violence against youth, or when semi-official death squads murder street children, there is a clear target for our protest. Killers need to be brought to justice, even if they are in uniform.  The armed forces of the state should only be used to protect, not harm the people.

But what if the young man firing a gun is from the streets? Does it matter if he belongs to something called a gang, a drug faction, a cartel, or a posse, or even a left or right wing militia?  What do we precisely mean when we denounce “gang violence?”

This question is in a way more difficult than it seems, particularly for those of us who travel in academic circles (no pun intended).  In the United States, criminologists have battled for decades over the definition of a gang and have recently inflicted this debate on Europe. In Latin America, Asia, and Africa, however, a more nuanced discussion assigns less importance to definitions. In these areas civil society faces some armed groups who are basically political and others who are mainly criminal. Para-militaries and militias carry out violence in the name of their god, ethnic group, or tribe.  Some groups commit violence solely in pursuit of money or duty, and some for revolutionary ideals.  Former child soldiers and street children fight for space in mega-cities overflowing with migrants and refugees. 

Gangsta rap nihilism

Welcome to the era of globalization.  On the one hand, financial zones of great cities become highly valued and receive massive private and public investment. On the other hand, entire regions as well as ghettoes, favelas, and barrios are shamefully neglected.  Criminality becomes conflated with a desperate need to survive.  Groups of young men live by an underground economy that often makes them both agents and prey of the deadly global business of drugs.

Many young people have lost their ideals and instead of fighting for tomorrow, they fight only for today. The nihilism of gangsta rap has almost completely replaced the little red book of revolution.  The children of the streets have lost faith in progress while political ideologies are overshadowed by ethnic or religious identities.

Polarization and the power of identity are among those factors that have altered the character of gangs and youth violence. For example, the MQM of Pakistan has its origins in political resistance to the forced emigration of Muslims from India.  Demoralization prompted some in MQM to forsake their revolutionary ambitions for criminal goals. In El Salvador, maras recruit youth who in earlier days would have joined the guerrillas. Child soldiers in Sierra Leone, having bleak post-civil war prospects, turned to the streets in the absence of schools and jobs.

Long-standing, institutionalized groups of armed young men

On the other hand, New York’ City’s Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation became politicized in the 1990s, before being suppressed.  In Spain the Latin Kings have also sought legitimacy.  Kingston’s drug posses are firmly rooted in mainstream political rivalries.  In Algeria, after the 1991 elections were nullified, the hittistes or street youth, were drawn to the Islamic radicals, but then used their connections to practice extortion.  In Nigeria, gangs of youth enforce Sharia for the local imams but also sell drugs and dress like LA gangsters. “Goondas” (thugs) work for Mumbai strongman Bal Thackery in mandels (clubs) that violently attack Muslims in the name of “Hinduvata” (Hindu fundamentalism).  In Northern Ireland Protestant militias have given up their war against Catholics only to fight one another over Belfast’s drug trade. The line separating gang, political party, organized crime, ethnic militia, and religious police has become hazy.

This maze of violence means many children now grow up in areas with long-standing, institutionalized groups of armed young men (and in Colombia, at least, armed women).  Children in these neighborhoods are raised with adult role models who tantalize them with illicit economic opportunities amplified by ethnic or religious identities.  Any “youth gang” that forms in areas with such armed groups can no longer function merely as a wild peer group.  Youth in these cities have become vulnerable to multiple, illicit, adult influences that often provide more jobs, services, and protection than the state.

The industrial era’s division of politics into “left” and “right” makes less sense today. Youth’s rebellion is seldom ideologically based and is tainted with nihilism, manipulated by adults, and colored by ethnic or religious labels. For poor youth, conditions in ghettoes, favelas, and barrios are not only desperate, but seem hopeless.

Hip hop versus "mano dura"

Does this mean violence is inevitable? Yes. But as we’ve seen, the various forms of youth groups, including those that are armed, are also capable of change. The cultural currents of hip hop, for example, that celebrate life and oppose oppression, can be used to draw youth, including those in armed groups, into a variety of social causes. Most poor youth, while receptive to mass movements, remain justifiably suspicious of political parties.

We can’t trust the state to provide the security we need and their “mano dura” exacts too high a price.  This means we need to step up our appeals for non-violence to youth and the groups they are in, no matter if these are called gangs, militias, factions, cartels, posses, or revolutionary vanguards.

So it really doesn’t matter how we define the group that does the shooting. We need to oppose killing from any quarter.  The people can’t unite if violence is being used by our youth to settle disputes.

From Comunidad Segura:

"Gangs are here to stay, no matter what we do"

Dossier COAV, Children and Adolescents in Organized Armed Violence

Read Further:

Prof. Hagedorn also maitains a site on Gangs,