5. Nuestra Familia
via latimes.com
Spanish for “our family,” Nuestra is a gang of Mexican American men whose main focus is distributing cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine both in and out of jail. Northern California Latinos created the gang in order to defend against the wrath of the Southern California ran Mexican Mafia.
Outside of prison, Nuestra operates in the scenic Salinas, California, littering the sleepy town with bodies. In Julia Reynold’s book, “Blood In the Fields: Ten Years inside California’s Nuestra Familia Gang,” she describes one of Nuestra’s violent dealings:
“Sal lay beneath his leafy canopy reposed like a saint, only instead of being arched in prayer, his hands were artfully arranged so that the right displayed one pointed finger, the rest curled under. The left hand had four fingers extended, thumb tucked neatly into the palm. To gangsters all over the West, that meant one-four—fourteen—Nuestra Familia’s symbolic number (because N is the 14th letter in the alphabet) and a sign to all that a traitor had been dealt with.”
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