When he returned, he learned most of the people he ran with had died either in gang violence or through drug overdoses. Rios, who followed older siblings into gang life, finally walked away after being ordered into rehab in Seattle and then living there for a few years. Rios’ and Manuel’s families initially grappled with accepting their sons as gay, but both say they now have great relationships with them, especially their mothers. “Sometimes it’s a look and you just know,” said Rios, who has been in a committed relationship for three years. Rios also agreed with Romero that there are ways to signal one’s intentions within the gang. “It was really hard because it’s not accepted by the gang and as Latinos, it’s not really accepted by our families as a culture,” said Romero, prompting nods from Cisco Rios, another former gang member featured in the “Homeboy” movie.
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“My mom wasn’t really around too much,” said Romero, who lives in East Los Angeles.Ī quiet boy, he was frequently the target of bullies, Romero said, until one day a gang member offered him protection and taught Romero how to fight.įor several years Romero committed crimes for the gang, including drug-related crimes and was even picked up in a murder investigation. “I gave up the Dickies and Ben Davises (gang clothing) but I still have some tattoos that I’m trying to remove,” he said, lifting his shirt to expose some faded and splotchy black marks that spell out the name of his former gang.īoth Manuel and Romero said they joined the gangs for the same reasons other young boys join: to have the support system they felt was lacking in their family structure. He has tried to erase most of the signs of his criminal past, but there are still some remnants, including a few tattoos. Manuel has been living as a gay man for nearly a decade and is in a committed relationship. “What happens is you get these guys on the special needs yards who know how to be gang members and they form these gangs,” Scarrano said, adding that the main reason Gay Boy Gangsters members formed this alliance is their sexual preference.
While he said these gangs are a growing problem, San Bernardino County Probation Officer and gang expert Nate Scarrano said the number of people in the gangs is still small.
There are dropout gangs in 32 of the 33 California state prisons, Valdemar said in a recent interview. Manuel, however, said he was not on the special needs yard while in prison. The groups or gangs are mostly made up of inmates known as dropouts who have asked to be placed on the sensitive needs yard in exchange for information about gang activities. Those yards at California state prisons are designated for inmates requiring special protection, such as certain sex offenders, informants and homosexuals. The Gay Boy Gangsters are part of a group of prison gangs that have sprung up on the sensitive needs yards, according to Richard Valdemar, a gang expert and retired Los Angeles Police Department gang detective. While most gay gang members operate within traditional gangs, there is a group made up solely of gay criminals. Manuel, who grew up in the South Los Angeles area and spent a good deal of time in Long Beach, did not want to disclose what city he lived in for fear of retaliation. “I kept saying to myself I wasn’t gay because I had a girlfriend and was only doing that because I was in prison,” said the 33-year-old man who lives in the Inland Empire. Manuel spent nearly two years in Chino Institution for Men on a drug conviction in the ’90s and said he did engage in homosexual activities behind bars but was in denial about the fact he was gay. It took Manuel - he wanted to use only his first name - several years to admit he was gay. However, an exact number of openly gay gang members is difficult to come by since many do not disclose their sexual orientation. With an estimated 9 million Americans identifying as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, according to a 2011 report from the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, gays are part of nearly every aspect of life, even within the gang life. “Before social media and Facebook, I had to post fliers in gay bars in order to find people willing to talk to me,” Dinco said. Gay gang members who are in Latino gangs not only have to deal with the stereotypical machismo seen in Latino culture, Dinco said, they have to contend with the hyper-masculine posturing within the gang microculture.