Joan W. Moore

Homeboys: Gangs, Drugs, and Prisons in the Barrios of Los Angeles.

Joan W. Moore is Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. She is the author of Mexican Americans and co-author (with Leo Grebler) of The Mexican American People.

Residence and Territoriality in Chicano Gangs

Researchers have long assumed that gang members live in the territory they defend as their turf. Our research into two Chicano gangs in East Los Angeles show that many do not. We examine the social and cultural factors which bind gang members together and look at the way non-residents join gangs. The widespread pattern of non-resident gang membership reflects the nature of impoverished Chicano settlements in Los Angeles. Our findings suggest that the ecological premises of the old Chicago school of sociologists no longer apply to gangs in modern U.S. cities.

Isolation and Stigmatization in the Development of an Underclass: The Case of Chicano Gangs in East Los Angeles

A good deal of our concern in the study of social problems has to do with the emergence in American society of a predominantly minority urban underclass. Generally, social scientists rely on one or a combination of two approaches in explaining this phenomenon. The first approach the culture of poverty-argues for the existence of a tangle of pathology which is . . . capable of perpetuating itself without assistance from the white world (Moynihan, 1967:47). All that is required to sustain this underclass culture is a welfare state. An alternative approach, equally oversimplified here, argues that the minority underclass is a product of institutionalized racism, which operates in education, the job market, the housing market, and the criminal justice system. But both the culture of poverty and racism explanations focus on categories of people rather than on communities. The culture of poverty approach emphasizes individuals and their families. The discrimination argument looks at individuals in relation to their roles in the institutions of the larger society. Neither recognizes the dynamics working within the communities in which underclass families live. I suggest here that it would be fruitful to focus on differentiation within poor minority communities. Further, since deviance and potential deviance are also part of our image of the underclass, we may borrow from the labeling perspective to understand how deviants, and by extension, underclass families come to be differentiated further in their own minority communities. A case history-the development of Chicano youth gangs-shows some of these processes at work, and also demonstrates that it is possible for these trends to be reversed. Thus we can also identify some of the dynamics involved in the reabsorption of members of the underclass into a less deviant or stigmatized segment of the minority poor.

The Chola life course : Chicana heroin users and the Barrio gang

The theoretical argument of the paper is as follows: Traditional values may deter many Latinas from drug use, but they operate to ostracize adolescent girls from cholo (street) families. Those girls may be propelled into drug-using youth gangs or similar peer groups, where they are further channeled to the more deviant subcliques. This pivotal experience initiates a drug-oriented adult lifestyle. Gender norms mean that the typical male career path to and from the gang is different. Data bearing on this argument are presented, and research and intervention implications are explored.

THE PARADOX OF DEVIANCE IN ADDICTED MEXICAN AMERICAN MOTHERS

Two aspects of mothering—using drugs during pregnancy and giving up the rearing of ones children—are the focus of this analysis of 58 addicted Chicana mothers who spent their adolescent years in barrio gangs. From a traditional stance, such women were doubly deviant, since they violated gender-role prescriptions by joining a barrio gang and by becoming involved in heroin and street life. Half of these women added to this deviance by using heroin during pregnancy, and 40 percent relinquished at least one of their children. This article explores what distinguishes these classically “bad mothers” from addicts who maintain some degree of conventionality in their mothering. We found that Mexican gender-role traditionalism is not the only influence on these women. Many came from cholo or underclass families with a tradition of street involvement. In addition, their involvement in gang and heroin worlds may influence their behavior as mothers. We found that women who used drugs during pregnancy were more likely than abstainers to be cholas and to reject traditional gender-role values. However, those who gave up their children were more likely than those who kept their children to be from traditional families. We discuss the implications of these findings for research on deviance and the underclass among Hispanic women.