The Emergence and Growth of the Avenues Gang

The Emergence and Growth of the Avenues Gang

The Avenues Street Gang, a Mexican-American street gang, residing and operating primarily within Northeast Los Angeles is also known as “The Aves” or “Los Avenidas.”  American street gang formed in the 1940s (United Gangs, 2017). The Avenues, the “heart of their territory on Division Street in its primary neighborhood of Highland Park, has grown from its humble roots during the 1940s and 1950s. Around that time, local Hispanic youth formed alliances in an effort to protect themselves (YouTube Documentary, 2016). Soon it began to grow and quickly became known as the fastest-growing gang in Los Angeles (KCET.org, 2016).  Divided into several cliques, the Avenues have their own special code that is marked by several specific tattoos. One tattoo is that of a reaper wearing a fedora with two hollow eyes, the number “1” in one eye, and the number “3” in the other.

As the Avenues grew, their strong generational and familial ties served as a solid foundation that continued to grow. For some of these tight families, membership in the gange became a family legacy (YouTube Documentary, 2016). Functioning as a very close-knit and secretive group, they depended upon the ample one-way streets and dark alleys to function as a clandestine, yet influential presence. In the late 1990s, the Avenues declared a race war in the streets of Los Angeles and began an ongoing fight with rival African American gangs over drugs and “turf” territory. Crack cocaine was the primary drug trade at this time, and this battle over racial tensions and crack only exacerbated the violence on the streets. Starting in the 1980s, this particular area in northeast Los Angeles became known as the “crack capital of America (YouTube Documentary, 2016).

The Avenues is strongly tied to the Mexican Mafia (MM), a related prison gang, also known as La Eme, and running upwards of 50,000 members deep (YouTube Documentary, 2016). It became a known fact in prison that if the MM asked an Avenues gang member to carry out an act of violence, it was done with no questions asked. Its loyalty was important, and anyone who was disloyal by “snitching” or essentially not doing his part, would be wiped out in an act called “cleaning up the books” (YouTube Documentary, 2016). It is not uncommon for members to wipe out other members who needed to be done away with and could not live up to the secretive, loyal expectations of their primary purpose: owning the streets and the drug trade.

Violence became heightening in the “Wrong Way Murder” where public outcry against this gang was intensified by the killing of a 3-year old child when her family’s vehicle took a wrong turn and ended up in the middle of a turf war where the Avenues were waiting for a rival gang. This public outcry made them infamous on a more national level. Additionally, it also made law enforcement’s raiding of their gang turf notable with a bounty of arrests, shaking up the close-knit gang family (YouTube Documentary, 2016). Regardless of this setback and internal challenges, the Avenues gang still remains strong today with its deep legacy strengthened by the ongoing drug trade and ancestral unity, allowing them to continually thrive in the streets of L.A.

References

KCET.org. (2016). The Avenues: Highland Park Gang. Retrieved from

https://www.kcet.org/shows/departures/the-avenues-highland-park-gang

United Gangs. (2017). Avenues Gang. Retrieved from

Avenues Gang

YouTube Documentary. (2016). Gangland: Gangs Los Angeles California Gangster

Documentary [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loW0AhZNG_o&feature=youtu.be