Barcelona's Homeboys Get Legal
Due to the US policy of deporting young resident immigrant lawbreakers, our home-grown gangs have been exported throughout Central and South America. Now offshoots the 1940’s Chicago-born gang, the Latin Kings, have migrated from the US to Ecuador and most recently to Spain.
Spain’s reaction? Involve the gang’s teenage members in public life by legally registering the Kings as a cultural association eligible to receive state aid---in return for the gang’s pledge to forgo violence.
The deal was brokered after two years of negotiations by New York priest, Luis Barrios, long famous for his success with Bronx gangs. Barcelona’s acting mayor, Jordi Portabella, praised the Latin Kings’ decision as courageous and a success with “few precedents in Europe and the world.” THOMAS CATAN for the London Times