[www.gangland:news.org] Gangland News - Getting the Scoop on Organized Crime | Puente 13

[G-Funk]

By: Anthony Boyce
Date: 12/12/2019

 

Varrio Puente adopted the alternative name Puente 13 in the mid-1970s following the affiliation of several senior members to the Mexican Mafia while incarcerated. Sections of Puente were re-shuffled into organized criminal elements by those figures, with a distinct priority on profiteering over gang activity for many older members. This facilitated the massive flow of heroin, methamphetamine and many other class A drugs into Mirror Park and significant drug sale profits for the gang. Puente are known for controlling a large chunk of territory around the Northern Eastern part of Los Santos, around the Mirror Park district, they've been known for occupying the area for almost thirty years now making them one of the oldest Southsider clique in the North East part of Los Santos.

 

Puente found itself feuding with an increasing number of North and East Side varrios in the 1980s and 1990s, that including cliques such as the Vespucci Rifa 13, as rumors spread it that there has been an ongoing feud between the two rival neighborhood gangs, mirroring the trend observed across the city. These conflicts continued to escalate until the infamous Mexican Mafia-led gang juntas of the mid-1990s, when drive-bys were outlawed in Mexican neighborhoods, In a dramatic show of muscle that has brought an uneasy calm to some of Los Santos’ most violent varrios, the Mexican Mafia prison gang has ordered thousands of Latino gang members to put a halt to drive-by shootings--or face the syndicate’s deadly wrath. The edict has been delivered over recent months at a series of tightly guarded meetings, including an afternoon summit on Sept. 18 attended by an estimated 1,000 or more gang members in Mirror Park. Under the new rules, gangs are still allowed to attack rivals with whom they have a personal beef, but they have been instructed to do it face-to-face, taking care not to harm bystanders. “It was, like, this is for la raza, the Mexican people,” said a gang member who attended the Mirror Park meeting. “If you have to take care of business, they were saying, at least do it with respect, do it with honor and dignity.” By using terror to impose some order on rivalries that were spiraling out of control, the Mexican Mafia has been credited with decelerating one of the bloodiest cycles in the long history of Mexican-American gangs. But in doing so, concerns have been raised about the influence of the clandestine organization, which is suspected of trying to use street gangs to expand its criminal enterprise outside the penal system. Word was given for varrios to focus attention on conflicts with Black gangs, such as the conflict between the infamous Florencia 13 and the East Coast Crips, rather than with each other. With few Black gangs present on the North Side, varrios there mostly paid lip service to this decree and conflicts continued, though on a notably smaller scale. The Mexican Mafia rarely took interest in gang beefs unless money was being affected, so this activity was mostly ignored. Puente, for its part as a historical Eme loyalist gang, did travel some distance on occasion to lend small numbers of soldiers to varrios in direct conflict with Black gangs, often on orders from Puente's own representatives in the mafia.
 

Edited December 13, 2019 by G-Funk