Negotiating Violence and Protection in Prison and on the Outside: The Organizational Evolution of the Transnational Prison Gang Barrio Azteca

Abstract

Barrio Azteca is a criminal organization that has significantly evolved since its inception as a prison solidarity group—first into a true prison gang and then into an organized criminal enterprise operating in the free world. Today, Barrio Azteca has declined in power and effectiveness in carceral settings but continues to play an important role in the wholesale and retail drug trade in the Paso del Norte area. Its organizational life cycle appears to parallel that of a licit enterprise, except that it primarily competes in the criminal protection marketplace. Thus, to survive and compete in the market for criminal protection, Barrio Azteca adapted to shifts in control dynamics, demonstrating uncommon resilience, first specializing in protection in response to changes in carceral violence and, later, expanding into the drug-trafficking market in response to violence in the criminal underworld both inside and outside prison. This article traces that history of adaptation and persistence, situating it within a synthesis of currently accepted theoretical models of criminal organizational evolution, and in so doing, provides the first organizational history of a prison gang—Barrio Azteca—published in the academic literature.

Keywords

organizational history prison gangs prison protection rackets violence

Introduction: Prison Gangs Inside and Outside of Prison

Security threat groups, colloquially known as prison gangs, develop, by definition, in confinement, but sometimes go on to expand into the free world. In particular, U.S.-based Hispanic and Latin American prison gangs, which often contribute to prison governance structures, have, in certain circumstances, evolved to underwrite the protection rackets that underpin criminal underworlds on the outside (Skarbek, 2014), typically via the drug trade (Bunker & Sullivan, 2013; Cruz, 2010; Dias & Darke, 2016; Dias & Salla, 2013; Dudley, 2011; Fontes, 2016, 2018; Grillo, 2011; Kan, 2012; Logan, 2009; Manwaring, 2007; Rodet, 2016; Santamaría, 2013; Savenije, 2004; Sullivan & Bunker, 2002; Willis, 2009; Wolf, 2010). While such initial, in-prison development and subsequent expansion into the free world are of interest to the literature (Ouellet, Bouchard, & Charette, 2018), the mechanisms driving them remain largely unexplored.

This work responds to that gap by detailing the organizational evolution of one such group, Barrio Azteca. Initially formed to resist other predatory groups, Barrio Azteca began as an inmate solidarity group for Hispanic prisoners from El Paso/Ciudad Juárez metropolitan area, known as the Paso del Norte. In its first 20 years, it achieved prominence as a prison gang in the El Paso jails and the Texas penitentiary system.¹ Today, it continues to play a significant role in the drug trade in the Paso del Norte.² This article explores how and why this evolution occurred and what lessons can be gleaned from this evolution to be applied to similar organizational contexts in different settings.

One accepted approach to understanding the organizational evolution of criminal organizations like Barrio Azteca is to study their organizational culture (Dodgson, 1993; Hofstede, Neuijen, Ohayv, & Sanders, 1990; Pettigrew, 1979). Just as Braithwaite (1989), Decker (2001), Fong (1990), Hobbs (2001), and Schrager and Short (1978) have applied the study of organizational cultures to criminal organizations and street gangs, this study goes on to synthesize and apply two evolutionary typologies—the theoretical model of inmate development proposed by Buentello, Fong, and Vogel (1991) and the five-stage empirical model of group development documented by Lester, Parnell, and Carraher (2003)—to the organizational development of Barrio Azteca. Taken together, these two frameworks model the potential development of an inmate group, responding to market pressures in and outside prison.

Importantly, applying these two typologies to the organizational evolution of a prison gang like Barrio Azteca, this work assesses the principal themes that have emerged from the existing literature on security threat groups. In particular, this article shows that the Barrio Azteca organization is first and foremost a protection merchant in the criminal marketplace of Paso del Norte and trades on its ability not only to protect against but also to inflict violence (Tilly, 1985). Its other illicit activities depend upon successfully providing protection for itself, not an atypical outcome for an organized criminal group (Gambetta, 1993; Varese, 2001).

This article proceeds as follows. First, it discusses what is known about how inmate groups develop into prison gangs and presents the models that help describe the evolutionary trajectory of a mature prison gang like Barrio Azteca into an organized criminal group. Second, it discusses the methodology used to examine the evolution of Barrio Azteca. Third, it considers the violent historical context that prompted the formation of Barrio Azteca. Fourth, it describes the founding of Barrio Azteca as a solidarity group, its evolution into a full-fledged prison gang and, later, a free-world organized criminal group, and its decline within carceral settings as the Texas Department of Corrections again effected changes which influenced how inmates and staff negotiated violence.

In sum, this article demonstrates that the Barrio Azteca organization’s history bears out the theoretical stages of an organizational life cycle posited in the literature, chiefly in response to changes in the protection market, which have influenced control structures both within prison and in the criminal underworld of the Paso del Norte area. This case study serves as the first academic assessment of an organizational life cycle of a transnational prison gang. The strategies Barrio Azteca used to sustain its well-being may be indicative of how similar organizations employ strategies to adjust to market shifts to attain organizational longevity.

The Development of Inmate Groups Into Prison Gangs: What We Know

The study of security threat groups over the past 40 years has often been limited or of limited use. Researchers face obvious access difficulties, and government reports and data do not always lend themselves easily to scientific study (Innes, Fielding, & Cope, 2005). While the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) National Gang Threat Assessment and the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Texas Gang Threat Assessment have been produced consistently, every year or two, in the new millennium, most others have been produced only intermittently (see, e.g., Cummins, 1995; Winterdyk & Ruddell, 2010). More problematically, available reports often rely on inconsistent metrics or fail to distinguish the actions of prison gang members from those of nonaffiliated inmates (Fleisher, 2017).

Nonetheless, the 2010s saw increasing academic attention to prison gangs. Existing studies have focused on groups of adult inmates initially formed in prison and whose primary activities are split between prison and the street. These studies yield questions distinct from those raised in the study of street gangs, which tend to focus on youth groups that both form on the streets and conduct their primary activities there (Esbensen & Maxson, 2011; Lauger, 2012; Maxson, 2012). Accounts of prison gangs’ formation typically, though not always, focus on how inmate groups develop in response to the protection market in prison rather than on how a specific street gang transforms itself into a prison gang (Camp & Camp, 1985; Gundur, 2018; Irwin, 1980; Skarbek, 2011; Tapia, 2018; Trammell, 2012). Prison gangs that operate in both carceral and free settings, albeit within distinct contexts and criminal marketplaces, mark a dynamic that has attracted scholarly attention in the United States, Latin America, and elsewhere (Fontes, 2018; Lindegaard & Gear, 2014; Rodet, 2016; Skarbek, 2014, 2016; Skarbek & Freire, 2018), a multifaceted context exemplified by the focus of this article: the organizational history of Barrio Azteca.

The emerging literature on prison gangs seeks to examine several interrelated issues, namely, what prison gangs are (Camp & Camp, 1985; Maxson, 2012); how prison gangs influence carceral governance structures and engage in violence (Butler, Slade, & Nunes Dias, 2018; Dias & Darke, 2016; DiIulio, 1990; Gaes, Wallace, Gilman, Klein-Saffran, & Suppa, 2002; Porter, 1982; Skarbek, 2010, 2011, 2014; Skarbek & Freire, 2018; Trammell, 2012; Weide, 2015; Worrall & Morris, 2012); how prison gangs’ organizational objectives and behaviors develop, expand, and evolve (Buentello, Fong, & Vogel, 1991; Camp & Camp, 1985; Clemmer, 1940; Fong & Buentello, 1991; Fontes, 2018; Fontes & O’Neill, 2018; Gundur, 2018; Hunt, Riegel, Morales, & Waldorf, 1993; Jacobs, 1977; Lessing, 2014, 2016; Mitchell, McCullough, Wu, Pyrooz, & Decker, 2018; Sullivan & Bunker, 2007; Tapia, 2018; Tapia, Sparks, & Miller, 2014); how prison administrations can control them (Fleisher & Decker, 2001; Fleisher, Decker, & Curry, 2001; Forsythe, 2006; Winterdyk & Ruddell, 2010); their influence on recidivism (Dooley, Seals, & Skarbek, 2014); how they migrate (Etter Sr, 2010; Fontes, 2018; Savenije, 2004; Wolf, 2010); and how prison gangs use their organizational structures to underwrite criminal activity through illicit enterprise in the free world (Fontes, 2016, 2018; Lessing, 2016; Skarbek, 2014), specifically in the context of the Mexican drug trade and its related violence (Bowden, 2010; Grayson, 2010; Grillo, 2011; Jones, 2016; Kan, 2012).

Taken in concert, these issues help define the study of prison gangs’ roles in various temporal and spatial contexts. These elements, however, are mostly presented in a piecemeal fashion across the literature, with few focused studies of a single prison gang in existence (see, e.g., Brotherton & Barrios, 2004; Rafael, 2007). Although these few works focus on organizational transition, they do not significantly address prison gangs’ role in criminal enterprise in the free world.

Nonetheless, the potential evolution of street gangs into criminal enterprises is a theoretical possibility considered by criminologist Julie Ayling (2011) and sociologist James Densley (2013, 2014), chronicled by journalist Natalie Y. Moore and academic Lance Williams (2011), and studied longitudinally by criminologist Marie Ouellet and colleagues (2018). Ayling, Densely, and Ouellet and colleagues advance the notion that while most street gangs cannot be regarded as “organized criminal groups,” some that survive over time evolve and become more formalized, shaped by the market demands of the illicit enterprises that sustain their organizational well-being. Market demands, however, do not guarantee that an organization evolves or sustains itself. For instance, Moore and Williams (2011) show in their study of the Black P. Stone Nation/El Rukn organization, how poor organizational decisions can backfire and cause an organization to regress. This study of Barrio Azteca shows that, like the street gangs discussed by these authors, some prison gangs can evolve, becoming organized criminal groups in the free world that engage in illicit enterprise.

Ayling (2009, p. 183) identifies the ability of criminal organizations to be “resilient,” to navigate the “pressures of competition and state opposition” in diverse settings, as one factor allowing them to persist a criminal marketplace. Ayling’s observation is likewise pertinent to the study of prison gangs that operate both in carceral and free world settings. In carceral settings, prison gangs are, in theory, subject to state control. In the free world, the objectives of prison gangs typically mirror those of organized criminal enterprise. Accordingly, Ayling’s notion of organizational resilience, whereby illicit enterprises develop the capacity to withstand disruption and to adapt when circumstances change, helps model the tactical decisions that prison gangs make to prolong their existence.

This theory of organizational resilience maps well onto the inmate group developmental model offered by Buentello et al. (1991) and the organizational lifecycle model offered by Lester et al. (2003). Each model shows that organizational progression, or even homeostasis, is possible only to the extent that the organization maintains its resiliency. Just as most criminal groups fail to persist and evolve over protracted periods of time (Ouellet et al., 2018), most inmate groups do not fully “complete” an organizational life cycle; to the degree that an organization ceases to be resilient or adaptive, it stagnates and declines, ending its life cycle without progressing through each evolutionary stage. Nonetheless, these organizations, in their various developmental stages, exist along a spectrum of various illicit enterprises that vie in the protection marketplace (Smith, 1980).

Buentello et al. (1991, p. 6) describe the following graduated development of inmate groups: Stage 1, an inmate enters prison; Stage 2, the inmate joins a clique; Stage 3, the clique becomes a self-protection group; Stage 4, the self-protection group becomes a predator group; and Stage 5, a predator group becomes a prison gang with influence both inside and outside prison. At each potential transition, the group may plateau, disband, or graduate. Each stage reflects a specific relationship between the group and the protection it provides, while graduation indicates that a group has expanded its role in the protection marketplace.

The Buentello et al. (1991) model does not, however, predict the evolving role of prison gangs over time or beyond the confines of prison. Barrio Azteca, like most prison gangs, is fundamentally an illicit enterprise dealing in protection, leading it to participate in the governance both of the free-world criminal underworld and of prison society in jails and state prisons (Skarbek, 2010, 2012, 2014). As a result, to comprehend the trajectory of Barrio Azteca from prison gang to illicit enterprise, one must consider its organizational life cycle as it shifts in response to market demand.

Lester et al.’s (2003, pp. 342, 343) five-stage empirical scale of organizational life cycles aids in explaining this phenomenon. First, an organization must establish itself. Second, it must survive by seeking growth. During survival, an organization formalizes its structure, establishes its competitive competencies in the marketplace, and seeks new territory. Third, an organization reaches a point of success. It is mature and has established a clear bureaucracy where “top management focuses on planning and strategy, leaving daily operations to middle managers” (Lester, Parnell, & Carraher, 2003, p. 343). Fourth, an organization renews itself, by focusing on its primary objectives. Fifth, an organization faces decline as it loses market share and/or ceases to be resilient. Decline may occur at any stage.

As demonstrated in Figure 1, these five stages overlap Buentello et al.’s (1991) prison gang development model. Considering Lester et al.’s (2003) stages of renewal and decline allows us to understand how the most successful inmate groups transition from simple prison gangs into organized criminal groups that engage in an array of illicit enterprise transcending the typical constraints of prison life. By combining these two models, we can understand the organizational logic which propelled the changes in Barrio Azteca from its founding in the mid-1980s through the 2010s and how, more generally, prison gangs evolve and adapt outside of carceral settings.

Figure 1.

A complete theoretical organizational evolution of an inmate group.

Method

This study forms part of a larger project examining the people and organizations involved in the illicit drug trade in the United States, necessarily including the study of prison gangs, given their prominence in the drug trade, particularly across the El Paso/Ciudad Juárez border. This work draws on interviews with a total of 33 respondents: 17 current and former drug cartel operatives and gang members, 8 law enforcement officers, and 8 journalists, all of whom possessed knowledge of Barrio Azteca and other gangs and criminal organizations in the Paso del Norte. In addition to these formal interviews, informal communications with community members in the Paso del Norte area helped to contextualize and triangulate respondents’ claims.

Respondents were recruited using a combination of traditional chain-referral, snowball sampling methods in both El Paso and Ciudad Juárez and online ads in El Paso only. A complete, in-depth account of my online recruitment strategy along with a reflection on ethical considerations is published elsewhere (Gundur, 2017) and will not be rehearsed here. These interview data were supplemented with a review of the available academic, journalistic, and gray literature. I conducted most of the interviews over 5 months in early 2014 in person in the Paso del Norte area. All interviews were voluntary and were conducted in the free world. Respondents who were not working professionals were modestly compensated for their time.

All interviews were recorded, except for two: one containing a technical failure that dropped a portion of the interview and another in which the respondent declined to be recorded. I took supplemental notes during all interviews. Two professional transcriptionists transcribed “intelligently”: Content was recorded faithfully, but pauses and stammers were not. I coded the transcripts for themes and read them specifically for items relevant to Barrio Azteca.

One respondent was José “Raulio” Rivera Fierro (March 27, 1959–June 25, 2017), the man who founded Barrio Azteca. In 2014, the late Charles Bowden recruited me to work on José’s³ memoir. José had sent the manuscript to Charles after hearing him speak on National Public Radio about the violence in Ciudad Juárez. Charles used his contacts as a journalist to verify José’s identity and key claims. José’s accounts of El Paso during his childhood and prison life in the 1970s and 1980s are consistent with the few articles published on the events of that time (see, e.g., Durán, 2018; Horton & Nielsen, 2005). His dates approximate those in other published accounts. Nonetheless, the timing of Barrio Azteca’s founding and development within this article is approximate.

The sparse existing scholarship covering Barrio Azteca focuses on its role in criminal enterprise and violence in Ciudad Juárez (Ainslie, 2013; Arratia, 2017; Bartolomé, 2011; Rossi, 2014; Salazar Gutiérrez, 2010, 2016). Some journalistic accounts provide insight into episodes and relationships within the gang (Grillo, 2011; Rodríguez Nieto, 2015). Notwithstanding these sources, no academic or indisputable public accounts discuss the group’s origins.⁴ The early history of Barrio Azteca presented here is based primarily on the manuscript José wrote and three in-person interviews I undertook with him to flesh out Barrio Azteca’s creation story.

The remainder reflects interviews with former Texas prisoners, some of whom held roles in Barrio Azteca from the 1990s to the 2010s, and media reports on the gang, particularly those involving trials, to help reconstruct key dates and activities from the 2000s to the 2010s. I have made every reasonable effort to triangulate key facts shared by respondents with the published record. Given José’s role in Barrio Azteca’s history, he is not anonymized; he gave me permission to use his name before his death in 2017. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) public information officer was authorized to give the interview referred to herein and gave permission to credit her by name. All other respondents have been anonymized. Their quotes are representative of themes that consistently emerged in the interviews.

Texas Prisons Until the Mid-1980s

The Control System (1849–1981)

From the early 1849, when the first inmate entered the first Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville (see Figure 2, below, for a timeline of key events in Texas prison history), until 1983, Texas prisons made use of a “control model” that employed the slave-era, punitive “control” system in which inmate guards, also known as “building tenders” or “turnkeys,” policed their fellow inmates in plantation-style prisons (M. C. Campbell, 2011; DiIulio, 1990; Lucko, 2010; Ralph & Marquart, 1991). Although building tenders had fallen out of fashion in most U.S. state penal systems by the mid-20th century, they were championed by George J. Beto, director of the Texas Department of Corrections (TDC) from 1962 until 1972, and continued under his successor W. J. “Jim” Estelle Jr. (DiIulio, 1990; Horton & Nielsen, 2005). When Beto became director of the TDC, he continued to employ inmate guards to keep costs down. Discontinuing the practice would have required constructing more single-unit cells and hiring more midlevel corrections officers (Alpert, Crouch, & Huff, 1984; Horton & Nielsen, 2005).

Figure 2.

Historical time line of Texas prison developments and Barrio Azteca’s organizational evolution.

The prison administration selected building tenders to control other inmates (DiIulio, 1990) and incentivized them to enforce prison policy by affording them special privileges, such as freedom of movement, free access to food, pets, access to white arms, and the keys to other inmates’ cells (Marquart & Crouch, 1985; Ralph & Marquart, 1991; Reavis, 1985). Building tenders maintained control through brutal, violent treatment of uncooperative inmates, developing systems of control in which they deputized friends and informants, forming structures analogous to security threat groups (M. C. Campbell, 2011; Ekland-Olson, 1986; Horton & Nielsen, 2005).

The building tender system did help the prison administration effectively control the majority of inmates. The building tenders minimized inmate violence (DiIulio, 1990) and discouraged organized inmate groups (Ralph & Marquart, 1991; Reavis, 1985). Prison yards were in order and the prison administrators were content. Through the late 1970s, the Black Muslims, who did not engage in consistent violence, were the only significant inmate group within the TDC (Ralph & Marquart, 1991).

However, in the late 1970s, Texas experienced an incarceration boom that more than doubled its inmate population (Alpert et al., 1984). With this influx, other inmate groups, such as the Texas Syndicate and the Aryan Brotherhood, arrived via prisoners who had become members of these prison gangs while previously incarcerated in California (Ekland-Olson, 1986; Fong, 1990; Pelz, Marquart, & Pelz, 1991). The building tender system kept these inmate groups in check until the system’s demise (Fong & Buentello, 1991; Ralph & Marquart, 1991).

Ruiz v. Estelle: The End of Building Tenders (1981–1982)

In 1972, inmate David Ruiz petitioned the Federal Eastern District Court to examine the TDC’s policies regarding solitary confinement, arguing that his constitutional rights had been violated (Alpert et al., 1984). The judge in the case, William Wayne Justice, combined the Ruiz case with complaints from seven other inmates, creating a single civil class action under the name Ruiz v. Estelle ⁵ (DiIulio, 1990). The case finally went to trial in October 1978 and, upon its conclusion, “Judge Justice found the TDC in violation of inmates’ constitutional rights in six major areas: (1) overcrowding, (2) security, (3) fire safety, (4) medical care, (5) discipline, and (6) access to the courts” (Alpert et al., 1984, p. 295). Judge Justice ordered the TDC to undertake several extensive organizational changes to address these violations. Judge Justice gave the TDC until 1982 to phase out and eventually abolish the building tender system (Ekland-Olson, 1986; Justice, 1981; Marquart & Crouch, 1985).

Transition (1982–1984)

The transition from the building tender system to a control system required hiring many more corrections officers. Between 1979 and 1984, the number of guards tripled to about 6,000 (Ekland-Olson, 1986). The new TDC guards, however, lacked the experience to effectively control the inmates’ behavior and were hesitant to intervene in violent inmate–inmate confrontations, which building tenders would ordinarily have squelched (Alpert et al., 1984; Ekland-Olson, 1986). The transition resulted in a power vacuum whereby the prison administration unwillingly relinquished its monopoly on violence (DiIulio, 1990; Horton & Nielsen, 2005; Pelz et al., 1991).

This power vacuum, in turn, led to the liberalization of the protection marketplace within the prison system (Gundur, 2018), resulting in an increase in violence inside Texas prisons as the 1980s progressed (Fong & Buentello, 1991). From 1981 to 1984, assaults against staff increased from 4 to 129 (Marquart & Crouch, 1985), and inmates fought among themselves more frequently. Wars between the inmate groups that had been suppressed by the building tenders were now openly waged. In 1984 and 1985, the white Aryan Brotherhood fought the black Mandingo Warriors out of race hatred, and the Texas Syndicate fought the Texas Mexican Mafia⁶ for control of Hispanic inmates and the prison drug trade (Fong & Buentello, 1991; Ralph & Marquart, 1991).

According to José:

The Texas Syndicate went to the [upstart] Mexican Mafia at the Darrington Unit⁷ [where the Mexican Mafia were selling cannabis] and told them, “You know what, we want a cut. You got to pay taxes.” Now, the [Texas Syndicate] thought [the Mexican Mafia would] be scared of them, that they were just going to lay down. But the Eme⁸ were no punks either. They were standup, too; they were somebody to be reckoned with.

The prison administration, in an attempt to reassert control over their prison yards, responded by isolating every leader they could identify in administrative segregation (Fleisher & Decker, 2001). With leadership weakened and in need of replacements, both the Texas Syndicate and the Mexican Mafia competed for recruits to replenish the ranks of leaders and soldiers and effectively challenge the other for dominance in the penitentiary. El Paso inmates, who were less likely to have associations with either the Texas Syndicate or the Mexican Mafia, given the geographical isolation of the Paso del Norte area from the rest of Texas’s urban centers, were thus sought by both groups, setting the stage for the birth of Barrio Azteca.

The History and Evolution of Barrio Azteca

Barrio Azteca Begins: Coming Into Existence and Survival in Prison (1985–1989)

Even before the prison wars of 1984–1985 (Ralph & Marquart, 1991), racial tension was rising in the Texas state prison system. The need for solidarity among inmates necessitated the formation of what sociologist Norbert Elias (1978) described as “survival units,” that is, groups that can attack enemies and defend against them. José described the formation of cliques, the fundamental survival units of a medium- or maximum-security prison, in the early 1980s:

There was no leader [of our clique] at that point [1983], no one person calling the shots. The gangs, the Mexican Mafia and the Texas Syndicate, hadn’t gone to war yet. But, under the pressure of the race war, people were starting to pull together into groups for protection, not just the [prison] gangs, but cities [cliques] too. The El Paso homeboys started to hang out together, and there were other cities that hung out together too.

These groups were kind of semi-separate, but the one thing we [Chicanos and Mexicans] had in common was that we all spoke Spanish, and we always had something going. We weren’t bored, and we weren’t letting time do us. We even helped the weak inmates. We didn’t discriminate, even against those who had been punked out.⁹

It hadn’t always been like that, but as bad as things were in ‘83, those groups just sort of came together by association. Most of us from El Paso knew each other from the free world, and [being locked up together] was just like hanging out in the barrio (Rivera Fierro, unpublished).

José’s account indicates that Buentello et al’.s (1991) second stage—the formation of cliques—unfolded at this time of racial tension. The cliques were not predatory; they formed to provide solidarity for their members in the likely event of conflict. In market terms, members faced an uncertain protection market in prison yards where violence, injury, and in some cases, death, seemed increasingly inevitable. To mitigate the threat of violence, inmates sought to group together—or as gang scholar Frederick Thrasher (1927 [1963], p. 46) explained, the members of these cliques integrated through the conflict that emerged when building tenders were no longer maintaining order. Simply put, inmates determined that they could better establish and maintain their own safety collectively in a clique rather than independently or by relying on prison authorities.

Though the conflict between the Texas Syndicate and the Mexican Mafia started in the Darrington Unit, news of the conflict spread throughout the system as inmates were transferred between prisons and joined their fellow gang members elsewhere, such as in the Coffield Unit¹⁰ where José was incarcerated. As the war between the Texas Syndicate and the Mexican Mafia escalated, each gang faced losses both through violence and segregation or isolation of their members by the administration. With these losses, both the Mexican Mafia and the Texas Syndicate sought to increase their ranks and courted men who were part of the city-based cliques that had formed in the early 1980s.

Many Paso del Norte inmates, in particular, were reluctant to join one prison gang over another because many had friends in each and did not want to take sides; others simply did not want to participate in the bloody violence unfolding in the prison yard. The frustration of losing comrades to the war provided the impetus José needed to formalize the clique into a structure from which the existing prison gangs could not recruit.

Accordingly, in 1985, José discussed with his pal Benito “Benny” Acosta his idea to start a carrucha, “a ride,”—an established prison gang—for the El Paso and Juárez inmates:

[Benny and I were] talking about all of the shit that had been happening on the unit. A couple more of our homeboys had joined the gangs, and I was not feeling too happy about it. […] El Paso had always been sort of a pseudo-gang, and now we were about to get swallowed up by bigger fish.

I told Benny, “You know what, man? Vamos a comenzar una carrucha. ¿Cómo vez? Pues, toda la gente está puesta.”¹¹ And he said, “No estuviera mal Raulio. Aquí vamos a hablar con la gente en la yarda en la tarde.”¹²

With encouragement from Benny, José called a meeting to poll interest in a formalized gang for the El Paso and Juárez inmates. José was a likable goofball who didn’t have a political profile or a reputation for being a bully; he had the respect of his El Paso peers. And, given that many of his peers also wanted to avoid participating in the violence between the Texas Syndicate and the Mexican Mafia, José’s proposition was a relatively easy sell. Most of the El Paso and Juárez inmates at the meeting joined José’s upstart group. José instituted a rough militaristic hierarchical order, placing himself at the top with four or five captains under him. The rest of the people who wanted to join were “put on the ride” as “soldiers,” emulating the paramilitary structure of the established Hispanic prison gangs of the time. The founding of Barrio Azteca meant that the group could now be recognized by other prison gangs as a formalized entity, with clear membership, putting it on the first stage—existence—of Lester et al.’s (2003) organizational life cycle model. The gang was now a player in the prison system’s inmate protection market.

Nonetheless, unlike the membership requirements of the other established prison gangs, “There was no blood in [to join], blood out [to leave],” José explained. Membership was informal: “There was just, yeah, ‘I’m in the gang,’ just by saying it.” During the meeting, José suggested using the name “Barrio Azteca,” in allusion to his Mexican heritage; the name stuck. The next day, José used his job pushing a broom throughout the prison to get the word out to prospective members and to put the other gangs on notice. Barrio Azteca had been born.

Despite the hierarchical organization of the group, José described the initial objectives as two fold: one, to provide solidarity for inmates from El Paso and Juárez and, two, to ensure that the group would not be part of, or victimized by, the other prison gangs. The formalized, named group provided security for new recruits to its ranks under the banner of Paso del Norte “brotherhood.” An offer of steady protection proved to be an attractive proposition, and Barrio Azteca steadily and consistently recruited more Paso del Norte inmates than did its competitors.

Barrio Azteca Expands: Survival and Maturity; Branching Out Into the Street

Expanding in prison (1989–1993)

Barrio Azteca survived the late 1980s without drawing significant attention; the literature from the time does not consider it at all. Nonetheless, Barrio Azteca survived its early years by evolving into a predator group. In other words, survival, the second step on the Lester et al. (2003) scale, required Barrio Azteca to use violence to underwrite its existence and continue to grow. Although José downplayed the role of violence during the early incarnation of Barrio Azteca, particularly on the streets, he acknowledged the gang’s authoritarian streak as it quickly evolved and grew from a self-protection group to a predator group.

One such example of Barrio Azteca’s early predatory behavior within prison led to the establishment of the Mexicles. In 1987, the Mexicles started as a group of paisas,¹³ or Mexican nationals, who had grouped together for many of the same reasons José formed Barrio Azteca. “The Mexicles were an upstart group [in the Coffield Unit]. They formed because [the Aztecas¹⁴] alienated and shunned them when they wouldn’t join us. They were a very small group,” José explained.

And thus, history repeated itself: Now as a predator group, Barrio Azteca preyed on weaker cliques to recruit their members. Just as Barrio Azteca had responded to the Mexican Mafia and Texas Syndicate, the Mexicles formalized their existence by establishing a named clique in an effort to resist the unwanted Barrio Azteca overtures. The Mexicles, however, never became a “Tier 1” security threat group, meaning that the Texas Department of Public Safety (2007, 2015) never deemed it a preeminent risk. The Mexicles likely failed to significantly expand in the TDC because most of its members were foreign nationals and were less likely to have been street gang members in the United States. Accordingly, upon their almost certain deportations after completing their sentences (Newcomb, 1998), the members of the Mexicles were less likely to return to the Texas jail and prison systems en masse or maintain links to street gangs in the United States like Barrio Azteca did.

Nonetheless, the Mexicles, like Barrio Azteca, became a principal competitor in the protection market in Ciudad Juárez, where many of its members were deported upon completion of their prison sentences. The proxy war that unfolded between Barrio Azteca and the Mexicles and their allies, a gang called the Artistas Asesinos, on behalf of the Juárez and Sinaloa Cartels, respectively, was the largest driver of the city’s exorbitant body count from 2003 to 2014 (Bowden, 2010; Durán Martínez, 2015; Heinle, Molzahn, & Shirk, 2015).

Another example of Barrio Azteca’s ability to act as a predator was its capacity to curb drive-by shootings in El Paso. When Barrio Azteca members were released, membership—and the gang’s presence—expanded onto the street and then into the jails as those members were rearrested. Barrio Azteca’s presence and dominance among El Paso inmates allowed it to create rules that affected the criminal underground on the street, a pattern of informal social control that has been observed consistently with southwestern Hispanic prison gangs (Skarbek, 2011, 2014), thereby promoting low levels of violence in the city. José, when hearing about the death of a little girl killed in a drive-by, banned the practice.

[The killing of the little girl] tore me up, but I knew that I ran the county jail, that all my people, it’s all Azteca. […] I let it be known, you know what, “Ponga la palabra, que no va a ver drive-bys. Al otro güey que caiga por un drive, le tumba por un cantón.”¹⁵

According to the police and gang members interviewed, drive-bys went from being a relatively frequent practice in 1980s El Paso to a rare occurrence in the 1990s. In fact, El Paso went from being a city with a reputation of gang violence to one of the safest cities of its size in the United States, being ranked frequently as one of the top three safest since 1997¹⁶ (Herzog, 2013). Notably, gun-related crime is unusual, even in neighborhoods that used to have a significant historical gang presence (Durán, 2018).

As Barrio Azteca established control in the El Paso jails and a significant presence in the state prisons, it established a foothold in illicit enterprise, namely the drug trade and related businesses (Gundur, 2019). Pedro, a former El Paso police officer, who worked gangs in the 1980s and 1990s, described the early Barrio Azteca gang activity on the street:

[…T]he [Aztecas] we dealt with […in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s engaged in] neighborhood stuff. For example: We brought in a little gangster and he had shot a guy. He didn’t kill him, but shot him. So, we had the arrest. That’s another thing. [Back then, t]hey would talk; whereas [today’s Aztecas members] aren’t divulging their secrets and methods of operation. [The early Azteca] guys would talk. So, we would make arrests fairly quickly because the one would go brag to the other which would brag to another. […B]ecause they weren’t involved in criminal enterprises like that, they really had nothing to lose and more of a reputation to gain by [bragging].

As the Barrio Azteca organization and its members matured, the amateur and unplanned nature that characterized the group’s early days gave way to a more professionalized code of business conduct. By this time, José left the gang, never to return in any significant role, as heroin addiction consumed his attention. In his absence, José’s captains assumed leadership and reshaped Barrio Azteca to emulate its competitors within the prison system. They instituted a rigid hierarchy, established clear rules, demanded unconditional loyalty, and created a set of obligations—known as “putting in work¹⁷”—for new recruits.

These changes indicated that Barrio Azteca was approaching the third step of the Lester et al. (2003) scale, maturity. As the Buentello et al. (1991) model predicts, Barrio Azteca had completed its evolution from a mere solidarity group, that sought to avoid intragang wars within prison walls, into a bona fide prison gang that sought forcefully to carve out its own place in Texas prisons and, eventually, the criminal underworld outside.

In one trial in which he testified, Charlie, a gang squad detective for El Paso Police Department, noted that the state of Texas officially designated Barrio Azteca as a “security threat group” in 1993. Barrio Azteca members who had joined in the 1990s and 2000s described the organizational culture of the gang’s hierarchy inside prison. Though the terms varied over time, the hierarchy remained consistent from the 90s through the noughties, indicating that Barrio Azteca had earned its “security threat group” status by establishing a clear organizational bureaucracy and by violently responding to threats from other inmate groups (Buggs, 2009).

Inmate politics typically fall along racial lines (Fong, 1990; Goodman, 2008; Pelz et al., 1991), and prison gangs recruit new inmates based on their ethnicity and/or place of origin. Inmates generally have three choices when they enter a prison yard: fend for themselves, find religion, or join an inmate group (Gundur, 2018; Orozco Flores, 2013). Joining an inmate group typically involves pledging allegiance to one’s race. Members in the most basic form of inmate group organization historically have been forced to respect the dominant prison gang of that race in prison as well as the “convict code,” which determines which behaviors are acceptable and expected, more generally (Trammell, 2012). In the Barrio Azteca, a step up from being part of the general Hispanic inmate community is a position called esquina.¹⁸ Esquina, which means “corner” (like that of a room) in Spanish, is slang for having somebody’s back: When fighting in a corner, one does not have to worry about an attack from behind. Bruce described his former role and obligations simply: “I became an esquina, in other words, a prospect. I started doing dirt.”

Bruce’s job was to extort sex offenders on behalf of the gang:

[I]f you had a child sex crime, you’d have to pay at least a hundred and fifty a week. I didn’t care how you got it. Either call your mom, call your dad, call somebody—shit a hundred and fifty dollars. [Sex offenders] got their ass beat every day. [If they didn’t pay w]e’d stab them or we’d beat them up.

The work that Bruce put in allowed him to gain status indicators, inked in tattoos such as the feathers that indicated that he had his huaraches.¹⁹ Despite prospecting for, and engaging in violent acts on behalf of, Barrio Azteca, Bruce eventually decided to decline further advancement because he did not feel membership gave him sufficient benefits.

Charlie, the gang squad detective, provided a full overview of the recruitment process and the current known structure of Barrio Azteca in an interview with me:

[Some new Hispanic inmates] become what [the Barrio Azteca] call prospectos or prospects. It’s a transition period where there’s an investigation done. For Barrio Azteca, you have padrinos or Godfathers that pretty much take this role in bringing people into the gang. Pretty much, they’re going to answer for [the prospect]. They’re going to send up a letter, or what they call a wila, up the chain [of command] to say that this guy’s good and he would be good for the gang. It’ll go up to a captain.

Right now [as of April 2014], that we know of, there’s five captains. One of those five captains will bless off on this process and [the approval will] come back down and [the prospect will be] inducted into the gang or given their hauraches, their sandals. Aztecs, they’re Indians and they wore sandals back in the day, so [once a prospect is] given [his] sandals[, he’s] a member of the gang.

It’s a process. From a prospect, you become a soldier, or in [Barrio Azteca’s] terms you’re called a carnal, a brother. That’s a lifelong commitment. It’s not something you can do for a minute and then you’re gone.

Once a prospect becomes a carnal, he can climb the hierarchy, transitioning from being a mere soldier to a sergeant, to a lieutenant, with the ultimate goal, for some, becoming a captain (Department of Justice, 2012). These rankings within the hierarchy influence rank in prison and on the street, but they do not always transfer exactly; upon release, regardless of rank, one must respect the Azteca who oversees the neighborhood to which one returns.

Expanding onto the street (1993–2008)

Upon release, Aztecas, returning to the Paso del Norte area, encountered lucrative criminal enterprises associated with the drug trade, both at the wholesale and retail levels. The connections made in prison; the preexisting contact with traffickers as a relatively ordinary function of the social circles in the Paso del Norte area, a key plaza, or strategic transshipment point, for the illegal drug trade; and the geographic proximity that connected both the Mexican and United States halves of the gang, allowed the Aztecas to become players in the drug trade on both sides of the border (Bowden, 2010; Poppa, 2010). In the streets, the transnational relationships that were commonplace in the Paso del Norte area, along with the improved connections a gang member obtained via incarceration, facilitated involvement with the drug trade (H. Campbell, 2005, 2009). With this development, Barrio Azteca clearly met Lester et al.’s (2003) criteria for being a mature organization: It had reached a point of success, its hierarchy and rules were now clearly established both in prison and on the streets, and it successfully sought out a presence in new territory: the jails of El Paso and the streets of Paso del Norte.

Whereas licit entrepreneurs network in business school, illicit entrepreneurs network in prison (see, for example, Porter, 2015). Barrio Azteca did not return to the free world as a street gang. Organizationally it was distinct. Its members had done time and put in work; they were adults, not youths. The organization occupied a higher perch in the local and regional drug trade compared to street gangs, a status that appeared obvious to the residents of Paso del Norte (Durán, 2018), particularly as the gang forged relationships with various drug trafficking organizations, including the Sinaloa Cartel in the 1990s and the Juárez Cartel in the 2000s and 2010s (Burton & West, 2008).

Scoperto, a Barrio Azteca X (pronounced “equis”)—that is, a former member who had left the gang without permission and was thus a marked man—had been blessed into the gang without being in prison, given his usefulness in the drug trade. Scoperto had no interest in being part of one of the youth gangs that had no currency in the drug trade and would be taxed by the Aztecas. By becoming an Azteca, he did what the family ²⁰ asked him to do. Scoperto transported drugs over the border from Juárez to El Paso. Everyone involved in the trafficking operation would take a turn at being a possible fall guy, the one carrying a small load which, if intercepted, would distract the authorities from the larger shipment behind. The first time Scoperto went to prison, he knew he was serving as the fall guy. It had been arranged, and it didn’t matter to him at the time: “Once in a family, you do what’s best for the family. They said it was your turn; you took it because the family would take care of me afterwards. I got caught and I did a dime for it.”²¹

While most of the wholesale drugs that reach El Paso are sold to traffickers who transport the drugs to other parts of the United States, Barrio Azteca keeps a small portion of its wholesale load for retail sale in the Paso del Norte area. On the street, Aztecas dominate the retail market in both Juárez and El Paso through a retail outlet system, consisting of tiendas or houses out of which a drug dealer sells his product. Each Azteca is entitled to one tienda. Emiliano explained how, upon release, even with no money to one’s name:

[The gang leaders] give you whatever you want to sell. If you want to sell some coke or heroin or whatever, they’ll give you a piece and you can start selling for some [money] and get on your feet. So that’s what I did [when I was released from prison]. I started selling.

Aztecas who had more than one tienda paid a cuota or a tax for the right to operate the extra store(s). Drug dealers who were not affiliated with Barrio Azteca were likewise taxed. This system allowed Barrio Azteca to gain a monopoly of the heroin and cocaine trade in El Paso, the city’s most commonly used hard drugs. White gangs, like the Aryan Brotherhood, sold methamphetamines, while Black gangs, like the Gangster Disciples, sold crack cocaine to the relatively low-volume niche markets that existed. However, they paid their cuota to Barrio Azteca for that privilege because Barrio Azteca controlled the county jails, where most drug dealers or their associates eventually landed. Emiliano, echoing economist David Skarbek’s (2011, 2014) findings on the governance mechanisms of prison gangs, explained the process of retribution when someone refused to pay:

It’s just that if you’re going through the wrong way, you’re going to get caught sooner or later. Even if it’s not you, it can be one of your family members²² or somebody you know that’s close to you. And that’s the way Azteca is going to set an example.

When [your people] go to county [jail. The Aztecas will say:] “So, these people don’t want to pay us? And you’re related to them? Okay.” [And the Aztecas will] beat them up. They’ll rough [your people] up pretty good and stuff. [Your people are] going to tell their family members, “Hey, this happened to me when I was in there.” So, it makes [non-payers] think twice because they’re thinking, “Even if I don’t go to jail, one of the family members will or one of the gang members will, and something’s going to happen.”

In Juárez, life as an average Barrio Azteca member—one who could no longer cross back into El Paso—developed somewhat differently and, in some respects, separately, indicating that settings and circumstance do influence illicit entrepreneurial decisions (Felson, 2006). In the Texas prison system, Barrio Azteca did recruit Mexican nationals—typically men from Ciudad Juárez—into its ranks and, as with almost all criminal aliens, these men were deported back to their countries of origin upon completion of their criminal sentences. Since most Aztecas were from Paso del Norte, these men returned to Juárez, where many continued a life of crime. The deportation of Aztecas effectively exported the prison gang and its organizational traditions, connections, and behaviors to the deportees’ home city of Juárez. The deportation and transplantation of prison gangs is a phenomenon which has been seen elsewhere, perhaps most notably with the exportation of the Mara Salvatruchas (MS-13) and Barrio 18 gangs whose members, once street gang members in Los Angeles, were deported to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras²³ (Fontes, 2018; Ward, 2013; Wolf, 2010; Zilberg, 2011). In the cases of MS-13, Barrio 18, and Barrio Azteca, deportation effectively forced the migration of the gang members, who, confronted with poverty, poor social control, and a lack of economic opportunity, perpetuated the gang structures they were familiar with and could more easily navigate (Fontes, 2018). While transnational cooperation between the disparate elements of MS-13 is questionable, the relationship that exists between the two halves that form the Barrio Azteca organization is unique given the proximity between Juárez and El Paso, cities that, although in different countries, are separated by a single border that one can walk across. Notably, however, Barrio Azteca has maintained its regional presence and does not have any significant, sustained membership outside Chihuahua, Paso del Norte, and West Texas (Mosso, 2018).

Although some outlets report that “Barrio Azteca” in El Paso is an organization distinct from “The Aztecas” in Juárez (Sullivan, 2013), this distinction is not correct. Local police and Barrio Azteca gang members all report that the two are halves of one whole, albeit with different capos or captains controlling various regions. Emiliano, a former Barrio Azteca member, described the cooperation between gang members on both sides of the border:

We cooperate in everything, like drug dealing or [having people] to come pick up from over here and take them over there and stuff like that. It’s still the same communication between us. But the one that runs it over there, he has a different style of running things; and the one that is over here has a different style. But when it comes down to like we have to get some things from over there, we’ll just talk to them and they’ll send our stuff. Or if you have to pick up somebody over here and take them over there. It’s the same gang. It’s still the same.

Although Barrio Azteca is a transnational organization, all of its members are not: An El Paso-based Barrio Azteca member can enter and leave Juárez with only a passport or a passport card. No visa is required, and no passport checks occur as one enters Juárez from El Paso, so criminal records do not impede Barrio Azteca members from entering. Consequently, the capacity of some members to go back and forth across the border legally through the controlled checkpoints is a net benefit for the gang. Juárez-based Aztecas are geographically restricted, and the progression of their criminal careers is impacted by that constraint.

Like their American counterparts, many of the Juárez-based Aztecas returned to prison, although in Mexico. Prison life in Ciudad Juárez is distinct from that in Texas. Juárez’s municipal jail and state prison are both known as Centro Readaptación Social, colloquially referred to by the acronym “cereso.” The Chihuahua state cereso is a high-security prison, governed by criminal organizations, including Barrio Azteca (Rodríguez Nieto, 2015; Wolff, 2018). According to Human Rights Watch (2014), 65% of Mexico’s prisons are under inmate rule. Several journalistic reports indicate that the criminal organizations that control the Juárez cereso have established livable communities that are distinct and separate from one another, with amenities, including restaurants, bars, and sex workers (Ortiz Uribe, 2010; Rodríguez Nieto, 2015; Wolff, 2018).

There is no comprehensive research on the social order of Mexican prisons, so it is difficult to comment on the recruitment process of prospective gang members within the Juárez cereso. Dominant prisoners employ violence to subjugate their fellow inmates (Martínez Ahrens, 2016), and the general population wing is viewed as a dangerous place to do time (Grillo, 2011; Ortiz Uribe, 2010; Wolff, 2018). The rival factions have access to weapons and have rioted and fought each other in the past (Borunda, 2009; Grillo, 2011; Rodríguez Nieto, 2015). One notable riot in Juárez’s cereso occurred on March 4, 2009, when members of Barrio Azteca attacked their rivals the Mexicles and the Artistas Asesinos, resulting in at least 20 deaths (Alis, 2009; Newsweek Staff, 2009). Clearly, like their American counterparts, the Juárez-based Aztecas sought to take advantage of the protection rackets they maintained to control the prison yard.

This ambition was mirrored in the street in the quest to earn money through illicit enterprise: In the context of Mexico, the protection which the Aztecas offered interested the city’s dominant drug trafficking organization, the Juárez Cartel, also known as La Línea or the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes organization (Jones, 2016), which had long been moving wholesale quantities of drugs across the border at the Paso del Norte (H. Campbell, 2009; Durán Martínez, 2015; Heiskanen, 2016; Patenostro, 1995).

The relationship between Barrio Azteca and La Línea dates back to at least 2008 (Burton & West, 2008), as cartels contested control of Ciudad Juárez, which was then, and still is now, an important plaza for drug traffickers (International Crisis Group, 2008). Barrio Azteca members came to fulfill two distinct roles—that of retail drug dealer/wholesale trafficker and that of enforcer (Durán Martínez, 2015). Charlie, the gang squad detective, described this development:

[A]bout 2008 [was when] we started seeing this war between the Sinaloa Cartel and the Juárez Cartel start to erupt. The Barrio Azteca got pulled into that mess. They got into an agreement, late 2008, 2009, with the Juárez Cartel that if they would become the enforcement arm for them, [Barrio Azteca] would share drug proceeds. [The] Juárez Cartel would pretty much handle all the cocaine. The Barrio Azteca would handle marijuana and heroin. That’s the agreement that they came to be.

That arrangement allowed Barrio Azteca to grow and reach its organizational pinnacle while specializing in different industries on each side of the border. In El Paso, Barrio Azteca members became the kings of the underworld and controlled the retail drug market, facilitated much of heroin wholesaling, dominated the protection markets inside county jails, provided weapons to their Mexican counterparts (Ortiz Uribe, 2010), and maintained a competitive presence in Texas state prisons. In Juárez, Barrio Azteca became an effective enforcer, entrenched itself in the burgeoning retail drug market, established itself as a reliable heroin wholesaler, and became a forceful presence in the Juárez penitentiary, where the local prison administration did not have any clear—and certainly not forceful—control over inmate affairs (Ainslie, 2013; Ortiz Uribe, 2010; Rodríguez Nieto, 2015). In short, at its operational apex, the various arms of the mature Barrio Azteca organization—the prison gang, the drug trafficking organization, and the enforcement crew—worked well and in concert with each other to exploit comparative advantages in the settings in which each operated.

Barrio Azteca Changes: Renewal and Decline; Shifts in Violence

The proxy war (2008–2013)

Drug-related violence escalated quickly in Mexico at the turn of the 21st century, and Ciudad Juárez became notorious for its many murders (Bowden, 2010; Heinle et al., 2015; Shirk, 2009). Juárez’s death toll arose largely from the conflict between the Juárez and Sinaloa Cartels, drug trafficking organizations fighting for control of the lucrative plaza. The war between the drug trafficking organizations, as DEA public information officer Diana Apodaca explained, is better described as a “proxy war” between the gangs that had allied themselves with these drug trafficking organizations, exchanging enforcement for access to wholesale quantities of drugs. The homicides attributable to drug-related violence in Mexico numbers tens of thousands (Calderón, Rodríguez Ferreira, & Shirk, 2018), though most victims were associated with drug trafficking organizations or their affiliated gangs (Shirk, 2009), which suffered heavy organizational losses. Despite these heavy proxy war losses (Bowden, 2010), Barrio Azteca excelled in drug trafficking and as paid muscle (National Gang Intelligence Center, 2015).

The gangs supplemented the sicarios—assassins—of old, increasing the capacity and manpower available for violent operations, and two of the most notorious events in which Barrio Azteca was involved help demonstrate both its modus operandi and capacity to inflict violence. First was the January 2010 massacre at the Villas de Salvácar (Grillo, 2011), where innocent university students were mistaken for members of a rival gang and murdered (Borunda, 2010). Second was the March 2010 killing of Leslie A. Enriquez, an employee at the U.S. consulate in Juárez; her husband, Arthur Redelfs; and Jorge Alberto Salcido Ceniceros, the husband of another U.S. consulate employee (FBI, 2014; Rodríguez Nieto, 2015). According to court testimony, the gang suspected the consulate employees were helping people associated with the Sinaloa Cartel obtain U.S. visas (Washington Valdez, 2014), though the hit may also have been motivated by the victims’ refusal to engage in corrupt practices on behalf of the gang (Conroy, 2010).

Regardless of the motives, in each event, Barrio Azteca violently, but professionally, killed people who were perceived to be opposition figures,²⁴ a pattern of behavior that characterized the early years of their relationship with the Juárez Cartel (Kan, 2012). The Salvácar killings saw the victims space cornered and murdered without any hope of escape (Grillo, 2011). Likewise, the consulate killings were professionally executed, with sophisticated radio systems to coordinate the shootings (Borunda, 2017). Both killings were extreme examples of the conspicuous violence that characterized the proxy war from 2008 to 2014 (Calderón et al., 2018), but given their victims, both killings drew extensive law enforcement attention from both sides of the border, leading to a concerted effort to target Barrio Azteca’s leadership and membership (Borunda, 2010, 2017; Washington Valdez, 2014), which may have curbed the organization’s growth.

Internal strife and focusing on business (2008–2015)

Conflict within the gang in El Paso characterized the early years of Barrio Azteca’s association with the Juárez Cartel. Testimony in a 2008 federal racketeering trial²⁵ against Barrio Azteca capos by Gustavo “Tavo” Gallardo, a former Barrio Azteca lieutenant, described a struggle between David “Chicho” Meraz and Angel “Angelillo” Esqueda (Molina Johnson, 2008). Meraz’s heroin addiction was considered a business risk by fellow Barrio Azteca members, and he was eventually murdered in Juárez at the order of Eduardo “Tablas” Ravelo Rodríguez, who was then the highest ranking member of the gang in Juárez, according to court testimony (Borunda & Molina Johnson, 2008). Ravelo had been on the FBI top-10 wanted list for nearly a decade until his arrest on June 28, 2018, in Uruapan, Michoacán, Mexico (Mosso, 2018). José, who remembered Ravelo as a fellow heroin user with no real direction or drive, found Ravelo’s importance and notoriety surprising. Former Barrio Azteca member Emiliano also disputed Ravelo’s importance:

Ravelo? Tablas? The one from Juárez? I don’t even know where he’s at or anything. It’s crazy in a way because [the police and the media] make it seem like he’s the main one. I don’t know if you paid attention to every time they catch somebody, they say he’s a main one. You know what I’m saying? That’s not true. They make it seem like he’s a real important guy in that industry or in that gang or whatever.

Regardless of who was in charge, both gang members and law enforcement officials reported shifts in organizational strategy that focused on behaviors that improved business outcomes. DEA Public Information Officer Diana Apodaca indicated that the Juárez Cartel established strict rules of behavior for Barrio Azteca members operating on their behalf. Emiliano, speaking about the differences between El Paso and Juárez Aztecas, noted that while El Paso capos tolerate heavy drug use, Juárez capos do not because anything that dampens one’s sharpness creates a safety hazard:

It’s way different the way they run it over there [in Juárez] and the way they run it over here [in El Paso]. […O]ver there, you can’t be strung out on heroin. [The capos] give you a couple of chances. They even put you in rehab centers, so you can clean yourself [up] and stuff. If you don’t listen, then it’s a different story[: You will be killed.]

Pancho, a current Barrio Azteca member, described how violence had become less brazen and less public:

Pancho:

[In Juárez], there is violence, but not like it used to be: like leaving the bodies out on the street. Now [the gangs] bury them. Now it’s like back in the days, they do it under water.²⁶

RVG:

What caused people to change that behavior?

Pancho:

The US government was about to go in over there. They just wanted to take the heat off the bridge [that connected El Paso and Juárez]. Everybody was losing money.

RVG:

Everybody? As in everybody who?

Pancho:

All the cartels. All the people that was moving something. They were losing money because all the heat they brought to the bridge. They needed to stop that [because it was bad for business].

In short, the focus on the drug retailing and trafficking activities indicated that the gang was renewing itself, thus entering the fourth stage of Lester et al.’s (2003) scale. This focus marked a shift from engaging primarily in providing protection to greater involvement in the day-to-day handling of the drugs themselves. To wit, in developing behaviors that do not bring undue attention to their free-world operations, the group appeared to understand that its role as enforcer could not undermine its activities as drug traffickers and retailers. The shift in behavior resulted in lower visibility, with local and national coverage of the gang declining sharply after its peak, following the consulate killings and their relevant trials. Despite this decline in visibility, both police and current and former Aztecas emphasize the gang’s continued preeminence in the Paso del Norte’s cocaine and heroin trade.

Nonetheless, at the time of writing, Barrio Azteca’s well-being and leadership in Juárez is at a crossroads. The relationships forged between Barrio Azteca and La Línea appear to be fracturing. Conflicts between the two groups have resulted in renewed violence on the streets of Juárez that has yielded hundreds of dead (Fierro, 2018; Robbins, 2018). In addition, June 2018 saw the arrest of Ravelo and other allegedly key leaders, including Juan Arturo “El Genio” Padilla Juárez (Mosso, 2018). Padilla Juárez, the gang’s apparent second-in-command in Juárez was murdered in prison a month after his arrest (El Diario de Chihuahua, 2018),²⁷ indicating that, despite measures to secure such a high-profile prisoner, prison administrators are still unable to control the gangs within the cereso. The prison violence appears to have resulted in retaliation on the street, as the press links killings of groups of suspected gang members to the timing of Padilla Juárez’s murder (Fierro, 2018). Moreover, Barrio Azteca has continued to be active in Juárez, killing rival drug dealers and asserting its position (Borunda, 2018). Despite the current uncertainty surrounding Barrio Azteca’s leadership status, it has retained a role in the transnational drug trade.

The Texas prison system reasserts control (2013–2018)

When the Federal Government targeted Barrio Azteca’s leadership on racketeering charges, it disrupted Barrio Azteca’s operations in two important ways. First, the prosecutions sowed distrust among the rank and file given prosecutors’ success in turning some members state’s witness (Borunda, 2011). Second, the prosecutions disrupted the organization’s ability to promote new leaders, creating a leadership void in the Barrio Azteca’s prison-system arm, especially because the racketeering prosecutions accompanied a concerted attack on the gang’s leadership by the Texas prison administration. Accordingly, the vertical, hierarchical structure that helped maintain order and comported with the status quo within the prisons in the 1980s ceased to be a viable organizational model (Gundur, 2018).

When Barrio Azteca could no longer fill its leadership positions, it could no longer assert control over new inmates or attract new members, causing its numbers, relative to other prison gangs, to fall (Texas Department of Public Safety, 2015). The loss in manpower and market share within the state prisons led the Texas Department of Public Safety (2015) to reduce the threat level attributed to the gang from Tier 1 to Tier 2, indicating that the gang still has a significant presence within the prisons and on the street, but not as it once did. It is a demotion that squares with the accounts of gang members and inmates recently released from Texas state prisons who describe a lack of Barrio Azteca members in the general prison population.

The prison administration’s focus on locking up gang leadership changed the dynamics of the protection market in prison, providing an opportunity for the development of tangos, relatively horizontal solidarity groups of primarily Hispanic inmates, organized around inmates’ geographic origins within the state of Texas (Gundur, 2018). The first tangos were purportedly founded in the early to mid-1990s (Brendel, 2008; Tapia et al., 2014). By 2012, the Texas Department of Safety identified tangos, collectively, as a Tier 1 threat, indicating their position as recognized prison gangs in the Texas prison system (Texas Department of Public Safety, 2013), despite their unusual horizontal configuration (Gundur, 2018).

Each tango has a head, known as a chompa, who serves as a spokesman to interface with other prison gang leaders; otherwise, tangos have a flat organizational structure where most members are on equal footing. Accordingly, tangos do not rely on hierarchy to fill their ranks. Decisions are made in a more collective manner, and neither lifetime allegiance nor allegiance outside prison is required (Gundur, 2018; Tapia, 2014; Tapia et al., 2014). Although the state of Texas views tangos as “security threat groups,” and the premier gang threat in Texas prisons (Texas Department of Public Safety, 2017), tangos collectively are not necessarily affiliated with one another (Tapia et al., 2014). Moreover, members of tangos equate the groups’ purpose with Barrio Azteca’s original purpose to provide solidarity and protection from other prison gangs that vie to recruit them.

Joey, a member of Chuco Tango, the El Paso tango, described his aversion to Barrio Azteca and the appeal of being part of Chuco Tango:

[Becoming a carnal for Barrio Azteca is that] crash dummy shit. You have to fucking do stupid-ass missions. […As] Chuco Tango […] you don’t [do missions], but you do have to represent and back up your friends. […] I say I’m Chuco; this is my homeboy from Chuco too, and in other words you’re saying I’m going to back him up regardless of whatever and we’re going to fix shit between us even if he’s fucking up, I’m going to back him up.

The appeal of Barrio Azteca to new prospects has declined, and the gang’s membership appears to be stagnating, due to the changing dynamics in both county and state lockups. There is little evidence that Barrio Azteca has renewed its dominant presence in carceral settings, though, to date, its decline there does not appear to have significantly impacted its ability to move and sell drugs on the streets of Juárez and El Paso. Frank, a member of Chuco Tango, noted the continuing power of Barrio Azteca in the streets of El Paso despite its weakening in prison:

Barrio Azteca, right, is the leader, that runs the city. I think that’s not how it is any more in prison, but in the free world they are still way more organized. [They divide their labor: T]hey have their people that run drugs, the people that sell drugs, the people that bring the drugs, […] the people that kill, [and] the people that charge cuota.

As Charlie, the gang squad detective, noted, this success supports the idea that, though recruitment within the jails and prisons of Texas has stalled, Barrio Azteca continues to recruit new members in the free world, with ranking members blessing in new recruits. Some news reports indicate that the gang has turned to social media to recruit members (Staff, 2018). The strategy of renewal for the gang on the street appears to buoy numbers despite its apparent decline within prison.

It remains to be seen whether the gang is still seeking to renew itself or is facing decline, the final stage of Lester et al.’s (2003) scale. Several questions remain: To what extent will Barrio Azteca continue to decline within Texas prisons and jails? Will that decline ultimately affect the organization’s capacity to renew its objectives by operating as an illicit enterprise in the free world, while successfully establishing itself as a primarily drug trafficking organization as existing dominant groups falter? Will a renewed Barrio Azteca have the capacity to fend off challenges from emerging groups (Robbins, 2018)? Ultimately, these questions center on whether Barrio Azteca, as an organization, can continue to be resilient and adapt to the circumstances it faces.

Discussion and Conclusion

This article has presented a concise account of how the Barrio Azteca organization formed and evolved, showing how it has navigated the issue of protection in the different settings and circumstances it has faced over the course of more than 30 years. The study of a single organization demonstrates how different elements of prison gang organizational life, often covered piecemeal within the literature, dovetail in the operational choices of a prison gang throughout its life cycle. This article has shown how Barrio Azteca evolved from a solidarity group in the Coffield Unit in 1985 to an organization that operated in a diverse array of criminal marketplaces. In addition, this account has shown that the Buentello et al.’s (1991) model of prison gang development correctly identifies the developmental stages of Barrio Azteca within prison. The organization showed resilience (Ayling, 2009) in its evolution from solidarity group to prison gang, as it carved out its own space in the prison protection market vis-à-vis established prison gangs like the Mexican Mafia and the Texas Syndicate. Moreover, this article goes beyond the framework of prison gang evolution by using Lester et al.’s (2003) scale of organizational life cycles to show how Barrio Azteca evolved into a free-world organized criminal group, adapting to new contexts both in and outside prison. In that evolution, the organization has revealed its ability to be resilient outside the carceral setting, by adapting its tactics to best supply and market the protection and criminal activities necessary to sustain its existence.

To frame the lessons of Barrio Azteca’s organizational evolution more concretely—and to understand the lessons this history offers in the broader context of prison gangs, particularly Latino, transnational ones—we should understand how the organization maneuvered vis-à-vis the dynamics of protection and space. The context that gave birth to Barrio Azteca was one where neither prison administrators nor other inmate groups dominated the protection market in prison. Unlike some gangs which began as street gangs and then developed a significant presence in prison (Moore & Williams, 2011; Savenije, 2004; Tapia, 2018), Barrio Azteca was born in prison and took its developmental and organizational cues from the existing paradigms of the inside. In short, Barrio Azteca members did not want to be subjected to the rules of other inmate groups, and thus, they integrated as a function of the competitive, liberalized protection market that developed in Texas state prisons during the early to mid-1980s in the instability following Ruiz v. Estelle. Barrio Azteca’s initial goal of providing solidarity and protection to its members soon gave way to objectives, rules, and desires that focused on seizing market share in the prison protection market and dominating carceral settings that Paso del Norte inmates were likely to inhabit.

In carceral settings, Barrio Azteca used violence to bully other inmates who did not want to join and to set and enforce rules more generally in the Texas state prison and the El Paso county jail system. Across the border, Barrio Azteca duplicated its tactic of asserting control and carving out protection market share in the ceresos of Chihuahua where its Mexican members were incarcerated. Given the ongoing violence—including targeted killings and riots—in Mexican prisons, it is clear that the protection market is not effectively dominated by the prison administration. Accordingly, inmates must create systems of self-protection to fend off threats from rival groups. While this phenomenon is not unique to Barrio Azteca and its conflicts in Chihuahua and has been observed in prisons in Central America (Fontes, 2018; Wolf, 2012), Brazil (Dias & Darke, 2016; Lessing & Wills, 2019), and other Latin American countries (Peirce & Fondevila, 2019), it underscores the role of protection in determining if and how violence unfolds in carceral settings. In short, when the protection market is competitive in prison, inmate groups compete for market share, and that competition is often underwritten by an actionable and credible threat of violence.

The history of Barrio Azteca demonstrates that, for inmate groups, asserting control in a carceral setting is paramount if they are to expand to the point of being able to control the dynamics of illicit enterprise in the areas where they wish to operate upon release into the free world. Protection is a fundamental ingredient to successful criminal entrepreneurship and an asset for emerging organizations in their quest to become part of the lucrative illicit marketplaces, like the wholesale and retail drug trade that Barrio Azteca entered in the Paso del Norte area.

Although this article has focused on the organizational evolution of Barrio Azteca, it also has provided a blueprint for assessing similarly successful inmate groups’ organizational objectives, along with their mechanics and internal relationships, illicit entrepreneurial trajectories, and resilience necessary for staying afloat within various illicit marketplaces. First, the dynamics of protection of the carceral settings in which an organization exists is fundamental to understanding its organizational objectives. Protection marketplaces are dynamic across time and space, and organizations cannot necessarily persist by using the same strategy in all circumstances. The case of the Texas Department of Corrections’ strategy of locking down prison gang leadership illustrates how Barrio Azteca went into decline and gave way to the rise of the tangos, as protection dynamics shifted.

Second, understanding the relationships that an organization has with the free world and the underworld that exists within it is paramount if academics and law enforcement are to accurately predict the kind of criminal activity a group will engage in. The members of Barrio Azteca were united socially and geographically, in a manner that was easily bridged. Moreover, their day-to-day lives and social circles brought them into contact with those in the wholesale drug trade. Navigating those spaces was relatively easy, meaning that even though Barrio Azteca never expanded much beyond the Paso del Norte, its importance to the drug trade endured. When they were new players, they provided protection; as they persisted, they were able to engage in more lucrative trafficking operations.

Third, academics and policy makers must develop an understanding of the various market dynamics in play when evaluating the strength of an organization. These dynamics include the social issues at play in the places to where gang members are deported. The Mexican state has struggled to impose its control over Ciudad Juárez. Government failure to exercise effective control over its territory and curb violence within it is an attribute common to many Latin American democracies (Whitehead, Fair, & Payne, 2010), particularly over the last 50 years. Accordingly, when states fail to impose effective control, the protection markets become competitive and more easily entered into by criminal actors. Moreover, the demand for protection and whatever illicit products or services a criminal group is dealing with can change over time. Whether a criminal group adapts to these changes determines its longevity. Barrio Azteca’s history illustrates how the protection market, most notably in prison but also in the free world, is dynamic and can be challenged with shifts to institutional order. Ultimately, we must remember that a minority of inmate groups fully complete this evolutionary cycle. Many devolve early in their existence, failing to develop the resilience necessary to endure. To that end, it may be worthwhile to assess the factors that stunt developmental growth and how prison administrators and policy makers can foster such factors.

Footnotes

Author’s Note

This research was approved by the Cardiff University Ethics Committee.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank William J. Clark, Isobel Scavetta, three anonymous reviewers, and the special issue editors who gave me valuable comments and editorial assistanceto improve this work. I would also like to thank the people at UACJ and UTEP, César A. Olivas, Leobardo Alvarado, and Sandra Garabano, who supported me in this project by providing spaces to interview my respondents and helping with access. I also thank the respondents who participated in this study, particularly José Rivera, whose firsthand account made this work possible.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) as a doctoral student at Cardiff University and additionally by an ESRC Overseas Research Travel Grant to conduct the fieldwork this work is based upon.

ORCID iD

R. V. Gundur

Notes

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