Latino Gang Carnage Is Part of an Invisible War : Violence: Killings in the barrios are largely ignored, although they claim twice as many lives as in black areas.

The bloodiest gang battles are not being waged in Watts or Compton, but in the barrios of such communities as City Terrace, Florence, Valinda, Pico-Union and Wilmington.

The players in these deadly clashes are not the notorious Bloods and Crips, but virtually unknown cliques of Latino youths with names such as Mara Salvatrucha, Geraghty Lomas, Crazy Riders, Mid-City Stoners, Cuatro Flats and Loko Park.

While black gangs are widely viewed as a symbol of street warfare, the reality is that violence among Latino gangs has claimed nearly twice as many lives in recent years as the infamous rivalry between the young men who sport red and blue bandannas. Last year, in communities patrolled by the Los Angeles Police and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s departments, 179 blacks were slain in gang-related homicides. During that time, 340 Latinos died in gang attacks.

Since the Los Angeles riots, when a truce between the majority of Crips and Bloods factions virtually ground black gang killings to a halt, the carnage in Latino neighborhoods has continued unabated. It is, in many ways, a forgotten war--one that has been waged with little political rhetoric, community protest or the spotlight of the cameras.

“It’s the undeclared crisis, “ said Lou Negrete, an Eastside activist and professor of Chicano studies at Cal State Los Angeles. “There’s tremendous pain and suffering in the community . . . but our leaders tend to take these killings for granted, like they’re part of the background.”

Gang members from Chicanos on the Eastside to Central American immigrants in Westlake seem unable or unwilling to stem the tide of violence that took root in the barrios decades before black street gangs existed. For many, there is too much pride, too much honor, too much tradition at stake.

George joined his Eastside gang in 1988--a noteworthy year in which sheriff’s officials reported no gang-related homicides in the entire East Los Angeles station area. Since then, there have been 88 gang killings, 40 of them in 1991. Six victims were George’s homeboys.

The funerals have taken their toll on George, who talks with a quiet fatalism that seems at odds with his fuzzy 17-year-old’s goatee. Still, he insists he has no regrets, not for the tattoos on his arms spelling out his gang name or for the crimes committed in the name of his neighborhood.

“People grow up in the barrio and they ain’t gonna give it up just because somebody says you gotta change,” said George, who asked that his last name not be used because he is awaiting trial on a shooting charge. “If you’re loyal, you gotta show it, you gotta be there when your homies need you, no matter what.”

When black gangs forged their peace accord, the purported message was one of unity, economic opportunity and political clout. But many Latino gangs viewed it as a sellout.

To Lil Man, a 23-year-old member of the East L.A. Dukes, the Bloods and Crips are latecomers to the gang scene--loud and flamboyant compared to the quiet, defiant cool of the traditional cholo. As he leaned against a graffiti-scarred wall in the Aliso Village housing project, sucking on an unfiltered cigarette, he dismissed the truce as a publicity stunt by black gangs to get media attention.

“They want to be the show, always putting up a funk whenever the cameras are around,” Lil Man said. “We’re mellow, man. You never see la raza-- the Latin people--on the news.”

Even if Latino gangs wanted to, a peace accord would pose a logistics nightmare. Sheriff’s officials estimate there are nearly 60,000 Latino gang members--as compared to about 35,000 blacks--in more than 450 gangs countywide, stretching from Pomona to Pacoima, from Hawaiian Gardens to Hollywood.

In many communities, those gangs have become increasingly factional, with small groups of young gangsters squaring off against older veteranos-- who in the past were more likely to have been mentors than rivals. Immigration patterns have also complicated the equation, with Central American refugees forming cliques on turf claimed by longtime Chicano gangs.

“It’s so Balkanized that in some areas, where you used to have eight or nine big gangs, you now have more than 40,” said Mary Ridgeway, a veteran Eastside probation officer. “They’ve also formed these odd alliances with each other, which they view as making them stronger, but which also means you inherit everyone else’s enemies.”

While the body count has mounted in the barrios, the nation’s attention has been riveted on the ‘hood. In movies, TV, newspapers and rap music videos, the Bloods and Crips have emerged as a powerful cultural force--urban rebels who symbolize savage lawlessness and the rage of the disenfranchised.

How the problems of Latino gangs became so overshadowed raises difficult questions about race, political power and Los Angeles’ tolerance for violence. The answers, gang and media experts say, lie in the way black and Latino gang members view themselves, the way they are viewed within their communities and the perceived threat they pose to the outside world.

“Black gangster images are much more vivid, much more spectacular and much clearer,” said Alan Bloom, a professor of broadcasting at Cal State Los Angeles who teaches a course in the study of music videos. “You don’t get the same sense from Latino gang symbolism.”

Conventional wisdom holds that black gangs tend to be motivated more by financial gain and Latinos more by territorial pride. Although that is a widely accepted generality, blacks also operate in a larger social context.

The Crips and Bloods, who trace their roots to the Black Power movement of the late 1960s, often describe themselves as victims of an oppressive and racist society that has forced them to hunt for their piece of the pie on the streets. Their message is steeped in themes of rebellion, brutality and community control.

Latino gang members, while viewing themselves as proud defenders of the barrios, tend to have a more fatalistic vision--a tragic sense of inevitability forged from rivalries dating to the 1940s. Good times and bad times, play now and pay later, what goes around comes around. It is all part of the price for choosing la vida loca, they say, the crazy life.

“You won’t see my people out there protesting, saying: ‘They did this to us or that to us because we’re Mexicans,’ ” said Chino, 20, a member of a South Los Angeles gang known as Barrio Mojados-- Wetback Town. “We don’t cry. We don’t let things get to us. We take it like it is.”

Even the music associated with the gangs reflects those differences. Rap music and the images of black gangster life presented in music videos have become pop icons for a generation of disaffected youths from the ghetto to the suburbs. Latino gang members, though many have taken to rap, still have a soft spot for memory-laden oldies--anachronistic tunes such as “Teen Angel,” “The Duke of Earl,” and “I’m Not Your Puppet.”

“It’s really pretty funny, all these gangsters listening to old love songs,” said Mister Blvd., 20, a former gang member from Highland Park who is trying to launch a career as a rap artist with Latino political themes. “When I perform, I know they’re gonna like the music, but I don’t always know if the message is going to hit them.”

To a large degree, the way each gang views itself is a reflection of its own community’s political awareness.

In African-American neighborhoods, long before the truce, there were intense efforts under way to warn of the Crips’ and Bloods’ self-destructive madness. Community leaders urged brothers to stop killing brothers, ministers formed committees dedicated to saving the black male and even a clothing company--Cross Colours--last year began marketing popular street wear bearing African color schemes and socially conscious slogans.

In Latino neighborhoods, however, such voices have been conspicuously quiet. Much of this, activists say, can be attributed to the struggles of an immigrant community, which must often contend with language barriers, fears of deportation and unfamiliarity with the democratic process. They note that Latinos--unlike blacks, who have a long tradition of fighting injustice--have been slow in awakening to their full political potential.

“It’s like, as long as it’s happening in the barrio, to somebody else, someplace else, it ain’t a problem,” said Miguel (Mike) Duran, a former pachuco who serves as director of specialized youth services for the county Probation Department. “I say: ‘Shame on us. Shame on us as Chicanos for allowing something like this to perpetuate itself.’ ”

The filter of the media, many experts believe, contributes to the illusion that gang violence is essentially a black problem.

Some African-American activists, such as Oakland-based novelist and social commentator Ishmael Reed, contend that news shows have found a lucrative market by exploiting black crime and playing to white fear. “The black pathology industry,” Reed calls it.

Other critics believe that the media is guided less by a racist agenda than by the desire to grab attention in a highly competitive news environment. Brian Stonehill, director of the media studies program at Pomona College in Claremont, said this means stories are broken down to their most simplistic and viscerally antithetical elements--good vs. bad, us vs. them, black vs. white.

“The implication is that gangs are an issue of black youths against the white Establishment or that whites are somehow victims of black urban violence--even though that is rarely the case,” Stonehill said. “The pressure to be dramatic has distorted our view of reality.”

That distortion cuts both ways. Many African-Americans believe youths in their community have been unfairly stereotyped and that the Bloods and Crips have been blamed for social ills far beyond their control.

On the other hand, many Latinos believe that their suffering has been ignored and that the conditions that drive young men to act out violently in their community have been allowed to fester.

Bugsy, a 16-year-old member of the Mob Crew in Boyle Heights, has been dealt one of those bad hands. He says he was abandoned by his mother and raised by an alcoholic father. He was arrested for the first time at 9, for stealing a boombox nearly as big as he was. Over the years, he has been in and out of custody, serving time for robbery and attempted murder.

“We’re just throwaway kids,” Bugsy said in an interview during one of his brief stints of freedom. “We keep on killing each other and nobody worries about us. I guess that’s just what they want us to do.”

* ONE SLAIN IN GANG SHOOTING: A gang member killed one party-goer and injured six others Saturday, police said. B1

The Numbers

In the last three years, the number of Latinos killed in gang attacks has risen sharply.

The following is a chart of gang-related homicides, by ethnicity of the victim, in communities patrolled by the Los Angeles Police and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s departments:

YEAR LATINO BLACK OTHER 1991 340 179 63 1990 315 157 27 1989 202 201 16

SOURCE: Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles County Sheriff