Safe at Home

There was no need for team oniforms at Saturday’s gang-truce softball mame. Players wore their ansiliations on their skin scrawled in Gothic tattoos across bellies, scalps--”San Fer” on one side “Pacas” on the other.

The monikers are those of two of the San Fernando Valley’s oldest street gangs, San Fernando and Pacoima. But for the tattoos, these former deadly enemies might have been rival chapters of the Rotary Club on Saturday.

There were prayers to start, then barbecued chicken, cheering families and handshakes. San Fernando won handily, 22-12. But hardly anyone but the umpire knew the score.

The game at Ritchie Valens Park marked the third anniversary of what both sides describe as a sometimes shaky truce organized by the Valley Unity Peace Treaty, a community group backed by the Los Angeles City Council and law enforcement agencies. City Councilman Richard Alarcon attended Saturday’s game.

Supporters say the truce has reduced gang violence in the area. So far this year, there have been 18 gang-related murders in the Valley, half as many as at this time last year.

But it’s unclear whether the truce is responsible, say police. “There’s a lot of factors,” said Lt. Fred Tuller of the Los Angeles Police Department. The truce was also in effect last year, when gang-related murders still reached record highs, he said.

*

Still, the young men at Saturday’s game said things have improved. “You don’t have to watch your back so much” since the truce started, said a beefy 24-year-old named “Bundy,” a member of the San Fernando gang.

“Before, if you saw someone from another neighborhood and you don’t get along with them,” a gang member would “do what you have to do. Now we have to all stick together,” said Albert Hermosillo, a 19-year-old member of the San Fernando gang.

The truce is also being felt on the sidelines of the gang wars, said 25-year-old Mia Aguierre, who came to watch a younger brother play for San Fernando. “I feel better now when my brother goes out. He doesn’t have to carry his gun,” she said.

The point of Saturday’s game was to keep the truce in the spotlight, said William “Blinky” Rodriquez, a founder of the Valley Unity group. Rodriguez lost a son to gang violence six years ago.

Before the game, he led both teams in a prayer that spoke to the truce’s fragility: “Lord, we ask that you continue to give every one of these young men the strength to keep it going,” he said.

Constant diplomacy is needed to keep the truce alive, gang members said.

Arguments are common. Younger members, and founders of new upstart gangs, have to be convinced to abide by terms agreed to by someone else.

“Events like this really help,” said Anthony Moreno, 30, a member of the Pacoima gang and a shuttle diplomat for the truce. “You see some guy on the street, and you can say, ‘Hey, he played baseball with us last week.’ Not, ‘Hey, he beat us up last week.’ ”

Gang members at Saturday’s game had plenty of reason to hold grudges. Many talked of friends, brothers and cousins who’d been shot or assaulted.

Forgetting “takes a lot of courage. But you got to respect what’s going on in the streets,” said Noel Adame, 23, a construction worker 11 months out of prison, who played catcher for the Pacoima side.

“We’ll never forget what’s been done to us, and they’ll never forget what we did to them. But we’ve got to put it behind us,” echoed Hermosillo, on the rival side.

The most passionate advocates of the truce are from the gang culture’s older set: young men in their 20s with children, jobs and wives or girlfriends bent on keeping them straight.

*

Richard Sarabia, 26, a San Fernando gang member who hit the only home run of the game, said he “retired” from gangbanging several year ago, after being shot. The bullet passed through the front of his thigh and came out the back.

“You don’t feel it at first. Your whole body gets numb and warm and you ears are ringing,” he recalled, adding, “I’m through with it. I’ll do my best to make sure my kids don’t get into the drugs and violence like I did.”

“We don’t want our younger brothers hurt,” explained Pedro “Pirate” Venegas, a Pacoima gang member, already a veteran at 19. “We don’t want to lose one of them.”

Enforcing the dictates of the truce--summed up by Venegas as “no violence, no drive-bys”--is a messy business.

Gang members who break it are disciplined by their own homeboys--beat up, in some cases, if the transgression is serious, the gang members said.

Even so, “there are people out there who are not running with the peace treaty,” Venegas said. “Different gangs that start up that we don’t know anything about.”

Although the two gangs didn’t mingle much at Saturday’s game, the event seemed largely free of the tension that has marred some past events, participants said.

The only exception came at the end of the game when a volunteer tried to convince the gangs to stand together for photos. At first, the teams refused to move to within 10 feet of each other and hung back with grim faces, as if separated by a wall.

But finally, some older members straggled across the gap. Someone made a joke. There were guffaws and mock punches. And the photo came together.

“Society, you know, they think we are a bad influence,” said Adame, the Pacoima ex-convict whose “Pacas” tattoo blankets his belly.

“But those people don’t know what’s going on here. They don’t know we are doing things like this and having a truce.”