Jesse Guajardo had grown up in the Latin Kings street gang, peddling drugs when he was only 8 and becoming a soldier when he was a young teenager. After an uncle recommended him for membership in 1988, he suffered a beating or "violation" by three Latin Kings to join the gang's ranks. By 2006, at age 29, he was a chapter leader in the southwest suburbs, commanding two dozen soldiers and making his betrayal of the Latin Kings that much more stunning. He was facing life in prison in a drug case when he decided to cooperate with the government.
"If the Latin Kings knew I was cooperating, they would kill me," Guajardo said. "I had no choice," Guajardo told a defense lawyer who called him a traitor at the drug conspiracy trial of his onetime gang boss, Fernando King. "I had to choose to continue to be a Latin King or continue being a father. I didn't ask for this."
Fernando King, 38—the national "Supreme Inca" or No. 2 leader—was convicted in a drug conspiracy by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, with the cooperation of Jesse Guajardo who secretly recorded high-level gang meetings, once catching King reprimanding members of the gang's "Crown Town" region, near Midway Airport, for disrespecting gang rules. In addition to Little Village and "Crown Town," the Latin Kings had six other regional organizations stretching from Waukegan to East Chicago, Ind., with hundreds of members in neighborhood chapters.
After King's arrest, federal authorities searched his home and confiscated the Latin King's constitution and manifesto that lay out gang rules, bylaws, symbols and its quasi-spiritual, quasi-revolutionary philosophy. The constitution lists the gang's official annual holiday as Jan. 6—Kings Holy Day—when gang members fast to honor "the memory of our departed Brothers and Sisters." Gang membership is open to anyone who adopts "Kingism" except for rapists, heroin addicts or anyone who has killed a Latin King or his or her relative. Also, any member "found guilty of being a traitor or police collaborator shall . . . be expelled from the Nation."
The gang was directed for years by Gustavo "Gino" Colon a North Sider who exerted control over the nation after he was in prison for a quarter-century on a murder conviction. Colon's incarceration, like that of legendary Chicago street gang leaders Jeff Fort and Larry Hoover, has left Chicago's gangs, including the Latin Kings, dispersed but still powerful and deadly.
The gangs have been disrupted further by aggressive federal prosecutions such as the "Operation Broken Crown" probe that resulted in the convictions of King and 31 other Latin Kings. The Latin Kings have chapters in New York, Florida and other states and even have a presence overseas, including in Spain and the Dominican Republic.
source-chicago tribune
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