A street gang with MBA order and Mafia cruelty

Ms. Gauthier did not deny that De La Rosa killed Guillen, but says it was under duress: He was acting on the orders of his boss and his own life would be in jeopardy if he didn't follow them. "You can tell how terrified these people are just by looking in their eyes," she said.

The jury wasn't convinced and convicted him of capital murder on Friday after a few short hours of deliberation. He received an automatic life sentence.

Born on Chicago's south side in the late 1940s, the Latin King Nation began as a Hispanic social organization. It evolved into one of the nation's largest and most violent street gangs, with 25,000 current members in Chicago alone, according to police estimates.

The gang's rapid growth occurred in the late 1980s and '90s when incarceration rates quadrupled. Inside prison walls, members enlisted new recruits and refined their rules.

"They got very well-organized, with manifestoes and organizational charts," says Dwight Conquergood, an ethnographer at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., who is writing a book on the Latin Kings. "They could give seminars to MBA students."

Behind bars, Dr. Conquergood says, the Latin Kings set up taco stands and provided welcome kits - complete with soap, toothpaste, and shampoo - for recently incarcerated gang members. On the outside, they dispensed winter coats and free medical services. After living among Latin King gang members for five years in researching his book, Conquergood believes the structure is a product of "extreme humiliation and day-to-day grinding poverty."

"These kids are never going to make any fraternity or key club in mainstream society and are trying to fill a basic human need for support," he says. "These are people who are living in states of emergency. The irony is that the complex web of mutual support that helps them in the short term is the very thing that locks them out of the mainstream."

Esparana, for instance, said he joined the gang at 16 because "my family wasn't really around. My father was really abusive to me and my mother, and I needed somebody to be there for me. In the Latin Kings, I had all the protection I wanted."

Because the Latin Kings have such a defined chain of command and written operating procedures - including formal constitutions, bylaws, and charters - authorities have had an easier time charging members under federal racketeering laws.

"Some of their instructional booklets are 92 pages long," says Mr. Daily, who refers to the Latin Kings as nontraditional organized crime. "We've done a good job of taking out the Mafia. We need to do a better job of taking out these street thugs who are operating like organized-crime groups."

Other street gangs, such as the Los Angeles-based Bloods, for example, are a federation of smaller groups that share rituals and bylaws but have no real affiliation. Some cities and states have no formal leaders at all.

In the Texas case, however, Guillen's death seemed to be all about leadership and internecine warfare. Police say the gang has been immersed in a power struggle since 2000, and was in the process of trying to become more cohesive through Beltran's appointment as regional leader. "Chicago is the gang's epicenter, but there always has been a strong linkage with Texas," says George Knox, director of the National Gang Crime Research Center in Chicago.

Like most gangs, Latin King criminal activity revolves around drug trafficking. Still mainly Hispanic, the gang wears gold and black colors and uses symbols like the lion, pitchfork, and five-pointed crown. The five points represent the five leaders in each state, of which Beltran was one.

Loyalty is valued - and enforced - above all else. "Membership is very loyal to those in command, often born out of fear, because the gang will kill its own members routinely," says one member quoted in a report by the National Gang Crime Research Center. "So the first and foremost law of the gang is, 'Once a King, always a King.' "

Even though Esparza believes he will be killed for his court testimony, he says he is trying to clear his conscience for his role in his friend's death. He says he finally realized the error of his ways when he heard De La Rosa confess to the shooting. "I was partly responsible because if I wouldn't have told 'Step One' about what he said, nothing would have happened," he says. "I was loyal to the gang. Now I want to be loyal to Christopher."

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