Abstract
On 28 October 2003, 15-year-old Ronny Tapias was gunned down in the late afternoon outside his school in Barcelona, Spain. News of his death sent Shockwaves throughout the Catalonian city and beyond. Alarmed about the growing skirmishes involving youths in the region, the press dubbed it a gang-related killing. The public, in turn, became incensed about the crime, attributing it to the recent waves of Latin American immigrants to Barcelona specifically and Spain generally. Ronny Tapias, you see, was not a native-born Catalonian or Spanish youth, but rather a “Latino” youth of Colombian origin.1 Reportedly, the Ne tas, a gang in Barcelona with ties to Latin America and the US, killed him because they believed he was a member of los Latin Kings, a rival Latino and Latina (or Latina/o) gang originating in the US, specifically in Chicago and, later, New York City. Tapias was not a member of either group, however. His murder, the police reported, was a case of mistaken identity.2
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Notes
Feixa explained the process through which he became involved in studying Latina/o youth gangs in the interview and through follow-up correspondence, dated 4 May 2012. For more of Feixa’s work on youth cultures, see C. Feixa and L. Porzio, “Jipis, Pijos, Fiesteros: Studies on Youth Cultures in Spain 1960–;2004”, Young, 13, 1 (2005), pp. 89–113
C. Feixa, “Tribus Urbanas and Chavos Banda: Being a Punk in Catalonia and Mexico”, in C. Feixa and P. Nilan (eds), Global Youth? Hybrid Identities, Plural Worlds (New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. 149–166
See, K. Calavita, Immigrants at the Margins: Law, Race, and Exclusion in Southern Europe (Boston: Cambridge University Press, 2005)
D. Brotherton and L. Barrios, The Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).
P. Bourgois, In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio (Boston: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
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© 2014 Miroslava Chávez-Garcïa
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Chávez-Garcîa, M. (2014). Latina/o Youths Gangs in Spain in Global Perspective. In: Juvenile Delinquency and the Limits of Western Influence, 1850–2000. Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137349521_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137349521_5
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