They have two Mexican mob groups in California, one is Nuestra Familia and the other is La Eme. They run the prisons in California. Italian mobsters in the Los Angeles crime family paid the La Eme for protection in the 70's and 80's in the prisons. Mexican mobsters are involved in some of the same type of rackets. They control illegal gambling, prostitution, drugs and extortion, but in the prisons of course, not on the streets. That means the prostitutes they pimp are gays or transvestites. I remember talking to some Hispanic kids that are customers of mine at a pizza place I manage in the Bay Area. These kids would want to be with the nortenos. The leaders of NF are doing life in prison and are on 23 hour a day lock down, but they still have the power to order murders from behind bars by sending letters to the streets. The La Eme have just one leader. They have soldiers on the streets of Southern California. There's a few L.A. gangs that are farm teams for La Eme.

I guess the difference between the Mexican mob and the Italian mob is that there is a sense of approachability to the Italians. For some reason the Mexican mobsters never had the skills of owning businesses like the Italians. They are also not as quite as the Italians are. It could also be that Italians are European and that old world sense of honor blends better into the American romantic traditions

A video on the Nuestra Familia

Looks like someone watched the "Gangland" weekly marathon.

Nope! Just putting up some info I know of.

Gangland episode are so contradictive of one another, same with american gangster and bio's mobsters.

Well of course they're going to contradict this themselves its a show about a bunch of crooks usually ones who got caught and came up with some bolshit excuse as to why there no longer in the life.

You both have some good points.

Jersey Boy...I was reading your first post, I'd say some Mexicans/Latin's do have business in their own neighborhoods.Cash Checking Places seems to be real big, because its easy to launder money threw those places. As well as small bodegas and body-shops.

Those bodegas make money because a lot of people don't have a car, I'm not just saying latins but a few different ethnicity's. Plus a lot of them don't play by the rules when it comes to ghetto shit, with the food stamp hustle, people use their "access card" to buy cigarettes with among other things. Little things like this really piss me off, being middle-class I hate seeing people fuck the system and having to foot the bill, when " I Pay my Tax"