Blood in the Fields: Ten Years Inside California's Nuestra Familia Gang

by Julia Reynolds

Overview

The city of Salinas, California, is the birthplace of John Steinbeck and the setting for his epic masterpiece, East of Eden, but it is also the home of Nuestra Familia, one of the most violent gangs in America. Born in the prisons of California in the late 1960s, Nuestra Familia expanded to control drug trafficking and extortion operations throughout the northern half of the state, and left a trail of bodies in its wake. Prize-winning journalist and Nieman Fellow Julia Reynolds tells the gang’s story from the inside out, following young men and women as they search for a new kind of family, quests that usually lead to murder and betrayal.

Blood in the Fields also documents the history of Operation Black Widow, the FBI’s questionable decade-long effort to dismantle the Nuestra Familia, along with its compromised informants and the turf wars it created with local law enforcement agencies. Journalist Reynolds uses her unprecedented access to gang members, both in and out of prison, as well as undercover wire taps, depositions, and court documents to weave a gripping, comprehensive history of this brutal criminal organization and the lives it destroyed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781613736500
Publisher:	Chicago Review Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	01/01/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	471,227
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Julia Reynolds coproduced and wrote the PBS documentary Nuestra Familia, Our Family and reported on the northern California gang for more than a decade. She currently works as a staff writer at the Monterey County Herald and has reported for National Public Radio, the Discovery Channel, the Nation, Mother Jones, the San Francisco Chronicle, and more.

Table of Contents

Map: The Salinas Valley and Environs xii

Nuestra Familia Organizational Chart xiii

On Sourcing xv

Preface xvii

Prologue: Pelican Bay xxv

Book 1 Emergence 1997-1998

1 Lil Scrap Killas 3

2 Little Man 13

3 The Artichoke Field 19

4 Good Gangs 26

5 Family Values 31

6 Preston 42

7 The Informant 50

8 Gangster School 59

9 The Mission 64

10 XIV Till Eternity 72

11 Full Sixty 75

12 State of Grace 81

13 Overt Acts 84

14 Basic Training 93

15 Soledad Street 96

Book 2 The O 1998-2001

16 You Gots to Kill 107

17 Breaking Huerito 112

18 Brothers 122

19 Rico's Way 131

20 All Creased Up 136

21 Breaking Regina 142

22 Second Chances 152

23 Lizard 156

24 Chinatown 159

25 Seeds of Empire 166

26 The Tortilla Factory 171

27 Spookio's Way 175

28 The Black Widow 179

29 Original Gangster 190

30 The King of Chinatown 197

31 Wiring Lizard 204

32 The Murder at Cap's Saloon 207

33 Oklahoma City 211

34 The Big Homie 214

35 The Confession 222

Book 3 Empire 2002-2007

36 Rico's Time Card 229

37 Northern Exposure 232

38 The Deal 241

39 The Coup 251

40 The General's Visitor 256

41 The Road to Delano 263

42 Heeker Pass 271

43 Down in the Hole 275

44 Salvation 279

45 Hitting Pablo 283

46 Clemency 289

47 Mount Madonna 291

48 The Virgin at Pinto Lake 295

49 The Evidence of Things Unseen 301

50 Fathers 305

Epilogue: Cease-Fire 309

Acknowledgments 313

Glossary 315

Source Notes 317

Index 333

Editorial Reviews

07/07/2014
Journalist Reynolds’s debut offers a well sourced account of the most important criminal organization you’ve never heard of: Nuestra Familia, a violent prison gang that controls drug trafficking in the correctional facilities and agricultural towns of Northern California. Nuestra Familia poses special challenges for law enforcement, as Reynolds well documents. Only career criminals can advance in its hierarchy, and its top brass operate out of supermax prisons—making the organization extremely difficult to infiltrate. Efforts to dismantle it have, in consequence, resorted to questionable tactics. Reynolds is especially critical of Operation Black Widow, the late-1990s federal initiative that was marred by its improper use of criminal informants and endangered public safety. Individual gang members receive humanizing attention from Reynolds, as do their girlfriends, their families, and their victims. Among the gangbangers, Reynolds finds duty and loyalty in abundance—albeit perverted to criminal ends. These “character” portrayals are valuable, as they demonstrate the complex ties that bind gang members to each other and the gang. Whenever Reynolds’s treatment turns too “fiction-like,” however, her narrative falters. When characterizing emotional states she often lapses into cliché; her strength lies in gathering and assessing of facts. Fortunately, her account of Nuestra Familia need not be a triumph of imaginative literature in order to register as substantive, compelling, and important. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"Blood in the Fields is a fascinating yet troubling look at a generation grappling with identity. It is a powerful account, one crafted with sensitivity and sharp human insights, of another Mexico within the United States. Julia Reynolds is a masterful storyteller."—Alfredo Corchado, author of Midnight in Mexico and Mexico bureau chief for the Dallas Morning News

“Both chilling and sad—so many lives lost, so many households ruined, and so many hearts torn apart. Blood in the Fields is a must-read for anybody interested in stopping the cycle of violence for safer communities.” —Gabe Morales, author, trainer, gang specialist, and founder of the International Latino Gang Investigators Association

"Journalist Reynolds’s debut offers a well sourced account of the most important criminal organization you’ve never heard of: Nuestra Familia." —Publishers Weekly



"A sprawling, literary true-crime effort that will reward patient readers with its gloomy account of an unstoppable, violent subculture." —Kirkus

"Reynolds skillfully limns the tough lives, heartlessness, misgivings, and bad decisions made for the sake of family and the home country of Mexico...A riveting tale of a monster of criminality that is still not dead but merely changing shape." —Booklist

From the Publisher

2014-07-01
Brisk, detailed exposéof the little-understood gang Nuestra Familia.Monterey County Heraldstaff writer Reynolds, a recipient of Harvard's Nieman Fellowship, spent 12years covering the gang (including as co-producer and writer of a PBSdocumentary), and it shows in her intense, intimate approach: She beginsabruptly, without much context regarding the unique nature of Latino gangs.This one began in Northern California prisons in the 1960s as a rival to thepowerful Mexican Mafia and has since gained territory via a street-leveloffshoot, the Norteños. Reynolds builds a long-term narrative focused on avolatile NF clique in Salinas, receiving orders from gang superiors allegedlyisolated in the Pelican Bay Supermax prison. She personalizes this approach byutilizing the perspectives of a Mexican-American cop and several beleagueredgangsters, who became informants, accepted plea deals for violent felonies orwere themselves victims of violence. Looking beneath their pseudo-revolutionary"Cause" ("a shallow and manipulative ideology"), she portrays a criminalconspiracy fusing cold business acumen, a corporate-style structure and vicioushatred for "Sureños" (Southern California Latinos). By the late 1990s, "the NFhad blanketed the state and was now running regiments in every tiny[agricultural] town." However, the gang's fortunes turned when then-U.S.Attorney Robert Mueller decided to pursue NF federally. Soon, even the crew'shigher-ups were cutting deals with the FBI, leading to one imprisoned teenagekiller's bitter conclusion: "The Cause…was nothing but generations of lies toldto entice kids like him to do a few old guys' dirty work." Yet, after spawninga complex investigation, the feds desisted after 9/11, leading the local copsto decide that "the Mexican-American lives lost on California's back-countryroads were of little concern in Washington." Reynolds concludes that thehigh-profile prosecutions actually advanced their power: "With each new guiltyverdict the gang branched out" within the federal prison system.A sprawling, literary true-crime effort that will rewardpatient readers with its gloomy account of an unstoppable, violent subculture.

Kirkus Reviews