Negotiating Violence and Protection in Prison and on the Outside: The Organizational Evolution of the Transnational Prison Gang Barrio Azteca

• Published date: 01 March 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/1057567719836466
• Date: 01 March 2020
• Author: R. V. Gundur
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Negotiating Violence

and Protection in Prison

and on the Outside:

The Organizational Evolution

of the Transnational Prison

Gang Barrio Azteca

R. V. Gundur

1,2

Abstract

Barrio Azteca is a criminal organization that has significantly evolved since its inception as a prison

solidarity group—first into a true prison gang and then into an organized criminal enterprise

operating in the free world. Today, Barrio Azteca has declined in power and effectiveness in carceral

settings but continues to play an important role in the wholesale and retail drug trade in the Paso del

Norte area. Its organizational life cycle appears to parallel that of a licit enterprise, except that it

primarily competes in the criminal protection marketplace. Thus, to survive and compete in the

market for criminal protection, Barrio Azteca adapted to shifts in control dynamics, demonstrating

uncommon resilience, first specializing in protection in response to changes in carceral violence and,

later, expanding into the drug-trafficking market in response to violence in the criminal underworld

both inside and outside prison. This article traces that history of adaptation and persistence,

situating it within a synthesis of currently accepted theoretical models of criminal organizational

evolution, and in so doing, provides the first organizational history of a prison gang—Barrio

Azteca—published in the academic literature.

Keywords

organizational history, prison gangs, prison, protection rackets, violence

1

Centre for Crime Policy and Research, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia

2

Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom

Corresponding Author:

R. V. Gundur, Centre for Crime Policy and Research, Flinders University, GPO 2100, Adelaide, South Australia 5001,

Australia.

Email: r.gundur@oxon.org

International CriminalJustice Review

2020, Vol. 30(1) 30-60

ª2019 Georgia State University

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DOI: 10.1177/1057567719836466

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Introduction: Prison Gangs Inside and Outside of Prison

Security threat groups, colloquially known as prison gangs, develop, by definition, in confine-

ment, but sometimes go on to expand into the free world. In particular, U.S.-based Hispanic and

Latin American prison gangs, which o ften contribute to prison governanc e structures, have, in

certain circumstances, evolved to underwrite the protection rackets that underpin criminal under-

worlds on the outside (Skarbek, 2014), typically via the drug trade (Bunker & Sullivan, 2013; Cruz,

2010; Dias & Darke, 2016; Dias & Salla, 2013; Dudley, 2011; Fontes, 2016, 2018; Grillo, 2011;

Kan, 2012; Logan, 2009; Manwaring, 2007; Rodet, 2016; Santamarı´a, 2013; Savenije, 2004;

Sullivan & Bunker, 2002; Willis, 2009; Wolf, 2010). While such initial, in-prison development and

subsequent expansion into the free world are of interest to the literature (Ouellet, Bouchard, &

Charette, 2018), the mechanisms driving them remain largely unexplored.

This work responds to that gap by detailing the organizational evolution of one such group, Barrio

Azteca. Initially formed to resist other predatory groups, Barrio Azteca began as an inmate solidarity

group for Hispanic prisoners from El Paso/Ciudad Jua´rez metropolitan area, known as the Paso del

Norte. In its first 20 years, it achieved prominence as a prison gang in the El Paso jails and the Texas

penitentiary system.

1

Today, it continues to play a significant role in the drug trade in the Paso del

Norte.

2

This article explores how and why this evolution occurred and what lessons can be gleaned

from this evolution to be applied to similar organizational contexts in different settings.

One accepted approach to understanding the organizational evolution of criminal organizations

like Barrio Azteca is to study their organizational culture (Dodgson, 1993; Hofstede, Neuijen,

Ohayv, & Sanders, 1990; Pettigrew, 1979). Just as Braithwaite (1989), Decker (2001), Fong

(1990), Hobbs (2001), and Schrager and Short (1978) have applied the study of organizational

cultures to criminal organizations and street gangs, this study goes on to synthesize and apply two

evolutionary typologies—the theoretical model of inmate development proposed by Buentello,

Fong, and Vogel (1991) and the five-stage empirical model of group development documented

by Lester, Parnell, and Carraher (2003)—to the organizational development of Barrio Azteca. Taken

together, these two frameworks model the potential development of an inmate group, responding to

market pressures in and outside prison.

Importantly, applying these two typologies to the organizational evolution of a prison gang like

Barrio Azteca, this work assesses the principal themes that have emerged from the existing literature

on security threat groups. In particular, this article shows that the Barrio Azteca organization is first

and foremost a protection merchant in the criminal marketplace of Paso del Norte and trades on its

ability not only to protect against but also to inflict violence (Tilly, 1985). Its other illicit activities

depend upon successfully providing protection for itself, not an atypical outcome for an organized

criminal group (Gambetta, 1993; Varese, 2001).

This article proceeds as follows. First, it discusses what is known about how inmate groups

develop into prison gangs and presents the models that help describe the evolutionary trajectory

of a mature prison gang like Barrio Azteca into an organized criminal group. Second, it discusses the

methodology used to examine the evolution of Barrio Azteca. Third, it considers the violent histor-

ical context that prompted the formation of Barrio Azteca. Fourth, it describes the founding of Barrio

Azteca as a solidarity group, its evolution into a full-fledged prison gang and, later, a free-world

organized criminal group, and its decline within carceral settings as the Texas Department of

Corrections again effected changes which influenced how inmates and staff negotiated violence.

In sum, this article demonstrates that the Barrio Azteca organization’s hist ory bears out the

theoretical stages of an organizational life cycle posited in the literature, chiefly in response to

changes in the protection market, which have influenced control structures both within prison and in

the criminal underworld of the Paso del Norte area. This case study serves as the first academic

assessment of an organizational life cycle of a transnational prison gang. The strategies Barrio

Gundur 31