The phenomenon of gangs is born, grows and reproduces at the same time and at the rate of migrations.
In Spain they emerged with migratory movements from Ecuador, first, and the Dominican Republic, later, countries where violent gangs of young people are well established.
It is a type of crime (tumultuous fights, robberies with force, attempted homicides, homicides ...) that in the police calculations describe the form of "mountain peaks, because it rises and falls", point out the specialized agents.
But now the gangs are once again experiencing a new “peak of the mountains”, which is accentuated in the summer season: “Hundreds of minors - police estimates speak of between 350 and 400 kids -, mainly Spaniards of Dominican origin, are being captured by the gangs, they are getting smaller and smaller, 11 and 12 years old, and unpredictable ”, agree policemen, social workers and representatives of the evangelical church, where mothers go alone and desperate in the absence of outlets for their wayward children. All these voices, and those of several ex-gang members recounting their lives within these organizations, appear in the videotape that accompanies this text.
The problem of “violent youth gangs” - as they are legally defined - began to be identified at the beginning of this century in our country, “specifically in Madrid, where a good part of Latin American immigrants settle”, with the Latin King and the Ñetas, both made up of groups of young Ecuadorians and historically rival gangs, which today "are practically extinct because those kids are already adults," the same police sources point out.
Dominican Don´t Play (DDP) and Trinitarios fight for territory and power with machetes in the neighborhoods of Usera, Villaverde or Tetuán in Madrid. "The gangs are a school of criminals, those who are 'good' end up in organized crime and those who are not, in common crime," warns the head of the Latino gangs section of the National Police in Madrid, which adds up to close of 200 annual arrests of young people of these characteristics. And he adds: "The solution is not police, it is necessary to give alternatives to these boys who flirt with gangs already in their preadolescence."