Gangland

Nuestra Familia

Nuestra Familia (Spanish for "Our Family") was organized in Northern California's Soledad Correction Training Facility in 1968. Chicano inmates had grown tired of the abuse at the hand of the Mexican Mafia.

Most of the original members of the NF were Northern and Central California. As the NF and Mexican Mafia engaged in a bitter prison war, new prisoners from Northern California were recruited into the NF while Southern California inmates joined the Mexican Mafia. By the late 1970s, after numerous prison riots and murders, an official dividing point emerged between the gangs in Delano, California. Footsoldiers of the gang living outside of the prison are typically called Nortenos (Northerners in Spanish).

The NF has a formal written constitution and claims about 200 inmate members with an additional thousand members on the outside. Their main enterprises are selling drugs and committing murder. Their motto is "blood in, blood out."

In April 2001, a three-year, top-secret investigation involving thirty agencies and code-named "Operation Black Widow," resulted in multiple arrests. Law enforcement indicted thirteen La Nuestra Familia members on charges of drug trafficking and murder.

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