September 24, 2000

More excitement today. It was between the whites and one of the Hispanic factions called the Surenos. The Surenos are the gang-banging more Americanized version as opposed to the other more foreign element the “Paisas”. One of these Surenos claimed that a white guy owed him some tattoo work. I heard the story from the tat artist who happens to be the main decision maker, or so called “shot caller” for the whites. Or even “decider” if you’re George Bush (that may be a bit apocryphal, not sure if he’d said that yet, but I had to do it). According to this fellow this all happened about a year ago. He has no idea why the guy is now upset. Probably there is more to the story than that. I am not a person that is on the needs to know list. But I can see. And this was a big enough deal for everyone to be out on the yard, many packing knives.

Thankfully it was all settled peacefully after a lengthy talk. I think that some of this stuff is really about testing limits. They refer to these relations as politics here I think because they do really resemble what we call politics-basically a big joke. I don’t think that many of the hard cases here feel right if something is not going right. The old self-fulfilling  prophecy. They always find something. They’re experts at it.

images (37)