It was kind of a surreal experience, sitting there chatting about greenlight killings and 15-year-old killers as we sipped coffee and watched a string of soccer moms and office workers file past. The picture he painted, of a shadowy organization that comfortably operates from behind the prison walls, is stark. According to his numbers, La Eme greenlights kill more than 100 people in LA each year. Though the organization itself has less than 300 members, it pulls the strings, Godfather-like, of 40,000 street-level gangsters. Cops I've talked to in the past say that while La Eme stays out of day-to-day business of gang operation, it ruthlessly controls the flow of money and power

Formed in 1957 in the Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy, Ca., the organization solidified its control of Latino gangs south of Bakersfield in '92. With many of its high profile members out on parole, it held huge meetings of gangbangers and laid down these three edicts:
1.) No more driveby shootings. Rafael says this wasn't out of any sort humanitarian gesture, but rather that their indiscriminate nature tended to cause collateral damage and bring unwanted law enforcement scrutiny.
2.) Neighborhood dope dealers would all kick up taxes to La Eme.
3.) From now on, you're all Sureños under our control.

Unlike the Italian La Cosa Nostra this mafia, with a top-down power structure, La Eme made itself a horizontal organization. Its top-level members, known as Carnales, all had equal power and voted on all important decisions. And, since it operated from prison, fear of incarceration was no big deal to its members.

"It's the home office," he said. "Prison is not a deterrent. Where they really want to be is LA County Jail. That's the best for them."

Gangsters looking to get back with their old homies have been known to cop to crimes they didn't commit _ or get caught on ones they did _ just to get into jail and pass information. Even behind bars, they can control drug sales and order murders.

As the Mexican Mafia plies its trade, the street level gangs can go to war, kill one another and wreak whatever havoc they feel like.

"As long as it doesn't have anything to do with business, they love it," he said. "The guys who are pulling the trigger, putting in the work, they're the new crop of recruits. The classic gangbanging is tolerated because today's shooter is tomorrow's associate and the day after tomorrow's Mexican Mafia Carnal."

Most people's cursory understanding of the organization comes from the film American Me. According to Rafael's book, La Eme wasn't too happy with the movie, but not because of its portrayal of violence and lawbreaking. It didn't like the implications of homosexual rape in prison and the suggestion that the main character played by Edward James Olmos had been killed by his own brothers in crime.

Rafael's an interesting cat. He's got a very distinct point of view (and he really doesn't like Tom Hayden, ex-Mr. Jane Fonda, former State Senator and author of Street Wars: Gangs and the Future of Violence, whom he picks on relentlessly in the book), but he struck me as straightforward and his info matched up with what I've heard from gang cops in the past. I'll keep you posted, dear readers, when he pops up as a source in future stories.