Spanish Vice Lords

Founded	Founded
Affiliations	People Nation — 1980 – 2000 or later;
Colors	Black and Maroon
Primary ethnicities	Latino (Mexican)
Symbols	Playboy Bunny, Top Hat, Cane, and Martini Glass
Symbol usage	Red playboy bunny
Status	Active

I do not know exactly when and where the Spanish Vice Lords started but it wasn’t in the South Deering community in the early 1980s like legends say.  The legends are mostly true; indeed the SVLs did come to South Deering in the early 80s but that isn’t their motherland.  The Spanish Vice Lords go way back to no later than the early 1970s.  They very well could be older and date back to the 1960s but no older than 1964.  I personally believe they began in 1966 when black and Puerto Rican gangs formed an alliance in the summer of 1966, this alliance was published in the newspaper.  I can say the SVLs were not in South Deering originally because the Vice Lord nation did not start moving into any south side neighborhoods until the late 1970s.  I believe the SVLs began on the west side of Chicago in a neighborhood like East Garfield Park or West Humboldt Park because these are communities that had a significant Puerto Rican population.  Now for the proof; my proof is in the book A Nation of Lords by David Dawley.  I first bought and read the 1992 revised version of this book and happened upon a page where he listed several Vice Lord branches that were around in the 1960s that truly did exist, not a single one was made up.  I saw in the list he mentioned “Spanish Vice Lords” so I was thinking he must have added that one in 1992 with the revised version.  I then got very curious and happened to find an original copy of the book published in the year 1973.  When this copy was made it was data compiled only up until 1972 at the latest.  When I flipped to page 65, low and behold, there were the “Spanish Vice Lords” mentioned.  My question would be, how could he know of that name back then if they didn’t exist?  Not only that it is against Vice Lord laws to close a VL branch then allow some other guys across the city to reinvent that name without any of the past members from the original section.  Once a name was taken that was it, you couldn’t copy it elsewhere.  It is also true the SVLs were fully sanctioned and approved by 5 star Elites in the Vice Lord nation making them certified which would entail following the rules.  This means an original member or a group of original members came to South Deering and gave birth to the Spanish Vice Lords in 1980.

The organization was placed at the intersection of 104^th and Hoxie which was right near the projects.  Many youths were still afraid to join because the Black Gangsters Disciples were large in numbers and they were afraid the SVLs would not last so they sat on the sidelines and watched, and what they saw was the few SVLs bust head after head and ferociously battle BGDs and King Cobras even if they were outnumbered.  The SVLs gained a lot of respect in the neighborhood and by the mid-1980s more Latino youths wanted to join and the gang got bigger. By the late 1980s they grew even larger and became even more ferocious.

In June of 1989, the Spanish Vice Lords had gained a major reputation and now had over 50 members in the gang.  This growing of power angered the Gangsters Disciples (formerly the Black Gangsters Disciples) so tensions grew considerably at George Washington High School located at 3535 E 114th St in the nearby East Side neighborhood.  On the last day of school a massive brawl occurred between the GDs and SVLs.  The fight got so out of control as carloads of gang members pulled up to join the fight, and paved a path of destruction that caught the attention of the police.  The police had a hard time stopping the fight all they could do was block traffic from coming near the fight.  Eventually, the news showed up to broadcast what was going on.  The SVLs fought viciously and became even more recognized and this led them to befriend a lot of kids from the East Side neighborhood, especially the kids that lived near Wolfe Park.

The kids in Wolfe Park had a clique of about 40-50 members of a group called the “Wonderers” that formed up in order to protect Wolfe park from the Latin Kings that picked on all the kids over there, regardless of if they were in a gang or not.  The Wonderers were powerless at stopping the Kings and in 1991 they could no longer function.  These kids hung out with and looked up to the SVLs from South Deering and wanted to join the gang but the SVLs were not in the East Side area.  This is when the 5 Star Elite sanctioned an East Side branch at Wolfe Park on 108^th and Buffalo to 108^th and Green Bay, and like that, the East Side SVLs were born.  The Latin Kings now laid off and withdrew from the park out of respect for the fact that the SVLs were part of the People Nation alliance.  This was all good until the summer of 1994 when SVLs went to war with the Latin Kings and also they took on another People alliance gang, the Latin Dragons.  The Wolfe Park SVL then gained a lot of notoriety in the area and recruitment increased because they fought their enemies so well and now territory expanded from Buffalo to Avenue O and from 106^th the 110^th.  That is all I really know about SVL.

Please send in 1980s and 1990s pics!

Questions:

1.  Who was the founder and what happened to him?
2. What year did SVL originally form?
3. What was SVL original neighborhood before South Deering?
4. What was the time line of leaders up to the year 2000?

Known sections of Spanish Vice Lords past and present

East Side neighborhood Established 1991

Sections of the East Side

106^th to 110^th, Buffalo to Avenue O (Wolfe Park, Bukk City) Established 1991

South Deering neighborhood Established 1980-present years

Sections of South Deering

104^th to 109^th, Hoxie to Torrence Established 1980

105^th & Calhoun 80s

 

Suburbs

Rockford

Hammond, IND Clay St & Homerlee to Indianapolis BLVD