Daniel “Nane” Alejandrez, founder of the national urban peace organization Barrios Unidos, has spent his whole life in mortal combat with the gangs, drugs, and poverty in Latino communities. The weapons he wields are no longer guns and blades, but words, spiritual conviction, culture, art, and the rare courage of “being there” with and for kids on the edge. Since its start in 1977, Barrios Unidos has worked with thousands of youth in gang culture. BU also operates the César E. Chávez School for Social Change, an alternative high school in Santa Cruz, California; BU Productions, a professional silk-screening micro-enterprise providing jobs and business training; and the Community Technology and Resource Center, a computer training and job skills center. In 2005, BU received the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award.
Alejandrez, who has lost 14 family members—including two brothers—to what he calls “the madness of inner-city America,” is also co-chair of the Urban Peace and Justice Summit, the national organization that works to forge truces between African-American and Latino gangs. As Latino incarceration rates in the U.S. have soared, Alejandrez and Barrios Unidos have also turned their attention to decreasing the incarceration and recidivism rates of those at risk. This is his story, as told to Sojourners associate editor Rose Marie Berger in October 2005.
I’m the son of migrant farm workers, born out in a cotton field in Merigold, Mississippi. My family’s from Texas. A migrant child goes to five or six different schools in one year, and you try to assimilate to whatever’s going on at that time. I grew up not having shoes or only having one pair of pants to wear to school all week. I always remembered my experience in Texas, where Mexicans and blacks couldn’t go to certain restaurants. That leaves something in you.
Read the Full Article
