Gang Life in Prison When

Gang Life in Prison

When Montoya Santana was an adolescent he and his two best friends belonged to a "strong gang," hoping for respect in the neighborhood. As one of them explained, "Belonging is good, but respect is better." Respect in the story meant that nobody could take away from them their "class" or dignity. Sent to Juvenile Hall, Santano is brutalized and sexually victimized and kills his attacker. This act, he discovers, earns him some respect but also a 10 to 25-year sentence at Folsom State Prison.

There he becomes a member of La Eme because "Power became our game -- power to provide everything on the inside that is on the outside. Extortion, gambling, prostitution. Power to make every inmate pay rent. And the biggest money-maker, drugs." The desire for power appears to be a primary motivation and reason for involvement in La Eme, and this should not be surprising among people like Santano who have been disempowered.

La Eme -- the Mexican Mafia -- gives him a sense of power to control at least some aspects of his life and to enjoy some of the pleasures of the world while in prison. it's like the inmates are running things in a covert sort of way. It allows them to enforce their own rules and to some extent control what happens. Whatever he gets from it, it's worth being thrown into the hole for. Santano says, "I can run the show from Solitary." Respect is more important than anything else -- what a member has to do, he will, even if he must kill his own brother whom he loves. Nobody must even think he might be showing weakness. Weakness is tender feelings and doubts about the wisdom of crime.

When Santano is released from prison after 18 years, he is still part of the gang. As head of the gang "inside" he hopes to expand his "business" on the outside -- his business and his power in La Eme. Because he and the rest of the members are Mexicans, they run into unexpected obstacles -- the Italian Mafia, for one. But Santano's gang offers him a way to feel successful and provides him with projects to channel his energy and intelligence into. He sees these activities the way a an ordinary person might see doing business and pursuing a livelihood. When Santano looks back on his old life in prison he comments that Fulsom was the "big time." He had more power there. Before the gang, if someone wanted something from him, "They just took it" because he was weak, but being in the gang stopped that because he became strong. He looks back on prison life with a certain sense of nostalgia and tells his girlfriend, "I loved it in there."

The gang allows him to be competent under horrible circumstances. He has been deprived of all the ordinary, normal experiences we take for granted, such as dancing, learning to drive a car, going to the beach, standing in the moonlight with a girl, and making love. All he has ever known is violence and the need to keep others afraid of him in order to protect himself. He's more or less ruined for life on the outside by his violent conditioning.

Santano's sense of identity is tied into his membership in the gang. This becomes clear when his girlfriend talks about him as two people. His concept of himself and who he is, he sees through the lens of La Eme. For anyone, having an identity is paramount to being a human being, but especially in the de-humanizing ordeal of prison life. This is what is meant by the title of the film, American Me. Me refers to inmates who have no other identity but that of criminals and don't know how to be anyone else. They have lost touch with who they really are.