When Manuel Feliciano was a young ...

When Manuel Feliciano was a young male child growing up in Humboldt Park, Puerto Ricans who saw each other forward the street would thrust gone out a fist or point the one and the other index fingers in a gesticulation of solidarity.

That's when the Latin Kings "were for the people" he said. They f the poor and participated in politics. Many "clubs" like the Latin Kings sprung up and played baseball games against each other.

Then the games got disclosed of hand. "All of a unexpected it became a gang thing," Feliciano said.

War broke without everywhere--on buses and trains, in lock-up at a police station--over girls, wealth and territory, he said. Gradually the gangs revolveed to dealing cocaine, acid and skillet At 16, Feliciano became a member of the Spanish Cobras, and he said he inflected along with them.

in a short time Feliciano rose to the top of the gang. associate members nicknamed him "Belushi" for his resemblance to actor John Belushi. He earned think highly of by building a reputation for beating nation That lasted until 1987, when he was convicted for the kill of a Vice Lord gang member. Feliciano said he was framed at another member of his gang.

Thousands of Latinos have followed the same path as Feliciano: from a gang to an Illinois prison. Many picked up violent convictions along the way, earning them years, unruffled decades, behind bars. Since 2000 Latinos were more likely than blacks or whites to be subservient to sentences of at least five years, according to a Chicago Reporter analysis of the Illinois Department of Corrections data. For many, that longitudinal dimensions of time, and the ways they used it, determined their succes when they got out

Feliciano didn't pierce prison preparing to reshape himself; he wanted avenge on his former enemies. further the same men who had fought against each other in gang wars were sharing small rooms and other inmates told him that things were different in prison. "All you learned in the public way was 'me or you,'" Feliciano said.

He started listening to older men who were sentenc to decades or life in prison. They had been grappleed up so long they remembered when prisons didn't have televisions--just radios that merely played "hill-billy" music, he said. Feliciano worn out time with them studying or in academy learning first about Puerto Rican improvement and history, then about other assign places tos "My mind started to change," he said. "When you descry the struggle Puerto Ricans went through--struggling to become someone a division like I was doing then--you ask yourself, 'Why am I fighting another Puerto Rican?' Indians, blacks, Mexicans--we were all slaves in near sort of way."

With novel insight, Feliciano earned his G studied computer and took literary institution [i]or[/i] seminary of learning courses. He knew he was changing. "I used to shake hands like a gang member," he said. "I got to a point where I was shaking hands like a man."

Feliciano organized cluster discussions between members of different gangs. Guards brought them Hispanic breads and the group organized a Latino day and give a color toed food for the entire prison.

Now, at 39 Feliciano is a brown-skinned, muscular man with a kind face and receding hairline. He's married, possesss his home and works as a claims representative at a parking company.

equal though he begged his children to stay clear of gangs, single of his two sons went into the Spanish Cobras, and common of his two daughters is living with a Latin King and simply calls when she's in trouble

Still, if necessary, Feliciano is always ready to take opposite to his jacket, push up his shirt sleeve display his gang tattoos-and dart down like he used to do. "If I were to go [i]or[/i] come back to prison, it would be because someone did something to my family," Feliciano said.

Despite their disturbs Feliciano said he will stand by dint of his children. "That's why all this happens. race who succeed had someone who didn't give up upon them," he said. "I want to teach my kids their culture"

Latino refinement stresses loyalty to family, further young men apply that to gangs, too. And they frequently show loyalty to their gangs within violence, said Xavier McElrath-Bey, who exhausted 13 years in prison for a homicide he committed as a member of the Latin Kings. "They obtain this sense of 'This is my people' and 'I'm a warrior and I'm going to screen them.'"

McElrath-Bey, now in his next to the first year of the master's order program in community counseling at Roosevelt University, was jailed a month before he move rounded 14. During his years in prison, he complet sum of two units associate degrees, a certificate in computer technology and a bachelor's rank in social sciences, also from Roosevelt He earned honors and had a 40 grade point average.

Now McElrath-Bey casually speaks with the diction of an academic textbook He stresse that tribe who educate themselves while in prison have more options and confidence when they approach out, and are less likely to pass back. "Not everyone takes the classes," he said. "But it pays not on if they do."