Blood Ties: How a Texas Prison Gang Became a Mexican Cartel Proxy

In the late 1980s and 1990s, street gang members from the impoverished Segundo Barrio in El Paso, Texas, united in the Texas prison system to create the Barrio Aztecas gang. They quickly rose to power in the Texas prison system and ultimately became a powerful transnational criminal organization.

Kolb describes the prison dynamic of predator and prey and the need for the prey to unify for protection against gangs such as the Texas Syndicate and Texas Mexican Mafia, also known as the Mexikan...