Huelga flag
The Norteños are a predominantly Mexican-American street gang that were founded in 1968. They were founded in northern California (hence "Norteños", which means "Northerners"), and are mortal enemies of the Sureños, likewise from the south. They are allied to the Nuestra Familia, Bloods, Black Guerrilla Family, and Latin Kings, while they are enemies with the Sureños, Mexican Mafia, Fresno Bulldogs, MS-13, Nazi Lowriders, and Aryan Brotherhood. They were responsible for arms trafficking, drug dealing, auto theft, extortion, murder, robbery, burglaries, and assault.
History[]
The Norteños were founded in 1968 in the prisons of California by Mexican-American inmates coming from northern California, splitting with the Sureños, the southern California Mexican-American inmates. The divide came from the hatred between the southern Mexican-Americans - mainly immigrants from Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Basin - and the northern Mexican-Americans - the people that worked on the fields of the Salinas Valley's farms. Norteños mainly belonged to the Nuestra Familia gang, while Sureños were mainly loyal to the Mexican Mafia. In reality, the Norteños are a loose coalition of several northern California Mexican-American gangs that are opposed to southern California Mexican-American gangs, and it is an umbrella term applied to all of the gangs in the northern half of CA. These include Nuestra Familia and the Rifa, while Sureños include La Eme, the Varrios Los Aztecas, and Vagos, and the main conflict between the Norteños and Sureños occurs in prison. The symbol of the Norteños is the number "14", as the letter "N" is the 14th letter of the alphabet (just as La Eme's symbol is "13", as "M" is the 13th letter of the alphabet). Their major bases are Modesto, Salinas, and Santa Rosa, san jose, while some gangs are based in San Francisco.