Clanton Street’s selective membership led to youth of non-Mexican and mixed-race backgrounds to create the 18 th Street gang. Al Valdez, an adjunct professor at the University of California, Irvine and retired head of the gang investigation unit at the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, 18 th Street was established because a gang known as Clanton Street, currently known as Clanton 14 (C14), only recruited and admitted Mexicans. Specifically, the gang formed in the “neighborhood where the Santa Monica and Harbor Freeway intersect, near 18 th Street and Union Avenue,” the area is also known as Pico-Union. The origins of the 18 th Street gang can be traced to Los Angeles, California, during the early 1960s in the Rampart District. This article summarizes its origins and national and transnational migration/diffusion.
Eighteenth Street is known as 18 th Street, Barrio 18, Calle 18, Mara 18, and M-18 in its various locations. It is one of the gangs frequently mentioned in a transnational context and often referred to as a mara-a type of sophisticated gang-due to its presence in El Salvador and other parts of Central America. Eighteenth Street: The Origins of ‘Barrio 18’Įighteenth Street (18 th Street) is a gang originating in the Pico-Union District of Los Angeles.