How Latin American Gangs Are Muscling in on Madrid's Crime Scene

MADRID — Jaime Guerrero Mesoussi tried desperately to escape after he was stabbed in the heart with a machete. 

Video from CCTV cameras caught the 15-year-old being attacked on the 5th of February by eight members of another gang armed with knives outside the Kapital nightclub in Madrid's Atocha, a rundown area of the Spanish capital.

The teenager, Pepe, who was armed with a machete, staggered and fell to the ground, bathed in blood. When medics arrived, they pumped his chest to try and revive him but there was nothing they could do.

Just one hour after the attack on Pepe, 25-year-old Diego Rodriguez died from multiple stab wounds to his back. In a separate gang fight, the same night, three teenagers were gouged with machetes.

The gangs remain a constant threat, say police, who deploy a dedicated task force to prevent their violent feuds spilling over into normal life. Earlier this month, a 17-year-old boy was seriously injured after being stabbed in the chest in a fight in Madrid between rival gangs. 

The killings mark the latest chapter in a bloody gang war between Los Trinitarios and Dominican Don't Play (DDP), two of Spain’s most feared Latin gangs, who have returned in force after lockdown.

Trinitarios and DPP members are second or third generation descendants of emigrants from the Dominican Repùblic who moved to Spain, battling it out on the streets of Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia. Other gangs in Spain are the Latin Kings and the Ñetas, who come from Puerto Rico.

The Trinitarios and DDP were started by Dominican prisoners in Rikers Island prison in New York, but have spread their reach far beyond the US, to Spain, Britain and Latin America after being deported or deciding to start a new life abroad.  

In 2020, these gangs were blamed by police for 18 murders and 88 sex attacks in Madrid, mainly linked to prostitution or abuse of the gangs’ female followers.

Now police and authorities fear fresh violence will erupt into an all-out war on the streets.

Gangsters have been linked by police to violent street robberies, acting as mules for the major drugs gangs, running prostitution rings, possession of arms and belonging to criminal organisations.

They have no female members and some sexually humiliate their girlfriends or women in their circles in order to emphasise their misogynistic credentials.   

Regular people in Madrid do not normally get caught in the crosshairs of gang violence. But the violence the gangs mete out is much greater than their numbers suggest and they have created a climate of fear in the capital. 

Gang members are not even scared to take on the police. “One officer who was giving chase stopped dead in his tracks when a gang member pointed a gun at him, but it misfired,” a police source told VICE World News.  

Today, there are about 400 members of these gangs across Spain, double the figure last year, say experts. These gangs have grown as other gangs declined because after their leaders were jailed.

More than 500 extra heavily armed police were drafted into Madrid last month to try to prevent a full blown conflict between the Trinitarios and the DDP.

The gangs establish in rundown, unfashionable neighbourhoods in the centre of Madrid or suburban towns. In a series of operations last month,  19 gang members were arrested, 11 of them from the Trinitarios and the rest from DDP. 

As the COVID pandemic has waned, police believe the gangs want to win back control over the Madrid underworld. But during the lockdown, which was one of the strictest in Europe, they could not get back on the streets.

Out of school and with little else to do, they started to glorify the violence of gang life so joined up and became foot soldiers who were used by the gang leaders when they needed to start fights with rivals, police said. 

“During the lockdown and restrictions, many of these young people were looking at their phones and at TikTok and identifying with these gangs and their symbols. They would start to use their symbols,” said a police source who did not want to be identified.

“They feel more cool, more important but without thinking about the consequences.  Now that the pandemic has eased off, the gangs can move about more and confront each other. But now there is a new group of younger gang members that we do not know because they are so young they have no record.” 

So, why are children barely out of elementary school joining gangs where they risk being cut up with machetes?

“Many of these children are watching videos and they think it is glamorous to join these gangs. They think the gang would be like another family. Or some gang members will be their friends,” said Katía Nuñez, an anthropologist at the University of Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona who has written a PhD on the Latin American gangs in New York and in Spain.

“Their leaders are much older and do not have to fight with machetes in the street. Anyone who is sent to prison is replaced by their lieutenants.”

The machete is their calling card because it is seen as a symbol of Dominican national culture, where it was traditionally used to cut sugar, an important crop for the country. The knives are 60cm long and have names like Amazonas, Black Panther and Zombie Killers. They’re sold for as little as €16.   

“These machetes are the weapon of choice for these gangs. They are easy to get and they allow people to fight but not to get too close to the person they are trying to hurt,” Carlos Rodriguez, an inspector with the Madrid Municipal police, told VICE World News. “Sometimes they hide them inside their trousers so that they can surprise their enemies.”

Sympathetic bar owners will sometimes hide machetes for the gangsters before a planned attack, said Rodriguez.  

“Once we arrived at a bar and found eight or nine machetes,” he says.  

Spain's government wants to bring in stricter restrictions to stop gang members getting their hands on these huge blades. At present to obtain a machete, all someone needs is to show a shopkeeper their ID and proof they are over 18.  They usually buy these blades from specialised shops or normal hardware stores. 

Among those arrested on suspicion of the murder of Diego Rodriguez – the 25-year-old who died of stab wounds – was a Trinitario leader, named by police as Sandy Antonio CC, nicknamed Chuky. He had been arrested in November in a major police operation against prostitution in which women were being drugged and sexually abused. The gangs exploit prostitutes for their own sexual gratification, often drugging them first. 

Chuky was released on bail for the alleged murder of Rodriguez, on 4 February.  He has not been charged with any offence, as charges usually follow much later under the Spanish legal system. 

Police sources said the person they suspect ordered the execution was Ayrton Carriola, known as Peru, who was described as “very dangerous, a complete fanatic”.

'Chamaquito', whose real name is Andrés Alexandre Martínez Sandoval, is said by police to be one of the most violent members of the DDP.

He has been accused of recruiting children as young as 12 to reinforce his control of the crime group and because he knows kids younger than 14 cannot face criminal charges in Spain. They contact him through social media, friends or directly by approaching Chamaquito. To ensure their loyalty, he orders more junior gang members to deal out punishments like beatings if they fail to follow his orders like carrying out attacks, robberies or drug dealing. 

The Trinitarios take their name from the three founding fathers of the Dominican Republic, who formed a secret society called Trinitaria Identity while they fought for independence for the tiny Caribbean state from foreign powers that ruled the country at the turn of the 20th century.

In a homage to the same spirit of independence, the gang was formed to defend the rights of Dominican prisoners inside New York's tough jails. When New York gang members were expelled from the US to the Dominican Republic after serving prison sentences, they moved to Spain. Others are the sons of migrants who made new lives in Spain. 

The gang uses their country's motto: Dios, Patria y Libertad (God, Fatherland and Liberty).

As authorities in the US cracked down on the Trinitarios and other Latin gangs, their tentacles spread beyond America. They now have factions in Latin America, Spain and Britain.

DDP sprang to life after a split within the Trinitarios in prison in New York.

One of the Trinitarios' founders, Julio Martínez – known as El Caballo (The Horse) – had a fight with another member of the same gang and the DDP was born.

Today, on the streets of Spain these gangs are made up of second- or third- generation migrant families. Police say 90% have Spanish nationality.

Unlike other Latin gangs like the Mexican Mafia, the Trinitarios and DDP do not normally have any distinctive tattoos. Instead, they have their own hand signals.

Trinitarios extend their two first fingers while DDP has another hand gesture which means fatherland – a national symbol in the Dominican Republic. It consists of three fingers up with the ring finger held down.  

Lots of gangsters use TikTok to post gang signs. The DDP use #d3 and #ad3 which represents ‘the love of three’. Their rivals, the Trinitarios, use #d7, which shows the gang’s values of peace and love, despite its violent reputation. 

Social media helps stoke fear of the gangs.

“There were rumours that a gang like the Latin Kings had rituals of initiation like being beaten up but no-one I spoke to among the Dominicans said this was the case,” said Nuñez.

The Latin Kings, which originated from the descendants of migrants from Puerto Rico or the US mainland, were once the most feared Latin gang but have fallen into decline in Spain.

Eric Javier Jara Velástegui, the leader of the Latin Kings, who is known as The Wolverine, is serving a 21-year jail term for rape and assault committed in Madrid in 2003.

Gang members speak in code and organise attacks on rival gangs using numbers to hide what they’re going to do from police, says Nuñez. 

“I interviewed someone in prison who told me if we say 27 it means we are going to organise an attack on that day,” Nuñez told VICE World News. 

Cops closely monitor social media messages to find out what the gangs are doing, where influencers with knowledge of gang activity post ominous warnings. 

Influencers warned the gangs would cut down anyone – gangster or not.

“Kids, this coming weekend, don't set foot in Madrid. Last weekend they killed a Trinitario and there will be a lot of bloodlust. Go with your head and be careful because they have already said that they do not care about people who are from the gangs or not,” wrote one.