Eric Velastegui -the head of the Latin Kings in Spain arrested this Tuesday in jail for continuing to lead the band-, leads with a strong hand and leisurely manner the module of the Galician prison where he is serving a sentence for raping a woman at gunpoint a few years ago. 20 years. The Godfather, as he is known within the organization that he imported to Spain in the year 2000, imparts order in a subtle way, without violence or intimidation but forcefully. The rest of the inmates respect him.
It represents what in prison slang is known as kie, the person in which the module begins and ends. The one who commands and the one who manages. “Nothing happens that he doesn’t want to happen but he does it without getting dirty, with a head. He does not pass drugs but he knows who does it and most importantly: that dealer sells it because he allows it, “explain prison sources.
There is an anecdote inside the Teixeiro prison (La Coruña) that shows the vision of the future that he had in the short term, once he was released. He wanted to bring order to the streets his way, from the top echelon of the Latin Kings. It happened a few months ago, when the virulence of the Latin gangs bit Madrid with deadly fights and a rivalry that even forced the design of a special security plan to combat it. His interlocutor lamented the situation, the danger of quarrels between the different organizations and how “dangerous the street was.”
Velastegui, aware that he had little time left to serve his sentence, answered resolutely: “That can be fixed with more discipline. With me there would be no such chaos ». A whole declaration of intent that has been backed by his arrest for continuing at the helm of the Latin Kings; an arrest that shows that he, indeed, he was still in the pulpit of the band. Yesterday morning, agents from the Civil Guard Information Service Headquarters traveled to La Coruña to notify him of the arrest. They informed him, according to the same sources, in the prison parlor, as usually happens on these occasions.
The Godfather, say those who have treated him in prison in the last 20 years, soon learned that it pays more to bend and take advantage of the system -with a relaxed attitude towards the gallery- than to confront him. And so he has passed through his prison life. The head of the Latin Kings in Spain was in charge of cleaning in module 2 of the Teixeiro prison. It is an intermediate area between the modules with conflicting prisoners and those who are serving their sentences in departments of education and respect.
Eric Velastegui is a “born leader” according to prison sources. His behavior behind bars has always been “correct” and he was “collaborative.” From prison, he continued directing the gang that he introduced to Spain in the year 2000 and which has a multitude of stabbings, arrests, confrontations with other organizations and also deaths on its resume.
He was arrested in the early 2000s for raping a woman in Madrid, near the Casa de Campo, after handcuffing her boyfriend. He sexually assaulted her along with another man. That same year, he had founded the Latin Kings and imported the practices of this band from Ecuador. The behavior patterns of its members include robberies, fights, and even rape of young people who deviate from internal discipline. They maintain a fierce fight for the control of the territory with other local gangs, according to the people who have left the organization and have dared to denounce and collect a multitude of police reports over the last 20 years. In addition, its members profess absolute loyalty to the leader, who calls himself supreme. His orders are unanswerable. Submission is total. There are entrance fees by way of tests of bravery. Blood crimes help to climb the ladder and this test allows the leader to know how far his subjects are willing to go to get a place. According to the police reports, the applicant has to demonstrate a series of attitudes to be accepted. One of the tests, for example, is to burn the genitals.
Sexual assaults also find their place. The Latin Kings are characterized by exacerbated machismo. When a girl wants to join the group, she must inevitably go through the leader’s bed. In the event that she wants to leave, things are much more bloody, almost heartbreaking. The last favor she has to do is to sleep with all the members of the group. If they resist, “they hold them against their will and rape them.”
The name of the group is also associated with drug trafficking (especially marijuana and cocaine), wide and colorful clothing, a specific greeting and crucifixes. But, what makes these young people group under these conditions? What do they want with this? It is necessary to delve into the origins of the band.
One of its germs are the marginal neighborhoods of Latin America, where the law of the strongest prevails. Accessing the Latin is synonymous with protection against other threats. However, in Spain this leitmotiv is illogical. Here the sense of controlling the streets is lost. Some experts attribute this behavior to uprooting.
Along with the leader, two of his lieutenants and his current partner were arrested, according to the same sources. The operation, called Torcido, was developed as a result of an investigation launched by the Civil Guard in June 2021, when a brawl broke out between members of youth gangs in the Madrid town of Galapagar, where Velastegui is believed to have founded the Latin King in the country in the year 2000.
In recent times there had been several clashes between warring factions within the Latin Kings, which put the Civil Guard on the trail of the organization and more specifically allowed them to focus on Eric Velastegui, who had a very important role to play. asset. The police authorities had detected a “reactivation” of the gang in different parts of the Community of Madrid, including in Galapagar (where El Padrino continued to go on his permits), a municipality in which the anti-gang plan of the Delegation of the Government.
In fact, the National Police arrested six presumed members of the Latin King, four of them minors, on September 2 for a brawl registered in the patron saint festivities of the town of San Sebastián de los Reyes in which a gang member and a neighbor were injured by two shots.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
