Luis J. Rodriquez’s Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A. is an autobiographical coming of age story that examines the social and economic forces influencing adolescent gang members, and the difficulties that exist in that environment. Presenting himself as an example of an “exception to the rule,” Rodriquez guides the reader through a turbulent adolescence in which death or long-term imprisonment seems imminent.
Chapter 1
“The refrain ‘this is not your country’ echoed for a lifetime” (p. 20).
Rodriquez begins his memoir by chronicling a bit of family history. He explains that his father was a principal in Mexico, and his mother was a school secretary, but neither parent is able to find steady employment in their fields of expertise in the U.S. The unstable employment sets up Rodriguez’s description of his childhood. He recalls moving often because of the family’s financial instability, feeling discriminated against because of his ethnicity, and his being pushed to the wayside for speaking Spanish as a first language in early elementary school. Rodriguez carries his sense of alienation into adolescence, but he finds some semblance of belonging in gang culture.
Chapters 2-3
“’Thee Impersonations…’ It was something to belong to- something that was ours. We weren’t in the Boy Scouts, in sports teams or camping groups. The Impersonations is how we wove something out of the threads of nothing” (p. 41).
Luis’s gang life begins when he, and three friends, form “The Impersonations.” The “gang” begins as group of four close pre-teen friends, but the prevalence of, and expectations to join, gangs in the barrio, transforms all four members into serious gang members early in life. Luis and his friends find themselves traversing small club-like gangs until the smaller clubs are absorbed into one of the major gangs, “The Animal Tribe.”
Soon Luis is involved in crimes that are more serious than standard examples of youthful deviance. He recounts an episode where he and several friends attempt hold-up a drive-in with Luis wielding a gun, and Luis offers his first description of being arrested after being lured into an altercation with undercover police at a beach.
Chapters 4-5
“I had certain yearnings at the time, which a lot of us had, to acquire authority in our own lives in the face of police, joblessness and powerlessness. Las Lomas was our path to that, but I was frustrated because I felt the violence was eating us alive.”
Chapter four begins and ends with the contemplation of suicide attempts. Luis’s propensity for substance abuse, his family feeling that he is spiraling out of control, and his being expelled from school, illustrate a complex mixture of adolescent pressures. Luis finds himself banished from the family house, and lives in the garage; separated from his family. He also depicts the separation between the Hispanic population and the white population that is the impetus of much of his trouble, but also his eventual salvation. He is kicked-out of the culturally bifurcated Mark Keppel High School for being involved in fights between the affluent white population and the Hispanic students, and he works as a bus-boy in a Mexican restaurant where he has to carry his birth certificate for fear of deportation.
Chapter five begins with Luis’s initiation into the gang Los Lamos, one of the two major rival gangs responsible for escalating gang violence in the Valley. With the heightening violence, community centers began opening to combat the violence. In one of these centers, Luis meets his mentor, Chente Ramirez. Chente possesses the streetwise demeanor that keeps him from being dismissed by gang members while exerting a positive influence. Until this point in Luis’s narrative, he had searched for direction and support in equally misguided friends, substance use, and short-lived youthful sexual relationships. Chente sparks Luis’s passion for social issues which begins to balance the barrage of negative influences that Luis has navigated thus far.
Chapters 6-7
“I don’t mind paying for my mistakes… Sometimes we pay even when there’s been no mistake. Just for being who we are… Just for being Mexican. That’s all the wrong I have to do.”
Chapters six and seven offer the escalation of Luis’s conflicting influences. On one hand, he finds himself almost arrested for running out on a check at a restaurant, and he explains, with the authority of personal experience, the realities of being incarcerated to the owner of the restaurant who decides against pressing charges. Luis also finds himself in jail for participation in “The National Chicano Moratorium March” against the Viet Nam War. At the same time, Luis immerses himself in involvement with the “John Fabela Youth Center” where Chente is a community organizer, and Luis, at Chente’s request, returns to high school where he becomes deeply involved in an Hispanic student organization.
Luis’s relationship with Chente is increasingly solidified throughout this part of Luis’s memoir. Luis begins attending meetings of Chante’s organization named “The Collective” where social issues are discussed and analyzed. Luis, somewhat emulating Chente while following his own passions, begins organizing school walk-outs, demanding classes that deal with Hispanic issues at the school, and realizes a sense of identity among a community cause.
Chapters 8-9
“It’s a lot better to feed some hungry kids than to clean up your fuckin’ walls…”
Chapter eight begins with Luis in jail for, nonfatally, shooting a man. Again, conflicting influences have Luis in a precarious situation, but he has established a support system through his community involvement, and begrudged legalities keep him from long-term incarceration. After his release, Chente offers Luis an opportunity to oversee mural paintings, and Luis becomes a significant figure in establishing and maintaining peace between the area’s rival gangs.
As he is juggling mediation among rival gangs, bifurcated student populations, and his own loyalties/emotions, Luis gains recognition for his writing. Mrs. Baez, the teacher who oversees the Hispanic club at Luis’s school, offers him an opportunity to be published. She edited Luis’s work and submitted it to several contests. Luis won scholarship money for his writing and painting, and was put in charge of painting and writing projects.
Chapter 10
“There comes a moment when one faces the fresh features of an inner face; a time of conscious rebirth, when the accounting’s done, the weave in its final flourish, a time when a man stands before the world – vulnerable, nothing-owed – and considers his place in it. I had reached such a moment.”
In Chapter 10, Luis decides/is forced to move away from his childhood home. He is the only one of the original four friends from “The Impersonations” that has freedom and life left. After being shot at by old comrades, and escaping long-term imprisonment (again), he ends the memoir with being confronted by an old rival that is disabled from an attempt on his life, Chava. Chava blames Luis for his condition, and confronts Luis, bringing two able-bodied teenagers willing to fight for him, but Luis calms Chava, and quells the impending violence by embracing Chava.
Chapter 1
“The refrain ‘this is not your country’ echoed for a lifetime” (p. 20).
Rodriquez begins his memoir by chronicling a bit of family history. He explains that his father was a principal in Mexico, and his mother was a school secretary, but neither parent is able to find steady employment in their fields of expertise in the U.S. The unstable employment sets up Rodriguez’s description of his childhood. He recalls moving often because of the family’s financial instability, feeling discriminated against because of his ethnicity, and his being pushed to the wayside for speaking Spanish as a first language in early elementary school. Rodriguez carries his sense of alienation into adolescence, but he finds some semblance of belonging in gang culture.
Chapters 2-3
“’Thee Impersonations…’ It was something to belong to- something that was ours. We weren’t in the Boy Scouts, in sports teams or camping groups. The Impersonations is how we wove something out of the threads of nothing” (p. 41).
Luis’s gang life begins when he, and three friends, form “The Impersonations.” The “gang” begins as group of four close pre-teen friends, but the prevalence of, and expectations to join, gangs in the barrio, transforms all four members into serious gang members early in life. Luis and his friends find themselves traversing small club-like gangs until the smaller clubs are absorbed into one of the major gangs, “The Animal Tribe.”
Soon Luis is involved in crimes that are more serious than standard examples of youthful deviance. He recounts an episode where he and several friends attempt hold-up a drive-in with Luis wielding a gun, and Luis offers his first description of being arrested after being lured into an altercation with undercover police at a beach.
Chapters 4-5
“I had certain yearnings at the time, which a lot of us had, to acquire authority in our own lives in the face of police, joblessness and powerlessness. Las Lomas was our path to that, but I was frustrated because I felt the violence was eating us alive.”
Chapter four begins and ends with the contemplation of suicide attempts. Luis’s propensity for substance abuse, his family feeling that he is spiraling out of control, and his being expelled from school, illustrate a complex mixture of adolescent pressures. Luis finds himself banished from the family house, and lives in the garage; separated from his family. He also depicts the separation between the Hispanic population and the white population that is the impetus of much of his trouble, but also his eventual salvation. He is kicked-out of the culturally bifurcated Mark Keppel High School for being involved in fights between the affluent white population and the Hispanic students, and he works as a bus-boy in a Mexican restaurant where he has to carry his birth certificate for fear of deportation.
Chapter five begins with Luis’s initiation into the gang Los Lamos, one of the two major rival gangs responsible for escalating gang violence in the Valley. With the heightening violence, community centers began opening to combat the violence. In one of these centers, Luis meets his mentor, Chente Ramirez. Chente possesses the streetwise demeanor that keeps him from being dismissed by gang members while exerting a positive influence. Until this point in Luis’s narrative, he had searched for direction and support in equally misguided friends, substance use, and short-lived youthful sexual relationships. Chente sparks Luis’s passion for social issues which begins to balance the barrage of negative influences that Luis has navigated thus far.
Chapters 6-7
“I don’t mind paying for my mistakes… Sometimes we pay even when there’s been no mistake. Just for being who we are… Just for being Mexican. That’s all the wrong I have to do.”
Chapters six and seven offer the escalation of Luis’s conflicting influences. On one hand, he finds himself almost arrested for running out on a check at a restaurant, and he explains, with the authority of personal experience, the realities of being incarcerated to the owner of the restaurant who decides against pressing charges. Luis also finds himself in jail for participation in “The National Chicano Moratorium March” against the Viet Nam War. At the same time, Luis immerses himself in involvement with the “John Fabela Youth Center” where Chente is a community organizer, and Luis, at Chente’s request, returns to high school where he becomes deeply involved in an Hispanic student organization.
Luis’s relationship with Chente is increasingly solidified throughout this part of Luis’s memoir. Luis begins attending meetings of Chante’s organization named “The Collective” where social issues are discussed and analyzed. Luis, somewhat emulating Chente while following his own passions, begins organizing school walk-outs, demanding classes that deal with Hispanic issues at the school, and realizes a sense of identity among a community cause.
Chapters 8-9
“It’s a lot better to feed some hungry kids than to clean up your fuckin’ walls…”
Chapter eight begins with Luis in jail for, nonfatally, shooting a man. Again, conflicting influences have Luis in a precarious situation, but he has established a support system through his community involvement, and begrudged legalities keep him from long-term incarceration. After his release, Chente offers Luis an opportunity to oversee mural paintings, and Luis becomes a significant figure in establishing and maintaining peace between the area’s rival gangs.
As he is juggling mediation among rival gangs, bifurcated student populations, and his own loyalties/emotions, Luis gains recognition for his writing. Mrs. Baez, the teacher who oversees the Hispanic club at Luis’s school, offers him an opportunity to be published. She edited Luis’s work and submitted it to several contests. Luis won scholarship money for his writing and painting, and was put in charge of painting and writing projects.
Chapter 10
“There comes a moment when one faces the fresh features of an inner face; a time of conscious rebirth, when the accounting’s done, the weave in its final flourish, a time when a man stands before the world – vulnerable, nothing-owed – and considers his place in it. I had reached such a moment.”
In Chapter 10, Luis decides/is forced to move away from his childhood home. He is the only one of the original four friends from “The Impersonations” that has freedom and life left. After being shot at by old comrades, and escaping long-term imprisonment (again), he ends the memoir with being confronted by an old rival that is disabled from an attempt on his life, Chava. Chava blames Luis for his condition, and confronts Luis, bringing two able-bodied teenagers willing to fight for him, but Luis calms Chava, and quells the impending violence by embracing Chava.