Wearing Nike Cortez shoes, baggy pants, a black T-shirt and a sad expression, Juan Rivera recalls his time as a gang member in elementary school. He remembers being hit by gang members without retaliating to get "jumped in," or initiated. He also remembers getting stabbed with a screwdriver in fifth grade. By his freshman year in high school, he wanted out.
"I felt bad that I made my mom go through all that, watching me in pain," said Juan, 16, a sophomore at Downtown College Preparatory, a charter high school in San Jose. "I left all that behind in the past."
Many teens like Juan, who start out glorifying the gang life, get to a point where they want to get out. Juan is changing his lifestyle on his own, and his goal is to become a lawyer who helps juvenile delinquents. He says whenever he's tempted by his ex-Norteño lifestyle, he thinks about the look in his mother's eyes.
But for those who can't go it alone, there are programs — both local and international — to help them find another path in life.
"What gang-involved teens need in order to end their gang involvement is a positive vision of their future," said Micah Morris, an English teacher at Downtown College Prep who advises students on how to find a better path. "I try to communicate to teens who are involved in gangs that I see them as people beyond their gang involvement and — as much as they might protest otherwise — that their gang involvement does not define who they are."
At the Mexican American Community Service Agency in San Jose, motivational speaker Dimas Martínez works with young people in a program that offers alternatives for those caught in gang activity. "It was either this program or probation," participant Jose Bello said after one of the gang prevention workshops the agency offers.
"Each one of you has a gift," Martínez recently told the seven teenagers in Bello's class. "I'm here because I think that all of you are savable."
Worldwide programs also exist to focus on older gang members. Victory Outreach Cease Fire is a faith-based program led by ex-gang members who work to bring peace between notorious gangs all over the world, including in San Jose.
"God uses this ministry to go back to the barrios and reach the gang members, drug addicts, and the people that the judicial system has given up on," said Daniel Contreras, an ex-Norteño and one of the leaders of Cease Fire.
The worldwide ministry helps rival gangs unite to stop the violence. The leaders of the organization are ministers who preach God's word to help gangsters find their path, "but it doesn't matter what religion they are from," said Robert Rios, a leader of Cease Fire.
Rios said the group's work includes uniting the two biggest gangs in El Salvador, the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 last year, a job many thought impossible.
"We are in six of the seven continents of this world," Contreras said. "We have governments that call us, and they ask for us because they see what we do."
They also work with San Jose gangs, last year negotiating a local cease-fire between Norteños and Sureños.
Victory Outreach is concerned with the violence that Latino gangs use on their people. Cease Fire leaders use inspirational words and are role models for unity because their organization is made up of ex-Sureños and ex-Norteños.
"God brings us all together," Rios said.
Cease Fire leaders also use music and rap to speak the language of most gang members. One poem on a Cease Fire CD describes the destruction that the North-South division causes.
North, south, it's all the same
The southern and northern vision that brings forth division by corrupt decisions
That XIII and XIV was never intended to be
Until someone came along and planted a seed
Full of pride, hate, envy, and greed
Only to fulfill a need
Giving in to dirty deeds that has many sewed up into deceived
A manmade movement that when it gets its own grain are restrained from where it came
Now who's the one to blame?
Some teenagers said they joined gangs because they wanted to belong to something. Leonardo Cervantes, 14, did. But the ex-Sureño later came to the same conclusion as Juan Rivera.
"Even if you are not hurting yourself, you are hurting your family and the families of the people you fight with," said Leonardo, a sophomore at Downtown College Prep. "No lifestyle is worth this."