God, Are You Trying to Get My Attention?

Jorge Roque

In 2011 and 2012, while more than 900 people were being murdered on the streets of Chicago, creative-writing students from DePaul University fanned out all over the city to interview people whose lives have been changed by the bloodshed. The result is How Long Will I Cry?: Voices of Youth Violence, an extraordinary and eye-opening work of oral history.

Told by real people in their own words, the book contains the extraordinary stories of 34 Chicagoans. This is one of them.

Residents of Little Village sometimes refer to their Southwest Side neighborhood as the “Mexico of the Midwest.” A tiled, terra-cotta gateway over 26th Street, adorned with the welcome-greeting “Bienvenidos,” has served as the point of entry for generations of Chicano immigrants to the city.

Little Village has a rich cultural life, bustling business district and proud heritage, but like many inner-city neighborhoods, it is plagued by street gangs, with the Latin Kings and the Gangster Two-Six Nation locked in a bloody and long-running rivalry.

Now 36, former Two-Six member Jorge Roque barely survived his teen years in Little Village. These days, he devotes himself to getting other young people off the streets. When we interviewed him in 2011, he was working as program coordinator for the YMCA’s Street Intervention Program, an anti-gang effort with a presence in 11 of Chicago’s at-risk communities. The barrel-chested Roque has the hard look of someone who has known more than his share of tough situations. But as he tells his story, there’s calm in his voice and compassion in his eyes.

Everything behind the gang is fake. It’s people wearing masks, guys wearing different masks because they have to cover the pain that they’re going through, the pain that they have in their lives. And, for me, that was maybe a fake type of love and acceptance, but it was that camaraderie between street soldiers. I always tell people, “Do not judge if you’ve never been there. Or if you’ve never tasted from that.” Because I’ve seen gangbanging and drug dealing. It’s an adrenaline—it’s a rush. It’s like a drug. It’s an addiction of feeling that you’re someone. Because everyone’s looking for that acknowledgement and acceptance. That was that one missing thing in our lives.

I was born in El Paso, Texas, and raised here. In 1977, when I was 1, my parents brought me here to Chicago. I guess my father had been coming back and forth to the States from Juarez. He ended up traveling from out of the West Coast and finally touching down here in Chicago and liking Chicago for whatever reason. Liking the snow, I guess. And the first community that they ended up in was Little Village. So they stayed there for at least seven years, renting an apartment there on 22nd and Albany.

My parents saved up some money and they were able to buy their first home, like in 1982 or 1983, in we call it the suburbs of Little Village, which is west of Pulaski. But growing up in Little Village, from 1983 on, by Komensky, that was my block. I had my grammar school there, at Whitney Elementary. We never really left Little Village. My parents love this neighborhood, this community. They still own that house.

But with the beauty of the neighborhood of Little Village, there was the other side. The dark side of Little Village, when it came to the gangs and drugs and just the violence, the youth violence, the street violence, kind of impacted my life as I was growing up there. There were not too many of the role models that I wanted to look up to. Because I believe it’s a choice of who you choose to hang with, be around.

The guys that I was kind of looking up to in my teenage years were the guys on the street corner. Instead of looking up to the doctors and lawyers, and the young women and young men that were going to college or university, I kind of chose the fast lane, the fast lifestyle of just, you know, the drugs and the money. And just what it offers: that package of making it easier and living a lot faster, and growing up faster as you experience violence.

And so at one time in my life, I decided that I just didn’t want to be an outsider. I made the choice myself, that I wanted to be part of a street organization in Little Village. Some people say, “Well, you can blame your parents.” But I had both parents. I come from a strong family of hard workers. My father worked long hours to provide and purchase a home.

But it’s also true that I saw a lot of violence within my home. I got to experience a lot of infidelity within my father, got to see a lot of domestic violence, got to see the alcohol problems that he had and just the mistreatment that my mom experienced. I remember, you know, my dad just coming home at just two or three in the morning and wanting my mom to cook for him. I remember going to the bars in the neighborhood, in Little Village, looking for my dad—me, personally, at the age of 6 or 7, telling Dad to come home. I got to meet a lot of his girlfriends as a young kid.

I’m not going to say I blame my parents’ issues or problems at home on the way I turned out. But I know it did affect me. I started to build a lot of anger towards my father. When you’re growing up as a Mexican father, parent, you’re brought up thinking macho. You know? And you can’t cry, you can’t show emotions, and you can’t hug your child or give him a kiss or give him words of affirmation and just say, “Man, I’m proud of you.”

That’s the environment that I was growing up in. And not knowing how to deal with that anger was just building and building inside of me to the point that, I just didn’t care no more about my father. I didn’t care for my dad. I hated my dad. There was a time in my life where I wanted to kill my dad, when I started hitting my teenage years. And I started standing up for my mom. One time, I went at him and I hit him with a bat and he hit me with a two-by-four. This is a kind of violence that we both experienced with each other. But that was the last time that he hit my mom, because I stood up for my mom. And so I went through a period in my life where I got involved with the street gang in Little Village. That’s where I learned to let out a lot of my aggression and anger.

I did my thing. I wasn’t really into the drug dealing. I’m not a good salesperson. I’m not a good marketer, and so I did other things to make money. I didn’t steal. I didn’t like stealing cars or car rims and stuff, but some other people make money stealing radios. I made some of the money dealing weaponry. Because, part of this lifestyle, there’s weekly meetings you have to go. There’s your weekly dues you have to pay, just like being part of the Rotary Club, you know? You have to pay your weekly dues when you’re part of that.

What I don’t want people to think is that gang members are just monsters and they’re out to just get anyone or anybody. There are rules and regulations at each gang and bylaws that they have to abide by. And so some of these street gangs do not let you steal in your own neighborhood, do not let you tag or write in your own neighborhood. Of course, you’ve got some renegade youth out there that don’t follow rules, but there are consequences for breaking some of those bylaws.

So I was lost for a while. I was blinded in believing that that was the right way in dealing with your personal issues or the way of coping with things in your life. But you know what? My mom wouldn’t give up. I was out there on the street corner, and she would stand out there until I came home. So my friends didn’t want me out there. They would say, “Leave already. You’d better run home. Your mom’s coming. Your mom’s going to stay out here on the street corner with us.”

And my mom would be like, “Either you let him go, or I’m going to stand out here with you guys and not let you guys do your activities, whatever those were.”

And they’d go, “Mrs. Roque, we promise you your son—we’ll have him there in 30 minutes.” They knew my mom by her name.

And she’d go, “Thirty minutes, guys. If he don’t come home, I’m going to come right back!”

It was like my mom became one of the enforcers. She’s one of the reasons I started getting away from gangbanging.

There’s this one corner, I was out there one night and a rival gang member passed by. He saw me out there, me and my friend that were on that corner saw him coming, and we knew what gang they were from. They passed by and I threw a brick through their window and dented up their hood. And there’s one individual who I did that to, he was known as a killer, as one of those crazy killers. And they chased me.

There’s a thing called security out there, so supposedly we had security. We got individuals in gangways or on corners with guns protecting, making sure that any intruders don’t come in, and then they react. And at that moment, our security supposedly was just on something different that night. I tell my friend, “Run, run, run!” And so he runs and he tries to jump the fence and I try to jump the fence, and I get caught up in the fence. My shoelaces get stuck on the fence.

And so this individual that I did the damage to his car, he looked at me, and he goes, “Man, you’re just, you’re just a kid.” And his friends there were like, “Who cares? Who cares? Look at what he did to the car. Look at what he did!” He was in his 20s, I was in my teens. I was about 15 at the time. And he had the gun to my head. His guys were like, “Man, kill him. Man, look at what he did to your car!” And for whatever reason—you know, that’s why I say God works in mysterious ways—one of my friends was passing by and he jumps out with a weapon. He’s like, “Don’t shoot him! Don’t shoot him!” He was the brother of my friend that was with me on the corner running.

Earlier that day, that same day, I remember my mom and my dad telling me, “Don’t go out.” And so I thought of my mom’s words, you know: “I dreamt you were in a coffin. I dreamt you were dead.” Her words start, in my mind, and I’m like, “I’m going to die here.”

And so while they’re negotiating, I get away, I cut loose. And all my guys, the guys on security, came out and they’re all trying to negotiate. We knew them from the neighborhood so we grew up around them, around this gang. And so they did not shoot, they did not kill me, thank God.

I ran home that night, telling my mom, “Mom, I almost got killed” with tears in my eyes, remembering her words. And she’s like, “Don’t worry, you’re alive. But what about you taking some time off from the community, from the neighborhood? I talked to your uncle today. And I was telling him all the things you were going through.” And he’s in Kansas, but she’s like, “Go for a month! Get away. Think about what you’re doing to yourself. Think about getting some breathing space.”

Liberal, Kansas. Small. Where they filmed Wizard of Oz. They have a museum of Wizard of Oz there. I arrive there, and I’m looking around, and you’ve got to understand, I know the city, the big city. But all I saw was nothing but wheat fields. Nothing but wheat fields.

Then my uncle tells me, “There’s rules here. We don’t have women here, so guess who’s going to do the cooking, who’s going to do the laundry? We go to church here at my house two times a week.” I looked at him like, “Are you crazy?” I mean, I only went to church three times a year: Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas. So I always say that I was in my uncle’s boot camp. Because what my own father should have maybe taught me, he taught me. He became a very, very important person in my life.

My clothes—I was still in my street uniform. This was before hip-hop culture hit, so I was wearing long socks, cut-off baggies to my knees, and Chucks—Converse All-Stars. I went to my uncle’s church dressed that way, but people accepted me the way I was, and they allowed me to be myself. I liked that. Because I was so used to so many churches in the city closing their doors on us—just because maybe them not understanding the young Latino culture, especially the street culture, the gang culture. And over there in Kansas, they treated me so different.

I spent close to a year there, and I learned a lot. They talked about a loving God, a God who doesn’t judge, a God who’s about equality and respect and justice. They showed it and that they practiced it. And they practiced it with me. Knowing where I was coming from, knowing my background, knowing how I looked on the outside shell, and they still didn’t see me any different.

I felt this big load on me. I was at the church on New Year’s. The preacher was preaching that we only go to God when we need Him. And he was saying, “Any one of you who is right now hurting and wants to experience that loving God, come to the altar. Who’s tired of their way of living?” I didn’t know that God. I wanted to feel that peace. I wanted to forgive my dad. I wanted to get rid of the anger towards him. And I wanted to even forgive myself because of what problems I might have caused to others, guys that were hurt, you know. I wanted to be forgiven from that, and I wanted to feel that peace and joy that they were talking about. I remember being at the altar for like three or four hours, crying and sobbing and just letting God know to forgive me. It was like a relief. It was like this thing came out of me, like a thousand pounds came off my shoulder.

I ended up coming back to Chicago in spring of 1993, when I was just turning 17, and I told my mom, “Ma, find a church, because we’re going to church.” I got to Chicago, and she found a church right around the corner, a Baptist church. I started going there and I started getting involved in the youth group. For six months, I was doing very well. I started going to GED classes, because they had kicked me out of Kelly High School for fighting.

I told my friends, “You know what, guys? I’m going to just focus on school, my education and church.”

And a lot of them were like, “Man, why you want to get out when you recruited us? You got us into this.” There was a lot of pressure. Then, my youth pastor at the time, he fell. The guy that I looked up to so much, he slipped. He was going to get divorced from his wife. And that discouraged me. I was a baby believer, you know, and so I was new to this stuff. I did not stop going to church, but I started slipping myself.

I caught myself holding guns again on the block with these guys. But I did not feel happy. It was hard because I had experienced that change. And so it was like me taking 10 steps back. I wasn’t happy doing it. I didn’t have peace. I couldn’t sleep. But I never stopped going to church.

And then one night, something happened that made me say, “You know what? Somebody’s trying to get my attention here.” Four guys got shot right in front of my mother’s house. Good friends of mine.

It was just part of the retaliation back and forth between the Two-Sixes and the Latin Kings that had been happening for decades. We’re talking about a war that’s been going on from the late ’70s, the ’80s, ’90s, until the present. It’s a war that’s gone on for like four or five decades. And it’s been retaliation after retaliation.

I was in my mom’s house. I had just gotten in. It was about two or three in the morning, and these guys were all standing two houses away. It was real loud. A drive-by, a real crazy drive-by. Two cars. They unloaded like three or four guns on my friends. And then one of my friends ran, and just fell in front of my mom’s house. And the other guy was in a gangway, shot up. They got hit with deer slugs. Like, the 30-30 bullets.

Everybody came out, my mom, everybody. She’s like, “Don’t go out, don’t go out.” But I came out because I seen my friend lying there. We were grabbing the guys who got shot and putting the bodies in cars and taking them to the hospital. You wait for the ambulance, and some of these guys are going to die.

One of them was very critical and it looked like he was going to lose his life. He’s alive. He pulled through. But that was the night where I said, “Lookit, man—God, are you trying to get my attention?” And ever since then, I’ve come a long way.

Staying in Little Village after I left the gang was the hard part. Imagine, coming from church and my friends making fun of me with my Bible in my hand. “Ha ha ha! Look at you, church boy.” Imagine the pressure. I used to make guys do things when I was in the gang, and now they’re making fun of me! My old friends from the neighborhood, man. But guess what? I went through it. I went through the pressure and the temptations.

I get emotional after all these years because a lot of my friends are coming back around and now they’re helping me, they’re supporting me. The guys with influence are making my job a little easier. In 2010, we were able to detach 10 youths from the gang. And so it’s like, yeah we work with 60-something youth, but people may say, 10 youth? Even if I have one youth leave the gang, that’s something.

A lot of people get stuck in gang life. A lot of my friends are locked up and shot up. But I knew I was created for something better—to help people, not hurt people.