Armando ‘Chunky’ Ibarra’s true crime memoir.
Armando “Chunky” Ibarra’s raw memoir Loyalty and Betrayal plays out like shadow puppets cast over the reeling history of the United States drug war. He is as much of a victim as his rivals caught in the gunplay on the street. Ibarra was released from Pelican Bay state prison in the early ’90s, promising loyalty to La Eme (the Mexican Mafia) shot caller Mike Lerma, which led to a cozy position over dozens of soldiers willing to do anything for a chance to become La Eme members.
Ibarra himself owed Mike something big. The big favor was to set up a hit on Chapo de Redlands. A disgraced member. Less than two weeks after his release Ibarra was traveling back and forth on the San Bernadino 215 freeway, holding “the keys” and supplying a drug operation that ran through Verdugo, Mount Vernon and 14th street.
Things didn’t go as planned.
Loyalty and Betrayal provides a rare coherent path through gang-life’s chaotic maze of broken trust, entanglements with the Criminal Justice System, and living with violence. The book is a sequel to Loyalty and expands on its predecessor by portraying a darker cross section of the Mexican Mafia – La Eme. A look at the ruthless greed, double dealing and trouble making members who wield influence over the mobsters in the Bay make this book even more gripping.
Greed and pride are powerful toxins in this book, more addictive than the drugs peddled like popcorn at a carnival.
In 1997, on the run with a Tec 9 machine pistol, $12,000 in cash and a pound of meth, Ibarra was caught on a parole violation and re-incarcerated. His trip back to Pelican Bay started in the West Valley Detention Center, slammed in a red suit, which identified him as a “high powered” inmate. He sent word and dope to senores via trustees, cracks in walls and vents connecting cells. By the time he reached the Bay he learned that the Eme had already decided to “wash him up.”
His loyalty had been betrayed and they were going to kill him. It was all politics. Another member had embezzled money and used Ibarra as a scapegoat.
As the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) said, “The migration of gang and posse members to small U.S. cities and rural areas resulted in increases in drug-related homicides, armed robberies and assaults.” Ibarra’s crew was a part of the upsurge in violence in California’s neighborhoods as well as the movement of cocaine, marijuana and heroin. Members were thrown away like hefty bags on the Waste Management morning route. It was Ibarra’s turn now.
Ibarra made it his personal mission to discredit the La Eme organization in his life and his books.
He’s dodged and out-fought every “hitter” sent at him in prison and on the street. One, a hulking Mexican covered in tattoos called Grizzly Bear, attacked Ibarra with a tomahawk but missed, giving Ibarra the opening he needed to knock some of the Bear’s teeth loose. “Grizzly Bear? He was more of a Teddy Bear,” Ibarra mocks.
The book walks a fine line between self-incrimination and gritty details. Ibarra knows how to show without “telling.” The story ripples with gunfire and credibility. It inspires deeper thought, since the profitability of drugs is what drives gang motivations. And La Eme is very much a capitalistic organization.
This could only happen in the United States, Mexico and South America. Other countries consider drug addiction a medical problem.
Physicians in Britain can simply prescribe whatever they feel is necessary. European countries host clinics for methadone and sterile heroin injection. But arguments for leniency in U.S. drug policy are still difficult to win. It took until 1995 for Proposition 200 in Arizona and 215 in California to allow medical patients to use marijuana without limit.
In the meantime, Dr. John Marks of the Chapel Street Clinic summarized what has fueled the violent U.S. street market. “Free markets promote use: prohibitions pedal use.”
The only medicine in Ibarra’s drug-war memoir is heavier doses of gunplay.
Ibarra opens with: “This book is dedicated to Mindy Flores. I will avenge your death until the day of my own.” He’s serious. Mindy was his girlfriend’s little sister. She was killed in a shootout in broad daylight in a residential area. The masked gunmen were soldiers trying to kill Ibarra. Ibarra was wounded and several children in the house narrowly escaped death. He may be fighting with words but clearly the last chapter in this real life drama is unwritten.
_____
Loyalty And Betrayal by Armando “Chunky” Ibarra. ISBN-13: 978-1493733897. Available on Amazon, and from The Cell Block, PO BOX 212, Folsom, CA 95763. facebook.com/thecellblock.net