Can't Stop Won't Stop

by Jeff Chang

  Melendez, the vice-president, was the skinny, whip-smart nineteen-year-old who had founded the gang. He was a teenage diplomat turned young revolutionary, a gifted organizer and orator. “Yellow Benjy,” as he was called, was known to give impromptu speeches to his followers, often laced with blood-and fire Old Testament scripture. They half-mockingly called him “The Preacher.” He could fight as well as anyone, but his real love was music. As children, he and his brothers had won a talent contest singing Beatles songs for Tito Puente. Now he led the Ghetto Brothers’ Latin-rock band and was at the center of any clubhouse party. When they broke out the guitars, he especially favored a Beatles tune called “This Boy,” a song whose sweet, close harmonies masked menace and foreboding. It began: “That boy took my love away. He’ll regret it someday . . .”

  If other gangs spoke of themselves as “families,” the Ghetto Brothers actually began as one. Benjy, Ulpiano, Victor, and Robert Melendez were brothers whose family was among thousands of Moses’s lower Manhattan refugees. In 1961, Moses began an “urban renewal” project to clear the slums of Greenwich Village, Little Italy, Soho, and Chinatown to make room for office and high-rise apartment buildings and the eight-lane Lower Manhattan Expressway. Although a citizen’s campaign to stop the Expressway succeeded by the end of 1962, the Melendezes joined Moses’s exodus into the Bronx.

  Settling near the Cross-Bronx Expressway, Benjy followed two of his friends, Huey and Raymond, into a small Tremont gang on Marmion Avenue called the Cofon Cats. When Benjy tired of hanging out with the Cats and his family moved south of Crotona Park, he formed a new clique with his brothers and friends, including Huey, Raymond and Karate Charlie. Benjy came up with a number of names—including the Savage Skulls, the Seven Immortals and the Savage Nomads—and they settled on the Ghetto Brothers.

  Suarez’s grandmother kicked him out of the house when he was eighteen, so he enrolled in the Marines and ran with the gang before shipping out for boot-camp. On Christmas break in 1970, he went AWOL and came back to the gang. So he went by many names: Charles Kariem Lei, Charles Rivera, Charles Magdaleno. He told reporters his first name was Charlie and his surname was Melendez.

  When Charlie returned, Benjy conspired to make him president. Suarez brought discipline and battle-readiness to the gang. He says, “I tried to teach them hand-to-hand combat. I tried to teach them how to throw a Molotov cocktail.”

  The two became a formidable core. Suarez says, “Benjy was my Yin and I was the Yang. Good cop, bad cop. I was the one that grabbed them by the throat and administered punishment. Benjy was the one that intervened.”

  Benjy had become a supporter of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party, and was pulling the group toward politics. “The guys were wearing black berets and red stars,” says Suarez. “Everybody had grown their hair real long. They looked more militant.”

  In some ways, the Ghetto Brothers had begun to resemble a lumpenteen version of the Young Lords Party. They criticized the quality of health care at the Lincoln Hospital, a place they called the “Butcher Shop,” questioned why youths had no jobs or recreation available to them, and decried heavy-handed policing. They forced slumlords to allow them in to clean the tenements, and set up a free-breakfast program and free-clothing drive. They became security for prominent Puerto Rican nationalists. They referred to themselves as “the people’s army.” By the summer of 1971, Melendez had come up with another name that described their new activities: The South Bronx Defensive Unit. He told Charlie, “Let’s stop this gang stuff and form an organization for peace.”

  A charismatic twenty-five-year old, half-African-American, half–Puerto Rican exjunkie named Cornell Benjamin had come into the fold. Known as “Black Benjie,” he became the third staff leader of the Ghetto Brothers. Most gangs had “warlords,” whose chief duties involved stockpiling the arsenal, training the members in fighting skills and military techniques, and negotiating times and places for rumbles. But at Melendez’s suggestion, Black Benjie became Peace Counselor.

  If there was a gang that could bring peace to the Bronx, perhaps it would be the Ghetto Brothers.

  The Teachers

  After three years of gang proliferation, Dwyer Junior High had become the central flashpoint for the Bronx gangs. Located at Stebbins Avenue near 165th, the school was at the center of a number of turfs, and its halls were crowded with rival gangbangers. In March, a boy at Dwyer harassed a Savage Nomad sister. She called on Suarez and Savage Nomad president Ben Buxton to back her up. It became an event. Hundreds gathered to see the perpetrator beat down, then they followed as the gangs marched triumphantly through the schoolyard.

  From a safe distance teacher Manny Dominguez watched, awestruck. He was convinced that the gang leaders were the most promising young people in the area. They weren’t sheep like the rest of the students; they were rebels with sharpened, anti-authoritarian reflexes, rappers possessed of mother-wit, renegades to whom the future should belong. With school principal Morton Weinberger’s consent, Dominguez began meeting with the gangs.

  Dominguez’s wife, Rita Fecher, had separately gone down to the Ghetto Brothers clubhouse to demand that they leave her students alone. As they talked, Fecher became interested in their lives. Realizing no one was going to tell their stories, she picked up a Super 8 camera and began filming interviews with the teen leaders, which would be gathered years later for Fecher’s and Henry Chalfant’s classic Bronx gang documentary, Flyin’ Cut Sleeves.

  In these frames, Fecher captured the vitality and tragedy of the emerging gangs. Here was Melendez and the Ghetto Brothers band on a tar-beach rooftop, wailing out Grand Funk Railroad’s epic of paranoia and disease, “I’m Your Captain”: “Everybody listen to me and return me my ship, I’m your captain I’m your captain though I’m feeling mighty sick”; a teenaged Blackie Mercado under a straw hat, a relaxed, dimpled grin on his face, talking about uniting Blacks and Puerto Ricans for the purpose of attacking a rival gang—”They wanted to make it a racial problem, so we made it an un-racial problem”; Ben Buxton in the street proudly bragging about the murders he had committed, then later, behind closed doors, thoughtfully analyzing legal aspects of his upcoming gun-charge sentencing (his verdict: he’d be gone for a long time); and most tellingly, a group of angry Puerto Rican girls confronting Buxton and Mercado. “How would you like it,” one of them asked, “if someone came along and took your kid’s life, your wife’s life, or maybe even your life?”

  Together, Dominguez and Fecher took the Ghetto Brothers, the Savage Skulls, and the Savage Nomads under their wing. At their West Village flat, they held what Fecher described as “salons,” where they discussed youth crises, Puerto Rican independence, the criminal justice system, global issues. The two teachers became advocates for the gang members, particularly Melendez and Suarez from the Ghetto Brothers, in whom they found an uncommon wisdom and a desire to move beyond the streets.

  Melendez, in particular, was ready for a change. “You can’t walk the streets peacefully these days,” he said. “You could never tell what’s gonna happen around the corner—where those drug addicts could jump you or another club could stop you, say ‘Give me your money,’ and right there they kill you.”8

  They secured the Ghetto Brothers a storefront clubhouse on 163rd and Steb-bins, fully funded by the city’s Youth Services Agency. Through contacts at New York University, they provided the gang with musical instruments. The media, attracted by the teachers, came to the Bronx to report on the gangs.

  The photogenic, articulate Ghetto Brothers were ready. Photographers captured them relaxing at a Friday block party, looking more like playground kids than fearsome predators. Black Benjie, Yellow Benjy, and Charlie appeared on network talk shows—the hard-scarred, vulnerable faces of a forgotten revolutionary generation. Documentary producers flocked to the Ghetto Brothers’ store-front to capture their transformation into “an organization.” Through it all, the GBs delivered angry soundbites and played funky music.

  The Br
onx youths’ invisibility was over. Indeed, the Ghetto Brothers cut a romantic profile of embattled, misunderstood youths struggling to do right. When that image reflected back to the forgotten youths of the Bronx, peace seemed to be an actual, viable alternative.

  War in the Bronx

  In 1971, the Bronx gangs were quickly burning down two tracks—one toward peace, the other toward more blood.

  As the days grew hotter, the violence in the South Bronx escalated. Even as the Ghetto Brothers moved publicly toward the revolution, they became more embroiled in growing conflicts. In May, three Ghetto Brothers were shot in the clubhouse, leaving one paralyzed. Victor Melendez, Benjy’s brother, the musical heart of the Ghetto Brothers band, and then-president of the Savage Nomads, was stabbed. The Ghetto Brothers and the Savage Nomads figured that the Mongols were behind the hits. For weeks, Suarez and Buxton handed out beatings to any with the bad luck to wander near them. Beefs opened up with the Javelins, the Dirty Dozens, and the Turbans.

  In November, gang wars seemed to hit a new level across the resegregated borough. “It was catastrophe after catastrophe. If it wasn’t Black against Hispanic, it was Black against white,” says Suarez. “Just hate on hate on hate on hate.” The Black Spades and a white confederation of the Golden Guineas and the War Pigs called Ministers Bronx went to war at Stevenson High. The Spades and the Savage Skulls, the largest Black and the largest Puerto Rican gangs in the Bronx, erupted into a rumble at a South Bronx movie theater. There were reports that heavy artillery was pouring into the streets—handguns, machine guns, even grenades and bombs.9

  Social workers urgently pressed for a peace treaty. Working with the gangs of East Tremont, a peace organizer for the Youth Services Agency, Eduardo Vincenty, secured truce commitments from dozens of gangs, including the Javelins, the Peacemakers, the Reapers, the Young Sinners and the Black Spades.10

  Separately, Suarez and Melendez had been meeting with gang leadership. “I was getting tired of being called in the middle of the night and loading a pistol or bringing down the samurai sword and running down the street to take somebody’s head off and don’t know if I’m ever gonna see that street again,” says Suarez. They hosted informal Friday gatherings at one of their apartments, sometimes extending invitations to leaders of gangs they were warring with. There would be women, music, spliffs, Suarez says. Then they would turn off the music and talk.

  As the wars peaked in November, they convened an emergency summit meeting at Bethesda Fountain in Central Park with leaders from the Skulls, the Nomads, the Roman Kings, the Bachelors, and the Black Spades. New York Post columnist Jose Torres praised the gang’s efforts, writing, “The ‘Ghetto Brothers’ gang is moving in the right direction. They don’t believe in bloody confrontations, they don’t think that violence is a substitute for persuasion.”11 But nothing concrete came of either Vincenty’s treaty commitments or the Central Park summit. The streets remained tense.

  And then, on December 2, word reached the Ghetto Brothers clubhouse that three gangs—the Mongols, the Seven Immortals, and the Black Spades—were in their neighborhood jumping local youths. Melendez sent Cornell Benjamin to mediate. With several Ghetto Brothers tailing him, Black Benjie headed up to Horseshoe Park on 165th and Rogers where the three gangs were massing.

  Earlier that day, the Immortals and the Spades had beat down some Roman Kings at the handball courts at John Dwyer Junior High School, sending one to the hospital. The rumor was that the Mongols, the Seven Immortals, and the Spades were now returning down Southern Boulevard for a rumble with the Savage Skulls. As Black Benjie descended the Park’s long staircase, the park was filling up with dozens of bangers, wire-taut and waiting for something to happen.

  “Listen brothers,” Black Benjie said as he walked into the park, holding up his hands to show he had no weapons, “we’re here to talk peace.” The Spades, the Mongols and the Seven Immortals surrounded Benjie and the Ghetto Brothers. “Peace, shit,” said one of the Immortals, taking out a pipe. Another pulled out a machete. In desperation, a Ghetto Brother whipped out his garrison belt and began swinging it. This was not going to be a day for peace.

  “Tip, brothers, tip!” Black Benjie said, and most of the Ghetto Brothers scattered. Then the pipe came crushing down on Black Benjie’s head, and he fell to the ground. The gangbangers closed the cipher around him, stomping, cutting and beating him to death.

  Hours later, with Black Benjie’s body lying in Lincoln Hospital, police patrols quietly circled Dwyer Junior High and reporters descended on the Ghetto Brothers’ clubhouse. “What are you going to do?” they asked the gang members, as if they were sniffing blood. “Will you retaliate?”

  The Daily News’s headline would read, PEACEMAKER KILLED IN MELEE. BRONX TEEN WAR. Dwyer Junior High principal Weinberger told the reporters, “This was bound to come.”

  Crisis

  Black Benjie’s murder threatened to destabilize the borough, and the future lay in the Ghetto Brothers’ hands. They could lead the Bronx into a bloodier war than had ever been imagined, or toward a peace the borough had never seen.

  Suarez could not hide his dismay at Black Benjie’s weakness. “He just couldn’t do what I did, walk into the fire and not get burned,” Suarez says. “He walked into the fire and was consumed immediately.” Suarez called all the division leaders, some as far away as Queens and New Jersey. “We were going to find the presidents and we were going to destroy everybody,” he says.

  As the word spread across the borough the afternoon of December 2, many gangs came to the Ghetto Brothers clubhouse, hoping to avoid the GB’s wrath. The Turbans came—Vietnam veterans in their throwback black-satin jackets, wearing their floppy berets topped by yellow yarn pom-pom ball, reminiscent of the early 1960s bopping gangs—to bury their beef and pledge their support. Bam Bam, the president of the Spades, personally came to the clubhouse to declare that the Spades had not been involved in the murder and would also join them in a war.

  But Melendez was firm that the Ghetto Brothers needed to maintain peace. He recalls, “There were two or three Ghetto Brothers who actually told me, ‘Regardless of what you say, if you don’t declare war we’re going to go out there.’ I said, ‘Listen brothers, you’re not going to go. I’m telling you right now we’re not going to lose any more of you guys. When Black Benjie died, he went for peace and if you go out there to declare war, it will make his mission in vain.’ ”

  Melendez left for the hospital. Suarez prepared for war. In the clubhouse, the Ghetto Brothers stacked guns, knives, machetes, bow-and-arrows, and Molotovs. Then they went out looking for the Seven Immortals and the Mongols. “I was prepared to hurt the one who had hurt one of ours,” Suarez says.

  By dusk, the Bronx police had mobilized their special operations teams, and were at a state of high alert. They had arrested a teen Black Spade in connection with Black Benjie’s murder. But word on the street had come back to the Ghetto Brothers that the killer was a guy named Julio, a leader of the Seven Immortals. They knew him well. He had once been a Ghetto Brother.

  Suarez and the gang returned to the clubhouse empty-handed. But Melendez was there and the spot was crowded with GBs and Roman Kings. Julio and four others, all members of the Seven Immortals and Mongols, had their legs tied and their arms bound behind their backs.

  Melendez watched as Suarez took a .45 and pressed the gun to Julio’s head, and then put into Julio’s mouth. “I’m gonna blow your brains out,” Suarez said. Melendez stepped up and put his finger between the hammer and the bullet.

  Suarez and Melendez argued. “You want to save this stupid son of a bitch who killed one of us?”

  “We’re all ‘one of us.’ ”

  Finally Suarez wheeled around and kicked Julio. The rest of the clubhouse descended on the Immortals and Mongols and beat them bloody. Then Suarez ended it, pulled the accused up and pushed them out into the winter night.

  Later that evening, Suarez and Melendez went to Black Benjie’s apartment to comfor
t Gwendolyn Benjamin, his mother. “Everyone loved Benjie. He was the man,” Suarez told her. “If something’s not done all hell is gonna break loose.”

  Mrs. Benjamin was clear: “No revenge. Benjie lived for peace.”12

  Suarez recalls, “Benjy Melendez and myself sat up that night. He was saying that war was totally crazy. ‘They’re still our brothers and sisters. We got to show them by example.’ And I said, ‘I don’t think I can do that, man.’ He said, ‘Charlie, the only way you can beat them is by showing them.’ We had to beat them by example and not retaliate and call a peace treaty. All the gangs.”

  The next morning, reporters gathered at the Ghetto Brothers clubhouse. Melendez was the designated spokesperson. “All the gangs are waiting for one word—’Fire’—but I’m not going to say it because that won’t bring Benjie back,” he said. “I notice you reporters look disappointed because you didn’t want to hear that, right? You wanted to hear about these South Bronx savages. But I’m not going to give you the pleasure.”

  Suarez recalls that many Ghetto Brothers were angry. “They said we were pussies,” he says. But after Black Benjie was buried in an emotional ceremony, the Ghetto Brothers issued a call for a truce meeting to be held on the evening of December 8 at the Bronx Boys Club, a sanctuary in the heart of the Fort Apache battleground.

  Peace Brother Peace

  And so they came, the Black and brown gangs of the Bronx. The smaller families—the Liberated Panthers, the King Cobras, the Majestic Warlocks, the Ghetto Warriors, the Flying Dutchmen. The hungry ones—the Young Sinners, the Young Cobras, the Young Saints, the Young Saigons, the Roman Kings. The established ones—the Turbans, the Brothers and Sisters, the Latin Aces, the Peacemakers, the Dirty Dozens, the Mongols. And the major families—the Javelins, the Bachelors, the Savage Nomads, the Savage Skulls, the Black Spades, and the Seven Immortals.13