ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the original Latino homicide study, go back to the past and update to the present, by focusing on the Mexican American experience and homicide in San Antonio in the 1950 to 2010 period. The recent San Antonio story now traces homicide motivations. Homicide data are admittedly imperfect measures of youth crime, gang activities, drug offenses or other circumstances. Certainly, the case of San Antonio provides knowledge that round out the understanding of national patterns because other southwestern cities follow similar paths: the city has Latinos on the foreign to native-born continuum, and it is one of the largest cities in the nation. Throughout the 1990s, national attention focused on the crack cocaine epidemic or youth homicides but those incidents were not endemic in San Antonio. The chapter finds that San Antonio communities with significantly more residents employed in professional occupations thwarted gang homicides. It looks at local history and provides an opportunity for some personal reflection.
