RISE OF THE BANDIDOS
The Bandidos motorcycle gang has a saying: “Cut one, we all bleed.”
It’s not clear who started the cutting, but there was plenty of bloodshed last weekend when the Bandidos brutally clashed with members of several other bike gangs at a restaurant in Waco, Texas. A wild shootout in broad daylight left nine bikers dead and 18 wounded.
It was the latest and perhaps goriest chapter in a long history of violence involving motorcycle gangs in America. The Bandidos, like their more popularly known archrivals the Hells Angels, are frequent characters in that blood-soaked book. The group is generally considered the world’s second-largest biker gang, behind the Angels, with as many as 2,500 members in13 countries, according to the Department of Justice.
The Bandidos’ story charts the rise of biker gangs from counterculture clubs to fearsome organized crime organizations.
American bike gangs took root after the Second World War, when thousands of young, disaffected, often war-traumatized men returned to a country they didn’t recognize.
“Returning veterans used their severance pay to buy motorcycles and party in taverns,” writes James Quinn, a professor at the University of North Texas who has studied motorcycle gangs.
There were signs of trouble even before there were any official bike gangs. On the Fourth of July weekend in 1947, about 4,000 motorcyclists flooded the small town of Hollister, Calif., causing havoc. The Hells Angels were founded a year later. Hunter S. Thompson’s 1966 book about the Angels came just as they were expanding across the country.
“They call themselves Hells Angels,” began a 1965 magazine article quoted in Thompson’s book. “They ride, rape and raid like marauding cavalry — and they boast that no police force can break up their criminal motorcycle fraternity.”
“We’re the one per centers, man — the ones who don’t fit and don’t care,” an Angel told Thompson. “So don’t talk to me about your doctor bills and your traffic warrants — I mean, you get your woman and your bike and your banjo and I mean you’re on your way. We’ve punched our way out of a hundred rumbles, stayed alive with our boots and our fists. We’re royalty among motorcycle outlaws, baby.”
The Hells Angels might have been first, but they were far from the only ones. Scores more motorcycle gangs sprung up across America. Many, if not all of them, sought to tap into the American outlaw archetype, as reflected in their rebellious names: the Outlaws, the Pagans, the Warlocks, the Mongols and the Bandidos.
The Bandidos began almost 20 years after the Hells Angels, but the two gangs soon became bitter rivals. According to the motorcycle club’s legend, founder Donald Chambers was bored with other bike clubs.
As both the Hells Angels and the Bandidos expanded, they grew from freewheeling counterculture clubs into ruthless organized crime syndicates.
“By the late-1970s, local police and federal investigations began to expose the involvement of many1% (motorcycle clubs) in drug trafficking, theft, extortion and prostitution rings,” Quinn writes. Chambers was caught in 1972, when he and two other Bandidos were arrested for killing two drug dealers in El Paso. Chambers was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences.
The arrest and incarceration of bike gang leaders in the ’70s led to what Quinn calls a “retrenchment,” during which a second generation of leaders dialled back the violence and focused on turning bigger profits through better-operating drug and other criminal rackets.
But the past three decades have been shot through with sporadic bike gang battles, often overseas. By the-1980s, both the Bandidos and the Hells Angels had become international organizations.
The two bike gangs faced off in Australia, Scandinavia and Canada, with “the Quebec Biker war” reportedly taking 150 lives.
Steve Cook, a Kansas City cop who says he’s worked undercover in gangs affiliated with the Bandidos, says the image they portray as fun-loving bikers is a charade.
“These guys are organized crime, but they are also domestic terrorists. These guys are heavily involved in methamphetamine, cocaine, marijuana, motorcycle theft. Those are all primary businesses for them. The thing is, these guys want to put on this appearance, ‘Oh we’re just motorcycle enthusiasts and we just like to ride bikes.’ The evidence is quite to the contrary.”