Nonprofit CEO talks about path that led him from street gangs to a more peaceful life
HARTFORD — At the age 11, Iran Nazario remembers Hartford gang members beating him as a way to test his fitness for the group. He thought nothing of it at the time, as Nazario said his life was already surrounded by violence.
“As the years went by, I didn’t know the difference between loving someone tenderly and loving someone and punishing them by hurting them,” Nazario, 53, said.
Nazario says that from his introduction to the Hartford gang scene at age 11, all the way until he landed in prison at age 27 after a conviction on felony charges related to his gang activity, the violence of Hartford in the 1980s and 1990s consumed him. In one year, he says he lost more than a dozen friends to violence. He had spent nine years of his life in jail.
Nazario’s lifestyle had taken a toll, but it was also his closest form of community. Nazario said gangs and posses on the streets of Hartford were family no different than his own and served as a way to find community and brotherhood in a city that offered few other outlets.
“It does something to you at a very deep level,” Nazario said. “And because I was abused as a kid, the trauma — I could be retraumatized by seeing people in body bags.”
Nazario’s new book that chronicles his journey, “Rage to Peace,” was published this month by Green Living Press. In it, he tells the story of his life, from violent gangs to working with young people to help them build peaceful communities in Hartford.
The book took him seven years to write because of the “uncertainty” of sharing personal childhood trauma and the difficulty of becoming “emotionally ready.”
“The purpose of the book is to engage individuals that may be dealing with a challenge or hardship, maybe feel like they have no way out of their current circumstance or that their pain is never going to end,” Nazario said. “Maybe my story will motivate them to start looking internally a little bit more and asking for the help that they need. So you don’t have to suffer all by yourself.”
While the gang wars Nazario endured in the 1990s in Hartford have slowed, violence in the city has surged over the last few years. In 2022, there were 39 homicides in Hartford, the highest number since 2003. As of August, there have already been 28 homicides this year. That doesn’t count dozens of other non-fatal shootings.
Nazario says he grew up amid violence, which led to his own violent behavior as a gang member. Today, he said he continues to see the systems that lead to violent behavior, such as generational poverty, hunger and a lack of community investment.
“What I think we’re seeing now is a return back to the crews and posses that existed before the gangs,” said Nazario, who wears a peace sign ring and has the word “peace” tattooed on his forearm.
Nazario is no longer finding community in a gang. As president and
Iran Nazario is a former member of Los Solidos in Hartford. Now, he is a peace advocate.
CEO of the Peace Center of Connecticut, he belongs to a different sort of group.
“I’ve been able to form a very strong unit, bond and coalition of people that focus on peace and helping communities,” Nazario said. “So I think that’s a great source of pride.”
April Goff Brown, former youth services director for the city of Hartford, has worked with Nazario for 20 years, helping atrisk young people turn away from violence and make better choices.
“The Iran that I know — he is definitely a very compassionate, very caring person,” Brown said. “And that was always there. And that definitely wasn’t allowed to come forward.”
A cycle of violence
Nazario says violence dominated his life since he was a child, from his home life to the streets in his neighborhood. He eventually ended up in foster care.
“I started to believe that violence was an option that you always go to when you want somebody to respect you, or you want to have power with someone, or you were angry or frustrated
or sad,” Nazario said.
He said his involvement in gangs started small. Around the age of 11 he joined the “GQ Crew.” Being asked to join the crew felt like being chosen and seen for the first time. He described “euphoria, excitement and unity.”
Homeless from age 13 to 18, he says he slept in the streets, in cars and under bridges, landing in prison for the first time at 17 after an incident where Nazario says stabbed someone in 1987.
But the gangs didn’t disappear in prison. In fact, they were more alive than ever. It was in prison where Nazario joined his first full-fledged gang, Los Solidos, a group that would spend years clashing with the rival Latin Kings during the 1990s.
“Before you know it you had homicides — every hour somebody was getting killed,” Nazario said. “I think that’s when I joined. And it took a hold on the city for a long time. Unfortunately, we lost a lot of people.”
Choosing peace
After
years on
the streets, Nazario realized his ardor for gang life had faded when his brother was fatally shot in Hartford in 2008.
“Every part of my soul wanted revenge,” Nazario said.
Although he said he was still a part of the gang at this time, the way his fellow members saw him had shifted. That’s because instead of fighting, he had taken on a role of helping the children of gang members escape the cycle.
“My brother died knowing me as a peace builder,” Nazario said. “And in order to honor my brother, I made this choice to stay on the positive side of things, to be here for my kids, to be here for my community and to keep my promises that I made to so many people who believed in me.”
At the Compass Youth Collaborative, Nazario worked as one of the first “peace builders.” The program lives on in Hartford today, helping young people choose peaceful alternatives.
Brown, who read Nazario’s book and has followed his story as a friend, believes there are other success stories out there waiting to happen — so long as the larger community does not give up on people like him.
“You can’t give up on them,” Brown said. “You’ve got to keep on trying because some won’t make it. I’m sure some won’t make it, but a lot of them will. They need us. They really need us.”
Solutions for Hartford
After living through the worst of the gang wars in Hartford, Nazario said he has perspective on violence and specifically in Hartford because after he left the gangs, he stayed committed to the communities impacted by them.
He lives in Wethersfield now with his wife and children, where he works on social justice initiatives and runs the Peace Center based in Hartford.
Nazario said violence in Hartford is different now than when he was a kid because of the prevalence of guns. When he was starting out, he said he usually fought with fists, knives and bats.
“What’s causing the uptick in violence and the uptick in traumatic injuries is not only the accessibility of guns, but the willingness and acceptance of young people to use guns within their own groups; it’s like you’re supposed to use a gun,” Nazario said.
He mentioned three key priorities for reducing violence in Hartford today: addressing disinvestment in certain neighborhoods, teaching social and emotional learning and celebrating people who successfully leave violent communities.
“We need to have young people and others see that there is a possibility, there’s another option,” Nazario said.
In publishing “Rage to Peace,” Nazario is hoping to tell people caught in a cycle of violence that they already have the tools to get out.
“My hopes are that as people read the book, they’re saying to themselves, ‘Wait a second. I have to look at my life differently,’ ” Nazario said. “You can identify the bright spots and start there.”