The expression "nunka é tardi di mas..." ( never it's too late...) proved wise once again: Mario Rodrigues, an ex-gang member and now a peace activist in the community, realized that it's never too late to turn the wheel and dedicate his positive energy towards the struggle to reduce violence among Cape Verdean youth gangs.
Please, listen to his sincere and appealing words, and see how he is helping regretful gang members doing the right thing:

Mario Rodrigues:
"After hearing me speak to a youth group, I was encouraged to write a response about the CV violence by [a community based organization]. I have been part of the violence here in Dorchester since 1991 in my early teens. I have been around gangs since I came to this country as a child in 1981. I would just like to give a quick history and what we are doing at the present time.
Before we started killing each other, we were fighting against the African Americans and Latino’s gangs that surrounded us. We we’re fighting to protect ourselves, because we we’re considered cowards so no one respected us at all! Something as simple as going to school without an altercation became impossible. Crack entered the inner city in the early 80’s. Now the combination of fighting and easy money fueled the creation of the Cape Verdean Posse (C.V.P). Those were the people I looked up to as a child and no one could have convinced me not to follow in their footsteps.

In my early teens myself along with several other youths well known today because of the media created another gang in Uphams Corner. We did loose friends but since they were not Cape Verdeans our community didn’t care about the problem until one CV youth murdered another, both were friends of mines. Before the death we were unified because of our C.V pride. After the death some of us started choosing sides between the murderer and the victim. I remained neutral, but was still tangled in our original fights.

Now several bullet holes and dead friends later we are starting to reconnect ourselves, using history and status. We have been doing this as a group since the death of Claudio Cardosa in 2004, a good kid taken away from us too soon. For many years I took my life for granted and was willing to die for a street, now I’m willing to die for a greater cause. I can only pray for forgiveness and hope that we have the support from the Cape Verdean Community as we travel this new path in life. "

Mario –aka- Mizz
Veda de nos Kriolu
P.S Pray & have hope in us.

Cape Verdean community and friends, let's come together and talk about the violence among our youth in a positive and constructive way, find ways to reduce it and support Mario and other like him on their struggle to help gang members who want to come out and live the life of good citizens among us.

Related article: Violence in the Cape Verdean Community: how to Reduce it ?
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I have nothing but love and support for you my Cape Verdean brother. Times are
rough in our community but togethe we can
show the beautiful in our people and how
precious it is. It's crazy how the crime rate is almost nothing Cape Verde and here in the states the bad apples are shinning.

Nylton Andrade, Peace, bulimedia.com

"Nylton, I agree with you. Cape Verdeans in general are peaceful and loving people but few folks has put a dirty spot in our name here that we need to clean with positive community things.

However, the CV community will only start taking serious steps to help its youth and help their kids that are involved in violence when they admit they have a huge problem among themselves and that the vital key to solve them is PARTECIPATION; PARTECIPATION; PARTECIPATION.

Yes, we need to sit down around a table as community and talk about approaches we can take to reduce crime and gang violence in our neighborhood. And unfortunately, many of parents among us are too lazy to stop watching crap on TV, soccer, or stop drinking in bars and go to meetings and community events that deal with issues to help stop and prevent their kids from getting involved in violence. Cape Verdeans parents in general don't partecipate on their kids school activities, meetings or any other thing that does not involve partying or drinking.
It's a shame when they pay tickets to travel from Boston to Florida, or drive down to Pawtucket or Cape Cod to attend parties and festivals and are lazy enough to walk next door to places like CVC UNIDO, MAPS, Bowdoin Street Health Center, DSNI, Catholic Charities, Brockton Neighborhood Iniatiative and other communities organizations to attend community meetings or other events that has to do with the well being of their kids or their community.

What a F****** are we, Cape Verdeans parents, thinking?

STOP sleeping and BE REAL: we have HORRENDOUS PROBLEMS in our community: PARENTS APATHY, LACK OF FATHER FIGURE and LACK OF PARTICIPATION; these are the three real bad apples that need to be eradicated from among us.

And THEN we have the guts to ask WHY THE BOSTON POLICE HAS NOT SOLVED AT LEAST ONE OF MORE THAN 54 GANG RELATED MURDERS IN THE CAPE VERDEANS COMMUNITY, WHEN THE POLICE WAS ABLE TO SOLVE TO THE LAST DETAIL MOLLY BISHOP'S MURDER, A BLOND BLUE EYES SUBURBAN GIRL ADBUCTION - A CASE WHERE THE INVESTIGATORS INITIALLY HAD NO EVIDENCE TO TRACE THE MURDERER.

Do you want to know why?

The Boston Police Department doesn't care and are not interested in solving those murder cases at all BECAUSE YOU, CAPE VERDEANS PARENTS AND PEOPLE, DON'T CARE as well.
At least they will have always job to do and get paid to show up and make a murder report; but YOU, CAPE VERDEAN PARENTS, will keep living with an increasing pain, sorrow, lost of your loved ones, insecurity and fear among you that will ended up breaking apart your community here in Dorchester and drive you to dispair and extintion from this neighborhood- fact that would let many people in Boston happy!!!

Now YOU tell me, is it worthy paying that price when all we need to do is be there for our kids instead of being in bars or clubs all the time, be with our family instead of being somewhere else talking about soccer, be at community meetings and events instead of being parting and drinking somewhere else 24/7? IS IT WORTHY?"

This is a response from Linda Barros, a community health worker, to the article publish this Monday ( July 4, 2005) in Boston Globe by Ms Smalley about The recent violence in the Cape Verdean community.

“Good afternoon Ms Smalley,

I work in the heart of the Capeverdean Community, especially around neighborhood safety. Tina Chery gave me your information.

What I can tell you is that we have been working so hard, year round, trying to keep the peace as much as we can. We cannot do it alone. On the other hand, it saddens me that only crime gets into people's radar. There's so much good coming out of the Capeverdean community and nobody wants to hear about it. 99% of us do good and well. I work with so many great youth, making a difference academically and socially, but their stories don't get to be heard, unfortunately. Very few agencies do real effective work with the youth, but many decision makers allocate funding to the wrong places, who disclose blank data. Currently, the work that I do is mostly through collaboration and support of those who believe in making a difference, from the goodness of their heart.

1. To my personal opinion, the surge of violence we've been witnessing around this neighborhood, and I cannot say that is solely in the Capeverdean community, especially in the past week, is partly because the C-11 police department have been over stretched in safety coverage demand. They just had eight more officers join their forces, and it's still not enough. We need adequate service year around, not only when people start dying.
2. Decision makers have to think more strategically before deciding where to allocate their strength and funding.
3. Presently we have the children from last year who have become teenagers, with not much to do, especially in this summer. When you are not occupied you'll have the tendency to hang around the corners of the streets.
4. There is an easy access to firearms, ammunition and drugs on the street. I still do not understand this dynamic. Authorities have identified the hot spots, but not enough arrests have been made. And that is not for lack of information from individuals.
5. We have now younger children (under 13) following the older friends foot steps.
6. The Boston Public Schools is in need of an urgent reform. Their system is shameful. They have great employees who are more than willing to dig into the real problems and help, however there are always the higher ups who prevent them to work at their full capacity. The BPS is referring too many of our children for IEP (special needs program), when they may not need this service. It justifies paying some people extra money instead of taking care of the problem. This is the only country that I've lived in and know of, that allows 16 year olds to sign themselves off school without parental consent. There are too many drop outs and not enough effort to use other resources to get these kids back to school or to work with truancy issues. The BPS is graduating many young people just because of their age, and not because of their faculty.
7. There's still parental/guardian/family denial around their children's behavior. Some are because of shame, some are because of fear, and some are because of lack of awareness.
8. We have the Operations Home Front that has been doing a fabulous job in our community. We have Capeverdean police officers, pastor and social workers reaching out to Capeverdean families and so far we've had mostly positive response.

How can we be effective if social programs such as affordable housing, food stamps, access to good schools are disappearing every year. Why are we allocating billions of dollars to fight a war that should not be ours instead of investing on our youth? I've lived in countries where attending high school is not an option, and where college education is quasi free. These are some things we need to think about and consider before we start pointing fingers. We cannot do this alone. We need less politics and more actions. We are full of beautiful politically correct stories. Somebody need to wake up and see some reality please!

This is my personal opinion. I want to be part of the solution, not the problem. I don't believe in sugar coating reality.”

my name is joey money gomes
in the streets they call me money
now in gods name my name is joey
gomes from brockton ma born in
roxbury. been to jail for lots of years. been in the streets from
1968 to 1989. is when i went to cape verde. for one year. and thats when i put god in my life and change my life. i love me today
i dont need to kill or hurt my cape verdean brothers i love me and my cape verdean commuity.and go out to the jails talking to brothers on lock down./ pary for them always. i can change you can to. if you need to to talk to the cape verdean commuity just call me and ill work it out. the white man would love to see us kill the commuity and the cape verdean brothers sad they cant see that. all cape verdean in the commuity hold your head up and love self. mr rodrigues in you need me just call me at 508 802 3807 name is joey gomes. god bless you all.. my email is

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Here is a practical solution for the gang violence:
every parent that has a teenage son, who has started to show some early evidence of street behavior and rebellion, should send him back to Cape Verde for at least a summer or 6 months to live with their relatives without sending any money, shoes or clothes from America; this way they can live and learn the hard life and strugle back home and appreciate the spoiled life they have in the USA.
So, they would have a short preview of how miserable their life can be if they screw up in USA and get deported.
Nothing better than learning while you experience it: experimental psicology!!!

One thing that I find very disturbing is when Cape Verdeans become so ghetto and ignorant in this country. It's a shame.

We have a beautiful culture and we should learn that this country offers a lot of opportunities and it is often our choice to chose opportunity for failure or success. I rather see Cape Verdeans dying of hunger and eating mucuous with camoca then to see them shooting each other in Roxbury & Dorchester (at least the ones that are involved in it).

I don't want to read about any shooting. These people are not Cape Verdeans. They are often trashy CVs that do not know their own history and how people stuggle. We need to stick together and help them through and not judge. But let's not say it's ok to be ghetto and ignorant.

I don't use the word ghetto to mean poor. I use it to mean the life style that many turn the tough innercity life into=The negativity and hostility towards each other and themselves. Just because your father is a jail bird doesn't make it an excuse for you to call your females bitches and call your fellow brother a nigger. Nigger is a hate word. It means ignorant and stupid in America. Only niggers use the word nigger. I am not a nigger and I will never be one. Black is beautiful, but a nigger, a thug, a pimp, should be despised.

And be careful whom you immitate because you become worse than they are!

I feel you to the fullest. I also just want to throw out there its not only the capeverdean's acting out with violences. Black on black crimes,latinos and every other race. The violence is out of control. And I think if more people like Mario got to gether to help fight violence we would see a change. Oh yeah Mario I read what you stated in the news paper you said your brother is knee deep into what is going on and if something was to happend to him you dont know how you would act. Understanding life is hard I said the same thing. My brother got shot three times I wanted to go get the person who did it. If I had nothing would have been solved it would just add fuel to the fire. tell your brother to sit down and think about where does he see himself in five years. Mario Just know that even as a leader touble still follows. No block is worth a life they say. You are nobody untill somebody kills you.
I tell everyone to just love, live, life. Because life is very very short.

With CV love,

Lamonte Pires Aka Harshima Pires

Let's support Mario and the peace institute on helping our youth get out of gangs and ofocus on positive stuff.

Parents need to be more involved in childs life... if they have to work two jobs to support a family I understand, but if it is to have a big screen Tv in their living room... we have a problem.
Parent need not to loose control... education is a tool, and it can be reached easely in the US. U don't have to be dependent on your child to read all your mail, including "mistranslating" school reports and court letters.