De bandas, bardas y pieles: Dialogando con Rogelio Marcial

Abstract

This article puts the trajectory of Rogelio Marcial in dialogue with my own trajectory in the study of youth gangs and cultures. In the prologue I review some moments of intellectual and personal encounter. In the central part I rescue five moments of convergence in the form of ethnographic scraps: my first foray into the study of punk gangs in Mexico City in 1991; my research on the globalization of "Latino gangs" in Barcelona in 2005; the foreword I wrote to Marcial's book on gangs in Guanatos in 2014; my take on The Gang, Thrasher's classic 1926 ethnography of gangs in Chicago that I translated and edited in 2020; and my current research on street youth groups in Rabat (Morocco) in 2021. In the epilogue I try to relate these five moments with the life worlds that Marcial set out to investigate: the pandillas (the gangs), his outside world (the walls) and its inner world (the skin).