Rodolfo Cadena - Biography

Biography

"Chy" Cadena was a wayward youth and a member of the "Varrio Viejo" Gang from Bakersfield, California. He was incarcerated at Deuel Vocational Institution after he and a childhood friend from the same street gang, "Richard Ruiz" who would become one of the founding members of "La EME", stabbed a Bakersfield man to death outside of the "Salon Juarez" dancehall in 1958. At the time of his conviction, Rudy was only 15 years old. While incarcerated, he earned the respect and admiration of the members of the Mexican Mafia ("La Eme") which was still in its development stage.

According to Chris Blatchford,

"By 1961, administrators at DVI, alarmed by the escalating violence, had transferred a number of the charter Eme members to San Quentin, hoping to discourage their violent behavior by intermingling them with hardened adult convicts. It didn't work. For example, the story goes that Cheyenne Cadena arrived on the lower yard and was met by a six-foot-five, 300-pound black inmate who planted a kiss on his face and announced this scrawny teenager would now be his 'bitch.' Chy returned a short time later, walked up to the unsuspecting predator, and stabbed him to death with a jailhouse knife, or shank. There were more than a thousand inmates on the yard. No witnesses stepped forward, and only one dead man entertained the idea that Cadena was anyone's bitch."

Cadena and Joe "Pegleg" Morgan, who became his best friend and mentor, led the gang to prominence in the California correctional system by terrorizing other unorganized ethnic inmate groups, gaining a monopoly over the sale of drugs, pornography, prostitution, extortion and murder for hire.

Cadena continued to run the Mafia's activities and began to look beyond the walls of prison, envisioning a statewide monopoly of crime. He struck an uneasy alliance with George Jackson and the Black Guerilla Family and became active in Latino political organizations like the Brown Berets. Cadena made overtures to unite La Eme with the rival Nuestra Familia, but his peace talks with "the farmeros" were frowned upon by Joe Morgan and other senior Eme leaders. In response, they ordered the murder of two Familia leaders just prior to an important peace conference between Cadena and Death Row Joe Gonzalez, a NF leader at Chino Reception center undermining Cadena's peace mission and effectively greenlighting him. With no influence in the Mexican Mafia, his importance in the eyes of the NF was diminished: he was now a target for retribution. Cadena could have saved himself by requesting Protective Custody, a move that would have shown weakness to the way of life he had fought and killed for. His fate effectively sealed, he chose instead to go out the way he had come in, fighting. On his arrival in Chino for the now sabotaged peace mission, he was taunted by the Nortenos and told his time would come.