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In the mid 1990's in New York City, the gang Los Ñetas, a.k.a. La Asociación, began an internal transformation process by abandoning gang wars and stopping violence. In this article, I intend to address the Ñetas' transformation and explain why they call it “pacification”. I want to suggest here that regarding transformation and desistance literature, there is a need to make sense of Ñetas' collective disengagement from violence and understand alternatively their political re-engagement. I show that the transformation of the Ñetas resulted from several processes: the renegotiation of the space of the city; the rediscovery of the history of La Asociación; and a shifting framework of emotional repertoires. I conclude this piece by referring to the broader context of New York City, and the ways that during this period, it was marked by zero tolerance policies that aimed to “pacify” its streets.
