While staying at the Beverly Hills bungalow of Go-Gos manager Ginger Canzoneri during the summer of 1983, British photographer Janette Beckman read a story in LA Weekly about a gang war happening on the streets of East Los Angeles.
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“The article described this culture going on half an hour drive from where I was staying,” says Beckman, who was shooting music and underground cultures for Melody Maker and The Face. “I needed to go and check it out. It described them, what they wore and I was like, ‘Where are the photos?’”
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Beckman got in touch with the journalist and he brought her out to Maravilla Park, home to El Hoyo Maravilla – a Mexican-American gang that got its start in 1935. “People told me it was a dangerous neighbourhood but I just went. I am really a believer that people are basically good,” Beckman says.
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