Photos and text by Erica Gonzalez
When John Rodriguez, a 33-year-old union organizer, meets someone, he offers the standard handshake. But for members of his own group, he delivers a special grip.

Placing his middle finger over his index finger, Rodriguez will clasp the other member’s hand, as he or she performs the same sequence of gestures. “We bring them up in the air,” Rodriguez says, referring to the grasp. With the two fingers still overlapping, each person touches his or her own heart, then raises the same hand to the sky and declares, “de corazon,” Spanish for “from the heart.”

Rodriguez is a Ñeta. Long treated as strictly a gang by the New York City Police Department, the Ñetas formed in the 1970s in the prisons of Puerto Rico to advocate against abuses within correctional facilities. Chapters of the Ñetas spread beyond Puerto Rico to New York and other states. The group also became popular on the streets with non-inmates.

In 1994, Rodriguez, then a youth counselor, was opening the doors for Ñeta chapters to meet at a community-based organization in Manhattan’s Washington Heights. “At the time, the Ñetas were huge in the streets,” says Rodriguez, a graduate of John Jay College. After listening to older members emphasize the need to address prison rights and other social justice issues, as opposed to gang banging, Rodriguez decided to join.

The Ñetas, along with many other groups, use rituals to define membership. Hand movements are frequently used to re-affirm identity as a group.

“When you put your fingers
like that, no one can touch you,”
Rodriguez says.

Rodriguez explained that overlapping fingers comes from a game similar to tag in Puerto Rico. “When you put your fingers like that, no one can touch you,” he says. According to Rodriguez, the sign was used and introduced by Carlos La Sombra, the founder of the Ñetas. The story goes that after taking beatings for inciting other prisoners to protest, La Sombra would flash the gesture to others to signify strength.

Fraternities and sororities also use special symbols and gestures to distinguish themselves. During college, Carlos Cortez pledged to become a member of the Omicron chapter of the fraternity Lambda Upsilon Lambda (LUL) in the spring of 2000.

Carlos Cortez shows one way of communicating that he is a member of the fraternity Lambda Upsilon Lambda.

“It was much different than what I thought,” says Cortez, 26, who assumed LUL emulated the drunk, boisterous parties he associated with fraternity life. Finding the fraternity culturally appealing – the organization focuses on Latino culture – he decided to go through the initiation process, which is not made public.

Like most fraternities and sororities, Lambda’s have certain markers. “If you’re wearing something physical, it would be colors or our letters,” says Cortez.

But the identifier that is most frequently used among Lambda’s is their special handshake, which Cortez would not disclose. Because the fraternity is 22 years old and has at least 1,000 members, there has to be a way to confirm someone’s membership, he says. “We give each other a grip, a handshake and only the brothers know it.”

Cortez says the grip is not only a way to verify membership, but also symbolic. “I think it’s a bonding experience for us, that it shows that we have something in common and that we have a connection,” he says. For a non LUL member to perform the hand signals would be disrespectful, says Cortez. “If someone knew the grip, it would be like a breach of trust."

The fraternity does use a hand symbol in public. Members position their fingers to resemble the letter L. “Your thumb would be straight in the air, your index and middle fingers would be extended out while the last two fingers would be touching your palm,“ explains Cortez, adding that the back of the hand is supposed to face out.

Rafael Zapata, who became a Lambda in 1998, says that the older members don’t tend to do the L gesture. “When you’re in college, being a part of a fraternity can be a really big part of your social life,” says Zapata, 31. But as members move away from campuses and take on their own lives, performing rituals to reflect belonging becomes less necessary, Zapata says. “We alter our ways and become more subtle.”

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