According to experts, the Bandidos MC is the fastest growing motor club in the world. The Bandidos are members of the so-called ’Big Four’ - the largest and most prestigious motorcycle gangs in America, including, besides the Bandidos themselves, Hells Angels MC, Outlaws MC, and Pagans MC.
The life of the Bandidos member is full of motorcycle riding, crime, women, drugs, prisons, fights and, shootouts with competitors from other gangs, and, of course, all sorts of cruelty s and lawlessness. All these atrocities are committed under the sign of a cartoon man with a machete and a gun. An interesting fact - this cartoon character has been borrowed by the gang as the emblem from the advertisement of a corn straw, but more on this later.
Origin
The Bandidos Motorcycle Club was created by a man named Donald Eugene Chambers in 1966 in San Antonio, Texas. There is an opinion that the head of the club named it Bandidos in honor of the TV commercial character Frito Bandito. He rose from hell to sell Fritos, corn straw. However, this opinion is not correct: the commercial hit TV screens two years later, in 1968 (although the cartoon Bandido, armed with a machete and gun, is currently used as an emblem against the background of the club’s colors).
When coming up for the biker club’s colors, Donald Chambers, a marine veteran who served in Vietnam, drew inspiration from the scarlet and golden colors of the US Marine Corps. His leadership came to an end when he was imprisoned for murder in the city of El Paso, Texas. The next president was a reputable biker named Ronnie Hodge. Under his leadership, the Bandidos expanded internationally and became the largest 1% motorcycle club.
The Bandidos take over the world
The Bandidos MC, also known as the Bandido Nation, is the fastest growing biker club in the world. They have more than 90 chapters in the United States, 90 chapters in Europe, as well as 17 in Australia and Southeast Asia.
The biker club is headquartered in San Leon, Texas, the United States. There are the Bandidos chapters in Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Washington, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, New Mexico, Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, and several other states.
The Bandidos also have a large number of support clubs, which act as intermediaries and representatives of Bandidos, both in legal and illegal activities. These groups usually wear the reverse colors (red rockers with a golden font) and a special patch called the Heart, which is a circle with the Bandidos colors. Most of these clubs are regional.
Both members of the Bandidos and their support clubs actively use biker jewelry and accessories to create a signature badass appearance. They enhance their looks with massive skull rings, cross necklaces, motorcycle pendants, and, of course, various patches with outlaw clubs motifs such as iron crosses, 1%, the Confederate flag, and some other attributes.
Domestically, Bandidos are organized into a structure that includes heads of local gangs and leaders of a region. In each country, there is sort of a gang council consisting of four regional leaders and the president of the club in a particular country.
Outlaw Gang
From the first days of its existence, the club has been notorious for attacking small towns, first in Texas and then in the neighboring states. These offenses invariably resulted in the plundering of local wine shops, mayhem in bars, clashes with police and armed locals, and drinking around a huge bonfire that was maintained for several days.
The second reason for infamy is that since the very origination of the Bandidos, the Hells Angels has been their most implacable enemies. If not for the support of the second largest and most dangerous motorcycle gang in the United States, Mongols, Hell Angels would have ruled the whole country and, perhaps, the rest of the biker world.
In the southern states of America, where the influence of the motorcycle gang is especially noticeable, drug addiction has always been out of favor among the population. The only illegal substance to really make money from is fake whiskey. As for the arms trade, in Texas, the procedure for obtaining a gun is so simple that anyone can acquire it in just a couple of hours.
That is why not so long ago the leadership of the Bandidos realized that in order to make a real dough (which is, of course, means committing crimes), the gang must be strengthened in other states. For this reason, the biker club turned a close attention to the north-east and west of the United States where the Bandidos began to eagerly create new chapters. In the US alone, there are already more than 3,000 official members of this club. As for the candidates, according to various data, there are from 12,000 to 22,000 potential members.
In this regard, other motorcycle clubs immediately began to take retaliatory actions. The additional recruitment has already been announced by Highwaymen, Warlocks, and Outlaws. Recently, the Hells Angels have initiated the first peace talks with the Mongols in 12 years because they realized that alone, despite their original high numbers, they would not survive in the war with the Bandidos.
There is only one reason for such concern - recently, adult members of Latin American street gangs have been strongly recruited into the Bandidos club. These people start learning to handle weapons literally from childhood, and by the age of 25-30, they become criminal professionals. Therefore, they represent a real danger not only for bikers from other gangs but also for policemen trying to stop them from spreading across the United States.