After a career working in California prisons, Robert Marquez heeds call to Flathead Valley

As a devout Christian Robert Marquez is big on forgiveness.

But it took a lot of forgiveness to overcome a gang murder of his younger sister in 1997.

Marquez, who lives in Lakeside, went on after his sister’s murder to become one of the nation’s experts on gangs.

He worked for 19 years inside some of California’s toughest maximum-security prisons where gang members were incarcerated. There he learned the methods, symbology and tactics that gangs use — inside and outside of prisons.

His sense of peace, purpose and forgiveness continue today.

His young son and a friend were confronted by an older boy with a knife recently. When the friend’s parents sought severe consequences against the alleged attacker, Marquez helped keep calmer heads. He finds a different approach to the situation.

“Do we want to put the kid in a situation that he can’t get out from under?” Marquez said. “We as a community need to look for ways to bring them back on our side.”

Marquez is looking for his next sign, his next place to start, to put his talents in the community.

He wants to work with young men and show them the larger picture of community, faith, and what it means to be a man.

“I don’t know that we’ve tried anything,” he said. “What are we doing to be proactive? What are we doing as a man, as a member of our community, to make it better?”

The old ways of incarceration don’t seem to be working. He has seen how paroled men leave prison only to return home and usually start the cycle all over again. “When they come back, they come back with nothing,” he said.

Marquez attends weekly prayer meetings at the Dirt Bags men’s fellowship in Bigfork. He’s met many interesting people there, and through his work at the Montana Veterans Home in Columbia Falls, who would be natural leaders for our community’s young men.

One of the children who allegedly threatened his son with a knife at Lakeside elementary had been smoking marijuana. That drug, Marquez said, was likely the symptom of a greater problem with the adolescent — where he is positioned in his family, with his friends and in his social structure.

Marquez learned in the California state prison system what it would take for him to succeed in controlling the burgeoning gang violence in the prison where he worked. He helped take the prison from one of the most violent in the state, to one of the least violent. He did that through prayer, and through listening … to inmates, to God and himself.

His supervisor at Pelican Bay State Prison once gave him valuable advice that he adheres to today. “My warden once told me to take responsibility for your area,” Marquez said. “And to the degree I can, I’m going to take responsibility for my community in Lakeside.”

Marquez has been here only for a year. He’s been asked to be a leader now, but he’s not sure what form that will take.

He’s still listening.

The answer, he said, may lie here: in Proverbs 3:27.

“Do not withhold from doing good, when it is in your power to do so.” Gangs provide young men and women with a structure, discipline and rewards that are not found in their families. In California Marquez saw how gangs often helped members learn to read and write.

However, he said, “Gangs kill, steal and destroy peoples’ dreams and hopes.”

He saw how his younger sister was drawn into gangs during the period when his parents were breaking up. “She was crying out for love and acceptance,” he said.

California gang culture grew out of the 1950s when the Mexican Mafia was started in a California prison. The Noestra Familia, Cryps, Bloods, Aryan Brotherhood and Black Guerilla Family came later. Now the three gangs are the major contributors to gang violence in California, Marquez said, because in order to join a gang it usually takes blood or being “jumped”.

“Blood to get in, blood to get out,” he said. On the street, gang members are “Jumped in or jumped out,” meaning the initiates must endure a jumping or beating from the other members to qualify for entry.

“There are very few communities in California that are not completely overrun” with gang activity.

Marquez said there are about 150,000 members in prison of the Mexican Mafia that control about 500,000 “street soldiers.”

Montana’s rural nature leads to isolation that mimics what young people in California experience. We need to do more as a community to pay attention to the people on the fringe who don’t have a place to engage with others. “We’ve really lost that connection with our neighbors,” he said.

When his sister was killed, “that gave me the passion and desire to be as well versed as I could in that field,” he said.

Marquez and his wife came to Montana on a prayer. In 1998 his wife had a dream about Flathead Lake, “and we’d never heard of the place,” Marquez said.

When Marquez retired from the California prison system, Marquez was undecided on his future plans. Then his pastor quoted from Isaiah in the Bible: “Depart, depart, touch no unclean thing.”

“It felt like the Lord called me here,” Marquez said.

Marquez faced daily violence in the prisons. In one year there were 900 felony crimes committed in one  prison where he worked, from narcotics crimes to homicides. ‘It was just like being a cop on the streets, but our patrol was prison,” Marquez said. Personal attacks on guards ranged from being stabbed to having urine or feces thrown on them.

Montana, he said, doesn’t seem to have the effects of gangs. “For the most part, this corner of Montana is pretty quiet, pretty clean,” he said.