Casually leaning against the wall, his hair is slicked back in a ponytail and a silver chain hangs out of his v-neck t-shirt, Will Moreano, 21, blends in with the crowd of clubbers getting some fresh air outside the Supperclub on Harrison Street.

Since he moved to the United States from Peru when he was fifteen-years-old, Moreano did not exactly have a normal teenager's life. Adapting to a new language and a new environment, Moreano became a gang member for several years, then changed his life around and got married to his high school sweetheart at age nineteen to get his United States citizenship.

Moreano moved from Peru to the Bay Area six years ago with his family on a tourist visa. At school, Moreano's first friends came from Guatemala, Mexico, or El Salvador and he started meeting even more

Latinos in his English as a Second Language classes. "My first year, it was all Spanish," he said, "I didn't learn anything." What Moreano did learn, however, was that the Latino community in the San Francisco Bay Area is divided into two zones: a blue zone reserved for new immigrants called "Southsiders," and a red zone for "Northsiders," who are second generation immigrants born in the United States from immigrant parents.

On his second day at school in Daly City, a student hit Moreano out of nowhere. "I felt anger," he says. "That's my welcome?" That day, Moreano was wearing blue and his attacker donned red. Daly City is considered an "outsider" zone, and the other kid was claiming his neighborhood. By wearing blue, Moreano became a part of the opposite clan, whether he wanted it or not.

"Going to high school was like going to prison because everyone was in groups: blacks, Filipinos and Latinos, who are also divided in two," he says. He explained that while groups were fighting each other, only the Latino groups were fighting within each other.

As a way to fit in and have someone to back him up, Moreano quickly began to spend time with a gang member named "Caballo" and started a crew in Daly City, whose members were recognizable by their bald heads and goatees. During his gang years, Moreano was cutting classes, getting in fights, running away from home, and attempting robberies. Beneath the tough exterior was a kid simply looking for acceptance in a new country.

"I chose the road of persecution," Moreano says. The reality of his choice kicked in when his friend, "Joker," 15, was killed in a shooting at a liquor store for wearing a blue shirt. At the funeral, Moreano saw Joker's mother cry and thought of his own mother
having to go through this. "I didn't want my mom to suffer from my mistakes so I just stopped," he says. However, leaving the gang meant being alone and for several months, Moreano did not have any friends; more importantly, he had no one to back him up. Eventually, he got in a fight in a high school hallway and was beat up. "You got to have someone to have your back; you can't be alone, but it wasn't me," Moreano says. "I have a strong family and money. I didn't have any reasons."

Joker's death acted as a wake up call for Moreano, who decided to turn his life around, leave the gang life, and turn his attention to school. He even became a Spanish and Math teacher's assistant during his last semester and graduated from high school with a three-point GPA. "I wanted to use my capacities," Moreano says, "and school kept me out of trouble." But given his immigrant status, Moreano knew that he had to restrain his own ambitions: "At the time, I didn't think of going to a four-year college because I didn't have any papers," he says, "City College was my limit, but still I was dreaming high."

But, something was about to happen again to change his life around. After applying for a job under a fake social security number, Moreano received a deportation letter at his house summoning him to court to possibly face deportation for being an illegal immigrant. At this point, Moreano had been in the United States for four years and Baelaya, his girlfriend of a year, decided she would rather marry him than lose him. So, on December 14, 2007, the two were married without their parents' consent. Moreano was only nineteen-years-old. "Most marriages are frauds but mine wasn't," he says. And after the court made sure of it, Moreano became a legal resident.

Now two years later, although separated from his wife, Moreano is grateful for the opportunities having a green card has given him. Most of Moreano's former high school friends never graduated from high school, have low-paying jobs, and families to take care of at the mere age of twenty-one. In comparison, Moreano now has the opportunity to transfer to a four-year school and pursue a business degree, and has been given better job opportunities--going from busser to bar back to bartender. "I'm finally doing something for myself," he says. [X]