Gang Signs & Ranger Tabs with Angel Cortes | Mike Drop: Episode 62

About this video

Ritland interviews Angel Guevara Cortez, a former Southern California gang member who became an Army Ranger with 24 months of sustained combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. Guevara recounts his childhood with illegal immigrant parents, poverty, abuse, and his path into gang life starting around junior high. He describes how he eventually joined the military, witnessed fellow undocumented immigrants serving and gaining citizenship in combat zones, and is now training to become a registered dietitian while raising his own family differently than he was raised.

Key takeaways

• Guevara attributes his gang involvement to poverty, lack of education, family instability, and abuse rather than lack of intelligence, noting many gang members were organizationally skilled
• According to Guevara, he witnessed approximately 100 soldiers, many of them undocumented immigrants from various countries (not just Latin America), receiving U.S. citizenship through military service during his Iraq deployment
• Guevara describes consciously choosing to parent his three children opposite to how he was raised, prioritizing emotional openness and saying ‘I love you’ despite his father viewing such behavior as weakness

Episode details: published August 17, 2020 · 212.6K views · 3:03:32 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Stories told by Mike Ritland’s podcast guests are the guests’ own accounts, attributed to them — not independently verified. Commentary is Ritland’s, presented as his analysis.

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