This article aims at giving an account of the historical, social and cultural conditions which allowed the «Latin Kings» to emerge despite the continued signifi cant inequalities and exclusions in Ecuadorian society. Departing from normative, positivist criminology conceptions of the «Latin Kings» as a gang phenomenon, i.e. a «deviant» formation of young people, we consider the gang as a national narrative, established and developed at the very core of the failed modernity of the Ecuadorian nation-state, particularly its neo-liberal projects.