Nearly 150 Latino gang members indicted for racial attacks on blacks

Nearly 150 members of a notorious southern California gang have been indicted for engaging in a plan to eliminate black people from their community.

Sixty three members of the Varrio Hawaiian Gardens gang were arrested and 147 total were charged on Thursday in what prosecutors are calling "the largest gang takedown in United States history."

Gang members "take pride in their racism and often refer to the VHG Gang as the `Hate Gang,'" according to the indictment. ''VHG gang members have expressed a desire to rid the city of Hawaiian Gardens of all African-Americans and have engaged in a systematic effort to achieve that result by perpetrating crimes against African-Americans.''

The latest indictments come years after authorities began monitoring racist street gangs in the Los Angeles area. A 2006 news report indicated that racist Mexican gangs were "indiscriminately targeting blacks who aren't even involved in gang culture, as part of an orchestrated ethnic cleansing program." That report blamed a "radical Neo-Nazi liberation theology known as La Raza, which calls for the extermination of all races in America besides Latinos."