Havana, Cuba. Somewhere in the 1960s, The Santana brothers were raised in Centro Habana, in a slum district where food was rationed, police were paid off, and the law was whatever the man with the most bullets said it was.
Their father, Luis Santana, was a high-ranking enforcer in the Cartel de Santa Cruz, a brutal Cuban trafficking network that thrived under the radar during the Cold War years, shipping cocaine through Caribbean routes.
When their father, Luis, was assassinated in 1986 in a government sting gone sideways, the brothers vanished from Havana’s streets. Brothers Antonio “Diablo”, Manuel “Blanco” alongside their cousins Diego “Silencio” and Emanuel “Piloto”, left Cuba together, and flew to Florida under forged papers with a cartel handler and a suitcase full of dirty money somewhere in the late 1980s.
By ‘92, the Santanas had moved west. East Los Angeles was a battlefield - torn by gang wars, police corruption, and the overflow of cocaine from the Miami and Mexican pipelines.
Seeing opportunity, the brothers severed ties with their previous father’s ties and founded their own outfit.
Sinaloa, Mexico. Fertile fields heavy with opium poppies and Mexican marijuana. After the Guadalajara Cartel split, the Sinaloa cartel rose. Mexican born Rosa Varga became The Sinaloa cartel’s associate in 1986 helping to handle operations of running poppy and cannabis farms & smuggling, while her brother Ignacio Varga became a sicario. The Varga family first met the Santana family in villa on Mexico’s west-coast somewhere in the late 1980s. Over Cabañas and tequila, two families began blood-in, blood-out partnership. Rosa “Rein” and Ignacio “Nacho” provided ties with the Sinaloa cartel and smuggling drugs, whereas Antonio and Manuel took over expansions operations in California, 1993.
La Sangre Nueva is a Cuban-born criminal outfit operating out of unknown location, born from the blood-soaked backstreets of Havana and baptized in the chaos of American street life.
What started as a small offshoot of Cuban organization in the early 90s has now become a feared and independent force - a sub-cartel carving its own name into the concrete of San Andreas with ties to Cuba and Mexico.
Led by blood brothers Antonio “El Diablo” Santana and Manuel “Blanco” Santana - both ex soldiers who brought with them Cuban muscles and sharp minds - and Rosa “Rein” Varga - who handles the laundering, bribery, and real estate fronts that give the crew legitimacy - LSN sub-cartel is a lethal blend of old-school Cuban discipline and 90s West Coast swagger, with roots buried deep in drug trafficking, gun running, extortion, and a growing empire of front businesses.
The muscle. The money. The bloodline.
ʀᴏꜱᴀ "ʀᴇɪɴ" ᴠᴀʀɢᴀ
ʟᴀ ꜱᴀɴɢʀᴇ ɴᴜᴇᴠᴀ
