Benjamin Melendez is best known for brokering the gang

Gang

A gang is a group of people who, through the organization, formation, and establishment of an assemblage, share a common identity. In current usage it typically denotes a criminal organization or else a criminal affiliation. In early usage, the word gang referred to a group of workmen...

 truce in the Bronx and Harlem

Harlem

Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...

 (New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

) in 1971. At that time, he was President of the Ghetto Brothers

Ghetto Brothers

The Ghetto Brothers were a gang and music group founded in New York City's South Bronx in the late 1960s. The gang eventually spread to much of the Northeastern United States...

, a mainly ethnically Puerto Rican

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...

 South Bronx gang, and lead guitar

Guitar

The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

ist of a musical group also known as the Ghetto Brothers.

Melendez was heavily involved in the rise of Puerto Rican nationalist consciousness among Nuyorican

Nuyorican

Nuyorican is a portmanteau of the terms "New York" and "Puerto Rican" and refers to the members or culture of the Puerto Rican diaspora located in or around New York State especially the New York City metropolitan area, or of their descendants...

 youth, having forged connections with the Puerto Rican Socialist Party

Puerto Rican Socialist Party

The Puerto Rican Socialist Party was a Marxist and pro-independence political party in Puerto Rico seeking the end of United States of America control on the Hispanic and Caribbean island...

. Perhaps surprisingly, Melendez's family, including Melendez himself, were Marrano

Marrano

Marranos were Jews living in the Iberian peninsula who converted to Christianity rather than be expelled but continued to observe rabbinic Judaism in secret...

s (Sephardic crypto-Jew

Crypto-Judaism

Crypto-Judaism is the secret adherence to Judaism while publicly professing to be of another faith; practitioners are referred to as "crypto-Jews"...

s), practicing their religion in secret even in the 1970s while being part of a Hispanic

Hispanic

Hispanic is a term that originally denoted a relationship to Hispania, which is to say the Iberian Peninsula: Andorra, Gibraltar, Portugal and Spain. During the Modern Era, Hispanic sometimes takes on a more limited meaning, particularly in the United States, where the term means a person of ...

community.
It is also well known that Bridget Bouvier was the only female member of the Ghetto Brothers and close confidant to Melendez. She eventually left for personal reasons, including a large disagreement with Benjamin's Hispanic family calling them "you people".