there's a strong element of social banditry in the novel's gangsters - at least when in they're in JA, in the 70s
reflecting the strong vein of social banditry - outlaw as folk hero - running through the JA badman tradition, i.e. The Harder They Come etc
I think James does an excellent job of showing how the reality is - unsurprisingly - decidedly less romantic and more complicated
i.e. there is a sense of the gangsters as lumpen rebels, but at the same time they're employed as enforcers and tools of oppression against their own people and communities - cooptation has, I believe, been a common response to banditry from the state
Josey Wales is the smartest and most self-aware of the gangsters, the only one iirc who seems to grasp just how they're being used by CIA et al and what the means, so even if he's too calculating and self-interested to be sympathetic like Papa Lo, you can still mourn his demise at the hands of the Man