Lesson 6 Appendix

An Immigrant’s Perspective LESSON 6 — Appendix Mexican Chicago Background Information The Journey North Building Community The first major wave of Mexican immigration to Mexicans arriving to Chicago usually found poorly Chicago began in the 1910s. These early immigrants maintained, crowded and expensive housing. They came mostly from the Central Mexican states of faced segregation and were often charged higher rent Guanajuato, Michoacán, and Jalisco, as well as Texas simply because they were Mexican. This worsened the and farming communities in the Midwest. They came overcrowding issue, since multiple families would be for various reasons; some were desperate for a job to forced to share living quarters. Colonias or Mexican support their families and had heard there was plenty residential areas developed around work sites near of work in Chicago’s new factories and railroad yards, steel mills, factories, railroad yards, and stockyards in others were fleeing the political upheaval of the Mexi- the Calumet region, the Near West Side, and Back of can Revolution, while still others came to escape the the Yards. religious persecutions of the Cristero War. Social life for the early solos arriving to Chicago Most of these initial immigrants were solos—mar- centered around pool halls, barber shops, and ried men who temporarily left their families in Mexico or settlement houses. When more women and children bachelors. In Chicago, they worked on the railroads, in began to arrive, the colonias expanded and Mexicans steel factories, and in meatpacking houses. established bodegas (markets), restaurants, tortilla factories, and local newspapers. They also founded The railroads were key for bringing Mexicans to mutualistas—business, labor, and social groups that Chicago. Not only were they a fast and direct form of helped their members in times of hardship. mass transportation—many railroad companies sent recruiters or enganchistas to Mexico to contract work- Religious life for Mexican immigrants to Chicago ers to build and maintain new railroad lines. Mexicans centered mainly on Roman Catholicism. The South helping build the railroad (traqueros) lived in portable Chicago Mexican community successfully rallied for boxcars along the tracks and moved northward as the the first local Mexican church Our Lady of Guadalupe, rail lines extended. In Chicago, Mexican communities built in 1924. In the late 1920s, Cordi Marian nuns sprung up in the railroad camps of converted box- fleeing the religious persecution of the Cristero War cars such as the South Chicago Rock Island Railroad arrived in Chicago and worked with Mexicans in Pack- Camp at 2650 East 95th Street. The people who lived ingtown, South Chicago, and the Near West Side. in these ‘camp cars’ used kerosene lanterns for light St. Francis of Assisi Church on Polk Street became a and had no running water. Entire families lived in one spiritual center for Mexicans living on the west side. car and would often take in solos as boarders. Today, there are over 111 Roman Catholic churches in Chicago with enough Spanish-speaking parishioners Another path to Chicago was by way of farm work. to have masses in Spanish. Many Mexicans contracted by enganchistas went to rural areas of the Midwest first to work in sugar beet 20th Century Crises fields. Entire families migrated to Michigan, Minnesota, When the stock market crashed in 1929, the Ohio, and Iowa to harvest beets together in the fields. Great Depression struck the United States and caused These betabeleros (sugar beet workers) and other farm- widespread job loss. Mexican workers were often the workers moved with the seasons to harvest or plant first to be laid off. Resentment against them became crops at the busiest times of the year. Many decided so great that over one million Mexicans and “Mexican to spend the winter working in factories in Chicago, looking” individuals were rounded up and deported in instead of making the expensive trip back south. In the the 1930s. ‘Mexican Repatriation,’ as it was called, cut warmer months they might return to the beet fields, Chicago’s Mexican population nearly in half. but a large number stayed in Chicago permanently. An Immigrant’s Perspective, Curricular Unit for Grades 6–12; Developed by the National Museum of Mexican Art with funding from the Terra Foundation for American Art, 2014 When the U.S. joined World War II in the 1940s, the Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, Mexi- demand for labor increased sharply. Only a few years cans in Chicago fought for improved housing and after the U.S. had deported Mexicans in great num- education through groups like the Spanish Coalition for bers, the nation again looked to Mexicans to fill its Jobs and the Latino Institute, also working to combat labor needs and started the Bracero Program to im- the employment and social discrimination still faced by port temporary Mexican workers. Mexicans in Chicago many. Political and community activists advocated for seized the new job opportunities made possible by the institutions like Benito Juarez High School and estab- war and also established or joined immigrant protec- lished organizations such as Centro de la Causa, Casa tion groups and labor unions to protect themselves Aztlán, Mujeres Latinas en Acción, Pilsen Neighbors, from discrimination and win better wages and working and Latino Youth. conditions. Discrimination was not eradicated, how- ever; in 1954, the government’s “Operation Wetback” Mexican Chicago Today captured braceros who had overstayed their visas and Today, the cycle of immigration is still being re- deported them to Mexico. peated, with new immigrants both official and undocu- mented continuing to arrive to Mexican communities Fighting for Change throughout Chicago. New arrivals with limited skills Despite these challenges, in the 1950s, Chicago and limited English usually enter jobs not unlike those Mexicans went on to establish local branches of civil available to immigrants in the early 1900s. Landscap- rights organizations that fought for the rights of Mexi- ing work has often replaced migrant farm work, and can WWII veterans, sought to increase U.S. citizenship non-union factory work has replaced unionized jobs in among immigrants, and secured the rights of Mexican steel and other heavy industries of early decades. The Americans. In contrast, the rights of the growing popu- number of immigrants from urban areas has increased, lation of indocumentados—Mexican nationals living in and among them are more skilled workers, clerical the United States without papers—were not actively workers, professionals, and businessmen. protected by any organization. The 2010 U.S. Census counted 778,862 Mexi- Mexican communities continued flourishing in cans in Chicago and approximately 1 million Mexicans the colonias of Back of the Yards and South Chicago, in the greater Chicagoland area. 44% of Chicago Pub- but in the 1960s, the University of Illinois at Chicago lic School students are of Latino origin, with children of expanded, forcing Mexicans south into Pilsen, also Mexican descent making up 25% of all CPS students. known as La Dieciocho. This new colonia expanded The Pilsen and Little Village neighborhoods are today’s in the mid-1970s past 26th street creating the area fastest-growing areas of Mexican and, more recently, known as La Villita (Little Village) or La Veintiséis. Central American settlement in Chicago. In Pilsen and Little Village, a mural movement Today, Mexicans hold prominent city govern- ignited by the Chicano Movement brought art to the ment positions, positions within the Chicago Public streets. The colorful and impactful murals can be seen School system, Aldermanic seats, state representative around these neighborhoods, at the 18th street CTA seats, and own many successful businesses. Chicago station, outside Casa Aztlán, and many other sites. In Mexicans are a socially active group involved in many 1987, the National Museum of Mexican Art opened in protest marches and other civil demonstrations con- Pilsen and has become one of the major institutes of cerning a wide range of issues including immigration, Mexican art in the country with a strong collection and education and housing concerns. Today, Chicago’s internationally acclaimed exhibitions. substantial Mexican community continues to grow, increase its presence in the life of the city, and expand its participation in all areas of society. Sources: Mexican Chicago by Rita Arias Jirasek and Carlos Tortolero. “Encyclopedia of Chicago: Mexicans.” The Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago. Chicago Historical Society and The Newberry Library. 2005 An Immigrant’s Perspective, Curricular Unit for Grades 6–12; Developed by the National Museum of Mexican Art with funding from the Terra Foundation for American Art, 2014 1. Pictured here is a Mexican railroad car sitting outside of the roundhouse in Orizaba, Veracruz, in 1937. All men depicted are railroad workers, similar to other railroad workers who made the journey via rail all the way to Chicago. 3. Pictured are betabeleras, female sugar beet workers, including Frances Martínez, center, with cut sugar beets. This photograph, taken c. 1926, along with the certificate of merit issued by the Great Western Sugar 2. Pictured here in 1944, Calixto Arroyo is standing on one of the New Company, documents that entire families worked in York Central Railroad’s biggest engines—the Streamlined Hudson. Calixto fields much like the migrant families of today. was first contracted as a bracero for the agricultural filed of California after migrating from Tendeparacua, Michoacan. Later that year he was contracted by the New York Central Railroad to work in the round house. He lived in a boxcar facility in Cleveland, Ohio until 1945. Calixto eventu- ally made his way to South Chicago, and later arranged for his family to emigrate in 1957. 4. The Martínez children with friends are photographed here on a locomotive in McCook, Nebraska. The Martínez family arrived in Nebraska in 1916 from Aguascalientes, Mexico.

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