From the Near West Side to 18th Street: Mexican Community Formation and Activism in Mid-Twentieth Century Chicago

In late 1971 a clump of Mexican Americans gathered in Chicago's Pilsen/18th public way neighborhood to discuss the naming of a of recent origin Mexican community center opening in the area's east end' The center would hold the building of an elderly Catholic grammar school and adjoining house of worship and rectory, which lay vacant for several years. St Joseph's, or St Joe's as it was known in the neighborhood, had lengthy served a Slovakian immigrant population, on the other hand those residents and their next to the first and third generation descendants had abandoned the neighborhood and the parish years before. The growing Mexican community in the area had obtained permission from the Archdiocese of Chicago to lease the facilities and operate a community center to work for local youth and families.

At their meeting, community members and leaders interested in the establishment of the center squeeze outed passionate opinions about what the site should be named. Older professionals in the community, of the like kind as physician Dr. Jorge Prieto and justice David Cerda, supported the name "Latin American Youth Center" a label that would clearly identify the community's view and ethnic identity. Younger, more militant participants who had embraced the nationalism of the Chicano change of the Southwest ardently called for a name in Spanish that would mirror the politics of a racialized national minority, not the traditional ethnic immigrant identity of the previous generation. According to single of the center's founders, Phil Ayala, "The more radical side [of the group] came up with [the name] El Centra de la Causa" (The Center for the Cause). strained debates over the center's name consum the long meeting. Ultimately, the group reached a compromise that would seemingly satisfy all involved. Since state law at the time did not allow incorporation beneath a non-English name, the cluster decided to adopt both names-the Spanish individual to appease the younger radicals and the English version to satisfy state incorporation laws and more moderate middle class sponsors.2

Regardless of the contrasting political views or generational differences, the establishment of the center marked an important twinkling for the Mexican people of Chicago's 18th way neighborhood: they had laid claim to the community and began efforts to draw resources and establish services for the growing Mexican and Mexican American population. The creation of institutions of that kind as El Centro de la Causa helped make 18th way the quintessential Mexican barrio in Chicago and the largest in the Midwest for the past four decades.3

Early Historical unfolding of a Community

The adjustment of Mexican Americans in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood did not appear by accident. Their presence there was embedded in a history of racially-based urban planning that had dislocated them from the neighboring Near West Side, known affectionately as "Taylor Street" (see map 1) Mexican immigrants had a decades-long history upon the Near West Side, on the other hand by the 1960s the construction of federal expressways, urban renewal, and the construction of the of recent origin University of Illinois, Chicago Circle Campus, had displaced plenteous of the population. As a flow most families moved across the railroad tracks that divided the sum of two units areas and settled in the historically Eastern European Pilsen community (known officially by means of the Chicago Community Inventory as the Lower West Side). This essay traces the move of the city's Mexican community from the Near West Side to 18th Street/Pilsen and the efforts at community formation and activism in the pair neighborhoods. I argue that the displacement of the thriving Mexican community upon the Near West Side in many ways contributed to the emerging see the verb of community activism in the 18th way neighborhood.4

The history of Mexican Americans in Chicago, and specifically the Near West Side neighborhood, dates back to World War I when Mexican workers came to labor upon the city's railroads and carbonized iron mills. Mexicans settled in the area and established traditional ethnic organizations while making connections with local institutions. The Community Area designated through University of Chicago sociologists as the Near West Side (Community Area #28) had historically been a port of access for immigrants to Chicago. Just southerly and west of the downtown business district, it was single of the oldest neighborhoods in the city.5

The area received Northern/Western European immigrants in the late nineteenth hundred Impoverished and overcrowded, the area was made famous through social reformer Jane Addams, who chose it for her social adjustment work and established Hull House in 1889 The dilapidated domicile buildings, which lacked plumbing or sewage a whole s provided crude shelter for thousands of European immigrants. At the beginning of the twentieth hundred Eastern and Southern Europeans (mostly grecians Italians, and Jews) began replacing earlier German and Irish immigrants.6

When European immigration decreased dramatically in 1924 greater numbers of Mexicans and southern Blacks began making their way to the Near West Side. The aged and pass overed neighborhood was one of the least expensive places to live and individual of the few areas besides the Black Belt that accepted racial minorities.7 The Near West Side housed a diverse working class immigrant and next to the first generation population. Though the population was also racially diverse, this diversity belied the rigid physical segregation of African Americans. Blacks lived within Near West Side boundaries, on the other hand they generally did not live among Italians, hellenics or other European immigrant neighbors. European ethnics many times had slightly more tolerance for Mexicans than they did for Blacks. In general, Mexicans take delight ined a more ambiguous racial position, at times considered just another immigrant cluster but at other times viewed as racially distinct.8