Chicago as a Mexican American hub
It looks like Chicago became a hub for Mexican immigration in the 1950s? Beofre the 1990s it seems like it was the only US city with a large Mexican American population outside the Southwest.
What drew such a large Mexican population? Could say it was industry, but they really didn't go to other Northern or Rust Belt cities in large numbers. |
I've read that the first wave that settled on the southeast side of Chicago were heavily recruited to come work in the factories and for others Chicago was a primary train destination and that's how alot of Mexicans ended up here after crossing into the southwest The second wave settled in a heavily immigrant area in the near west side of the city where they could practice their customs without alot of fear of discrimination. I do know other Mexican Americans whose families settled in other smaller midwestern cities usually had to Americanize much faster. I know there was another big wave in the 70s and I know for alot of them it was a combination of available housing and jobs. My family skipped Los Angeles because even back then there was already a housing crunch in the Mexican areas and skipped Texas because of the crappy job opportunities whereas in Chicago they were able to work in factories and rent cheap 2 or 3 bedroom apartments. The 90s wave, which I think was the biggest came to an already established Mexican community also primarily made up of first gen immigrants from mostly the same parts of Mexico.
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Doesn't Chicago have the second largest Mexican American population after L.A.?
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Sure there are more people in absolute terms in the city of Chicago but they are not a dominate cultural group in Chicago or the Midwest. |
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and yes, of course there are more total mexican-americans in "the western states" (no fucking shit), but comparing a single city to "the western states" is an absurdity. the fact that chicagoland is home to 1.1 million people of mexican ancestry is still quite notable considering that it's over 1,100 miles NE of the border. |
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I dont think anyone would say Chicago is a hub for mexican peoples and culture, they would for say Polish or Italian, or Irish (and long long ago French). Even if their are more Mexicans in Chicago by absolute numbers than those other groups these days.
Thats my take anyway |
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that's my take anyway. |
I'm happy to use the term "hub" instead and move on.
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thread edited to remove the off-topic literalist dip-shittery. |
another interesting aspect of chicago's status as a mexican immigration hub is the spillover effect up into milwaukee.
these are city proper numbers, so certainly not great for apples-to-apples, but it's the best i could quickly do because the american fact finder doesn't do metro areas. Major Midwest Cities (city propers) by Mexican-American %: Chicago: 22% Milwaukee: 13% Kansas City: 8% Indianapolis: 7% Detroit: 6% Minneapolis: 6% Columbus: 3% St. Louis: 3% Cincinnati: 1% Cleveland: 1% |
Cleveland being lowest isn't surprising as it's east of the "Mexican/Puerto Rican" line. But yeah Chicago really stands out, with some spillover in Milwaukee. The other cities have Black-dominated NHW populations for the most part.
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The other Great Lakes/Rust Belt cities ceased to be major immigration hubs nearly a century ago.
You can see that with another large group - Polish Americans. Chicago attracted a lot of Polish immigrants through the 1980s and 1990s, while the other cities are pretty much all pre-1930 Polish American. |
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The same can be said for many Latinos in the borderland areas of Texas and Arizona. When it comes to the Southwest, having Latino ancestry is extremely different from being a recent immigrant. |
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His memory was of a jarring change. While it was not weird to see Mexican-Americans in Chicago then, and there was already an established Mexican-American community (I don't recall which neighborhood) in which he felt at home, the opposite was true of Milwaukee. He was often the only Mexican-American person people up there had met, and there was no community to speak of. He moved back to Chicago on his own as soon as he could, because Chicago was just a better fit for an 18-year old Mexican-American, circa 1988. It's not that he was obsessed with his ethnicity, but rather that he didn't want to stick out like a sore thumb all the time, wanted to feel more 'normal.' It looks like today's Milwaukee is quite different from the one he remembers. |
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https://i.redd.it/aupdhuonnufx.jpg source: https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/com...race_1361x679/ roughly 2/3 of the latinos represented by the yellow dots on the map above would be of mexican ancestry (puerto ricans making up the majority of the remaining 1/3). milwaukee's barrio: https://www.google.com/maps/@43.0182...7i13312!8i6656 they've even included a chorizo in the famous sausage races at miller park for over a decade now (running alongside bratwurst, polish sausage, italian sausage, and hot dog): https://ewscripps.brightspotcdn.com/....0_640_480.jpg source: https://www.tmj4.com/news/klements-s...r-brewers-snub |
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