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  #1  
Old Posted Jan 24, 2020, 4:19 AM
Docere Docere is offline
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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.
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Old Posted Jan 24, 2020, 4:52 PM
Chisouthside Chisouthside is offline
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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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  #3  
Old Posted Jan 24, 2020, 6:04 PM
Obadno Obadno is offline
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Quote:
Chicago is a Mexican hub
The entire western 3rd of the USA laughs at this.

Last edited by Steely Dan; Jan 24, 2020 at 6:43 PM.
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  #4  
Old Posted Jan 24, 2020, 6:06 PM
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Doesn't Chicago have the second largest Mexican American population after L.A.?
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  #5  
Old Posted Jan 24, 2020, 6:12 PM
Chisouthside Chisouthside is offline
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Originally Posted by Docere View Post
Doesn't Chicago have the second largest Mexican American population after L.A.?
Yeah theres like a half million in Chicago alone and im sure over a million in the whole metro area. And yeah it's a hub as Mexican culture in Chicago is not as watered down with 3,4 or 5th generation Mexican Americans like in the southwest.

Last edited by Steely Dan; Jan 24, 2020 at 6:43 PM.
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  #6  
Old Posted Jan 24, 2020, 6:13 PM
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Originally Posted by Docere View Post
Doesn't Chicago have the second largest Mexican American population after L.A.?
Are you going to argue relative vs absolute? There might be several hundred thousand Mexicans in the city of Chicago but there are millions upon millions of them in Western states. In New Mexico for example 49% of the population identifies as Latino or Hispanic with 30% of households speaking Spanish.

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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  #7  
Old Posted Jan 24, 2020, 6:20 PM
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Originally Posted by Obadno View Post
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.
mexican-americans don't have to be the dominant group in chicago for it to be a hub of mexican immigration.

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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Last edited by Steely Dan; Jan 24, 2020 at 11:30 PM.
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  #8  
Old Posted Jan 24, 2020, 6:38 PM
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Originally Posted by Obadno View Post
Are you going to argue relative vs absolute? There might be several hundred thousand Mexicans in the city of Chicago but there are millions upon millions of them in Western states. In New Mexico for example 49% of the population identifies as Latino or Hispanic with 30% of households speaking Spanish.

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.
The premise of the thread is why Chicago is unique as a Mexican immigration hub outside the Southwest.
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  #9  
Old Posted Jan 24, 2020, 6:40 PM
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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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  #10  
Old Posted Jan 24, 2020, 6:41 PM
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Thats my take anyway
your take is radically outdated.

that's my take anyway.
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  #11  
Old Posted Jan 24, 2020, 6:41 PM
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I'm happy to use the term "hub" instead and move on.
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  #12  
Old Posted Jan 24, 2020, 6:45 PM
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I'm happy to use the term "hub" instead and move on.
perfect!

thread edited to remove the off-topic literalist dip-shittery.
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Old Posted Jan 24, 2020, 8:17 PM
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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%
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Last edited by Steely Dan; Jan 24, 2020 at 8:31 PM.
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  #14  
Old Posted Jan 24, 2020, 8:24 PM
Docere Docere is offline
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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.

Last edited by Docere; Jan 24, 2020 at 8:36 PM.
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  #15  
Old Posted Jan 24, 2020, 8:28 PM
Docere Docere is offline
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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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  #16  
Old Posted Jan 24, 2020, 9:18 PM
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Originally Posted by Obadno View Post
In New Mexico for example 49% of the population identifies as Latino or Hispanic with 30% of households speaking Spanish.
Yeah, and a lot of those Latino residents of NM have been living in the US for generations - often equal to or longer than many Americans of Irish or Italian descent. New Mexican Latino culture =/= Mexican culture.

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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  #17  
Old Posted Jan 24, 2020, 9:54 PM
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Originally Posted by Obadno View Post
In New Mexico for example 49% of the population identifies as Latino or Hispanic with 30% of households speaking Spanish.
Well isn't that what you'd expect from a place called NEW Mexico?!?

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  #18  
Old Posted Jan 24, 2020, 11:05 PM
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Originally Posted by Steely Dan View Post
another interesting aspect of chicago's status as a mexican immigration hub is the spillover effect up into milwaukee.
A good friend of mine who identifies as Mexican-American was born in Chicago to a Mexican immigrant and a white Cheesehead. His parents divorced in the early 1970s, and his mom moved the kids with her up to Milwaukee.

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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Old Posted Jan 24, 2020, 11:21 PM
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It looks like today's Milwaukee is quite different from the one he remembers.
it sure is. metro milwaukee's mexican-american community is now ~100,000 people strong, and quite concentrated on the SW side of the city.



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):


source: https://www.tmj4.com/news/klements-s...r-brewers-snub
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Last edited by Steely Dan; Jan 25, 2020 at 1:42 AM.
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  #20  
Old Posted Jan 24, 2020, 11:25 PM
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Originally Posted by Obadno View Post
The entire western 3rd of the USA laughs at this.
I have family all over the west coast (California, New Mexico, Texas). Chicago is a Mexican hub, and a completely unique one for being so far north and East . It’s only laughable to west coasters that have never been there.
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