Making Mexican Chicago
I’m proud to be Mexican, born in this country… struggling for the rights of Mexican people in this country.
Rudy Lozano, Speech on May Day 1979
Rodolfo Lozano was born in Texas in 1951. His family moved to Chicago when he was young and settled in the Pilsen-Little Village area on the city’s Near West Side. In the 1950s, the neighborhood was a mixture of immigrant groups, mainly Czechs, Poles, and a growing population of Mexican Chicagoans. The largest of several Mexican neighborhoods was in the area where the UIC campus now stands. When the University of Illinois built its Chicago campus in the early 1960s, it demolished much of the neighborhood, displacing residents and businesses. Many of those who had lived in this area moved south and west to the Pilsen-Little Village neighborhoods where the Lozanos had settled.
Rudy grew up and went to school in a growing community that was forging a Mexican identity. As Czechs, Poles and other white ethnic groups moved out, Mexicans arrived from Texas, over the border from Mexico, and from the area that became UIC. They created new institutions and community organizations aimed at empowering and advocating for Mexican Chicagoans.
Para español:
La construcción de un Chicago mexicano
