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Community activists--Illinois--Chicago
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- Notes:
- Pedro Mateo is from Salinas, Puerto Rico and now lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He first came to Grand Rapids in the 1950s, but quickly moved to Indiana Harbor to work in the steel mills alongside many other Puerto Rican immigrants of that era. Mr. Mateo describes the steel mill culture and the Puerto Rican community that developed in Indiana Harbor beginning in the 1940s. After a short time in Indiana Harbor, Mr. Mateo moved with his family to Van Buren Street near Ashland Avenue in Chicago, in the barrio area then known to Puerto Ricans as La Madison. In the 1960s, Mr. Mateo moved to Addison Ave. and Wilson Street, next to Wrigley Field. It was here that he first met the Young Lords. Mr. Mateo describes his daily travels by train to La Clark to work at “Las Gomas,” or a rubber factory, by New Orleans and Chicago Avenue. He ultimately returned to Grand Rapids, where his large, extended family plays a prominent role in the city’s Latino community.
- Date Created:
- 2012-03-08T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Although Estervina Jiménez has never lived in Chicago herself, her life has been deeply connected to the city. Born and raised in Barrio San Salvador of Caguas, Puerto Rico, Ms. Jiménez’s husband, Cordero, traveled back and forth to Chicago’s La Clark for work in the early 1950s. Many of her other family members did the same, starting and sustaining the social clubs, congregations, businesses, and other organizations that were at the core of Chicago’s Puerto Rican community. Ms. Jiménez also had several uncles migrate to Detroit during that same period in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Through her memories, it is clear that social clubs like the Hachas Viejas and other were a fundamental source of support for separated families in a strange land. These organizations also provided a way to cope with language and cultural challenges, segregated streets, and housing discrimination. Today, Ms. Jiménez volunteers in her church in San Salvador, the Catholic capilla. She delivers communion to the sick and visits and prays with them. She spends much time sitting on her porch with her husband, who is now in poor health, talking with the travelers who walk down the small path in front of her home. When someone dies in San Salvador, she makes herself available to assist in the traditional novena and helps to lead and to pray the rosary for the nine days. If there is an event or program she also helps out. In fact, she helps the priest whenever called upon and volunteers to daily to clean the church. Ms. Jiménez is a resource for the residents of San Salvador, especially in the Morena and Lao Frío sections of Caguas. Ask anyone from San Salvador and they will also tell you that she is like the unofficial mayor.
- Date Created:
- 2012-06-23T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Ana Encarnación is from the San Juan metropolitan area of Puerto Rico and describes growing up there in the late 1930s and 1940s. She arrived in Chicago in the 1950s, settling in Old Town, along the border dividing Old Town from neighboring Lincoln Park. She lived on the south side of North Avenue, at the corner of Sedgewick. When the Young Lords decided in 1968 to start to defend the Puerto Ricans and the poor from being displaced, it was her dream come true to join the Young Lords Movement. She saw it as a way to help her people. Ms. Encarnación was in nursing and so she began to work in the Young Lords’ Emeterio Betances Free Health Clinic. Ms. Encarnación describes how the volunteer staff, including herself, not only provided many long hours of free services to the Puerto Ricans and poor of Lincoln Park but when money was low, they also donated from their own personal savings to keep the clinic afloat.
- Date Created:
- 2012-07-10T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Francisca Medina lived for many years in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. She describes visiting with other Latinas on the streets of Lincoln Park, at laundromats, and in the large variety of Puerto Rican owned shops in the 1950s, a time when the community was thriving and safe. Ms. Medina recalls her involvement in Council Number 9 at St. Teresa’s, as well as her work with the congregations at St. Vincent De Paul and St. Sebastian. Ms. Medina raised her family in Lincoln Park, moving several times within the neighborhood including homes on Sheffield, Bissell and Fremont Streets.
- Date Created:
- 2012-03-02T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Juan Jiménez is the younger brother of Antonio “Maloco” Jiménez and currently lives in Barrio San Salvador of Caguas, Puerto Rico, in the secluded road behind the tienda, or store, of the Trinidads. His home is newly built and sits on cement blocks like stilts, carved right into the hill but sitting halfway on air. It is difficult to turn your car around the dead end road as there are more hills to the other side. And he has a beautiful view of the center of San Salvador’s Monte Peluche, a tall, rocky mountain covered with vegetation. It is his section of paradise and what Mr. Jiménez worked for all his life when he lived in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, on La Armitage. Mr. Jiménez is content, still raising his college-aged daughter. His son is a proud Illinois State trooper. Mr. Jiménez was part of Council Number 9 of the Caballeros de San Juan and Damas de María at St. Teresa’s Church on Kenmore and Armitage. He played well and was a proud member of their softball team. It instilled character in the players, kept the community stable, and kept the youth away from hard drugs and off the streets. Each team had their own chanting cheerleaders, coaches, and managers. It was also good for small entrepreneurs who sold pasteles and pastelillos, rice and bean dinners, and T- shirts and flags and banners. The Catholic softball leagues provided the Puerto Rican version of the college town football game for the entire Puerto Rican family. It kept them united and parents knew at all times where they could find their children. It was a cost effective, after school fun that today would have eliminated the few existing after school programs. And it was a true community program that did not have to be funded by the federal government or by city hall. But the leagues and the Caballeros and the Damas were being weakened and destroyed by discriminatory plans to “cleanse for profit” the lakefront and near downtown areas of Puerto Ricans, other minorities and the poor. And along with their displacement and destruction of neighborhood networks and the disenfranchisement of Puerto Rican and poor voters, breeding grounds for today’s super gangs were created.
- Date Created:
- 2012-06-25T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Juan Rodríguez was a member and leader of the Jovenes Nobles social club in San Salvador, Puerto Rico, where he was born and raised. Mr. Rodríguez later followed other family members to Aurora, Illinois where he worked for many years at the Caterpillar Plant on Montgomery Road. Later, Mr. Rodríguez heard about the organizing work of the Young Lords in Chicago’s Lincoln Park. By that time his relatives from the Jiménez family had also come to Aurora, moving from Lincoln Park and Wicker Park. Mr. Rodríguez and his brother Ramón would visit their home regularly, and assisted with organizing the parades.
- Date Created:
- 2012-06-21T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Antonio “Maloco” Jiménez Rodríguez has no qualms about admitting that he was the Vice-President of the notorious Hacha Viejas, or Old Hatchets, of the 1950s and 1960s in Chicago. He was a World War II veteran with a lot of heart.
- Date Created:
- 2012-06-25T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Eugenia Rodríguez is the mother of José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez. She is the youngest of 13 children and was born in San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico to Juan Rodríguez and Victoria Flores. They then moved to the Morena section of the barrio of San Salvador, Caguas, Puerto Rico. When she was just a child her mother became sick and so Ms. Rodríguez was sent to be raised by her older sister, Toribia. But Toribia also had her own family to raise, so her father decided to send her to live in a Catholic orphanage until she was 15-years-old. She never attended formal school but did learn how to read and write. When Ms. Rodríguez left the orphanage, she returned to live with Toribia. There she met Antonio Jiménez, the younger brother of Toribia’s husband, who would become her husband. In 1949, Ms. Rodríguez traveled to New York and then to Boston. In early 1951 the family moved to La Clark in Chicago.
- Date Created:
- 2012-05-10T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Roberto Jiménez is son of “Tio Funfa” Jiménez. Today he lives in the small mountain town of Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico, but did live for some years in Detroit, Michigan, traveling back and forth in the 1950s, “when there were not that many Puerto Ricans living there.” It was cold in Detroit. And Mr. Jiménez recalls having to rely on family and friends for transportation and other things. He likes to raise rabbits for sale, and chickens. Mr. Jiménez also grows green bananas and other vegetables in his backyard behind the three houses where his brothers and sisters live in separate apartments. At least one of the houses is an inheritance and it is not bad to be able to live and to share supper with family. When friends arrive to visit, he has a habit of giving them some bananas or a chicken or a rabbit. If he has to do the work to prepare it, he will charge for his time. Mr. Jiménez considers himself to be just a humble worker and recalls going to the United States because farm labor was seasonal and there was no work. Sometimes construction was good. But it did not last long because there were many people trying to do it. Mr. Jiménez had heard about the Hacha Viejas, but they were his cousins, children of Tio Gabriel Jiménez, and workers who worked on his uncle’s farm, and not part of his immediate family. Today, Mr. Jiménez has no plans except to enjoy the tropical breeze from the same chair he sits on daily in their patio/garage entrance. Here he is calm and can think as he enjoys the car and truck traffic blaring as it passes the house.
- Date Created:
- 2012-07-09T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Eugenia Rodríguez is the mother of José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez. She is the youngest of 13 children and was born in San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico to Juan Rodríguez and Victoria Flores. They then moved to the Morena section of the barrio of San Salvador, Caguas, Puerto Rico. When she was just a child her mother became sick and so Ms. Rodríguez was sent to be raised by her older sister, Toribia. But Toribia also had her own family to raise, so Ms. Rodríguez’s father decided to send her to live in a Catholic orphanage until she was 15-years-old. She never attended formal school but did learn how to read and write. When Ms. Rodríguez left the orphanage, she returned to live with Toribia. There she met Antonio Jiménez, the younger brother of Toribia’s husband, who would become her husband. In 1949, Ms. Rodríguez traveled to New York and then to Boston. In early 1951 the family moved to La Clark in Chicago.
- Date Created:
- 2012-06-24T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries