Posted on 01/11/2003 7:55:37 AM PST by sarcasm
IF you think the mid-west is too cold and white for Latino culture, take a stroll down 26th Street in Chicago's Little Village. Two miles of shops are flush with goods from Mexico: cowboy hats, snakeskin boots, and the flouncy white dresses that teenage girls wear for their quinceañera parties. An old man from Michoacán, peddling mango and papaya from his pushcart in the freezing weather, says he arrived 21 years ago and still doesn't speak English. No need, he adds, in la Villita.
Altogether the seven main mid-western states are now home to 9% of the Mexicans living in America, up from 7% in 1990 (see chart). Having overtaken San Antonio, Chicago now has the second-biggest Mexican population in America, behind only Los Angeles and well ahead of places like Houston. The number of Mexicans in the Windy City rose by 50% during the 1990s to reach 530,000 in 2000, according to the census. Twice that number live in Illinois.
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This trend has been repeated in other less urban mid-western states. Mexican populations more than doubled in Minnesota, Iowa, Indiana and Wisconsin during the 1990s. In St James, an agricultural town of 4,695 people in south-west Minnesota, nearly one-quarter of the population is Latino (largely Mexican). In a string of towns running south from Minneapolis to the Iowa border, some of the country's largest meat-packing operations are kept going principally by employing Mexicans, sometimes in appalling conditions. In October, the remains of 11 undocumented Mexicans were found inside a locked box-car near Des Moines, Iowa.
The mid-west, with its cold winters, distance from home and lack of historical ties, seems an odd choice for Mexicans. Why do they come? A few have been there for a long time. In the early 20th century, Mexicans were brought in to work on railway lines, to tend sugar-beet fields or even as “scab” steelworkers during strikes; some stayed and founded communities like la Villita. Every year, migrant farmworkers added to the numbers during harvest time.
The recent wave of immigration is partly driven by economic opportunism: the mid-west offered more diverse and better-paid jobs than the south-west. But it has also been caused by measures to keep immigrants out. Sterner border controls in the 1990s made it harder for Mexicans to move back and forth easily, prompting many migrants to settle—and bring their families. The controls also meant that there was less incentive to live near the border and more incentive to find well-paid jobs wherever they existed. September 11th has only tightened things further; it also seems to have dampened hopes of a formal guest-worker programme.
These new arrivals have an enormous economic effect. Elizabeth Handlin, an official with the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, says about $9.2 billion in remittances were sent from America to Mexico in 2001. Many of the mid-west's agribusinesses, factories, hotels and restaurants rely heavily on Mexican labour. A 2000 study by HACER, a Latino advocacy group, estimated that undocumented workers (most of them Mexican) added $1.5 billion to Minnesota's gross state product and contributed more than $1 billion in state tax revenue. “The meatpacking businesses in south-east Minnesota would have to close up shop without them,” claims James Kielkopf, author of the report.
The Mexican government, trying to come to terms with the fact that about a tenth of its population lives in America, is now trying to formalise its relationship with these exiles. These moves seem to have gone further in Chicago than elsewhere, partly due to an unusually energetic consul-general, Carlos Sada, a former mayor of the Mexican town of Oaxaca.
In Chicago the number of local “Mexican clubs”, which funnel money back to specific towns in Mexico to build schools, roads and churches, jumped from 35 in 1995 to 181 last year. Every morning hordes of Mexicans cram into the consulate seeking a matrícula consular—an identity card that allow them to open bank accounts and which is recognised by the city, regardless of the holder's legal status (the consulate doesn't ask). The Chicago consulate now issues about 1,200 cards per day, triple the rate of a year ago (and, it adds proudly, well ahead of the rate in LA).
This is not just a tribute to Mr Sada's enthusiasm. Jorge Santibáñez, president of El Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Tijuana, Mexico, argues that geography also forces the mid-west's Mexicans to be more organised. Over time, he predicts, a split will open up in America's Mexican communities: those in Los Angeles and Texas will become ever more like Mexico, but the more isolated northern Mexicans around Chicago will integrate better.
That does not mean that they will do particularly well—as the wretched Mexicans in the box-car proved. Mexicans in the mid-west are typically poorer and less educated than other immigrants, and many worry they will become a permanent underclass. In Minneapolis a Latino group known as CLUES runs a distance-learning centre, set up with help from both the Mexican government and the state of Minnesota, that allows immigrants to follow a Mexican curriculum for high-school before testing for an American diploma.
Such collaborative efforts, argues Mr Santibáñez, show a change of emphasis. Rather than trying to forge great treaties with the federal government over things like guest workers, the accent now is on smaller bottom-up schemes, involving the states and communities like 26th Street.
You guys in the Midwest haven't seen anything yet. Wait a few more years....You wont recognize the place.....
Not really. East Germans and Czechs had more socialism than Poles (Commies in Poland failed to eradicate small business and force peasants to give up their farms while Germans or Czechs tended to be more obedient and docile).
The proud or haughty Polish attitude made them bad candidates for German or Soviet occupation. Even during the Stalin's time Commies had to adress the low ranking workers "Sir" (Pan) instead of "comrade" ("towarzysz"). In this aspect many Americans who "know that it goes with the territory" are more similar to Germans. What BTW is good for productivity and organisation - Poles are clearly behind their Western neighbours :).
And that's what this invasion of millions is all about, so you can gawk at the "cute waiter" while millions are defacating on our sovereignty, crashing our borders, ignoring our laws, filling our jails, choking off our social services, hospitals, etc etc.
But hey, that food sure is tasty!
In a few more years, you wont need to go to a restaurent to gawk at these cuties, you will only have to open your front door, and every line you stand in, you will be standing behind them......
You won't hear English spoken in the low-income housing projects or welfare offices here because not all immigrants even come to work. Even if they don't want to deport every illegal, I wish they'd stop giving immigrants so many handouts, there is no way we can continue to provide free health care and the rest to an ever growing population of lazy types.
There are is no such race as brown. The three major human races are white (Indo-Europeans like Indians, Iranians, Armenians, Kurds, Georgians, Greeks, Slavs, Germanic, Latins and Celts ..., Semites like Jews, Arabs and some others), then black - "brown" and "black" subgroups, yellow - mongoloids (Chines, Korean, Japanese, Siberian, American Indians, etc). Some minor groups I did not mention.
Most of Mexicans are of American Indian blood and mixed. Their upper classes tend to be white Spanish.
BTW, the only real "Caucasians" are Christian Georgians and brave "freedom" fighting Chechens. :(
Jorge Santibáñez, president of El Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Tijuana, Mexico, argues that geography also forces the mid-west's Mexicans to be more organised. Over time, he predicts, a split will open up in America's Mexican communities: those in Los Angeles and Texas will become ever more like Mexico, but the more isolated northern Mexicans around Chicago will integrate better.
Cause for concern for those in the Southwest, certainly.
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