Theresa Delgadillo - Building Sustainable Worlds: Latinx Placemaking in the Midwest

LATINOS IN CHICAGO AND THE MIDWEST

Series Editors

Omar Valerio-Jimnez, University of Texas at San Antonio

Sujey Vega, Arizona State University

Founding Editor

Frances R. Aparicio

A list of books in the series appears at the end of this book.

Latinx Placemaking in the Midwest

Edited by

THERESA DELGADILLO, RAMN H. RIVERA-SERVERA, GERALDO L. CADAVA, AND CLAIRE F. FOX

2022 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Delgadillo, Theresa, 1959 editor. | Rivera-Servera, Ramn H., 1973 editor. | Cadava, Geraldo L., 1977 editor. | Fox, Claire F., editor.

Title: Building sustainable worlds : Latinx placemaking in the Midwest / edited by Theresa Delgadillo, Ramn H. Rivera-Servera, Geraldo L. Cadava, and Claire F. Fox.

Other titles: Latinx placemaking in the Midwest

Description: Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2022] | Series: Latinos in Chicago and the Midwest | Collection of essays by Theresa Delgadillo and others. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021055879 (print) | LCCN 2021055880 (ebook) | ISBN 9780252044540 (hardback) | ISBN 9780252086618 (paperback) | ISBN 9780252053542 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Hispanic AmericansMiddle WestSocial life and customs. | Hispanic AmericansMiddle WestEthnic identity. | Hispanic AmericansMiddle WestSocial conditions. | Middle WestEthnic relations.

Classification: LCC F358.2.S75 B85 2022 (print) | LCC F358.2.S75 (ebook) | DDC 305.89/68073dc23/eng/20220126

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021055879

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021055880

Theresa Delgadillo, Ramn H. Rivera-Servera, Geraldo L. Cadava, and Claire F. Fox

Theresa Delgadillo

Claire F. Fox

Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes

Delia Fernndez-Jones

Ariana Ruiz

Sandra Ruiz

Carmen Hernandez, PBVM

J. Gibran Villalobos

Karen Mary Davalos

Sergio M. Gonzlez

Emiliano Aguilar Jr.

Theresa Delgadillo, Laura Fernndez, Marie Lerma, and Leila Vieira

Geraldo L. Cadava

Ramn H. Rivera-Servera

We owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the many scholars who have studied and written about Latinxs in the Midwest. Some are individuals in whose footsteps we walk, while others are our colleagues and peers in this ongoing work. Our chapter endnotes and the volumes bibliography include numerous references to many of these sources, but here we acknowledge how deeply we admire and draw from this important body of work.

We thank the many individuals, leaders, event participants, artists, and activists who agreed to share their perspectives, materials, words, and time with us in the course of this research. We have learned much from you and much about Latinx communities in this region. Lourdes Torres, Ana Aparicio, Amalia Pallares, and Teresa Magnum graciously shared their expertise and guidance with us at the first gathering of this research collaborative at Northwestern University in August 2017, helping us to launch our shared work. We are also grateful to the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago and especially Cesario Moreno, chief curator and visual arts director of the museum, for hosting our gathering with a group of leaders from community cultural centers in the region in 2017. Thank you to Roberto Torres, Carmen Hernandez, Gibran Villalobos, and Cesario Moreno for talking with us about the work of cultural and community organizing in varied Latinx communities in the Midwest. Louis Mendoza, Gina Prez, and George Sanchez provided invaluable feedback on our work in progress at our second gathering in the spring of 2018 at the Ohio State University, nudging us to consider unexplored questions or alternative explanations or to consider our evidence in new ways. We are also grateful to colleagues at OSU who joined in parts of our discussions there and helped us to think through what we were finding in our research. We could not have asked for a more supportive and relaxing environment for further thought, discussion, and editing than the summer of 2018 at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies in Iowa City, Iowa. Thank you, Teresa Magnum, director of the Obermann Center, for hosting us, and many thanks to Obermann staff Erin Hackathorn and Jenna Hammerich for assisting with arrangements. We are also grateful to Gerardo Sandoval for partnering with our project for the week to create three different local public-access TV programs to share our research with Iowans and communities beyond the university.

We thank our collaborators in this volume not only for their keen insight, generosity in feedback and ideas, openness to collaboration, and extremely hard work on this volume but also for much shared joy, laughter, and pleasure in our gatherings, including walks along the lakeshore in Chicago and hikes in Iowa state parks. We recall evenings of shared conviviality at long dining tables in Chicago, Columbus, and Iowa City with much fondness. We valued the opportunity to learn more about each other and to better understand how this research mattered in each of our lives professionally and personally.

We are grateful for the funding that allowed us to launch a multiyear collaboration among scholars across the Midwest that culminates in this volume. Our discussions began in 2014 as we worked to craft a proposal that addressed Latinx cultural and social life in the region as a question about climate. We are grateful to the Ohio State University Humanities Institute, especially Rick Livingston, the associate director, for encouraging this project with a $5,000 seed grant. This allowed us to land a 201719 grant from Humanities Without Walls based at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaigns Humanities Research Institute and funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Thank you to Antoinette Burton, director of the Humanities Research Institute, and to Jason Mierek, director of operations for Humanities Without Walls, who answered many questions along the way.

The support we received from the Humanities Without Walls consortium was supplemented by additional administrative and facilities support from the Ohio State University, the University of Iowa, and Northwestern University, including the absolutely outstanding work of several individuals at our respective universities who helped us to navigate the demands of grant records, reports, and reimbursements. Our hats off in particular to Nick Spitulski, administrative coordinator for the Latina/o Studies Program and the Center for Ethnic Studies at Ohio State University, who provided amazing, outstanding, and excellent support at every step, ensuring that bills were paid, travel went smoothly, and facilities functioned as we needed them. Thank you, Nick! We also thank Corey Campbell of the University of Iowa Department of English, who graciously dedicated her exceptional organizational skills and attention to detail to make our Iowa City gatherings and public events a success.

The publication of this book also received support from our academic institutions, including Northwestern University, the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education at the University of WisconsinMadison with funding from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, and the University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Office of the Vice President for Research.