Wilfredo Cruz - Chicago Latinos at Work

The first Latino arrivals to Chicago came principally seeking economic opportunities. They came to work. As mainly poor and working-class laborers, they did not have much capital, education, or skills. But they eagerly took on hard, backbreaking, and often dangerous jobs hoping to earn decent wages. They did not come seeking charity. They came searching for a brighter tomorrow.

The onset of World War I and World War II created severe labor shortages in the United States. Midwestern industries needed a plentiful supply of cheap and unskilled labor. These industries looked to Mexicans and Puerto Ricans to fulfill the need. Companies recruited Latino workers to toil and sweat on the railroads and in the steel mills, meatpacking plants, foundries, stockyards, and factories of the city and its surrounding suburbs. Large companies recruited thousands of Latino workers to pick crops as migrant farmworkers throughout the Midwest.

The first significant group of Latino workers in Chicago were Mexicans, who arrived to work on the railroads. In 1916, Chicago-area railroad companies recruited Mexican workers from the Texas-Mexico border. The number of Mexicans working for Chicago railroad companies rose from 206 in 1916 to over 5,255 in 1926. The railroad companies confined Mexicans to the laborer jobs constructing new railroad lines or maintaining existing ones. Mexicans performed physically strenuous work, often in below-freezing weather. Employers were pleased that Mexicans worked hard and long hours for low wages. By 1928, Mexicans were 11 percent of the workers in 15 of the Chicago areas meatpacking, steel, and other plants.

In 1948, U.S. Steel brought in over 500 Puerto Rican contract workers for its Gary, Indiana, plant. Hundreds of Puerto Ricans labored in the steel mills of South Chicago, Gary, and East Chicago, Indiana. Puerto Ricans worked largely in unskilled occupations in the blast furnaces, where the work was unbearably hot and dangerous. An agency of the Department of Labor of Puerto Rico was established in Chicago in 1949 to help recruit even more Puerto Ricans for work in the city.

Early Latino immigrants often experienced discrimination. They were not welcomed as permanent neighbors or accepted as American citizens. Large companies welcomed Latinos as cheap laborers, but these companies hoped that once they completed their contracts they could return to their homeland. Over the intervening years, many more Mexicans and Puerto Ricans voluntarily immigrated to the city seeking work in industrial plants and factories.

This is a 1942 portrait of the family of Bacilio and Paula Valencia (Mexican). The children are unidentified. They were one of the early families of Mexican descent to settle in the South Deering neighborhood. Bacilio worked on the railroads and later in the steel mills. Their older son (center) joined the U.S. Navy. (Courtesy Southeast Historical Society.)

Beginning around 1916, Mexicans began working for railroad companies in Chicago. Chicago-area railroad companies recruited Mexican workers from the Texas-Mexico border. Companies like Santa Fe, Topeka, and Burlington send labor recruiters to Texas to recruit Mexican laborers. The individual in the photograph is unidentified. (Courtesy Illinois Labor History Society.)

Although railroad work was physically challenging, Mexican workers were up to the task. Mexican railroad workers performed the hard, backbreaking laborer jobs such as constructing new railroad lineslike the men in this photograph, who are constructing railroad lines in Chicagos Grant Park in the early 1920s. (Courtesy Illinois Labor History Society.)

Felipe Valdez (Mexican) celebrated his 102nd birthday in 2009. His wife, Rebecca, 94, looks on. The couple has been married for 78 years and has 11 sons and 3 daughters. Felipe worked for a Chicago railroad company from 1927 to 1929. However, due to the Great Depression, Felipe and many other Mexican workers were laid off from their jobs. He, and other Mexican workers, returned to Mexico. In Mexico, Felipe ran a small grocery store for many years. He eventually returned to Chicago. (Courtesy Oscar Valdez.)

Some Mexicans opened small businesses like pool halls, taverns, restaurants, bakeries, and barbershops to cater to the growing Mexican community of South Chicago and South Deering during the early 1930s. Owner Nicolas Garcia (Mexican, foreground) is inside his Nuevo Mundo barbershop at Ninetieth and Brandon Streets in the early 1930s. At his side is his brother Juan. (Courtesy Dolores and Emilio Reyes.)