https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0291-3466
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ToniAnn D Treviño, Mike Amezcua. Making Mexican Chicago: From Postwar Settlement to the Age of Gentrification., The American Historical Review, Volume 129, Issue 3, September 2024, Pages 1245–1246, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhae252
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Mike Amezcua’s Making Mexican Chicago: From Postwar Settlement to the Age of Gentrification provides a meticulous account of how Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans profoundly impacted Chicago’s social, economic, physical, and political landscape in the latter half of the twentieth century. This work significantly contributes to the rich body of literature on how urban Latinx communities crafted unique identities shaped by regional and temporal factors, as well as how they engaged in meaningful placemaking practices. Utilizing local archives, newspapers, and interviews with residents, Amezcua compellingly demonstrates that the experiences of Mexican residents are crucial to understand the complex history of modern cities. His textured exploration of Chicago’s Mexican neighborhoods from the 1950s to the 1990s culminates in a contemporary analysis of the ongoing erasure of Latinx neighborhoods. Amezcua reveals the enduring historical processes leading to current challenges, such as segregation, political disempowerment, gentrification, and systemic violence.
Making Mexican Chicago unearths microlevel stories grounded in La Villita, Las Yardas, the Near West Side, and Pilsen over the course of six chapters. The book presents two pivotal arguments regarding the role of Mexican residents in shaping Chicago. First, Amezcua highlights their proactive agency, illustrating that Mexicans and Mexican Americans actively molded their communities. Segregationist politics enforced spatial and racial barricades to postwar prosperity, and yet Mexican community members created new opportunities for economic advancement and asserted their right to belong. Making Mexican Chicago complements the contributions of scholars like Louise Año Nuevo Kerr, Lilia Fernández, Gabriela Arredondo, and Michael Innis-Jiménez, who have documented Latinx community-building and placemaking within Chicago’s multiracial urban contexts. Amezcua expands upon the historical forces that sought to constrain Mexican urban settlement and examines how Mexican stakeholders engaged with forms of “Brown capitalism” and conservatism to adapt to the evolving cityscape.
