Since the early twentieth century, thousands of Mexican Americans have
lived, worked, and formed communities in Chicago's steel mill
neighborhoods. Drawing on individual stories and oral histories, Michael
Innis-Jiménez tells the story of a vibrant, active community that
continues to play a central role in American politics and society.
Examining how the fortunes of Mexicans in South Chicago were linked to
the environment they helped to build, Steel Barrio offers new insights
into how and why Mexican Americans created community. This book
investigates the years between the World Wars, the period that witnessed
the first, massive influx of Mexicans into Chicago. South Chicago
Mexicans lived in a neighborhood whose literal and figurative boundaries
were defined by steel mills, which dominated economic life for Mexican
immigrants. Yet while the mills provided jobs for Mexican men, they were
neither the center of community life nor the source of collective
identity. Steel Barrio argues that the Mexican immigrant and Mexican
American men and women who came to South Chicago created physical and
imagined community not only to defend against the ever-present social,
political, and economic harassment and discrimination, but to grow in a
foreign, polluted environment.
Steel Barrio reconstructs the everyday strategies the working-class
Mexican American community adopted to survive in areas from labor to
sports to activism. This book links a particular community in South
Chicago to broader issues in twentieth-century U.S. history, including
race and labor, urban immigration, and the segregation of cities.
