They first arrived from Oaxaca, Ixtapalapa, Tzintzuntzan, and Mexico City. Some had green cards and visitors’ permits; others didn’t. They lived in barrios and worked in meatpacking houses and steel mills.
Known as mestizos, braceros, wetbacks, and spics, the Mexicans who came to Chicago in the 1920s and ’30s searching for prosperity and independence found prejudice and poverty.
Although never considered strong churchgoers, Chicago’s Mexican-American Catholics have always retained a deep sense of faith. They decorate their homes, stores, and cars with Catholic symbols, paint murals on neighborhood walls, and celebrate feast days with processions. One custom, the Via Crucis, or Way of the Cross, was introduced to Mexico by Spanish conquistadors. Its enactment in Chicago has become a powerful affirmation of faith that holds the Mexican-American community together.
Since 1977, parishioners from Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood have participated in this annual dramatization of Jesus’ agony and death. It begins with a Passion play in the basement of Providence of God Church at Union and 18th Street. Sometimes drowned out by the clamor of the nearby El, audience murmurs can still be heard as Judas betrays Jesus. When soldiers strip Jesus and place a wreath of thorns on his head, women in the audience weep.
Leaving the basement, the cast, led by a mounted Roman centurion, proceed along 18th Street. The actor who plays Jesus drags a nine-foot-long wooden cross to Harrison Park, where Pope John Paul II once celebrated an open-air Mass. Jesus is followed by his grieving mother, the Apostles, Mary Magdalene, and two criminals who will die with him. For the first block, film crews are allowed to shoot footage for the evening news. Soon they are asked to move away so the drama can unfold.
The procession passes hardware stores and cantinas, all closed to show their respect. Makeshift altars, laden with flowers, candles, crucifixes, and pictures of the Holy Family and Our Lady of Guadalupe, line the street. As the Stations of the Cross are recited from a mobile loudspeaker, the words “¿Donde, donde, donde encontraré al Senor?” are sung by the hundreds of people, many dressed in black, who accompany the procession. Most participants walk the long route, but many others gaze down from apartment buildings. All seem somber, even the children, and they speak in whispers. When the bleeding Christ stumbles, veiled women look on with concern; when he falls, soldiers force him to his feet. This is no celebration. The mourners grieve as Jesus goes to his execution.
When the soldiers finally nail Jesus to the cross and raise him up, a hush spreads through the crowd. When he cries out, “Padre,” the weeping and mourning begin anew. The soldiers break the legs of the two criminals, then take a saber and draw blood from Jesus’ side. It is finished. After his body is lowered, it is placed on a litter covered with a floral quilt and lovingly carried to St. Adalbert’s Church. Some mourners follow; others visit the street peddlers in search of something to remember this day of sorrow and prayer.
Every year, more and more Mexicans come to the United States. In 1920, there were only 1,200 in Chicago. By 2000, that figure had grown to more than 750,000. Over the past eighty years, they have made great strides in the city, both professionally and politically, but life is still not easy. Jobs are not as plentiful as they were, wages have not kept up with inflation, living conditions have scarcely improved, and fear of the undocumented has spread. Karen Davalos, a professor of Chicano studies at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles, observed in 2005 that “the Via Crucis in Chicago is about salvation on earth and the parallels between Christ’s suffering and our contemporary oppression.... When they march on the streets of Pilsen, they are experiencing Christ’s pain as it is felt in the community, not just in his flesh and spirit, but also in the people of Pilsen.” Amid the din and pollution of their city, they have experienced Christ’s suffering. Amid the factories, discotheques, and taco stands, they have watched him fall and die.
The clouds darken. The crowds disperse. All that remains is the barren cross and the words “Jesus de Nazaret—Rey de los Indios.”
