The passing of my grandmother in the autumn of 2021 marked the end of an era for our family. She was the gravitational centre that we all orbited around. We were inseparably close. When it was just the two of us, nestled in the comfortable routine of novelas and popcorn munching, she would regale me with tales of growing up in Indiana Harbor, a mere stone’s throw from Chicago. Her name was Esther Lopez, born in the gloaming of the Great Depression in March 1930, amidst the towering silhouette of smoky factories and steel mills.
Historians suggest that the East Chicago’s Harbor was one of the most densely populated Mexican enclaves in the United States at the time. An area of less than a square mile housed about 5,000Mexicans, according to an account by Ciro Harolde Sepulveda, a historian turned Chicano and Boricua studies professor at Wayne State University. He recalls that train conductors at the Harbor stop would cheekily announce it as ‘Mexico City’. This tightly knit Mexican neighborhood, affectionately known as La Colonia del Harbor, played a profound role in molding the woman my grandmother became.
It was only after she was no longer with us that I stumbled upon a long-kept family secret. Apparently, at some point before the summer of 1932 drew to a close, her parents had considered the possibility of ‘self-deporting’ to Mexico —- voluntarily repatriating. As I delved deeper into this revelation, I discovered eerie similarities between that era and our present political climate.
Just as the world was grappling with the economic malaise let loose by the Depression, rivalry for jobs and social welfare surged among residents, leading Americans to clamor for the deportation of Mexicans. In the face of this upheaval, Immigration and Naturalization Services conducted a few attention-grabbing raids, but the brunt of action fell on local informal groups, who resorted to intimidation tactics, often harsh and coercive, to persuade Mexicans and Mexican Americans to ‘self-deport.’ One of my aunts would later verify that my grandma had indeed recounted this narrative to her.
Something that is often overlooked in American history is that the Mexican community was not originally an immigrant community. Instead, it was absorbed into the US following the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which led the US to acquire more than half of Mexico and its native population of approximately 285,000 Mexicans. This is the historical background to the oft-repeated assertion: ‘We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us.’
Despite this history, discrimination against Mexicans and Mexican Americans was profoundly prevalent. As Sepulveda elucidates in his writings, ‘insignificant offenses frequently landed Mexicanos in jail.’ He documents an episode where an indignant Mexican student retorted to a harassing teacher, stating that his ancestors being native to North America made him ‘more of an American’ than the teacher whose forebears hailed from Europe. Discernible seeds of resentment were sown.
David Curtis Stephenson, a Klan leader, is believed by Sepulveda to have been ‘the most powerful man in [Indiana]’ during the 1920s. However, the Harbor’s diverse demographics, boasting a robust Slavic population along with Catholics, managed to stave off significant Klan influence. Yet, the Klan still held regular meetings in East Chicago churches.
By the time the Great Depression struck, the latent anti-Mexican sentiment, which had been simmering beneath the surface for almost a decade, reached its boiling point. Such was the atmosphere that enveloped my grandmother’s early years, indirectly shaping her life and the narratives that she passed onto us.
This grim and often glossed-over chapter of American history was integral to my understanding of my grandmother, and offered me a deeper insight into the struggles she and her family endured. The revelation of her family’s near ‘self-deportation’ profoundly underscored the turmoil faced by Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the wake of the Great Depression.
My grandmother, Esther Lopez, was a woman shaped by this tumultuous history and the tight-knit community of La Colonia del Harbor. Yet, ironically, it was only after her passing in 2021 that we found out about these aspects of her life. The narrative of her existence was intricately woven with the story of the Mexican community in the United States, a legacy that we, as her family, will continue to proudly remember.