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Erika Villegas

Posted on by Chicagolandia

Image: Goodman Theater

Erika Villegas

Volunteer Organizer, Interviewed 2024

Erika Villegas is a Chicago-area realtor and community leader. Erika was born and raised on the southwest side of the city and lived in Mexico for a few years as a teenager which helped her become fluent in Spanish. She established herself as one of the top residential Realtors in Chicagoland serving a wide variety of buyers and sellers.

In this clip, she describes encountering the first migrant families and quickly realizing the massive scope of the issue. She describes the initial steps she took to organize her community into what would become a robust care network that spanned multiple police districts.

This full interview with Erika Villegas was taken as part of the Illinois Legislative Latino Caucus Foundation’s “Our Heroes, Our Stories” project. For more, see the tab on the Chicagolandia website.

Hada Matías

Posted on by laurenmeranda

Hada Matías

Interviewed June 21, 2023

Hada Matías was born in Dover, New Jersey and grew up in Elgin, Illinois. In this interview, she examines her family’s Puerto Rican heritage and her own racial identity. She shares insights into her childhood and her growth as a trans woman and a human being. She also explains the challenges and joys of being trans in the United States today.

In this clip, Hada explains her family’s origins in Puerto Rico and shares memories from her uncle’s restaurant, Pat’s Grill.
In this clip, Hada explains how her feminity became a problem in her family, forcing her to hide herself.
In this clip, Hada explains how she went from “living in survival mode” to finding identity, healthcare, and community.
In this powerful clip, Hada shares the joys and challenges of being trans. She also talks about the importance of mutual respect and education, as well as the specific relationship between the cisgender Latinx and trans communities.
In this clip, Hada explains how, at age 17, she traveled to Japan to fulfill a lifelong dream. She also talks about the worries and lessons that came from a recent trip to visit family in Puerto Rico.
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Ramon Angel Campos

Posted on by Chicagolandia

San Luis Potosí, 1958

Ramon Angel Campos

Radio Personality, Musician, Comedian – Interviewed By Anthony Villanueva, 2022

Ramon Angel Campos was born in San Luis Potosí, Mexico in 1942. As a young man, he traveled across Mexico and Central America as part of several musical groups. He regularly performed comedy and impressions under the stage name “Quello El Bello.” In the 1950s and 60s, Campos rubbed elbows with illustrious actors and musicians of Mexico’s world famous Golden Age of Cinema — La Época del Oro del Cine Mexicano — such as Agustín Insunza, Libertad Lamarque, and Manuel Medel. 

Ramon Angel Campos came to the Chicago area in the mid-1960s and has resided here ever since. In 1978, he started Radio Fiesta, Elgin’s first Spanish-language radio program, and was its host for more than twenty years. Over many decades, he organized dances, parties, and musical performances across Chicagolandia, the state of Illinois, and the United States.

In this Spanish-language clip, Campos talks about establishing his first musical group as a 12 year-old boy. He also shares how he developed his impressions of performers like Cantinflas while sitting in the balconies of Mexican theaters.

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Jaime García

Posted on by laurenmeranda

Jaime García

founder of Centro de Información, interviewed 2017

Jaime García was born in Mexico City but immigrated as a young boy with his family to Rockford, Illinois in the early 1960s. As a lifelong United Methodist, Jaime was hired by the church to do outreach to the Spanish-speaking community in Elgin in 1970. Two years later, he helped found social service agency Centro de Información. Today, Centro continues to be the most important Hispanic-serving social service agency in Elgin and the region. In this interview, conducted by students at Elgin Community College, García talks about Elgin in the 1970s and the founding of Centro.

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