Mexican/Mexican American – Chicagolandia https://chicagolandiaoralhistory.org Oral History Project Thu, 19 Dec 2024 22:02:22 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 https://chicagolandiaoralhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/websiteAssets-18-150x150.png Mexican/Mexican American – Chicagolandia https://chicagolandiaoralhistory.org 32 32 Ramon Angel Campos https://chicagolandiaoralhistory.org/2023/07/03/ramon-angel-campos/ Mon, 03 Jul 2023 17:39:24 +0000 https://chicagolandiaoralhistory.org/?p=593

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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Alma Nevarez https://chicagolandiaoralhistory.org/2022/08/16/alma-nevarez/ Tue, 16 Aug 2022 17:42:13 +0000 https://chicagolandiaoralhistory.org/?p=202

Alma Nevarez

custodian, interviewed 2019

Alma Nevarez has worked at Elgin Community College since 2007 and is currently a Custodian Lead.

She describes her first job after high school at City Hall in her hometown in the Mexican state of Durango. Her family, though, was poor and Nevarez eventually decided to migrate to the United States in the early 1980s for higher wages.

Nevarez describes living in Franklin Park and working at a brush factory in the early 1980s. There were few Mexicans living in the area. Nevarez studied English and eventually earned enough to rent her own apartment. She also describes how she fell in love with her future husband at a dance in Mexico. In 1987, the couple married and settled in Elgin.

Nevarez describes the positives and negatives of doing custodial work at Elgin Community College. She explains that she has always taught her own children to treat everyone with respect regardless of their social status or job.

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Jaime García https://chicagolandiaoralhistory.org/2022/07/14/jaime-garcia/ Thu, 14 Jul 2022 23:23:58 +0000 https://chicagolandiaoralhistory.org/?p=77

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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Margarita “Mary” Decker https://chicagolandiaoralhistory.org/2022/07/12/hello-world/ Tue, 12 Jul 2022 15:13:25 +0000 https://chicagolandiaoralhistory.org/?p=1

Margarita “Mary” Decker

Aurora community leader, interviewed 2020

Mary Decker was born María Margarita Rodríguez in 1944 in Crystal City, Texas. Her parents moved to Aurora, Illinois in 1950 where her father worked at Austin-Western’s manufacturing facility. Margarita was a precocious and athletic child. She later became a community leader in Aurora, married welder Stanley Decker, and worked for the Aurora Urban League. Decker eventually became one of two Spanish-speaking real estate agents as Aurora’s east side Mexican immigrant population boomed in the 1960s. In this interview clip, Ms. Decker describes her advocacy on behalf of immigrants in Aurora and her successful campaign running for Kane County Board in 1972. It is likely that Ms. Decker’s victory in that election made her the first Latino or Latina elected to a county-level political office in Illinois history.

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