Arts & Entertainment
Exhibit Explores the Influence of Mexican Railroad Workers in Chicago
Part of Chicago’s identity is rooted in its railroads, but an important part of that history has long gone untold.
Now, an exhibit at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Pilsen explores how Mexican railroad workers helped shape the city’s infrastructure in the early 1900s.
“Rieles y Raíces: Traqueros in Chicago and the Midwest” takes a closer look at the workers and how the roots they planted still shape communities today.
“A hundred years ago if a Mexican came to Chicago, you weren’t taking an airplane and you weren’t taking a highway because they didn’t exist, you were literally taking the train,” co-curator Ismael Cuevas said. “And when you landed in Chicago at Union Station or any of the stations downtown, the job that was readily available was a railroad job or a steel job or the stockyards.”
Cuevas and co-curator Alejandro Benavides investigated census records that helped trace people who once lived in boxcar settlements along the tracks. Maps, photographs and personal items show how communities carried their culture with them.
It’s a passion project Cuevas said led him to uncover a personal family connection.
“My grandpa told me that I had a great-uncle who worked in the railroad and he was based out of California,” Cuevas said. “So I’m thinking I was going to find a document from California. I ended up finding a document, and it says that he was a section laborer in 1926 to 1932 in the maintenance and weight department in Ottawa, Illinois,” Cuevas said. “So literally about an hour away from here, I had an uncle who was living here with this family.”
The exhibit explores World War II and how a massive labor shortage sparked the Bracero Program, bringing millions of Mexican workers to farms and railroads across the country.
“Mexicans were being embraced during this era because they were needed to fulfill that labor shortage,” Cuevas said.
Things took a turn, however. The exhibit also shows a photo of federal agents deporting Mexicans along the same railroad tracks Cuevas said Mexican laborers helped build.
“We’re literally seeing a moment in history where history is repeating itself,” Cuevas said. “Deportation campaigns happened in the 1930s, deportation campaigns happened in the 1950s, and they’re happening today.”
Cuevas said he hopes uncovering this piece of history inspires others.
“This is not just about railroads,” Cuevas said. “I hope that youth come here, boys and girls of all kinds, and get inspired to do digging of their history, and someday they’ll have an exhibit.”
The exhibition is free at the National Museum of Mexican Art, 1852 W. 19th St. It runs through April 26.
