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Jojo Galvan Mora, CHM Digital Humanities Fellow, writes a brief history of Cuban independence, the country’s ties to the United States, and Cuban relations with Chicago.

On the island of Cuba, May 20 is a day just like any other. However, for the roughly 18,000 Cubans who call Chicago home, and for the thousands more in the diaspora around the world, May 20, 1902, is remembered as one of the most important moments in the island’s history. On this day, the Cuban flag, the Estrella Solitaria (Lone Star), was raised for the first time over the Castle of the Three Kings of Morro in the bay of Havana, marking the end of formal US military occupation, thereby inaugurating the Republic of Cuba as an independent nation, kickstarting over a century of complex international relations between both countries.


View of the Castillo de los Tres Reyes del Morro (Castle of the Three Kings of Morro), Havana, Cuba, c. 1899. Library of Congress, LC-USZC2-6452

The flag raising on May 20 was the culmination of nearly a century of intertwined history between the island nation and the United States. What first began as an amicable trade relationship between the US and the Spanish territory in the early 1800s quickly became so important and profitable that, in 1848, US president James K. Polk formally offered the Spanish empire $100 million to purchase the island, an offer that Spain declined. Despite the denial, trade between the US and the island continued, with the US becoming the largest buyer of Cuban sugar by the 1860s. In 1868, the island entered into militarized conflict seeking independence from Spain in what would come to be known as the Ten Years’ War. During this time of crisis, the US became a place of sanctuary for those fleeing the violence, as the country welcomed more than 10,000 Cubans immigrants throughout the duration of the fighting. Two more conflicts would follow in pursuit of independence from Spanish rule, the first in 1879, and and the second in 1895.


Lithograph depicting the destruction of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor during the Spanish-American War, Havana, Cuba, February 15, 1898. CHM, ICHi-008428. The destruction of the Maine has long been the subject of historical debate, with press reports blaming the incident on Spanish forces, while other records point to an accidental explosion.

The third struggle for independence would finally see the United States entering the conflict after the USS Maine exploded in Havana Harbor in February 1898, with the international press quickly placing the blame on Spanish forces, and the US government formally declaring war in April. The Spanish-American War lasted a little over three months, ending in August with Spanish defeat. As part of their concessions, the Spanish empire ceded control of the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico to the US, and a military protectorate, the Platt Amendment (proposed 1901, approved 1903), over the island of Cuba.


Milk glass dish with lid titled The American Hen, in the shape of an eagle sitting on a nest of eggs labeled ”Porto Rica” (Puerto Rico), Cuba, and Philippines, 1898. CHM, ICHi-179104

The Platt Amendment placed Cuba under US military and financial guardianship until the island’s political leaders, many of whom were installed by the US government, could draft and ratify a new constitution. In 1901, the assembly tasked with drafting a new constitution for Cuba rejected the terms of the Platt Amendment, a demand which then-US president Theodore Roosevelt rejected. In June 1901, a new constitution was approved, with the Platt Amendment included as an official appendix to the new nation’s founding document. In December of that year, elections were held, and after some controversy, Tómas Estrada Palma, a naturalized US citizen residing in the mainland was elected to lead the Cuban Republic, formally ending the occupation when he took office.

The legacy of the Platt Amendment is vast. It established the terms for the lease over the area that would become the infamous Guantanamo Bay detention facility and opened the door to extensive US immigration and investment on the island. By 1902, more than 15,000 residents on the island were US citizens. On the US mainland, the topic of Cuba was one of constant debate, with many seeing the terms of the Platt Amendment as little more than a US version of European imperialism, a sentiment fueled further by growing Cuban populations in cities like Miami and New York.


Charles G. Dawes (holding top hat), vice president of the United States from 1925 to 1929, stands next to Gerardo Machado (wearing glasses), president of Cuba, who is shaking hands with Chicago mayor William Hale Thompson, along with a group of men during a visit to Chicago, 1927. Machado is shaking hands with one of the men. DN-0083489, Chicago Sun-Times/Chicago Daily News collection, CHM

While Cuban migration to the Chicago metro area would not come until the middle of the 20th century, the Windy City served as a host to Cuban civic and political leaders. In 1927, US vice president Charles G. Dawes hosted Cuban president, and later dictator, Gerardo Machado as part of a larger effort to demonstrate goodwill and the importance of commercial and political ties between both nations. While this visit may seem little more than a trivial footnote, it demonstrates the depth behind the history tying both nations as political and economic allies, opponents, and sites of cultural exchange. In many ways, it’s impossible to adequately tell Cuba’s national history without giving a nod to the ever-present shadow of US policy, a complex reality that continues to this day as policies around trade, immigration, and national sovereignty continue to shift.

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Cinco de Mayo is here, and the scent of lime juice is in the air! We’re popping salt on the rims of some festive cocktails. But why? Fighting colonial powers is the answer!

In the United States, Cinco de Mayo has become a general celebration of Mexican culture. Sometimes people even mistake it for Mexican Independence Day (which is actually September 16).


Guerre du Mexique, siège et prise de Puébla / Imp. lith. Charles-François Pinot éditeur, c. 1870. Library of Congress, LC-USZC4-2673

But the holiday is more specifically the celebration of a mixed-heritage (Indigenous, African, and European descent) Mexican victory over the French at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. The French intended to recolonize the newly independent Mexican nation, which won independence from Spain in 1821. Though Mexican resistance to the French colonizers took several more years to reach lasting victory, this was an important moment for Mexicans to publicly and very visibly reject the idea of new and additional colonization.

This rejection was crucial following on the heels of the US-Mexico War (1846–48), during which the US stole more than half of the land belonging to Mexico and occupied the state of Puebla and Mexico City. Then-US president James K. Polk requested that each state in the union send military troops to the US-Mexico border to fight in the war. Illinois governor Thomas Ford sent three regiments of local militia in 1846 in response.


A copy of the order from General William Jenkins Worth saying that the government of the State of Puebla (and any other lands occupied by the US) is abolished by the occupying government of the US, May 22, 1847. CHM, Abakanowicz Research Center, broadsides collection

This local “contribution” to the war may be part of the reason why CHM has General Antonio López de Santa Anna’s ceremonial tack (spurs and bit) in its Americana Collection.


The bit (above) and one of the spurs (below) that belonged to Santa Anna, 1840–50, on display in Aquí en Chicago. Photograph by CHM staff

Santa Anna (1794–1876) was the 8th president of Mexico, a military leader who lost Texas to Sam Houston—and eventually to the US (1845). He allowed US forces to invade Mexico City (1847) and brokered the utterly bad deal (for Mexico) of the Gadsden Purchase (1854), selling off additional Mexican territory.


Undated lithograph of General Antonio López de Santa Anna. CHM, ICHi-053702

The success, from the standpoint of United Statesian empire building, of the US-Mexico War paved the way for much more imperial US expansion during the 19th century including, most notably, the theft of Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines from Spain in 1898.


Milk glass dish with lid titled The American Hen, in the shape of an eagle sitting on a nest of eggs labeled “Purto Rica” (Puerto Rico), Cuba, and Philippines, 1898. CHM, ICHi-179104

So, this year when you’re firing up the grill, consider the ways in which US imperialism has helped create the Chicago we experience today. ¡Salud!

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Spring is in the air. And that means it’s time for full skirts and photo sessions as young people across the area begin celebrating their milestone fifteenth birthdays with a quinceañera. This special event is a coming-of-age ritual for many families of Latin American heritage.

Front view of a quinceañera ensemble from Mi Quince World with a matching bouquet and tiara, c. 2024. Created by Nelly Lizcano; Susana Cavazos, Wendy Clavijo, Anahi Marin, Giselle Morales, Juanita Rangel, Ariella Santoyo. CHM, ICHi-186341

Traditionally, the quinceañera looks a bit like a wedding, minus the groom. A young lady attends mass with her family and then makes her debut at a party surrounded by a coterie of damas and chambelanes (ladies and gentlemen of her court). She may wear her first high heels, give her last doll to a younger member of the family, receive gifts of money, and enjoy toasts in her honor and a delicious meal.


Juanita Villarreal wears a quinceañera dress made by her mother, Maria Villarreal, 1983. Courtesy of Roman and María Villarreal

Though the celebration of the quinceañera often retains a religious component—celebrating mass—the focus is now, more than ever, on the individuality of the celebrant and the culture. And the celebration is beginning to include young men and nonbinary folks as well as young women. Clothing is often the space we use to express our identities, and in the quinceañera that often takes the shape of a gown. 26th St. in Little Village, La Veintiséis, is the place to shop for quinceañera gowns and accessories, not only in Chicago but all over the Midwest and beyond.


Interior view of Mi Quince World, 2018. Courtesy of Jonathan Michael Castillo

After Michigan Avenue, 26th St. is the highest grossing street in Chicago. Chicago has roughly 80,000 Latine businesses (Illinois has roughly 140,000), and, during Operation Midway Blitz last fall, the businesses on 26th St. were hit particularly hard, losing sometimes 40–60% of their business. This is an excruciating, sometimes insurmountable burden for a small, independent business.

Ariella Santoyo and Jesús “Jesse” Nevares, co-own Mi Quince World on 26th St. It grew from their more general apparel business, started in 2006, to focus entirely on the quinceañera in 2008. The selection of gowns on site, mostly made in Mexico and locally, the customization of the gowns, and the focus on themes sets the shop apart. The seamstresses and designers at the shop do the beading, embroidery, lace, and other decorations themselves as well as the entire conjunto of supplies for the event: bouquet, bible, kneeler for mass, guest book, and so on. The tiaras also come from a single maker in Mexico.


Mi Quince World staff pose with the peach gown that was on display in Aquí en Chicago. Photograph by Elena Gonzales

In 2023 Ariella graciously recorded an oral history about the shop and the tradition of the quinceañera and, in 2024, Mi Quince very generously made two glorious—and very different—gowns specifically for the Chicago History Museum’s permanent collection. The gowns each had their time on display Aquí en Chicago (on view through November 8, 2026).

The traditional peach and champagne-colored gown (on display first) might appeal to celebrants across Latin American heritages, not only Mexicans (who make up 73% of the Latine third of Chicago). This gown is a classic, sparkling vision of femininity featuring a skirt nearly eight feet in diameter and a long train covered in rhinestones and applique. The tiara (from a single maker in Mexico) features an iridescent floral pattern.


Left: CHM production manager Ethan Gasbarro and lead preparator Taylor Ausley open the display case to switch out the gowns. Right: CHM mount maker Michael Hall adjusts the bouquet that coordinates with the escaramuza gown. Photographs by CHM staff

On April 29, 2026, the vibrant escaramuza or equestrian-style gown came on view with a distinctly Mexican aesthetic. The escaramuzas or female charros began competing in teams in Mexico in the 1960s and are cultural icons of today of a femininity that is wild and daring yet noble, powerful, and accomplished.


Front view of a charro style quinceaёera dress and accessories, c. 2024. Ensemble includes a bodice with floral appliques, a matching overskirt, a red tiered underskirt, a tiara, a bouquet of faux roses. Created by Nelly Lizcano; Susana Cavazos, Wendy Clavijo, Anahi Marin, Giselle Morales, Juanita Rangel, Ariella Santoyo. CHM, ICHi-186750

This red and black ensemble features a dramatically flounced skirt that may be removed for a sleeker look at the after-party with the black satin miniskirt and bustier embroidered with red roses. Note the horse in rhinestones in the tiara!

The golden buttons feature the image of the Piedra del sol or Aztec Calendar Stone, which appears several times throughout Aquí as a national symbol of Mexico that finds many homes in Chicago. The real Piedra is at the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City and is enormous, weighing approximately 24 tons. The Aztecs carved it using stone from the Xitle Volcano between the 13th and 16th centuries.

Embed from Getty Images

¡Felicidades to all those turning 15 this season!

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Our podcast, The Missing Exhibition: Building Aquí en Chicago, is a finalist for “Best Podcast” at the Chicago Headline Club’s Peter Lisagor Awards! In this blog post, The Missing Exhibition co-creators Elena Gonzales, Curator of Civic Engagement & Social Justice at CHM, and Jesse Betend, producer at Rivet360, write about how the podcast is a celebration of Latine history in Chicago that weaves the immediate with the often overlooked.

In our contemporary media landscape, we’ve become accustomed to sound bites, vanishing social media posts, and myriad competing, cacophonic demands on our attention. Long-form journalism feels like a thing of the past, when quaint radio dramas held us rapt on our sofas. It has been a great honor and pleasure to bring the Chicago History Museum’s first podcast into being at this particular time, when we crave a moment to sink into stories without distraction. The Missing Exhibition allows listeners to delve more deeply into just a few of the many histories within the exhibition, Aquí en Chicago.

Like the exhibition, the podcast started with high school students from Instituto Justice and Leadership Academy in Pilsen challenging CHM to better reflect their communities’ history.


Students at Instituto Justice and Leadership Academy with their signs protesting CHM’s lack of Latine content in its exhibitions, 2019. Photograph courtesy of Anton Miglietta

Our initial goal was to document the protest and find ways to extend the presence of Latine histories beyond the year that the exhibition would be open. These stories are crucial to our understanding of Chicago, whatever our individual backgrounds may be, and we could not allow them to feel like a flash in the pan. The series touches institutions, power structures, and public narratives, and balances a broad context with specific and detailed moments both fragile and unfolding.

In addition, we’ve been able to take up topics that arose too close to opening to share in the exhibition. We opened Aquí in October 2025 amidst Operation Midway Blitz, a hate-fueled, racist mass-deportation campaign focused specifically, at that time, on Latine folks in and around Chicago. At the same time, the podcast was already in production.

We chose to lean into this opportunity for truth telling and documentation of the present in conversation with the past. We pieced together histories that were fragmented, but that echoed the violence and specific actions of our contemporary moment. In cases where traditional records failed—for example, researching people who never returned after mass deportation campaigns such as so-called “Operation Wetback”—absence became part of the story itself.


Map showing the Studebaker factory on S. Archer Ave. between S. Cicero Ave. and S. Laramie Ave. Plate 55 (1959), Insurance maps of Chicago, Illinois, vol. E, Ink on paper, 1925, Sanborn Map Co., United States. CHM, ICHi-189067

Parts of the story emerged through the corridos of Jesus “Chuy” Negrete, the beloved activist, songwriter, and scholar whose music immortalized everyday Chicagoans and 500 years of Chicano history alike. Corridos are traditional Mexican ballads—story-songs Negrete described as a “musical newspaper”—that preserve what official archives often don’t. A single line from the lyrics of Negrete’s ballad for Rudy Lozano, written for the funeral of the activist-turned-politician who was murdered in his home at the height of his career, revealed suspicions the press and law enforcement had largely ignored.


Jesús “Chuy” Negrete (center) and Teresita de la Torre (right foreground) play in homage to Rudy Lozano outside Farragut High School, Chicago, c. 1983. STM-036822153, Al Seib/Chicago Sun-Times

We began to find evidence of disappearing histories all around us. The story of a community leader’s legacy obscured by press coverage of his alleged killer’s trial led us to former Chicago Reader reporter Gary Rivlin, whose work suggests what the community believed all along: that Lozano’s death was political, part of a broader pattern of power and retaliation that the official story never fully confronted.


Rudy Lozano (right) at a meeting of CASA (the Centro de Accion Social Autonomo, or the Center for Autonomous Social Action), Chicago, February 12, 1975. ST-40001425-0011, Chicago Sun-Times collection, CHM

These themes are especially present in the second episode, “Sound & Faith: Echoes of Defiance in a Sanctuary City,” which traces the sanctuary movement at a time when that history is being aggressively weaponized to justify mass deportations. From Adriana Portillo-Bartow, a Guatemalan mother fleeing military violence in the 1980s, to Elvira Arellano, whose protest inside a Humboldt Park church after 9/11 reignited a national movement, we felt it more pressing than ever to document the reasons Chicago became the second city in the nation to offer refuge to immigrants fleeing violence in their home countries.


Adalberto Memorial United Methodist Church, where Elvira Arellano took sanctuary, in Chicago’s West Town community area, 2022. Photograph by Rebekah Coffman

The Missing Exhibition is an invitation to listen differently, to consider whose histories are told, who gets to tell them, and what it takes to change that. Join us in close listening as well as close looking within the exhibition Aquí en Chicago through November 8, 2026.

In this blog post, Gladys De La Torre, a Kichwa cultural organizer and writer, writes about Pawkar Raymi, one of the most significant celebrations of the Andean peoples, and the Mushuk Nina ceremony, which take place at the spring equinox. Our exhibition, Aquí en Chicago, features objects from the Kichwa Otavalo community.

Read the original post in Spanish./Leer este post en español.

The great celebrations of the Andean peoples originate from the profound observations of changes occurring in Pachamama, or Mother Earth. Based on this ancestral knowledge, specific times of the year are recognized as periods of transformation, renewal, and gratitude, influenced by nature’s cycles and its relationship with the sun. This knowledge has been passed down from generation to generation as part of a living collective memory. These periods were also linked to cycles of planting and cultivation, as the Indigenous peoples organized their lives in relation to the rhythms of Earth and the observation of the sun.

Within this context is Pawkar Raymi, one of the most significant celebrations of the Andean peoples, especially the Kichwa communities. The word “pawkar” refers to blossoming, abundance, and the moment when life springs forth anew with strength. This time marks a period of renewal that is expressed both in nature and in community life.

During this time of renewal, the Mushuk Nina ceremony, which translates to “new fire,” is also performed. Mushuk Nina represents the ritual lighting of a fire that symbolizes new beginnings, purification, and the continuity of community life.

These celebrations are symbolically linked to March 21, or the spring equinox, a moment when day and night are in balance. The equinox is the time of year when day and night are of equal length because the sun is positioned directly over Earth’s equator. This phenomenon marks the changing of the seasons and has been observed by Indigenous peoples as a sign of renewal, planting, and balance with nature.

Over the past decade, the Kichwa Otavalo community in Chicago has held Mushuk Nina ceremonies as part of their cultural continuity practices. Through community gatherings, the symbolic lighting of the fire becomes an act of reaffirming their identity, involving families, elders, youth, and children, and strengthening the transmission of ancestral knowledge for this migrant community.

In the Indigenous worldview, Pawkar Raymi and Mushuk Nina can be understood as practices that mark cycles of time, allow for the collective expression of processes of renewal, and strengthen the social and spiritual bonds that sustain community life. These ceremonies not only accompany cycles of nature but also reinforce collective memory and a sense of belonging.

For the Kichwa Otavalo communities living in the diaspora, these practices take on an even deeper meaning. Celebrating far from our ancestral territory is a way to keep our identity alive, transmit knowledge to new generations, and reaffirm that culture is not limited to a geographical space but lives within people and the community. In Chicago, a place with many migrants, this flourishing doesn’t always occur in the land itself, but rather in community ties, collective organization, and shared memory.

“Pawkar kawsayta apamun, mushuk nina yuyayta kawsachin.” (Blossoming brings life, and new fire rekindles memory.)

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En este blog, Gladys De La Torre, una organizadora y escritora cultural kichwa, escribe sobre Pawkar Raymi, una de las celebraciones más significativas de los pueblos andinos, y la ceremonia de Mushuk Nina, que se realizan al equinoccio de primavera. En nuestra exposición Aquí en Chicago se presentan objetos procedentes de la comunidad kichwa otavalo.

Leer este blog en inglés./Read the post in English.

Las grandes celebraciones de los pueblos andinos tienen su origen en la observación profunda de los cambios que ocurren en la Pachamama, la Madre Tierra. A partir de estos saberes ancestrales, se reconocen momentos específicos del año como tiempos de transformación, renovación y agradecimiento, influenciados por los ciclos naturales y la relación con el sol. Estos conocimientos han sido transmitidos de generación en generación como parte de una memoria colectiva viva. Estos tiempos también estaban ligados a los ciclos de siembra y cultivo, ya que los pueblos originarios organizaban su vida en relación con los ritmos de la tierra y la observación del sol.

En este marco se comprende el Pawkar Raymi, una de las celebraciones más significativas de los pueblos andinos, en especial de las comunidades kichwas. La palabra pawkar hace referencia al florecimiento, a la abundancia y al momento en que la vida vuelve a brotar con fuerza. Este tiempo marca una etapa de renovación que se expresa tanto en la naturaleza como en la vida comunitaria.

Junto a este tiempo de renovación, se realiza también la ceremonia del Mushuk Nina, que en español significa fuego nuevo. El Mushuk Nina representa el encendido ritual de un fuego que simboliza los nuevos comienzos, la purificación y la continuidad de la vida comunitaria.

Estas celebraciones se vinculan simbólicamente al 21 de marzo, momento asociado al equinoccio, cuando el día y la noche se encuentran en equilibrio.

El equinoccio es el momento del año en que el día y la noche tienen la misma duración, debido a que el Sol se posiciona sobre la línea ecuatorial de la Tierra. Este fenómeno marca cambios de estación y ha sido observado por los pueblos originarios como señal de renovación, siembra y equilibrio con la naturaleza.

Desde los saberes andinos, este momento no se concibe únicamente como una fecha, sino como un tiempo propicio para acompañar los ciclos de la vida, fortalecer la relación con la naturaleza y renovar los lazos comunitarios.

En la última década, la comunidad kichwa otavalo en Chicago ha venido realizando ceremonias de Mushuk Nina como parte de sus prácticas de continuidad cultural. A través de encuentros comunitarios, el encendido simbólico del fuego se convierte en un acto de reafirmación identitaria, donde participan familias, mayores, jóvenes y niños, fortaleciendo la transmisión de saberes ancestrales en contexto migratorio.

En la cosmovisión Indigena, el Pawkar Raymi y el Mushuk Nina pueden comprenderse como prácticas que marcan los ciclos del tiempo, permiten expresar colectivamente procesos de renovación y fortalecen los vínculos sociales y espirituales que sostienen la vida comunitaria. Estas ceremonias no sólo acompañan los ciclos naturales, sino que refuerzan la memoria colectiva y el sentido de pertenencia.

Para las comunidades kichwas otavalos que vivimos en la diáspora, estas prácticas adquieren un significado aún más profundo. Celebrar lejos del territorio ancestral es una forma de mantener viva la identidad, transmitir el conocimiento a las nuevas generaciones y reafirmar que la cultura no está limitada a un espacio geográfico, sino que vive en las personas y en la comunidad. En contextos migratorios como Chicago, el florecimiento no siempre ocurre en la tierra, pero sí en los lazos comunitarios, en la organización colectiva y en la memoria compartida.

“Pawkar kawsayta apamun, mushuk nina yuyayta kawsachin”. (El florecimiento trae vida, y el fuego nuevo renueva la memoria.)

Recursos adicionales

As the end of Ramadan approaches, Rebekah Coffman, Curator of Religion and Community History, writes about the Ojalá Islamic Center in Berwyn, Illinois, the first Latino-led mosque in the Midwest, and how it formed to be a space for Latino Muslims in the Chicago area.


Ojalá community picnic, 2025. Courtesy of Ojalá Foundation

At sundown on Thursday, March 19, 2026, Muslims around the world are expected to conclude the month of Ramadan with celebrating Eid al-Fitr, the festival that breaks the fast. Here in Chicago, 3–4% of Chicagoans identify as Muslim. Within the Chicago metro area’s diverse Muslim communities, a small but growing group is the Latino Muslim community. In a 2023 study published by the Institute for Social Policy & Understanding (ISPU), roughly 1 in 5 United Statesians identify as Latino. As of 2020, 9% of Muslims in the United States identify as Latino, up from 5% in 2017.


The Grand Mezquita of Córdoba, an example of Umayyad architecture and culture in Spain, September 7, 2012. In the 16th century, a Renaissance-style Catholic cathedral was inserted into the building, making it today known as the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba. Photograph by Nicolas Vollmer, Wikimedia Commons

While there has been a noted uptick in Latinos converting to Islam over the last two decades, Islam is not entirely unfamiliar to Spanish-speaking communities. Historically, Spain was under Islamic rule in the southern Al-Andalus region through the Arabic-speaking Umayyad Dynasty from the 8th to the 15th centuries. Through this, Spanish history and culture is intertwined with Muslim influences. While Spanish colonization of the Americas is often discussed through a Catholic-dominant lens, cultural remnants persist of this Arab Muslim presence. A clear example is in the Spanish language itself, which retains some 8,000 words that have Arabic roots. In fact, one of the most common Spanish expressions—Ojalá, which is typically used like the word “hopefully” in English—means “God willing” and is related to the Arabic phrase “Insha’Allah.”


Sign outside the Ojalá Foundation: Latino Muslims of Chicago building in Berwyn, Illinois, 2026. Photograph by Rebekah Coffman

This linguistic cultural tie has become a marker for Chicagoland’s Latino Muslim community. The Ojalá Islamic Center in Berwyn, Illinois, is the first Latino-led mosque in the Midwest. A central part of their mission is to build bridges between the Latino and Muslim communities. In our exhibition Aquí en Chicago, we trace the many diverse ways Latine communities have created and maintained space for themselves in the city, including through diverse spiritual practices. The Ojalá Foundation: Latino Muslims of Chicago came through the unification of different communities of practice realizing the specific need to connect and support these burgeoning communities.


From left: Alma Campos, Imam Christopher Abdul Kareem Pavlicek, and Vilma Lopez, cofounders of Ojalá Foundation: Latino Muslims of Chicago. Courtesy of Ojalá Foundation

Twenty years ago, there was little representation of Latino Muslims in the Midwest. This began to shift through the organizing efforts of two Latina women, Vilma Lopez and Alma Campos. Vilma Lopez was born in the Dominican Republic, where she lived in the second largest city—Santiago—and attended Catholic school. Growing up Catholic, Vilma felt drawn to religious practice and after high school joined a convent with the intention of becoming a nun. However, some months in, she realized this wasn’t her path and instead joined her parents to come to the United States in 1991. They initially settled in New York, and it was there that she was first exposed to Islam and started attending the Islamic Center of New York. A year later, she embraced Islam. In 1997, she came to Chicago to join her then-husband. She initially attended the Muslim Community Center in the Irving Park neighborhood. At MCC, she began to meet other Latino Muslims, including Alma Campos.

Alma embraced Islam when she was in her early twenties as a college student. As a first-generation American from a Mexican immigrant family, her journey to Islam began years earlier in high school, where she attended a Catholic school and was introduced to the faith through her best friend, who was Muslim. At the time, Alma often felt alone in her journey and even traveled to Mexico in search of a Muslim community but was unable to find one then.


Women of Ojalá. Courtesy of Ojalá Foundation

Both Alma and Vilma experienced challenges of being new to Islam and feelings of isolation from their broader Latino communities. They felt an urgency to create the scaffolds of support in which they wanted to raise their families, so together they founded Latino Muslims of Chicago, a grassroots organization to do just that. Importantly, they anchored this network of care in their identities as women, as Latinas, and as Muslims. They knew in order to be sustainable they needed to embrace their Latinidad through food, language, and culture. This included being able to practice in Spanish and to have access to resources like the Koran also in Spanish.

Several years after Latino Muslims of Chicago were informally gathering and centering the experiences of Latina Muslim women in Chicagoland, similar efforts began to connect Latino men and other converts to Islam. Imam Christopher Abdul Kareem Pavlicek, the third cofounder of Ojalá Foundation, was pivotal to these efforts. Imam Pavlicek grew up in Rogers Park and Naperville. Though himself of Croatian background, he felt embraced by the Latino community when he lived in Pilsen, and this continued to be true after he embraced Islam a few years later.  Sylvia Morales, a community member originally from Texas who came to Chicago in 2010, suggested Alma, Vilma, and Imam Pavlicek combine efforts to strengthen their shared mission of supporting Latinos and new Muslims. In cofounding Ojalá Foundation in 2018, Imam Pavlicek wanted to ensure the experience of Latino Muslims and those new to Islam was uplifted amidst the increasingly diverse Muslim community.


Ojalá’s Neighborly Deeds Initiative. Courtesy Ojalá Foundation

For over eight years, Ojalá: Latino Muslims of Chicago have centered their efforts in civic action. An example is the program Neighborly Deeds, which responds to the needs of Chicagoland’s unhoused populations through providing warm meals and basic supplies like blankets and hygiene products. Another example is Andando y Limpiando, where community members join for a walk and to pick up trash in the neighborhood as an act of service. They especially wanted to ensure non-Muslim family members and friends felt welcome to participate and be present.


Eduardo Castaneda, owner of Lalo’s Mexican Restaurant Chain, in front of Lalo’s on South Harlem Avenue, Berwyn, Illinois, March 25, 1993. ST-11002576-0034, Chicago Sun-Times collection, CHM

For several years, Ojalá remained itinerate, but in 2024, they began looking for a permanent home. They desired to be in the near west suburbs to be close to Latino communities. Community leaders looked at locations in Cicero and Berwyn, which are 88.8% and 60.2% Latino today, respectively. After an initial location was scouted in Cicero, the community came close to purchasing a property at Harlem Ave and Cermak Road, the previous site of an old standby Mexican restaurant, Lalo’s. However, the purchase did not move forward, and the community continued its search.


Exterior of the former First Reformed Church of Berwyn, now the Ojalá Foundation, 1900 Oak Park Avenue, Berwyn, Illinois, 2026. Photograph by Rebekah Coffman

Soon after, they found their new home—a former church building on Oak Park Avenue and 19th Street in Berwyn. The space was originally built in 1948 as the First Reformed Church of Berwyn, which initially served a predominantly Dutch heritage community. This congregation originated in the 1840s and ’50s when families from the Netherlands immigrated to Chicago and began forming Dutch Reformed congregations. Initially meeting in homes, the First Reformed congregation had several church buildings in Chicago before moving west to the suburbs as part of white flight from the city during the 1920s–40s. During the 1920s, Berwyn became the fastest-growing suburb in Chicagoland, and it experienced another period of significant growth after World War II, the same period First Reformed Church was constructed. Berwyn remained predominantly Euro-American until the 1990s, when the number of Latino residents grew. By 2000, 38% of residents identified as Latino, and within the last 25 years it has become a Latino majority community.


Ojalá’s main prayer hall, 2026. Photograph by Rebekah Coffman


Women’s prayer section in the Ojalá prayer hall, 2026. Photograph by Rebekah Coffman

In 2017, First Reformed Church merged with Bethel Reformed Church of Chicago to become CrossRoads Community Church, and in 2024 they stopped worshipping in Berwyn to focus their ministry in Chicago. Ojalá closed on the sale of the building on May 5, 2025, after months of fundraising, and began adapting the sacred space into their new home, an example of architectural conservation known as “sacred shift.” This included sympathetically adapting the former sanctuary into the new prayer hall by removing pews and installing new carpet, refreshing the fellowship hall, and making plans to adapt the restrooms to include more space for wudu, or ritual washing. In 2026, they are celebrating their first Ramadan in the building, including nightly iftars to break their fast together and to welcome others from the surrounding community—Muslim and non-Muslim alike. This includes crucial work to support Latinos across Chicagoland during a period of targeted activities by ICE. Today, the Ojalá community includes hundreds of congregants and supporters, ensuring Latino Muslims have a supportive home in Chicagoland for the future.

With thanks to Alma Campos, Vilma Lopez, Sylvia Morales, Karen Rios, and Imam Christopher Abdul Kareem Pavlicek for speaking to the author, and to the Ojalá Foundation for their hospitality.

Additional Resources

Jojo Galvan Mora, CHM Digital Humanities Fellow, writes about the significance of Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo being elected president of Mexico, how Chicago’s Mexican community both influenced and is impacted by it, and the community’s importance in local, national, and international politics.

As midnight drew closer on June 2, 2024, Mexican voters on both sides of the US-Mexico border witnessed history when that year’s presidential election was called in favor of Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, cementing her place in history as Mexico’s 66th president and as the first woman and first Jewish person to hold the nation’s highest office. Sheinbaum succeeded Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), continuing the leadership of the progressive National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) over Mexico for another six years. Chicagoans with Mexican citizenship played their role in a historic moment of their own: the 2024 election marked the first time that Mexicans living abroad in the US could vote in person at the Mexican Consulate on the Near West Side.

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Mexican nationals wait to cast their vote in the Mexican presidential election at the Mexican consulate in Chicago on June 2, 2024. Photo by KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images

According to data from Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Eleccciones (National Elections Institute or INE) more than 10,000 Mexican citizens registered to vote in Illinois. The Mexican consulate in Chicago reported 1,500 in-person voting slots.

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A Mexican national fills in her ballot for the Mexican presidential election at the Mexican consulate in Chicago on June 2, 2024. Photo by KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images

Sheinbaum was born in Mexico City to a Jewish family with Eastern European roots. Both of Sheinbaum’s parents were scientists, her father a chemist, while her mother worked as a biologist. This upbringing led Sheinbaum to the sciences, and she earned a PhD in energy engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in 1995. Sheinbaum first entered politics in 2000 when AMLO, then Head of Government for Mexico City, named her Environmental Secretary.

In 2015, the largest borough in Mexico City, Tlalpan, elected Sheinbaum as mayor. Riding a wave of local popularity, Sheinbaum went on to win the election for the Head of Government in Mexico City in 2018, the same year that her longtime mentor, AMLO, secured the Mexican presidency. Her time in office was marked by a science-forward approach to the COVID-19 pandemic and policy reforms focused on addressing gender violence, outdated public infrastructure, and initiatives to make education available to all. Sheinbaum’s popularity as the leader of the largest urban metro area in all of North America made her a logical choice to succeed AMLO after the conclusion of his six-year presidential term. She won close to 60% of the vote at home and from Mexicans abroad, and carrying 31 out of 32 states in the country. She was inaugurated in October of that year, and her leadership has been defined by policies focused on energy reform, nationwide passenger rail modernizations, and social welfare programs designed to support children and mothers.

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New president of Mexico Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo receives the presidential sash during the investiture ceremony as part of the presidential inauguration on October 1, 2024, in Mexico City, Mexico. Photo by Manuel Velasquez/Getty Images

In Chicago, Sheinbaum represents an aspirational figure for thousands of people with Mexican heritage in the metro area. According to data from a report published by University of Illinois Chicago’s Great Cities Institute in 2024, as of 2022, Mexicans made up at least 50% of the population across 15 neighborhoods in the city, and about one-fifth (roughly half a million) of the city’s entire population.

Sheinbaum’s ascension to the presidency also highlights the resounding impact of women in both local and transnational politics, especially in a city like Chicago, where women with Mexican ancestry are increasingly visible as business owners, educators, and political leaders. As an international figure, Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum represents a milestone in the history of women achieving high leadership roles, and also the undeniable importance of Chicago’s Latine community as constituents in both local and international politics.


This photograph of “Fallen Dictator,” from Marcos Raya’s (b. 1948) mural Prevent World War III (1980) is currently on view in Aquí en Chicago. The banner depicted in the mural reads “MORENA” (Sheinbaum’s political party) and previously depicted a red and black portrait of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara, remnants of which can still be seen in the outline behind the current banner. Photograph courtesy of Mario Hernandez, 2024

For more about Chicago’s Latine history, visit Aquí en Chicago, open until November of 2026.

For more on the history of Mexican political movements in Chicago, read Making Mexican Chicago: From Postwar Settlement to the Age of Gentrification by Mike Amezcua, available in our Abakanowicz Research Center.

Photograph © Tipping Point Photography

How can we help shape our communities and country for the better? By Using our Civic Superpowers!

Made by Us developed Civic Superpowers for their annual Civic Season, and CHM staff has applied them to develop this classroom activity. Students examine Amplifiers, Connectors, Nurturers, and Defenders from history to see how these powers and their actions have shaped our democracy. Explore the lesson and how your students can discover their own Civic Superpowers.

Download the Civic Superpowers Activity Guide Download the Civic Superpowers posters (11″ x 17″)

In recognition of Women’s History Month, we share excerpts from a forthcoming Chicago History article by Ann Saunders on her mother Doris E. Saunders, a librarian, author, editor, businesswoman, and professor, perhaps best known in Chicago for her work with Johnson Publishing Company, which published Ebony and Jet magazines and empowered Black self-representation.


Promotional image of Doris E. Saunders for her radio show, The Doris Saunders Show, which broadcast on WBEE, c. 1966. Courtesy of Ann Saunders 

In Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood, there were businesses to establish and manage, newspapers like the Chicago Defender to keep up with and contribute to, and churches and religious institutions that offered both refuge and responsibility. Within this vibrant world, my mother, Doris E. Saunders (1921–2014), lived and thrived. A hidden figure in the story of Black Chicago and beyond, she left behind a legacy that few know, but one that deserves a place in the city’s historical memory.

Early Life and Literary Roots

An only child born to an only child, my mother grew up without siblings or cousins. She craved family—and with it, the stories, kinship, and culture that connect generations. Books became her extended family. As an early young reader and precocious, she found companionship in books like Heidi (published in 1821). I was named after the heroine in Anne of Green Gables (published in 1908). By age twelve, she was reading the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Scott’s Official History of the American Negro in the World War (1919) by Emmett Jay Scott, which were permanent fixtures on her grandmother’s library table.

Her education unfolded in Chicago’s public integrated schools and its libraries, especially the Hall Branch Library, which opened in 1932 in Bronzeville. Named after Dr. George Cleveland Hall, a surgeon and cofounder of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History with Carter G. Woodson, the Hall Branch was created, my mother said, because Hall believed his community deserved a first-class library. I think my mother drew resourcefulness and agency from books.

In 1935, my mother met Charlemae Rollins, the Hall Branch’s children’s librarian, who would become a lifelong mentor and friend. Rollins introduced her to the canon of Black literature—Langston Hughes’s poetry, W. E. B. Du Bois’s essays, James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1905), Nella Larsen’s fiction, and The Negro in Chicago (1922), Charles S. Johnson’s landmark study of the 1919 race riot. My mother had grown up hearing about that riot in family conversations, and reading Johnson’s analysis gave her a context for those memories.

Johnson Publishing and the Innovative Information Management

Encouraged by Rollins, my mother wrote a letter to John H. Johnson, publisher of Ebony magazine, proposing something that had not been done before: a special in-house library designed specifically to house reference materials by and about Black people. This was an opportunity to realize a long-held concept, now with a focus on supporting the editorial and advertising work of Johnson Publishing Company (JPC). When interviewed, she was hired on the spot.

John H. Johnson established his company in Chicago in 1941 with his first publication, Negro Digest (later renamed Black World). He began publishing Ebony in November 1945. Ebony became the company’s flagship magazine. Ebony shared stories, news, and information about African American life. The company and all its publications fostered social, cultural, economic, and political awareness and development among generations of people of African descent across the globe.


Ebony Special Issue: The Emancipation Proclamation, cover designed by Herbert Nipson and Norman Hunter, Johnson Publishing Company, Chicago, September 1963. CHM, ICHi-183267

So, in 1949, at 27, my mother began creating a groundbreaking corporate library—the first of its kind—organized around the Black experience as its primary focus. Because the library was Mom’s concept, she established the initial parameters of its scope by defining the library’s position in the corporate structure. Unlike many other corporations where the library was in the lower echelons of the corporate structure, this library was on the same level as other departments, including advertising, editorial, circulation, and subscriptions.

* * * *

But she was more than a librarian. She was, in her words, an “information and marketing manager.” In an era before computers, PDFs, internet access, mobile phones, or even electric typewriters, she became the living interface for JPC’s information infrastructure. Working with carbon paper, mimeograph machines, manual typewriters, and landline telephones, she built a system that revolutionized how JPC accessed, analyzed, and archived information. Her design served every department across the company, providing a responsive, interdisciplinary model of information management tailored to JPC’s mission and markets.


Black World, edited by Hoyt Fuller with cover designed by Herbert Temple, Johnson Publishing Company, Chicago, August 1971. CHM, ICHi-182539

From the start, she established associations, memberships, subscriptions, and networks with organizations whose publications and data would underpin her work, supporting JPC’s advertising staff. In her first few years, she collaborated closely with the company’s New York advertising office, led by William P. Grayson. Her pioneering marketing research verified what Black newspapers already knew, but what most mainstream advertisers had failed to realize or accept: the existence of a vibrant, $16 billion “Negro market.” Her research helped persuade national advertisers to buy ad space in Ebony, driving the company’s financial success.


People enjoying an open house for the new Johnson Publishing Company building, 820 South Michigan Avenue, May 16, 1972. ST-70004694-0042, Chicago Sun-Times collection, CHM

This was not guesswork. My mother’s ability to extrapolate, interpret, and organize census, demographic, and business data had been honed during her year in the Social Science and Business Division at the Chicago Public Library. By the end of 1955, Ebony could point to advertising revenue, rather than circulation alone, as the marker of its success. This shift also helped open new avenues in the broader media landscape, including commercial photography, advertising, and publishing directed at Black audiences. By 1970, other media companies were launching books and magazines targeting Black consumers, once it became clear just how profitable the market was.

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