EXTRA: Are you sure foreigners are taking over everything in this nation?

I spent my Saturday afternoon in the Pilsen neighborhood, checking out the set-up along 18^th Street and the Mole de Mayo festival.

McDonald's on a street named for Cesar Chavez, or ...

It’s an event intended to give various restaurants a chance to show off their special recipes for that uniquely Mexican dish – mole. That mix of the cocoa bean and assorted spices mixed into a sauce served atop chicken, turkey or other meats.

... mariachis playing in between Giordano's and Subway? Photos by Gregory Tejeda

IT HAPPENS TO be a personal favorite of mine, and I was anxious to try unique variations on the dish (which my mother often served atop chicken with rice).

But the part of the day that caught my attention was the ethnic and racial blend of people that turned out to what some people would want to believe is the ultimate Mexican neighborhood in Chicago.

Chato's for pasta, along with ...

Just as many white people of assorted ethnicities showed up and gave the mole a try. The fact that this one-time immigrant enclave that has been through so many ethnicities during Chicago’s history truly is going through gentrification.

... Memo's for hot dogs

For it seems there were so many mixtures of the old (being the Mexicans who have been a part of Pilsen since the 1950s) and the new (upper-scale individuals who like the idea of a city address not too terribly far from jobs downtown (it’s about a 15-minute ride from “the Loop” to the 18^th Street CTA ‘el’ train platform).

I’M STILL TRYING to figure out the most off-beat sight I saw – the stage on 18^th Street where I saw a female mariachi band perform, located in between Giordano’s and Subway franchise restaurants.

Or the McDonald's franchise located on Chicago's Cesar Chavez Street.

A faded Mexican mural on a barbecue joint

The conservative ideologues who would have you think that the foreigners, especially all those dreaded Mexicans, have “taken over” this country ought to see these sites. It would go a long way towards shutting them up – except that the ideologues usually don’t worry about having fact to back up their rhetorical trash.

I also couldn’t help but notice several restaurants in the neighborhood being operated – based on their names – by people of Mexican ethnic origins. But who are serving up most definitely un-Mexican foods.

Still sights w/in Pilsen ...

PASTA AND HOT DOGS, to be exact. Assimilation at work. Perhaps somebody figures that even Mexican-Americans are anxious for something else to eat, even though the ideologues might have inane thoughts about serving up burritos.

Now I know some people see these sights and they get scared. They’re afraid the white people are going to drive up the rents and make it too expensive for others to afford to live there.

Although there has to be a mid-ground we can reach between a neighborhood remaining an ethnic enclave and becoming the latest version of Lincoln Park – which itself was once a Puerto Rican neighborhood back in the days when Pilsen had an overflow of Czech immigrants and it made sense the neighborhood was named for one of the largest cities in what is now the Czech Republic.

... that I'm sure will manage to offend ...

It was pleasing to see so many interacting with good behavior.

I DIDN’T SEE any bad incidents, and in fact there wasn’t even a heavy police presence.

I saw two lone officers walking along 18^th Street, and they said it was a pleasant afternoon. Which is something I'm sure the ideologues will refuse to believe can occur in an ethnic enclave in Chicago. We are, after all, the "murder capital" of the country -- even though it's really St. Louis, with Baltimore and New Orleans close behind.

... the ideologue idiots amongst us

Not even the presence of $5 beers got people to misbehave. Perhaps it was the presence of all the food that kept people from acting up. Or at the very least, kept us all stuffed to the point where none of us would have felt compelled to start up any trouble.

Although I have to admit to one thing – despite not being displeased with anything I ate or drank, I still have to say; none of the moles compared to the way my mother use to make them.

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Long-time ethnic enclave turning white and wealthier, but is that a plus?

Gentrification is a label with negative connotations to some people, usually those whose long-time home neighborhoods get improved to the point where they can’t afford to live there any more.

Proximity to downtown makes Pilsen attractive to all

Some want to say there’s nothing wrong with upgrading a neighborhood. It ought to be desired.

BUT WHAT OF the situation where upgrade means creating improvements meant to attract newcomers, without any interest in improving life quality for the existing residents.

That seems to be the situation taking place in Pilsen, the long-time immigrant neighborhood whose character has evolved so much throughout the years and is undergoing yet another round of change.

Pilsen carries the name of a village now in the Czech Republic. Sure enough, it was once a Czech enclave in Chicago. It has been home to many ethnic groups as they first enter the United States. Since the 1960s, the neighborhood language has been Spanish – it has been a Mexican enclave.

But the DNA Info website reported on a University of Illinois at Chicago study of the neighborhood demographics – the Mexicans are moving out; being displaced not by other immigrants but by many white people.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD, ACCORDING to the study, is still majority Mexican-American in its composition; nearly 29,000, compared to about 4,300 white people. But that white figure is about 22 percent higher than it was in the year 2000.

While the number of families with children living in the neighborhood is down by 41 percent. Which brings about a drastic change in the neighborhood’s character.

Pilsen has the potential to become the kind of place where a young professional type of person lives for a few years (to gain some sort of Chicago street-cred, so to speak) before moving off to a suburb once they have their own kids.

And for those people whose lives depend upon being within a Spanish-speaking enclave (because their comfort level in English is lacking), they are the ones who could find themselves with minimal options for moving forward.

THAT’S ACTUALLY THE sad part. As a third-generation Mexican-American (albeit one with no ties to Pilsen nor its bordering community of Little Village), I’d like to think the reason Mexicans are moving out is because we’ve progressed beyond the ethnic enclave.

But as one who sees my own home neighborhood of South Chicago turn into a place for people with few other options, I know it’s not true.

I also know that the talk in recent years of turning the one-time U.S. Steel South Works plant into an upscale community of its own scared many South Chicago residents for the same reasons being expressed in Pilsen – the idea that this project was meant to chase out the existing residents.

I actually get why outsiders would be interested in Pilsen. It is fairly close in to downtown Chicago and has direct contact with the Loop through the ‘el.’ Someone living in Pilsen would have easy access to a downtown job, or to other places throughout Chicago through mass transit.

IT MAKES ME wonder if Pilsen is destined someday to become like Lincoln Park – which once upon a time ago was a Puerto Rican enclave, until developers saw that lakefront site and figured other people would benefit from it more.

Just as I’m sure some people probably think a place like Pilsen with good mass transit is being wasted on people who never want to leave the neighborhood.

The key to this situation is to comprehend that there are people already in the places where other people would like to live – if only they can get rid of what’s already there. The most drastic case of this may be the modern-day Cabrini-Green – whose near North location was always seen as wasted on the public housing that was built there back in the 1940s.

Now, many of those former public housing residents are scattered throughout the Chicago South Side and suburbs – where they are disrupting the decades-old routines of those communities. Which could easily happen with the Mexican ethnics whom the whites would love to move out of Pilsen – if things are not handled properly!

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