♪ The story of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in the West Side is not a simple, straightforward story of belonging or community.

It really is a back and forth kind of experience.

But in the face of that, the community remains resilient.

It's in those moments of tension that they continue to shape their sense of belonging.

My name is Chantel Rodriguez.

I'm the senior public historian at the Minnesota Historical Society.

The West Side is separated from the rest of St.

Paul by the Mississippi River, and its proximity to the river has really shaped its history, especially because of the flooding.

The West Side Flats has always been a landing point.

By the time Mexicans and Mexican Americans from South Texas start showing up in the 1920s in larger numbers, it has already established the West Side Flats as this place for immigrants who are working class.

Originally, the Mexican and Mexican American population in Minnesota was minuscule, and one of the reasons is that the folks that were coming up here were here seasonally.

They were doing the harvest, so usually here from April through the fall.

But in the 1920s, there's things that are happening in the sugar industry.

Minnesota beet sugar is really eager to create a stable workforce, and for them, a stable workforce means Mexican workers.

So they actually start to encourage Mexican workers to stay year-round.

My dad, he would come with his parents and his family to work the fields.

He finally decided to stay because a lot of the packing houses were hiring.

He would work five days a week at Swift and then on weekends go to the various farms to pick up extra money.

Oftentimes when there's economic insecurity, or in this case the Great Depression happening in the 1930s, there is always this sense of perceived danger, in this particular case of Mexican workers, who are perceived to be taking American jobs.

And so we have these moments of very intentional drives to remove Mexicans, whether they be Mexican Americans and hold U.S.

citizenship or not.

And then a decade later, World War II happens.

They say, "We need workers," and they start to welcome these Mexican workers back into the United States.

So it's really this back and forth, "We want you, we don't want you, we need you, "we don't need you" kind of experience for the Mexican community.

- I was very fortunate to be brought up on the West Side.

There were many different ethnic groups, you name it, it was on the West Side.

And we all got along.

We all took care of each other.

My mom would always prepare enough food for my friends.

It was always tortillas, beans, and eggs, and she would make big pots of it.

And as my friends would come, she'd make sure they never left without eating.

- In Minnesota, in our pequeño templo de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe.

- So the church is Our Lady of Guadalupe, and it's incredibly important to them.

There's bilingual services.

It's a place where really important moments in people's lives happen.

And if you look at some of the community's recollections of what it was like to go to church, they'll tell you the church was life.

It was their spiritual place of home, but also their cultural place of home.

My father, he was one of the founders there.

Originally, there were about a dozen young men who approached the archdiocese about creating a church on the west side.

The community had a lot of religious activities at the church, obviously, but social as well.

There would be literally classes of kids making their first communion, their confirmation.

Back then, they had nuns who were the instructors, and they were of another kind, believe me.

Everything was pretty much centered around the church.

When you think about the West Side Flats, you really need to think about its geography, right?

It is just sort of south of the river, and it's in a low land space.

And so that means that just naturally, it's going to flood.

I remember walking out of our back porch and seeing people going down in boats.

For as far as you could see, it was predominantly high water.

The city was well aware that being a flood zone, the residents were very well aware that that is just what happened.

But we had some really intense floods that happened in the 1940s, and the worst one in city history at the time was in 1952, where the floodwaters went up to eight feet above flood stage.

The St.

Paul City and the Port Authority start to realize that perhaps this is our moment to deal with this issue, remove the residents, and then build that industrial park.

And they make that announcement in 1956 without ever holding any kinds of town halls.

Of course, the residents are trying to fight back and trying to say, "No, we don't want to leave.

This is our home."

There doesn't seem to be any sort of progress on that front.

I believe that the plan of operation should be halted, certainly slowed down.

There is too much confusion, too much trouble for these families.

They are bewildered.

They've been calling on me for help.

By 1961, the city moves forward with deciding, well, we're going to try and buy people out, and they give them a lot less money than what market value is.

It takes about two or three years to effectively condemn buildings, buy people out, force people out.

And by 1964, all 2,147 residents, of which, again, four-fifths are of Mexican descent, have been forcibly dislocated.

And in 1964 is also when they finish construction on that flood control and that three-mile levee.

And then they completely are done bulldozing the entire place.

And then they start making the plans to break ground and build the industrial park that is still there today.

If you speak to many of the community members who remember that history or who experienced that history, they will tell you that one of the greatest injustices of being forcibly dislocated is the fact that there was no plan in place for resettlement.

That being said, the community itself was very resilient.

About 70% of the Mexican-American families and Mexican families living in the West Side flats before it was demolished, chose to move uphill to the Concord Terrace area and rebuild.

In 1961, I was 11 years old.

I remember coming home and my mom was sitting at the table with my dad and she was a little teary-eyed.

And my dad told my brothers and sisters that we had to move.

Today I'm thinking, my dad had 12 kids and he was told he had to leave.

And the pressure for him and my mom to find a place for 12 kids, where they were going to move.

I mean, I just can't imagine that kind of pressure on parents.

The Chicano movement, generally speaking, is this national movement that kind of starts in Los Angeles in the late 1960s.

And I think it's really important to note that here in the West Side, the Chicano movement is not imported.

The movement, so to speak, is actually already happening in the West Side because of the forced dislocation and displacement from the West Side flats.

So as soon as the West Side flats are demolished and the community moves uphill to the Concord Terrace area, many of the residents are already organizing.

They're becoming activists.

They are saying, "We just lost our home.

We just lost our tight-knit community in that place.

How can we ensure that there's a continuation and strength of our community in this new place?"

And so they organize, and ultimately, one of the things they ended up forming was the West Side Community Organization, or WSCO.

WSCO was invested in a lot of different things, like telling the city, "Well, we want a Concord Terrace renewal project.

We want to beautify this new place.

We want you to invest money improving existing buildings.

We want you to build a park."

They also argue for the creation of low-income, low-cost, cooperative living places.

And those same groups of residents are doing other things.

Sister Giovanni actually was born in St.

Paul, and she was really interested in self-determination and supporting the Mexican and Mexican American community.

And so one of the first things that she did in 1964 was to create the Guadalupe Area Project, which was at the time in 1964, a summer recreational program for youth, but also actually ended up expanding to include adults as well.

By the late 1960s, Sister G realized that there was a problem and that problem was that there was high dropout rates for Mexican American youths in high school.

So she, together with some other sisters, purchased a house and started this alternative high school that was culturally sensitive to the Mexican heritage experience.

And so that really did help to improve dropout rates, and so that was really powerful for that community.

And it still exists today.

Some of those residents organize and create La Clinica.

It's a really great example of the activism of West Side residents who are sort of infused by these ideals of the Chicano movement and are making really huge changes to their community by taking action.

Nobody provided those resources, so the community did that together, whether it was through faith and Our Lady Guadalupe Church, right?

Whether it was through the families that established their businesses moving forward on the West Side.

That is the form of community that built it.

And it wasn't just to say, "We're gonna feed our families."

It was to say, "We're gonna take care of our gente.

We're gonna be representative of la raza."

- Neighborhood House has been a hub for the West Side community since the early 20th century.

Originally, Neighborhood House was founded in the flats as a settlement house for Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe, who originally were the largest group in the flats at that time.

As demographics changed, it really reorganized and started to serve all members of the community, doing things like food and housing assistance, citizenship classes, dances, social events, and more.

After the destruction of the flats, Neighborhood House moved to a new location in Concord Terrace, providing a measure of continuity and support for displaced residents.

But for whatever the reason is, you know, the economy, racism, folks need that little boost.

And if we can be that little boost to them, again, that's what Neighborhood House has been all about.

My uncle Gilbert De La O, my great uncle, I've always known him to be a pillar of the Neighborhood House.

Gilbert De La O, he grew up in the West Side Flats and was also a lifelong West Sider.

As a child, he was in daycare and also did youth programs.

Then later on in life, ended up working there in a variety of roles.

Gilbert developed a cultural consciousness or a deep understanding and connection to his Mexican heritage through classes at the newly formed Department of Chicano Studies at the University of Minnesota, as well as through his involvement in the St.

Paul chapter of the Brown Berets.

The Brown Berets were a paramilitary organization founded in Los Angeles in 1968.

They were really focused on ending racism and discrimination through things like organizing, protecting and assisting the Mexican and Mexican American communities.

Gilbert's activism was very much fueled by the Chicano movement and his lived experience in the West Side.

That first generation that were, and they didn't have to make an excuse for it, but they were the ones about being here real humbly, thankful, and those kinds of values.

And so my generation became the loud mouths, man.

We became the agitators.

You carry that pride.

I've always been, oh, there's Maria Isa, the Puerto Rican girl from the West Side.

You hold that wanting to open up the doors for other folks from our community to see that there's opportunities.

And Gilbert de la O meant that.

He was, you know, he's no longer with us, but his legacy and his spirit is vibrant on the West Side every day.

Every time you run on the Gilbert de la O fields, every time you see the West Side boosters cheerleading and chanting and screaming West Side, that's Gilbert de la O. As Mexican migrants started coming and living in the West Side, being able to have a sense of home was really important to them.

And so we started having more and more local businesses being set up, including restaurants or grocery stores that would sell food or other types of vegetables and produce that were very familiar to the community.

And it was really important, not just having a sense of, this is a place that's our home, but also knowing that you have these goods and foods that are very accessible and make you remember your previous home and also give a sense of home and belonging in this new place in Minnesota.

- And I directed a fashion show at 16 to highlight our novedades.

And that's where you get like your quinceanera dresses or baptismal or like your Latino concert t-shirt.

When I was first elected into office, it was very important for me to highlight these businesses that have survived and have influenced the Latino economic development for our entire state.

Murals are very much important to the Chicano movement.

The murals here in the West Side are intimately connected to the displacement that happened with the West Side Flats.

They start to use murals to sort of demonstrate ethnic pride and a connection to a history and a pre-Columbian past, oftentimes connected to Aztec ancestry.

And so for the Chicanos in the West Side, murals become this sort of cultural and artistic tool to claim visual, social, and political space.

The West Side has been a hub for Latino culture.

It has been very interesting to come back every time that I can, just to photograph in general.

I approach a couple.

He's dressed with a cowboy hat, and I asked him if I could take a photo.

Right to the side of the parking lot, there was this mural.

The mural, it's one of the Aztec warriors.

Years later, I found that they erased that.

I wish I could have that vision of what's going to remain and what's going to disappear, so I can make something about it.

The lovely thing about murals is that they are this wonderful historical piece that showcases people's identity.

The downside is that they are ephemera.

They are out oftentimes in the elements, in the harsh Minnesota elements, and they don't last long unless there is a consistent effort to try and repaint and keep them up.

And so a lot of these murals have just sort of gone away.

But it doesn't mean that the sort of cultural idea of using murals to identify space, to tell a story, to claim a space has gone away.

- The Latino community here came from somewhere else, right?

Was uprooted from mostly Mexico, maybe Texas, maybe California, and then again, it was uprooted because of the floods.

So it's a history of rooting and uprooting folks over and over and over.

The interesting part is once there's a little bit of calm and we can settle, we can start to build culture.

And I think that's probably what remains.

That those little spaces of breathable air that we can say, "Yeah, let's do something.

"Let's make a parade.

"Let's march in the street.

"Let's go to the supermarket and buy something "that we're familiar with.

"Let's go to barber shop and have a conversation "with all the folks over there."

Because that's where a community is, right?

- And so it's a complicated story, but it's one that at least through the past that we've seen has shown that the community has always relied on itself, its culture, its connections, and has been able to, through the strength of its people, find ways to remain resilient and find joy through all of that because they're still here.

And you look around the West Side and you can see that history and that experience over time.

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