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Homecoming, 1997 leonard g. ramírez I look down from my window hoping to see Isaura’s blue two-door sedan pull in front of the arched doorway of my six-flat. Only a faint seam of daylight remains at the edge of the clouds. The vehicles pass quickly through the glow of the streetlights. The car that had momentarily caught my attention moves down the avenue without pause. The one at the corner continues north past my street. Chicago is in the midst of a transformation. Miniature white cyclones swirl outside my living room windows. Naked tree branches reach in all directions up to the sky. Swaying limbs extend upwards like the pleading hands of a devout congregation. A woman moves briskly down the street, her head sunk turtle deep inside the lifted collar of a winter coat. A young man caught unexpectedly by the abrupt change in weather digs his hands deep into his thin jacket. He pushes forward, head bent, attempting to shield his face from the icy wind shards hurling off Lake Michigan from only a block away. Tonight’s holiday gathering will welcome Yenelli Flores and her husband, Matin, back to the city. In the late 1970s, Yenelli, a community organizer, left Chicago with her family for a small Midwestern college town where Matin was able to secure a position as a college professor. It is difficult to reconcile the vision of the fiery activist from those early years with the pastoral images of a faculty wife attending department socials, school picnics, and church peace vigils. I think back to Richard M. Nixon’s visit to Chicago in 1972 when he walked onto a stage to the tune of Hail to the Chief only to have the evening’s proceedings interrupted by Yenelli racing down the aisle shouting antiwar slogans. i-xxx_1-226_Rami.indd 17 8/19/11 10:54 AM 18 . leonard g. ramírez Caught momentarily off guard, the Secret Service was slow to respond. Just before she reached the stage, Yenelli was lifted high off her feet, whisked out of the ballroom, and unceremoniously deposited outside the auditorium. Behind her a room full of conservatives clamored for “Four more years!” However, Yenelli had managed to pierce the self-congratulatory bubble of well-being that Republican America was trying so hard to project. After more than a decade, Yenelli had returned to the Chicago area. Tonight would also be an informal minireunion of a 1970s independent community-activist network, a local expression of the national Chicano Movement.1 Comité women were known to be among the most outspoken militants of Chicago’s Movimiento. In the late 1960s, Pilsen became the heart of the city’s Mexican community as well as the center of the Mexicano/Chicano Movement in Chicago. The bifurcated name acknowledges the participation of ethnically identified Mexicans and those who framed their identity at the intersection of two cultures and national experiences.2 María Gamboa, a Comité member, was an ardent proponent of Chicano nationalism as were other members of Compañia Trucha, the theater group to which she belonged.3 Trucha members saw themselves not only as entertainers but, perhaps more important, as popular educators whose theatrical performances used everyday experience to draw critical life lessons. Trucha worked closely with other cultural groups including Teatro de los Barrios (barrio theater group), a South Chicago troupe.4 Before the collapse of the steel industry, South Chicago was a bustling community. Activists from South Chicago like those from other parts of the city were attracted to the cultural and political renaissance that was occurring in Pilsen. Politically conscious youth were particularly drawn to a social-service center and an activist hub called Casa Aztlán. Aztlán housed adult-education programs, art studios, and a health clinic and served as a community meeting place. Before acquiring its own space, Compañia Trucha operated out of Casa Aztlán and often performed at the various functions that took place there. When not performing, María remained disciplined and serious, so I was somewhat surprised the day she invited members of the Comité to attend a house party in South Chicago. On a sweltering summer evening in the mid-1970s, a group of us piled into a car and headed to an apartment near the steel mills. After an extended time on the dance floor, a line of perspiring dancers made its way to the back porch for a bit of evening breeze...

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