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Celebrating Mexican Independence Day, Chicago-style, with car caravans and flag waving: ‘It’s a sense of belonging’

Each September in Chicago, Mexican flags adorn cars and fly in front of homes and storefronts as people get ready to celebrate Mexican Independence Day on Sept. 16.

For decades, people have shown their pride in Mexican identity and culture by driving in caravans, waving flags and honking through the neighborhoods shaped by Mexican immigrants.

“It’s a sense of belonging, we are making ourselves visible because we are proud of our roots. We’re here and we’re not going anywhere,” said Ricky Flores, a Chicagoan born to immigrant Mexican parents who established themselves in the Brighton Park area.

For more than 16 years, Flores has helped to organize peaceful caravans to honor the holiday and celebrate Mexicans in Chicago by bringing together different car clubs and groups. The Chicago area is home to nearly 3 million Latinos and 75% of them are of Mexican descent, according to a report by the University of Illinois at Chicago and Metropolitan Family Services.

The cruising traditionally was focused in the neighborhoods. But during Donald Trump’s administration some began to drive downtown to Trump Tower, blasting Mexican music and sometimes even taking live bands, recalls Flores. The former president’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and negative comments about Mexican immigrants fueled some to buy larger flags and play louder music, he said.

“We wanted to show our pride and show that we weren’t afraid of him and other people that don’t want us and our parents here. This is our city too,” Flores said.

In recent years, Michigan Avenue and East Wacker Drive became the meeting point for people cruising not only from Chicago, but from nearby suburbs and even Indiana.

“If you see a car with a Mexican flag, you follow it and we’re all there together, to celebrate one another,” Flores said. “We kept it peaceful and then drove away when police approached us,” he said.

Sept. 16 commemorates when Catholic priest Miguel Hidalgo in 1810 made a cry for independence from Spain hours after midnight by giving a riveting speech in the town of Dolores and ringing the town’s church bells in what become known as “El Grito.”

“For those who are here undocumented, the caravans and other events with hundreds of Mexicans in one space makes people feel at home; but it also makes them feel visible in a place that they know is not their home,” said Jorge Mujica, a Mexican pro-immigrant rights activist who has worked closely with Chicago’s immigrant Mexican community.

The caravans evoke nostalgia, said Emmanuel Nuñez, who remembers going on the cruises with his father as a child while growing up in Pilsen.

“I know they don’t celebrate this way in Mexico but this is something that’s been done here in Chicago since before I was born; I would stand up and hang out the sun roof holding the flag with all my strength fighting the wind,” Nuñez said. “It feels good to go down a street and see paisanos — other Mexicans — cruising with their flag.”

Now, Nuñez takes his own children out to celebrate.

“It’s one of my favorite Chicago traditions. Makes me proud to be a Chicano. A Mexican American,” he said.

The number of people cruising to Chicago’s downtown has grown over the years, and participants have at times felt like they were being heavily policed.

Flores recalls police officers issuing hefty tickets for idling in tow zones when the traffic was moving slowly. Other times, they would force people to put the Mexican flags away, and in some instances officers broke the poles, he said.

Still, the tradition has grown with the number of Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans in the Chicago area, Mujica said.

In recent years Chicago police began closing streets and blocking intersections where people would congregate to cheer on the caravans, preventing the traditional celebration in the Mexican American neighborhoods.

In 2020, residents in Little Village — known as the Mexico of the Midwest — reported street closures in the nights leading up to the eve of Mexican Independence Day. Street closures in Austin and Belmont Cragin, also predominantly Latino neighborhoods, were also reported. The I-55 exit at Pulaski Road was blocked with barricades, as was the intersection of 26th Street and Albany Avenue, near Little Village’s emblematic Arch, blocking the entrance to the Discount Mall.

Vendors and other small business owners expressed concern because the closures forced people out of the area in what tends to be one of the most profitable weeks, said Elizeth Arguelles, a young community leader and street vendor in the area.

Angered by the closures, the caravans headed to Michigan Avenue and other major streets in downtown Chicago, prompting downtown street closures through the weekend and a complete stop to the traffic on Jean Baptiste Point DuSable Lake Shore Drive the nights of Sept. 15 and 16.

“If they don’t allow us to celebrate in our neighborhoods, then we’re going to take over downtown,” said Flores. “They don’t realize that the more they (city and police) try to stop us, the more momentum they create.”

This year will be no different, said Flores. He said several groups are planning their cruises the night of the 15th and 16th.

The Office of Emergency Management and Communications said in a statement that no street closures are planned for this year’s celebrations, but the city has “measures in place if any activity begins to escalate.”

“As tens of thousands of residents are coming together to celebrate and embrace their rich heritage and great diversity that helps to make our city what it is, we remain committed to ensuring the safety and security of all those participating in the celebratory activities,” the statement said.

Because of the pandemic, the largest Mexican Independence Day parade was canceled by the Little Village Chamber of Commerce this year, and the Mexican General Consulate will be hosting a virtual “Grito.”

“We understand the importance of the event, but we must take care of our people and we cannot promote events that can potentially spread the COVID-19 pandemic which has already harshly and disproportionally hit our Mexican community,” said ambassador Reyna Torres Mendivil, consul general of Mexico in Chicago.

Torres Mendivil said that following last year’s headlines of caravans taking over downtown, she engaged in conversation with city officials seeking to work together to regulate the celebration safely.

Torres Mendivil and other Mexicans say the city needs to recognize the magnitude and importance of the holiday for Chicagoans by designating a plan to embrace the cruising and caravans the way it has embraced celebrations for St. Patrick’s Day and other holidays.

Parading in caravans is nothing new and many other ethnic groups partake in similar celebrations to commemorate their Independence Day. Puerto Ricans, the largest group of Latinos after Mexicans in Chicago, also adorn their cars with their flags and parade once a year. During the September festivities, people from Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua join to honor their Independence Day on Sept. 15, as do Chileans on Sept. 18.

Though the caravans downtown remain largely peaceful, some worry that the celebration creates a superficial meaning for the historical event and “makes (Mexicans) look rowdy and bad,” said Elena Duran, a Mexican immigrant who moved to Chicago 30 years ago.

“It’s extremely disrespectful because it doesn’t even acknowledge the actual significance of el Grito de Dolores or the beauty of our Mexican culture, it is not a way to show patriotism,” she said.

But beyond recognizing the meaning of the holiday in Mexico and commemorating the historic event, Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans have adopted the holiday as a time to show pride in their identity and recognize the cultural values that unite them, said Dr. Lilia Fernandez, associate professor of Latino & Caribbean Studies and History at Rutgers University.

Fernandez is the author of the book “Brown in the Windy City,” which examines the migration and settlement of Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in postwar Chicago.

“It is a way to assert their ethnic pride, identity and it is also a sense of belonging in a city that has not always been welcoming and friendly to Mexicans,” she said.