BOOK WILL BE AVAILABLE IN 2025
When a book is no longer available the story is then gone and within time is forgotten. The same is true about people; their stories would fill volumes of books. But once they die their story fades over generations unless their memories are kept alive by photographs and oral history. Photographs fade and get lost, as does their significance. Oral history changes, details get omitted, embellished, or forgotten all together.
Stories about the first group of people from Mexico to settle in the manufacturing and railroad Midwest city of Aurora, Illinois, during the early 1900s have been primarily associated with the people who lived at the "West Eola Mexican boxcar camp." The few existing photographs render a bleak image of a solidarity monochromatic place consisting of a long row of old wooden boxcars without electricity or running water in a railroad switchyard and metal reclamation center. The story is significant as people living therein established the first Mexican community in Aurora. The relatively short-lived Mexican boxcar camp is of historical value, but it is only part of a much larger story of the other people from Mexico and Mexican-Americans who settled in several different Aurora neighborhoods.
The book provides a community narrative spanning from the late 1910s to the late 1970s on the formation of the foundation of Mexican and Mexican-American identity and community. The book does not purport to represent their diverse history, but instead utilizes personal stories, photographs, and experiences to tell a significant saga of the preservation of Mexican and Mexican_American culture, identity, the Spanish language, and overcoming barriers.