Latest / Pionerd / The Battle of the West Side: How Minnesota’s Chicano Movement Built an Unbreakable Legacy
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- INTRO: Chicano Movement MN: The September 15th Parades and Civil Rights Legacy Every May, millions of Americans toast Cinco de Mayo, mistaking a single battle victory for Mexico’s true independence. That widespread confusion mirrors how Minnesota has long treated its Latino community, relegating a century of deep cultural roots to a superficial, temporary presence. Mexico’s true Independence Day arrives four months later on September 16, with national celebrations beginning on the evening of September 15, the eve of El Grito de Dolores. Across three pivotal decades, Mexican Minnesotans turned this specific date into a recurring stand for survival. Every time municipal authorities tried to quiet them, reduce them to cheap labor, or bulldoze their neighborhoods, a new generation answered on the eve of El Grito. The history of St. Paul’s West Side is not just about surviving displacement. It is the story of how a resilient community built an indestructible safety net on Minnesota soil, one that continues to protect families today. ACT I: Mexican Roots in MN: Sugar Beet Fields, Boxcars, and Early Barrios The story of Minnesota's Latino roots begins unexpectedly with a sick musician in 1886. Luis Garzón, a nineteen-year-old oboe player traveling with a Mexican orchestra, fell ill in Minneapolis. His troupe moved on without him. Garzón stayed, married a local woman named Clara Wagner, and performed in local symphonies. By the early 1920s, he opened the Twin Cities’ first Mexican tienda on Concord Street in the West Side. It became an essential gathering spot in a neighborhood already known as the "Ellis Island of St. Paul." Tucked into the Mississippi river lowlands, the West Side Flats was a dense working-class sanctuary where early Irish, German, and French Canadian settlers lived alongside Jewish, Syrian, Lebanese, and Black families. When Mexican labor families arrived in the 1920s, they joined this established multi-ethnic mosaic. Most Mexican families arrived not by chance, but through backbreaking labor recruited by northern agricultural giants. During the 1920s, American Beet Sugar, later renamed American Crystal Sugar, recruited over 7,000 Mexican and Tejano betabeleros every year. Families crossed the southern border after paying an $8 head tax per person. Border agents weighed, measured, and disinfected every migrant before sending them to work. In the Red River Valley, workers spent long days on their knees under blistering sun and swarming mosquitoes. They used short-handled hoes to weed, thin, and manually pull four-to-eight-pound sugar beets. When winter froze the fields, families moved south to St. Paul, seeking year-round work in meatpacking plants and along the Burlington Railroad lines. Hostile surroundings forced these early residents to forge their own social safety net. In 1922, they formed the Anáhuac Mutual Benefit and Recreation Society to pool emergency funds. In 1931, local women established the Guadalupanas alongside Our Lady of Guadalupe Mission. That same year, Great Depression anxieties boiled over, and municipal authorities forcibly deported at least 15% of St. Paul’s Mexican population. Yet the community refused to be intimidated into silence. On September 15, 1939, Texas-born migrant Alphonso de León led the Twin Cities' inaugural Fiestas Patrias parade across the Mississippi River to Harriet Island. On the eve of El Grito, they marched to prove that their roots were permanent. ACT II: West Side Flats Urban Renewal: The 1963 Demolition of Neighborhood House For decades, community life centered on the West Side Flats, St. Paul’s vibrant, multi-ethnic "Ellis Island." Tucked between the river bridges and the bluffs, the neighborhood was far from a quiet outpost. It was a thriving commercial hub powered by over 100 local family businesses. Kosher butcher shops, Mexican bakeries, Lebanese markets, and neighborhood taverns lined the streets alongside major employers like American Hoist and Derrick, Gedney Pickles, and Yoerg Brewery. While infrastructure lagged, a 1917 survey noted many homes lacked indoor plumbing, the Flats maintained a rich, self-sustaining community economy. When a devastating flood forced 2,641 residents to evacuate in 1952, municipal authorities seized on the mud-caked streets not to rebuild the neighborhood, but to clear it. Municipal authorities saw an opportunity in the disaster. Between 1954 and 1956, the St. Paul Port Authority targeted the neighborhood for complete clearance to build the Riverview Industrial Park. The city spent $13,000,000 on the project, $9,000,000 for industrial development and $4,000,000 for relocation costs. Wrecking crews moved in. By 1963, bulldozers flattened the historic Neighborhood House facility at 229 East Indiana Avenue. The entire residential neighborhood was wiped off the map. The 1963 demolition of Neighborhood House tore away the central anchor of Mexican community life. Founded in 1897 by Jewish women to support Russian Jewish refugees, the facility had evolved into the primary lifeline for Mexican families. They hosted the neighborhood’s first bilingual health clinics, citizenship classes, and Guadalupana club meetings. Its destruction created a dangerous institutional vacuum. Families pushed up the bluff were forced to rebuild their lives along Concord Street without a central sanctuary, directly sparking the need for self-built alternatives. Displacement ignited a new resolve to protect and educate the community’s youth without relying on outside institutions. In 1966, Sister Mary Giovanni Gourhan created the Guadalupe Area Project, known as GAP. The program offered alternative education for 14-19 year-old Latino students struggling in public schools. By weaving Mexican history and trade skills into daily lessons, GAP proved that honoring cultural heritage was key to opening doors for the next generation. ACT III: Chicano Activism MN: Brown Berets and U of M Morrill Hall Takeover By 1969, national civil rights currents reached the West Side. Inspired by the United Farm Workers grape boycott and California school walkouts, neighborhood youth organized a local chapter of the Brown Berets. At its peak, the group numbered roughly fifty-five core members ranging from 12-27 years old. Led by organizers like Rudolph Saucedo, Gilbert de la O, and Rose Zarate, they stepped up to defend their community. The Berets mobilized to fill the defense vacuum. Beyond hosting annual Christmas toy drives and summer youth trips to Camp Owendigo, their primary mission was community protection. In response to routine police harassment and targeted traffic stops along Concord Street, Beret members launched street patrols to monitor law enforcement, document officer misconduct, and protect Hispanic youth from racial profiling. Local authorities viewed them with intense suspicion, but neighborhood families saw them as a necessary shield. Frustration turned into direct political action on campus. On September 15, 1970, University of Minnesota activists organized under the Chicano Liberation Front and staged a public demonstration outside Morrill Hall. The momentum built over the next year as student activists demanded dedicated academic space for their history. On October 26, 1971, student leader Ramona Rosales led twenty activists into Morrill Hall and occupied the administrative building. Rosales issued a 72 hour deadline: establish a dedicated Chicano Studies Department or face a campus-wide strike. The administration yielded before the clock ran out. In the fall of 1972, the U of M held its first classes in Chicano Studies, the very first department of its kind in the Midwest. On September 15, 1972, the Brown Berets marched down Concord Street carrying the U.S. flag, the Chicano eagle, and Our Lady of Guadalupe, turning the eve of El Grito into an undeniable declaration of presence. ACT IV: Latino Civic Legacy in MN: From CLUES to State Representation Under continuous police pressure and public hostility, the St. Paul Brown Berets formally disbanded in 1972. Yet their movement did not end. Instead, its leaders poured their energy directly into building permanent civic institutions to fill the void left by urban renewal. Activists expanded La Clínica on the West Side to provide accessible healthcare to working families. In 1977, Conrado Vega won a seat in the Minnesota Senate, becoming the first Latino to serve in the state legislature. The following year, lawmakers established the Spanish Speaking Affairs Council to guarantee a direct voice in state policy. In 1981, Comunidades Latinas Unidas en Servicio (CLUES) incorporated under executive director Donna Sherlock. Starting from a modest storefront on Robert Street, the organization grew into the state’s premier Latino-led social service agency. In 1991, Edwina Garcia became the first Latina elected to the Minnesota Legislature, winning a seat in the Minnesota House of Representatives. Today, CLUES operates out of an expanded forty-thousand-square-foot headquarters at 797 East Seventh Street on St. Paul’s East Side. The facility houses behavioral health clinics, youth tech programs, and the 46th Consulate of Mexico in the United States. What began as protective youth patrols transformed into lasting institutions that continue to empower generations of Minnesotans. CONCLUSION: The Built City on West Side Ground: Minnesota's Latino Legacy and Modern Shield In 1931, when municipal authorities loaded hundreds of Mexican residents onto southbound trains, the rest of Minnesota looked the other way. Nearly a century later, that silence broke. When federal agents launched Operation Metro Surge—the largest enforcement crackdown of its kind, deploying thousands of militarized agents across Twin Cities neighborhoods—something fundamental shifted. As agents targeted people of color and forced Mexican and Latino families into hiding, non-Latino neighbors, faith leaders, and everyday citizens refused to stay silent. Neighborhoods established their own early-warning networks; when federal vehicles turned onto a street, whistles echoed block by block to alert families. Citizens like Renée Good and Alex Pretti put their bodies between agents and vulnerable residents, losing their lives in the process. In response, thousands took to the streets, standing resolute alongside their targeted neighbors and demanding accountability. That public standing is the true, living legacy of the West Side. The bulldozers of 1963 destroyed a physical neighborhood, but they could not erase St. Paul's historic Ellis Island. The Brown Berets who marched down Concord Street on September 15, 1972, were demanding more than self-preservation, they were asserting their rightful place in a long line of immigrants who built Minnesota. Today, the spirit of La Víspera is no longer just a memory of Mexican independence. It is an active pact across the Twin Cities. When state power threatens to erase a community, the deep roots of a shared multi-ethnic sanctuary ensure an entire state stands up to shield them.