The Latinx community in Grand Rapids has more than 100 years of history. Delia Fernández-Jones’ new book, Making the MexiRican City: Migration, Placemaking, and Activism in Grand Rapids, Michigan, explores that history and community in depth.
As a first-generation MexiRican (having both Mexican and Puerto Rican roots) from Grand Rapids, and as a historian of Latina/o history, Fernández-Jones brings personal and academic understandings to Mexican, Puerto Rican, and other Latinx communities in Grand Rapids.
Fernández-Jones grew up with a large extended family and a “really vibrant community.” She developed a strong sense of identity rooted in both her Mexican and Puerto Rican heritage and in being a Grand Rapids resident. As she got older, she noticed there were times when people would ask, “So where are you really from?” Her typical response was, “Grand Rapids.”
“That's confusing, right? Cause I'm really from Grand Rapids, like my parents,” Fernández-Jones said. “One of my grandmothers was born in Saginaw. We're really from Michigan. ... Those were those early signs that there was this idea of ‘belonging’ in Michigan that some people had and that did not include me or people like me.”
In deciding on a time frame for her book to cover, Fernández-Jones said it was really important for her to show the presence of Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and other Latinx people in the area over a long period of time.
“There is always this phenomenon that people think is happening, that Latinos are new immigrants. They've been called new immigrants over and over and over again,” Fernández-Jones said. “What I wanted to show was that, ‘Hey, there's this really, really early history that is a small group of people, but it's still there.’”
In her book, Fernández-Jones traces history from the 1800s up toward the 1920s, around the time when Mexican immigrants first came to Michigan. With this history, Fernández-Jones also wanted to look closely at the spaces in which Latinx communities in west Michigan were formed and sustained.
“Beauty salons, bars, church basements, living rooms, those really intimate spaces are where community happens, where community formation really exists. Because what those spaces allow you to do is to get to know people on a really intimate level,” Fernández-Jones said.
It is out of these spaces that the more formal spaces for community-building are formed. Fernández-Jones cited the Latin American Council, which started in the late 1960s, as one of these more formal community spaces. The council served as a “one-stop shop for social services,” as it offered youth programming, elderly outreach, and a base for activism, among other services.
Fernández-Jones found this kind of community-building across Latinx communities to be unique to smaller cities. In Chicago in the mid-20th century, for example, Fernández-Jones said Mexicans and Puerto Ricans typically lived on opposite sides of the city. In smaller cities like Grand Rapids, two communities could more easily create a new space and community together.
Fernández-Jones said these shared community spaces are distinct not only to smaller cities but also to the Midwest as a result of the agricultural and railroad recruitment that led early Latinx immigrants to the region in the first half of the 20th century.
To put her book together, Fernández-Jones had to look through a lot of source material, often reading between the lines to understand communities that were not well-documented.
“I had to kind of look through things that were really unconventional that historians who are doing work on a very dominant population don't necessarily have to do,” Fernández-Jones said. “For example, I worked with Bill Cunningham at the Grand Rapids City Archive, and he showed me jail records from the 1940s and '50s that had information about Mexican men, mostly, who had come to the area. And so I read those sources against the grain, meaning I was looking at them for information that they were not necessarily made for.”
In her research, Fernández-Jones got a closer look at how people in Grand Rapids’ Latinx community advocated for their place in the city, as well as how other residents of the city reacted.
“What is not apparent from the things that I knew about the community from the oral storytelling tradition that I grew up in, was really the types of embedded resistance to allowing Latinos to kind of have their place in Grand Rapids and to be really seen as, one, an aggrieved minority in the city, but also a part of the city, and not just those people who we could stick in the margins,” Fernández-Jones said.
Fernández-Jones also noted how challenging it was for Latinx people in the mid-20th century to see themselves reflected in a city that was primarily seen in a binary of white and Black people.
“Many Latinos, Mexicans and Puerto Ricans were trying to figure out, ‘How can I be read in a way that is both going to allow me some social mobility, but that I also don't have to give up who I am?’” Fernández-Jones said.
Fernández-Jones hopes to leave Latinx youth in Grand Rapids with a sense of belonging that hasn’t always been there.
“This book is a love letter — a historical, highly researched love letter — to my community, to my ancestors, those who came before me, and to these young people and to the young people who have yet to come,” Fernández-Jones said.
GUEST ON THIS EPISODE:
- Delia Fernández-Jones, author of Making the MexiRican City: Migration, Placemaking, and Activism in Grand Rapids, Michigan; professor of history at Michigan State University
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