This text sympathetically discusses Mexican immigrants in Chicago under several subsections. In the first section, “The New Home,” authors Robert C. Jones and Louis R. Wilson describe the lively and colorful street life of the neighborhood where Mexican immigrants have settled in Chicago, along Halsted Street between Harrison and 15th streets. The authors point out both Protestant and Catholic Mexican churches and include a map of other neighborhoods in Chicago where Mexican immigrants have also settled. In the next section, “The Old Home in Mexico,” Jones and Wilson delineate the regions in Mexico from which most immigrants have come (Michoacán and Zacatecas, among others), emphasizing the rural and impoverished nature of Mexicans’ lives there, as well as the importance of religion. In the third section, “The Call of the North,” the authors bring to the fore how the demand for labor, especially working in the beet and cotton fields of the Southwest and in the steel mills of Chicago, has drawn Mexican immigrants to the United States. In the fourth section, “And Now Here He Is,” they sketch the process by means of which Mexican communities have developed and the social challenges they face. The next section, entitled “The Mexican Immigrant’s Reaction to the Protestant Message,” is the longest in the pamphlet. It describes the success Protestant missionaries have had in recruiting Mexican immigrants to their churches, and how this has increased their welfare while also lessening Catholic prejudices against Protestantism. Statements by a substantial number of Mexican men about their impressions of Protestantism are quoted to support these claims about the positive influence of Protestantism on them. “Major Denominations Represented” catalogs Protestant Mexican immigrant churches in Chicago. The last section, “The Mexican—His Place Among Us,” argues that Mexican immigrants will be productive and positive U.S. citizens, emphasizing their value as laborers, in both agriculture and industry. With respect to art and culture, the Mexican immigrant is said to “bring a rich emotional life and a keen appreciation of color and of form capable of adding greatly to our store of artistic beauty.” Furthermore, the authors argue that the Mexican immigrant “has that native feeling for beauty of line and color and tone which is today making Mexico a Mecca for lovers of art.” This pamphlet closes with a concise statement of its purpose: “It is toward the understanding of one of the newest of our immigrant groups that this pamphlet is dedicated—the 20,000 Mexicans in Chicago.”

This pamphlet was published and distributed by the Comity Commission of the Chicago Church Federation—a Protestant organization—in 1931 with the aim of educating their constituents about Mexican immigrants. As the introduction states, it was meant to be distributed to church- affiliated youth groups, schools, “women’s Missionary Societies, and Men’s clubs,” with the aim of educating Chicagoans about the admirable qualities of Mexican immigrants,  and clearly with the intention of supporting the efforts of local churches to attract Catholic Mexicans to Protestant churches in the Chicago area. In addition to discussing at length the assimilation of Mexican immigrants into Protestant churches in the United States, it argues that Mexican immigrants were spiritually and aesthetically sensitive, as well as extremely effective workers. The authors repeatedly emphasize the need for Mexican labor in the auto and steel industries in and near Chicago, as well as the route by which many immigrants made their way north, first working in the beet and cotton fields of the Southwest, then on the railways, and finally settling in Chicago. It criticizes U.S. citizens for exploiting Mexican labor and for fostering prejudice against Mexican immigrants. It also includes a bibliography of suggested reading for U.S. readers, such as texts on Mexican art and culture by Manuel Gamio, Carleton Beals, and other writers. This document addresses two research topics: “Exile, Displacement, Diaspora” and “National Imaginaries/Cosmopolitan Identities.”