| | |  Americas & Beyond 
Mexico 2010 Chicago Bash Will Celebrate Breadth of Mexican Immigrants' Diversity, Country's Bicentennial
 Oscar Avila - Chicago Tribune
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September 13, 2010
 |  | Mexico is trying to burnish a somewhat tarnished national brand with a bicentennial celebration in Chicago stretching over several months. |  | | |
Surely the Mexican government views the news coverage as better when it revolves around a cellist from Monterrey rather than a drug lord from Tijuana.
"It isn't just better. It is fair," argued Manuel Rodriguez Arriaga, Mexico's consul general in Chicago. "Often, the bad news dominates the information and the good realities, the good news, are not the main story."
Mexico is trying to burnish a somewhat tarnished national brand with a bicentennial celebration in Chicago stretching over several months that will peak in a massive bash Wednesday at Pritzker Pavilion featuring ballerinas, mariachis and classical music.
Community leaders in Chicago are embracing the festivities amid serious challenges facing a population that has become a demographic force through a wave of immigration and, now, a swelling population of Mexican-Americans younger than 18.
The Mexican community in Illinois appears to be buying homes and becoming U.S. citizens at a growing rate, according to a recent report by the Washington-based Center for American Progress. Mexican merchants have revived fading business strips in working-class suburbs such as Cicero and Elgin, while fueling the area's restaurant, construction and service industries.
At the same time, most recent Mexican immigrants to Illinois have arrived illegally, researchers estimate, and many remain stuck in low-wage jobs with no health insurance and little hope of advancement.
Nearly 20 percent of Mexican immigrants in the Chicago area in 2006 lived in poverty, a rate virtually unchanged since 1990, according to census data analyzed by researchers Rob Paral and Michael Norkewicz. Their study also found that a majority of Mexican immigrants cannot speak English well, a rate that grew slightly in that time frame.
Community leaders say a nationwide backlash against Mexican immigration echoed by some local residents makes the Pritzker Pavilion a good choice for the traditional "grito," a shout of "Viva Mexico" that re-creates the one that launched the fight for independence 200 years ago.
Nestled in the heart of cultural Chicago, the Millennium Park venue shows that Mexicans, like other immigrant groups before them, have arrived, those leaders say.
All immigrants, "sooner, rather than later, become part of the mainstream," Rodriguez said.
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