Rev. Stephen Budrovich of Holy Trinity Croatian Church in Pilsen must be very careful to avoid lingual disaster when he schedules Sunday masses.
At 10:15 a.m. each Sunday, his church is filled with worshipers for whom the church was built in 1914. But those who gather to hear mass said in their native Croatian now come from outside the West Side Pilsen neighborhood.
At 12:30 p.m. each Sunday, Father Budrovich says mass in Spanish for the Mexicans who now dominate the neighborhood around his church.
”If I don`t tell them ahead of time when I change the schedule, I get Croatians at the Spanish mass and Mexicans at the Croatian mass,” said the priest. ”It gets very confusing.”
Most of Pilsen`s 11 Catholic churches were built as ”national churches” that served as sources of unity and stability for specific ethnic groups as they arrived in Chicago`s Ellis Island of neighborhoods.
Today, the churches built for Lithuanians, Bohemians and Poles serve mostly Mexican parishioners. Many of those that served the Irish and Italians in past decades simply closed.
The new, court-ordered redesign of the 25th Ward, which encompasses Pilsen and a population now estimated to be 73 percent Hispanic, reflects the latest ethnic change in the neighborhood. So did the decision of the ward`s Italian alderman of 33 years, Vito Marzullo, who faced the inevitable and reluctantly agreed to retire.
Marzullo views the latest transition with all the good will of an overthrown monarch.
He feels the remap, which by federal court order gave his ward an overwhelmingly Hispanic constituency, was engineered by political kingmakers to rob him of his power base in City Hall. ”They couldn`t beat me with people so they found new ways to do it,” Marzullo said angrily.
With four Mexican-Americans seeking Marzullo`s post in a special aldermanic election March 18, the 25th Ward`s Hispanic residents are guaranteed ethnic representation on the city council for the first time.
The 18th Street business district of Pilsen has always been rich in ethnic flavor, but the scents, sounds and sights today are those of Mexico.
Taco shells, tostados and tortillas parade on conveyor belts from the ovens at Sabinas Tortilleria, 1509 W. 18th St. Latin rhythms fill the street outside Libreria y Discoteca Novedades a few blocks away.
Vivid street murals and Spanish signs on storefronts add to the color of a neighborhood that has been an irresistible lure for movie and television crews.
Pilsen has the potential to match nearby Chinatown as a tourist draw, urban analysts say. But the community`s leaders must overcome industrial decay, high unemployment and youth gang violence.
The Pilsen neighborhood, named after a Czechoslovakian brewing center, is home now to a Mexican-American community made up of immigrants as well as refugees from a tight Hispanic community displaced two decades ago by construction nearby of the University of Illinois at Chicago.
The new 25th Ward is a lively, gritty, blue-collar domain with many vacant lots and cadavers of factories. In spite of the industrial decay, the neighborhood`s enduring middle-class base has sustained vital commercial areas along Cermak Road and 18th Street. A young artistic community has also begun to thrive in the eastern portion of Pilsen.
The emergence of an Hispanic political force has helped nurture a new sense of community to the old Chicago neighborhood, residents say.
”The interesting thing is the excitement the campaign has generated
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–more so than previous years,” said Rev. Tim McCormick of Providence of God Catholic Church, 717 W. 18th St. ”The Hispanics now have a number of choices. People are more conscious and participating on more levels.”
The aldermanic choices offered the ward`s 16,000 registered voters are State Rep. Juan Soliz, 36, a Pilsen lawyer who has been portrayed as a political chameleon by opponents; Juan Velazquez, 40, a longtime neighborhood activist and city employee; Virginia Martinez, 36, who is on leave as legal counsel to the Latino Institute, an information clearinghouse on Hispanic affairs; and Philip Coronado, 49, a neighborhood youth group`s athletic director and political neophyte.
Neighborhood issues have been almost secondary in this race and in the six other ward races in this special election. The remap elections are widely viewed as preludes to the 1987 city mayoral contest and as proxy power plays in the war between Mayor Harold Washington and Ald. Edward Vrdolyak (10th).
Soliz was once a Washington supporter but has been viewed as a Vrdolyak man since accepting funds from the 10th Ward alderman to retire a campaign debt. He denies that he is tied to either camp. Soliz is running
simultaneously for renomination to the legislature, but he promises that if elected alderman, he would give up his legislative seat and help find another Hispanic to run in the general election next fall.
”If I had known there would be special elections, I would not have run for state representative,” Soliz said. ”Now, they want to deprive the voters.”
Both Velazquez and Martinez are disaffected Soliz supporters who say he has betrayed his Hispanic constituency.
Velazquez, a deputy commissioner in the city Department of Streets and Sanitation on a leave of absence for the campaign, has enlisted Washington as his honorary campaign chairman, although the mayor has not yet made an official endorsement in the 25th Ward.
A straight-talking street activist, Velazquez`s candor drew self-conscious laughter from students at a recent appearance on the University of Illinois at Chicago campus.
”I am very familiar with the university. You displaced me, my family and my friends,” said Velazquez. ”I have been accused of being rough, my Spanish is not the best, I`m not the prettiest, but I believe in fighting for what I believe in.”
Virginia Martinez bristles at being accorded ”also-running” status by political analysts. As Midwest director for the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, she says she was one of the first attorneys on the legal case that got the ward redrawn for a large Hispanic majority.
Local residents credit Martinez with spending many years working in the Pilsen area, helping students, the jobless and those too poor to pay for legal assistance. She says she is relying on grass-roots support, and although she has past ties to Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan (D., Chicago), Martinez says she is not affiliated with him or any particular political faction.
Coronado is a plant supervisor for Allen Paper Co., 564 W. Randolph St., and athletic director for Centro de la Causa, a youth center at 731 W. 17th St.
Like Velazquez, he is a native of the neighborhood that was displaced by the U. of I. campus. Coronado charges that his opponents are merely puppets of various Democratic factions, while saying he was inspired to run by his dedication to the people of the ward.
”My biggest asset is that I have worked with the people in the community for 25 years,” Coronado said. ”I can get people working together to solve the problems that I don`t have all the answers to.”
Voters in the special election will also choose a Democratic ward committeeman. Marzullo and his successor as committeeman, Marco Domico, long wielded formidable clout from the 25th Ward Regular Democratic Organization office at 2520 S. Blue Island Ave.
Although Domico is being challenged by three Hispanic candidates and although his traditional Italian constituency has crumbled, the 68-year-old incumbent treats his re-election as a foregone conclusion.
”It`s a precinct captains` election,” Domico said. ”And the first thing in their mind is to elect their own committeeman.”
Velazquez is depending on his own Hispanic organization to ensure his election as both alderman and committeeman.
Committeeman candidate Jesse Negrette, 40, is a Cook County sheriff`s sergeant. He describes himself as a loyal member of the regular Democratic organization who is running as an independent in his first elective endeavor. ”I was raised in that area,” he said, ”and I feel I can represent it as well as any of the other candidates.”
Raul Rodriguez, 46, may have the most interesting background of any of the candidates. The barrel-chested Rodriguez, an independent candidate with regular Democratic ties, is a professional wrestler who competes under the name ”Blackie Torpedo Guzman.”
”I win more matches than I lose,” he said, ”but I don`t count anything but my money.”