It took a nudge from famed social reformer Jane Addams for a young Anita Villarreal to speak on behalf of an immigrant in need.
But before long, she had acquired an impressive rap sheet for her work.
Born Anita Duarte, Villarreal was raised in the shadow of Hull House, the Halsted Street settlement where Addams helped American newcomers decades before the government lifted a finger on their behalf.
Raised in suburban abundance, Addams had taken a vow of poverty: She set up shop in the slums of Chicago out of a moral conviction that those who had more ought to share with those who had less.One day at Hull House a woman was unable to communicate in English that she wanted to mail a letter. Villarreal was nearby and spoke Spanish, but was shy. Addams insisted that she use her voice to find out what the woman needed.
From serving as an interpreter at Hull House, Villarreal moved into community organizing and eventually worked as a public notary who facilitated connections between Mexican immigrants and American employers who wanted people to work their fields and assembly lines.
The government employed few Spanish speakers, so it used Spanish-speaking volunteers to recruit Mexican workers, bring them here and find them housing. In addition, Spanish-speaking notaries verified the authenticity of immigrants’ documents.
But then as now, government attitudes toward immigrants can shift sharply, and Villarreal — born in the United States — was among those swept up in the vagaries of America’s immigration policies.
In 1954 the government had begun a campaign to arrest and deport unauthorized Mexicans — “Operation Wetback,” as it was offensively dubbed.
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A few years later, a U.S. marshal handcuffed Villarreal in her home at 1102 S. Ashland Ave. Federal prosecutors accused her of helping Mexican workers obtain fraudulent visas, and Villarreal entered a guilty plea.
The judge in her case, Julius Hoffman, was no bleeding-heart liberal. He was later famed or infamous (you pick) for presiding over the trial of the defendants who fueled protests of the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, known as the Chicago Seven.
But Hoffman sentenced Villarreal to five years’ probation without requiring her to return the money to clients who had bought ersatz visas.
“Now we have, on occasions, as you know, granted probation, with a provision for reimbursement of the money illicitly acquired to those from whom it was taken,” Hoffman noted.
But this situation was different, because Villarreal’s clients had bought visas to slip into the country and disappear. She didn’t know how to reach them.
“I don’t like to enter an order which cannot be complied with,” Hoffman replied, letting her off the hook.
The trial cost Villarreal her notary license, and she needed a new way to support her family. She took a real estate course at the YMCA’s junior college, got a broker’s license and opened an office in Pilsen.
In coming years, Villarreal would help orchestrate a relatively orderly ethnic transition in Pilsen and South Lawndale, which other brokers had rebranded as Little Village. Both longtime Czech and Slovak neighborhoods eventually became predominantly Mexican.
In those times, fearful white flight often followed the first arrival of any newcomers. North Lawndale went quickly from a Jewish neighborhood to a Black one in the 1950s. Panic-peddling brokers bought properties below their fair-market value and sold them to the new arrivals at crippling rates.
Buyers who couldn’t get standard mortgages were financed via “mortgage contracts.” The buyer had no equity in the home he bought until he repaid the entire loan. If he missed a payment, the property would be foreclosed, and he’d lose all his money.
Realtors reaping the benefits of this rigged system rejected Villarreal’s admission to their professional organization, which circulated listings of property for sale among its members.She also asked to join the local chamber of commerce. “We don’t want to take your money yet,” she was told. “Wait six months and see if you still want to join.”
“Don’t worry about me,” she replied. “I’ll be here in six months.”
None of this deterred Villarreal. “We are going to be the first Mexican suburb” became her mantra, as she bought home after home and one storefront after another in “La Villita,” promising a fair price to people who wanted to sell and a welcoming community to those who wanted to buy.
Villarreal knew firsthand the problems of the first Mexicans to move into a white ethnic neighborhood. When she and her family arrived on Avers Avenue, a Bohemian real estate agent warned her landlord that his building would be bombed. The landlord told them to leave.
Villarreal demanded to know who told the landlord to be rid of her family. She marched over to Citizen Realty on 26th Street, threatening to file a claim of racial discrimination with the Chicago Real Estate Board.
But she soon moved, having found a better home: a two-story brick bungalow at 2416 S. Ridgeway Ave. She recounted her experience to her real estate clients, underscoring her belief that home ownership helps build democracy.
Eventually, only one restaurant serving Bohemian cuisine remained on 26th Street, once the shopping and socializing rialto of the Czech community.
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“From the Italian I bought it from,” the Mexican proprietor of Katherine’s Restaurant replied when a Tribune reporter asked how he learned to cook pecena kachna (roast duck), knedlik (dumplings) and zeli (sauerkraut).
Of course, not everything about the transition went smoothly. In the 1960s an anti-civil rights movement was organized in South Lawndale. The Property Owners Co-ordinating Committee often met in real estate offices.
The Black-owned Chicago Defender reported its 1963 demonstration under the headline “Racists to March on City Hall.”
Villarreal thought there was a better way to represent Spanish speakers concerned about their own property values: cultivating, rather than alienating, Chicago’s movers and shakers.
When a long-standing Italian community along Taylor Street was designated for rehabilitation, the local alderman, Vito Marzullo, promised: “There will be no Negroes and no Mexicans living in the community.”
Led by Villarreal, Mexicans pushed back against the idea of having no say in the future of the neighborhood they also lived in.
“When it’s likely to mean a better community for my children to grow up in,” Villarreal once told a reporter, “I like to help with the work of the planning board.”
She courted Mayor Richard J. Daley, inviting him to be the guest of honor at parades and fiestas.
That association with Daley distanced her from the so-called lakefront liberals, who were convinced that political progress depended on defeating the Daley Machine.
“In Villarreal’s assessment, the reformers had no experience governing and no influence in the business community, which would jeopardize Little Village’s prosperity,” historian Mike Amezcua reported in his 2022 book “Making Mexican Chicago.”
Villarreal created her own mini-machine. Her son Larry was president of the Little Village Council of Financial Institutions. His brother Daniel was vice president of the Little Village 26th Street Chamber of Commerce.
Villarreal herself was its president, and on her advice Daley appointed Irene Hernandez as the first Spanish-speaking member of the Cook County Board of Commissioners.
In 1986, disparate political visions crashed head on in the 22nd Ward. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, a reformer, had been elected ward committeeman and was running for alderman.
“She was very unhappy with the way the ward was being run,” recalled her daughter Loretta Villarreal Long. “She said, ‘This is it! I’ve had it!’”
At the age of 66, she ran for alderman against Garcia. She lost, died in 2001, and today is little remembered.
No honorary street sign bears her name. Nor a park. The most visible evidence of her impact is 26th Street: lined with taquerias, store windows displaying sombreros, and record stores blasting rancheras, songs of love’s joy and pain.
But should an epitaph be wanted, Villarreal’s son, Larry left an appropriate text:
“She never rested,” he said. “Any time people would come to her with a problem, she would just get up and go. She never said no to something she thought was a good thing.”
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Ron Grossman is a columnist emeritus for the baiduhai. His columns vary from social and political commentary to chapters in Chicago history. Before turning to journalism, Grossman was a history professor. He is the author of “Guide to Chicago Neighborhoods.”
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