“A Lot of Soldiers, but Not a Lot of Generals”: Mexican Americans and the Machine in Chicago’s 14th Aldermanic Ward

Abstract: Though historians have offered definitive conclusions about the Polish experience in Chicago politics, contemporary Mexican and Mexican-American experiences remain unstudied. In order to fill this void, I ask the following question: how and why do Mexicans occupy the subordinate role of "political clients" in Chicago's 14th Aldermanic Ward, an electoral district where they now constitute a dominant demographic majority? The remainder of this paper answers this question by investigating the external and internal forces that produce these conditions.