By Natasha Korecki
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Thursday, November 20, 2003

Women leave the evening rosary service in La Purisima's new church. U.S. immigrants paid to build the church in this small town in Michoacan, Mexico.

LA PURISIMA, Mexico – Amid the poverty that surrounds it, a new church sits on a manicured hill.

Its cross lights up an azure blue, and residents stare at it adoringly as if it were a beacon for lost ships.

In many ways, that’s exactly what it represents.

Immigrants who left this central Mexican town for U.S. jobs – many settling in Hanover Park and Carpentersville – are part of a group, Club La Purisima, that helped raise $80,000 of the $300,000 cost of the church.

"It reminds people here that the people who left haven’t forgotten them," said club secretary Alejandra Arroyo of Hanover Park. "It’s like they’re giving them hope."

Over the past five years, locals contoured the concrete exterior, even as water leaked into some of their own homes.

A boy regularly pushes a sputtering lawnmower over bright green grass outside the church, while most residents contend with swampy yards where chickens, goats and pigs crow, stomp and snort.

The townspeople take pride in keeping the church immaculate because they poured their sweat into building it.

This kind of club-funded construction is happening in the smallest of Mexican pueblos as immigrants make money in the north.

Club members say they aim to do two things: improve the lives of those still living in the impoverished towns they’ve left behind and, in doing so, hope to one day limit the number of people leaving for the United States.

Their goal is not that different from that of thousands of Mexican immigrants in the suburbs. Much of what fuels the Mexican exodus is the desire to improve life "back home," if not for themselves, then at least for families and friends.

Of 37 million Hispanics in the United States, 67 percent are Mexican, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

In 2000, the number of Mexican immigrants in the suburbs swelled to 290,000 – more than three times the 1990 number, according to a Roosevelt University study.

And those immigrants are fueling their homeland’s economy.

Mexican immigrants send $10 billion home every year, money that is the country’s third-largest revenue source, after oil and tourism, the Banco de Mexico reported.

That money, most of which goes toward feeding families and buying clothes, is nine times the combined annual budgets of Schaumburg, Naperville, Elgin, Lisle, Arlington Heights, Geneva, Gurnee and the Illinois Toll Highway Authority.

Looking over La Purisima, a community of 2,500 people in the south central state of Michoacán, it’s clear what’s club-funded: the church, a new road, an improved water system, a cleaned-up cemetery.

The projects stand out like flecks of color in a black- and-white photograph.

Club La Purisima is one of 27 clubs in Illinois sending money to towns in Michoacán. The clubs fall under an umbrella group called the Federation de Clubes Michoacanos en Illinois.

"We cannot do a lot one by one," said Gerardo Torres, federation spokesman. "But together, everybody can put (in) a little money and we can do big things."

Members have built big things on humble incomes.

Only 26 percent of Mexicans in the United States earn more than $35,000 a year, compared to more than half of non-Hispanics. And nearly 23 percent of U.S. Mexicans live below the poverty level, compared to about 8 percent of non-Hispanics, according to the census bureau. The U.S. poverty level is $18,400 for a four-person family.

Most of the 200 members of Illinois’ Club La Purisima earn minimum wage. They donate what they can; sometimes $20 or $50 a month, sometimes nothing.

A young La Purisima resident prays the rosary with other parishioners in her hometown's new church. Many U.S. immigrants from this town formed Club La Purisima and sent back the money to build the church.

Arroyo collects club money for projects the old-fashioned way – knocking on immigrants’ doors in Hanover Park and Carpentersville.

At 21, she is one of the youngest to participate.

One researcher, Xochitl Bada, with the University of Notre Dame-based Institute for Latino Studies, said few second-generation immigrants feel the same connection to the country their parents left behind.

Arroyo is different.

She has a love for La Purisima, where there are no rules and the rural landscape makes for a peaceful retreat every summer or December.

Yet it’s practically impossible to survive on La Purisima earnings.

Working the fields is common, but job availability is inconsistent and wages range from $7 to $8 for a day’s work.

"People ask, ‘Why are you doing it? You’re not even from here,’ " Arroyo said. "I say, ‘I like being involved and helping people.’ "

She also remembers the past.

On a visit when she was 8, she had to shower outside, dumping pots of water over her head.

Since then, the club helped build a better system. Now, pipes carry water into each home.

But these kinds of local improvements alone aren’t enough to slow immigration.

The reasons for the mass migration from Mexico to the United States run much deeper. It is a result of a number of factors including wage disparities, job opportunities and the need for improved education.

Those who want to slow immigration, including David Gorak, executive director of the Midwest Coalition to Reduce Immigration, say the continued flow of Mexican laborers keeps U.S. companies from increasing wages for low-skilled workers and from improving work conditions.

Still, immigrants keep sending money back home. They want to ease the poverty they’ve left behind.

Club money flowed so frequently, especially over the past 10 years, that the Mexican government took notice.

In 1997, the state of Zacatecas introduced a program called tres por uno, or three-for-one. The government – split among county, state and federal budgets – gives $3 for every $1 club donation.

Other states, including Guerrero, Jalisco, Guanajuato, San Luis Potosí and Michoacán, embraced the program.

Clubs collect most of their money through monthly fees and by throwing big fund-raising parties in churches, parks or forest preserves. The fund-raisers bring in $5,000 to $15,000 apiece, Torres said.

Though the practice dates back to the 1950s, the effort to raise money for hometowns has evolved in the past 10 years. It has gone beyond the typical immigrant sending money to a highly organized economic system, experts say.

The number of Mexican clubs in the Chicago area jumped from 20 to more than 180 from 1994-2002. More than 600 are registered nationwide.

A new church in La Purisima, Michoacan is a large symbol of the money coming in from town residents who have moved to the United States. Many of those residents now live in suburbs like Hanover Park and Carpentersville.

Though estimates show immigrants send a total of $10 billion to their homes, more than 90 percent of that money is sent outside of organized clubs, said Bada, the Latino studies researcher.

However, the symbolic power is enormous, she said.

"They’re saying to the Mexican government, ‘Hello, here I am. I was able to do these things you were unable to do,’ " Bada said. "It’s a way of sharing the wealth they’ve acquired in the U.S."

Bada said the money clubs raise in the U.S. exceeds the annual budgets of towns in the states of Zacatecas and Michoacán.

Dominican, Guatemalan and Salvadoran hometown associations also developed over the past 10 years, she said, but Mexican clubs have had the greatest impact.

Typically, immigrants start the clubs after living in the states for more than a decade.

"When they have a mature community and they’re not worried about a means of survival, it’s very likely they’ll start worrying about problems they left back home," Bada said.

In his office in Morelia, Michoacán Coordinator General Claudio Mendez said the needs are too great.

"We want to develop the state," Mendez said. "We want to help every single project. But we have a limit."

The cutoff is 30 million pesos, or $3 million.

From the suburbs, each club works with Mexican residents to develop priorities.

They submit proposals to the state, which gives them to members of a statewide committee made up of government officials and five U.S. immigrants.

Gonzalo Arroyo of Aurora, the former president of the Michoacán federation, is one of those five.

"The Mexican people come here and are saying they’re not forgetting the people in their towns," he said.

Yet it doesn’t mean immigrants do not invest in the United States, said Bada and Teresa Carrillo, Assistant Professor of Raza Studies at San Francisco State University.

Clubs provide scholarships and get involved in community anti-violence programs, they said.

"Being active in hometown clubs is a very sociable experience," Carrillo said. "The hometown clubs can be a first step of political activity in this country."

Club members have not forgotten Ecuandureo. In the small Michoacán town, immigrants helped create a better gathering place.

Around Ecuandureo’s central plaza, half-inch-long bugs called tijeritas, or little scissors, are swept into piles. Workers spray each morning because some people in town say they believe the insects, resembling earwigs, crawl into people’s ears, cutting the drums.

Eminem’s "Cleaning Out My Closet" blares out of speakers around the plaza as teens hold hands outside a store.

The plaza was transformed after a major 2000 renovation funded, in part, by Club Ecuandureo, which has members in Chicago and the suburbs.

What was an empty lot, overgrown with weeds became a tidy spot with benches, parkway trees, sidewalks and a gazebo. Religious festivals and fiestas are held in the plaza now.

But just outside the plaza’s outskirts, poverty prevails.

Young boys in Ecuandureo don't seem to mind that their "swimming hole" is about two feet deep. This old laundry basin entertains the fearless boys for hours.

Mariana Camarillo, who has family in Rolling Meadows, welcomes visitors to her home and then warns them.

Step to the right, she says, as two men lay out white tile to repair a broken floor.

Be careful where you stand, she says. Water drips from a round, yellow stain spreading on the living room ceiling.

There still is much club members could fund.

On the other side of town, young boys laugh and splash around. It’s a humid day, nearly 90 degrees.

Before them is a muddy, shallow concrete water basin used as a community laundry. It’s only about 2 feet deep.

One boy stands at the foot of the laundry, points his hands together and dives in head-first.

Other boys follow.

The community laundry doubles as a community pool.

A pipe carries water into the basin that’s drawn from a deep well called el ojo de agua, the eye of the water.

As the boys shake themselves off and shriek with laughter, two women draw water from the pipe into a large blue jug.

"It looks yellow," Camarillo says but insists, "the water is good for drinking."

Just as in Ecuandereo and La Purisima, the rural village of Valparaiso in the state of Zacatecas still needs help.

More than two decades ago, Hanover Park resident Arnulfo Flores, 50, left Valparaiso for the riches of America.

But home dug a trench deep within his heart, he says. He cannot shake the memories of the constant need.

He and his seven brothers and sisters barely had enough. From his father’s U.S. wages, he had one coveted pair of shoes while other kids attended school barefoot.

When he returned to his old school a few years ago, he quickly decided two things: He would preside over Illinois’ Club Valparaiso, and the school would be project No. 1.

Its sewer system stopped working one day. With no money to make repairs, bathrooms stayed closed for years.

Kids excused themselves from class and knocked on neighbors’ doors when they needed to relieve themselves, Flores said. He vowed to raise money for new bathrooms.

"They said: ‘You guys are crazy, full of promises just like the government,’æ" Flores said.

But Club Valparaiso members kept their promises. They paid for bathrooms, a new road, a meeting room next to the school, five wheelchairs and an ambulance.

Now, they’re funding construction of a senior citizen home.

The unfinished, one-story structure is five minutes outside downtown and made of simple but modern red brick.

It’s not much, compared to the spacious, three-bedroom Hanover Park house where Flores and his family live. There, 13 pairs of shoes spill out of a shoe rack at the front entrance.

Yet, Flores, like so many other Mexican immigrants, feels caught between two worlds. He’s adjusting to his new life in the suburbs, but he’s still attached to the world he left behind.

"My heart is still there," Flores says of the village that lies in a valley surrounded by curving, green-covered hills.

"Who knows? Someday, that senior house might be the place for me."