The Resurrection Project of Mexican Catholic Chicago: Spiritual Activism and Liberating Praxis

Abstract

This chapter offers a historical ethnography of community building in Chicago's historic Pilsen neighborhood on that city's Near West Side. It focuses on the Resurrection Project, a community development organization that predominantly builds and secures housing for Latino residents, and locates the organization within the historical context of mexicano Catholicism in Chicago. Focusing on the organization's first fifteen years, 1990–2005, and inaugural efforts in Pilsen, it uses historical archives, oral history interviews, and ethnographic material to view the programs for housing, community development, and leadership as a strategy to create a life of dignity, as revelation, and as an expression of “the faith of the people.”