Nearly 150 years of Mexican history in Milwaukee is carefully stored in file cabinets on the city’s southwest side.
This trove of more than 400 photos isn’t displayed in a museum or a historical society. It’s preserved within the brick walls of the Wisconsin Hispanic Scholarship Foundation, the city’s largest funder of the annual Mexican Fiesta.
There isn’t another archive with a collection like this one, said Margarita Sandoval, a retired genealogist and librarian-turned-volunteer at the foundation. She’s collected photographs of 69 Mexican families who moved to Milwaukee between 1910 and 1940, also called Los Primeros — a term local historians use to refer to the first generation of Mexicans to arrive in Milwaukee.
“I always like to say it’s for the grandchildren,” said Sandoval, a grandmother of three.
Latino history in Wisconsin dates back to at least the 1880s. Yet none of the 3,000-plus sites on the State Register of Historic Places and the Wisconsin Historical Marker Program commemorate that heritage.
For decades, recording Latino settlement in Wisconsin wasn’t a priority among preservationists, said Cheryl Jiménez-Frei, an associate professor and co-director of the Public History Program at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.
Culturally significant buildings, like Milwaukee’s first Mexican grocery store, were often demolished to make way for apartment buildings and interstates, she said.
Despite these gaps in history, historians from Eau Claire to Milwaukee are using oral histories from generations of Latino residents — along with sparse news clippings and government documents — to piece together stories of Latino settlement in Wisconsin.
Here are a few places throughout Wisconsin that researchers believe could qualify as historic sites and tell important stories about Latino resilience, community and pride.
Milwaukee’s first Latino-owned store opened in Walker’s Point in the 1920s
Arturo Morales was 25 years old when he became the first Latino store owner in Milwaukee in 1925.
For 39 years, Morales’ grocery store at 535 S. Fifth St. in Walker’s Point kept Mexicans connected to home while they began their new life in Milwaukee, said Sergio González, an assistant professor of history at Marquette University and author of the book “Mexicans in Wisconsin.”
The store sold traditional Mexican foods, general store items and had a restaurant, according to a 1929 Milwaukee Sentinel article.
“Grocery stores are vital for immigrants to preserve some of the cultural traditions,” González said.
Today, most of what’s known about Morales and his store comes from the Milwaukee Journal. John Torres, the first Latino reporter to work at the paper, interviewed a 77-year-old Morales in 1977.
In that interview, Morales said he was recruited to Milwaukee by the Pfister & Vogel Tannery shortly after moving to Texas from Mexico. It took him two years to save up the $2,150 needed to open up the store while making 50 cents an hour at the tannery, he said.
The store — called Compania Industrial Mexicana Manufacturera y Importadora, or simply Morales — persisted through the economic crisis of the Great Depression and the mass deportations of Mexicans and their descendants in the 1930s.
In the article, Morales recalled those tough years and said he gave many Mexican and non-Mexican families credit in his store.
“He never kept track of the money he was never repaid,” the article reads. “He said he had no regrets.”
His store no longer stands today. Sometime in the 1940s, González estimates, the original building was demolished. It is now a parking lot.
“It’s really hard to document the physical history of the community when the buildings are gone,” González said.
Morales had a second location at 607 S. Fifth St., which he sold to Ezequiel and Maria Martinez around 1956. The Martinez family named the grocery store Casa Martinez.
That building held different businesses over the years. It remained culturally significant in the Walker’s Point neighborhood because of the “Anything for Selenas” mural by Mauricio Ramirez, González said. The mural celebrated the late Mexican-American pop singer Selena Quintanilla.
Around 2022, the 607 S. Fifth St. building was demolished and replaced with the six-story Taxco Apartments building. Another version of Ramirez’s Selena mural was painted on the back of the property.
Without a building, the Morales grocery store can’t qualify for the State Register of Historic Places. But that doesn’t mean its history can’t be commemorated: It could still qualify for the state’s historical marker program, Jiménez-Frei said.
“The marker would resurrect this story,” Jiménez-Frei said. “But also point out the fact that it was erased or forgotten.”
The “heart” of the Los Primeros generation still stands today
From one look at 719 S. Fifth St. in Walker’s Point, it’s hard to imagine it was once a church. The 135-year-old building seems suited for a storefront, not pews and an altar.
But this cream-colored brick building was once the Mexican Mission Chapel of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
In 1926, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee purchased the building to serve the emerging Spanish-speaking Catholic community in the area.
Although many of the Mexican Catholic families were financially strapped, they poured any spare dollars and time they could into remodeling the new chapel, according to González in his book “Strangers No Longer.”
Nearby churches donated an old altar and pews. Brothers Florencio and Juan Arenas painted the outside in a similar style to the chapels they grew up with in Jalisco, Mexico.
With snow piled along the street, congregants huddled outside to christen the church on Dec. 12, 1926, the Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
The church soon became the “heart” of the city’s Latino community, González said. The chapel was a respite from the everyday segregation and discrimination that Los Primeros experienced in the city and factories. By the late 1930s, the chapel had more than 1,300 members.
Sandoval, the volunteer at the Wisconsin Hispanic Scholarship Foundation, said her father Pedro Sandoval was one of the Los Primeros and an usher at the chapel. He and his brother moved to Milwaukee as orphaned teenagers in the early 1920s.
“My father also helped to bring many other Mexican families to Milwaukee,” she said.
In 1946, the chapel became a parish church and moved to Third and Washington Streets. Twenty years later, after the number of congregants dwindled, the Guadalupe Parish and Holy Trinity merged and became the well-known Our Lady of Guadalupe church that still stands at 605 S. Fourth Street.
Today, not much of 719 S. Fifth Street’s holier days remain. The cross that once adorned the peak of the building is gone. The first floor that held the altar and pews is now occupied by Folia, a hair salon and plant shop.
This building could potentially qualify for the State Register of Historic Places, but Dieter Wegner, the owner of the building, is skeptical about historical preservation. Before any building can be designated for the historic register, the current property owner has to approve.
“I’m really into and interested in the history of things, but I’m not interested in having people limit my rates as a property owner,” said Wegner, who said he owns multiple buildings in Walker’s Point.
That’s a common misconception, said Amy Wyatt, deputy state historic preservation officer. Being on the State or National Register does not mean that property owners are prevented from making changes, unless they are using state or federal funding.
“We don’t have review authority over what a private property owner chooses to do with the property using their own money and resources, including demolition,” Wyatt said.
This is one of many hurdles that Jiménez-Frei and her research team have run into when trying to find places that can qualify for the historic register.
“For marginalized groups, especially for immigrant communities, it’s harder to be able to purchase one of these buildings and preserve it,” Jiménez-Frei said.
Latino gay bar is a cultural staple in downtown Madison
At 27 years old, Ricardo Gonzalez was yearning for a space where he could express his culture, sexuality and politics.
It was 1973, and he was the Latino affirmative action officer for the Wisconsin Department of Administration. His close ties with the Latino community were interwoven in his work and personal life and extended from Madison, where he lived, to his second office in Milwaukee.
But homophobia was prevalent, especially within the Latino community. It seemed easier for Gonzalez to keep his gay identity separate from his Latino heritage, he said.
“I just wanted to have a place of my own,” Gonzalez, 78, said. “I was ready to come out. The bar was the vehicle to come out.”
On the night he opened the Cardinal Bar in 1974, he let his two worlds collide. He remembers his Latino friends were taken aback at the sight of a crowd of gay people walking into the bar.
“Many of them didn’t come back for a long time,” Gonzalez said. “It took years before they came back, but they all did. Eventually, the Cardinal was one of those places that brought the communities together.”
The bar quickly became the place to be in downtown Madison. The live bands were hot, and the drinks were good.
Today, the Cardinal Bar is still a gay salsa club in a swanky, stylish spot in downtown Madison. It has tile floors, stained-glass windows and a small dance floor attached to the old Cardinal Hotel.
But back then, the bar was also known as a meeting space for progressives. Activists working on issues impacting the LGBTQ+ community, women, Native Americans and Latinos held fundraisers and benefits at the bar.
Gonzalez often didn’t charge them to use the space. He often tended the bar himself to save them money, he said.
Politics were always a part of Gonzalez’s life. At 12 years old, he and his family fled from Cuba to Miami as dictator Fidel Castro took control over the island. He continued following politics while attending high school and college in Miami and later Oklahoma. He was known to challenge his family’s conservative views. His aunts and uncles called him “the lawyer,” he said.
In 1989, Gonzalez became the first openly gay Latino man to be appointed to a political office in the U.S as an alderperson representing Madison’s 4th District, according to the Wisconsin LGBTQ History Project. Gonzalez advocated for LGBTQ+ rights and forged Madison’s sister city relationship with his hometown of Camaguey, Cuba.
After 43 years, Gonzalez sold the Cardinal Bar to new owners Carrie Tobias, Anthony Rineer and Andy Hansen. The owners still celebrate the bar’s Latino, queer history through photographs in the space. Latin jazz plays every weekend.
Gonzalez’s story is only a taste of the impact Cuban migration had on Wisconsin, Jiménez-Frei said.
“To be gay in Cuba was a crime,” Jiménez-Frei said. “A lot of them that left (who) were refugees at Fort McCoy and other areas in Wisconsin were gay.”
The bar is 51 years old, so it could qualify for the state register, she said.
“I’m proud of that,” said Gonzalez, who still resides in Madison. “I love Wisconsin.”
A baseball team becomes a nonprofit for Latino youth in Racine
In the 1970s, Island Park in Racine was a hotbed for municipal softball leagues, with tournaments every weekend. Eddie Guzman, his three brothers, and their friends made one competitive team. They called themselves “Por La Gente,” and they played to win.
A large, Latino fan base would cheer them on from the stands, recalled Guzman.
“We played for the gente,” Guzman, 68, said.
In 1978, the team competed in the Los Mestizos Softball Tournament in Milwaukee. Por La Gente got the best of the 23 other leagues from across Wisconsin, taking home the trophy and a $200 cash prize.
After they won again the following year, Guzman and his teammates had the idea to start using their winnings “for the people,” as their name says.
They formed Por La Gente, a nonprofit focused on empowering Latino youth, in 1984. The team socked away its winnings from tournaments to give athletic and academic scholarships to Latino high schoolers in Racine.
The 1980s were a troubling time for Latino youth in Racine, recalled Guzman, who was the nonprofit’s first president. Some were pressured to join gangs or skip school.
Por La Gente decided to organize tournaments of its own at Island Park to teach young people life lessons through sports. On the softball diamond, the players taught teamwork, skill building and confidence, Guzman said.
Their first tournament was on Labor Day weekend in 1984. Now, it’s an annual family event with food trucks, tents, music and more than 20 teams.
Por La Gente continues to introduce boys and girls to basketball, bowling and golf. In the past 41 years, it’s awarded more than $100,000 in scholarships.
After reading the Journal Sentinel’s article about Jiménez-Frei’s work with the Wisconsin State Historic Preservation Office, Guzman wanted to know if Island Park could be designated a historic landmark to commemorate the impact of the Por La Gente founders.
Parks have qualified for the state and national registers, Wyatt said. She believes Island Park could qualify for the state register, especially if it retained historical character.
Some of the Por La Gente team members have since passed away, so it’s important to Guzman that their legacy isn’t forgotten.
“We look at it as a legacy to give to our families, our grandkids,” he said.
Gina Castro is a Public Investigator reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She can be reached at gcastro@gannett.com.
Journal Sentinel visual producer Lou Saldivar contributed to this piece.
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: ‘It’s for the grandchildren’: Wisconsin Latinos race to keep their history alive
