Certificate of Naturalization for Carmen Martinez Arias

Carmen Martinez Arias and her extended family donated many items to the Southeast Chicago Historical Museum. Carmen was the oldest child of Lucio and Pasquala Barrios Martinez who emigrated to the United States from the Zacatecas region of Mexico in the period during, and just after, World War I. Carmen was the oldest of six children, who lived with their parents on 108th and Torrence Ave in South Deering near Wisconsin Steel where Lucio worked. The family originally attended Our Lady of Guadalupe Church and, later, St. Kevin’s in South Deering. In 1982, Carmen and her sisters Olga, Faye, Coni, and Martha, along with her daughter Rita, provided a lively oral account of growing up Mexican-American in South Deering to the Southeast Chicago Historical Project. The oral history, conducted by Dominic Pacyga, can be found in the archive. Her daughter, Rita Jirasek, would later become a bilingual education teacher at Bowen High School in South Chicago and publish a book of photographs called Mexican Chicago along with Carlos Tortolero.