Little Village is a port of entry for Mexican immigrants, and the neighborhood’s roughly two-mile 26th Street corridor from Sacramento to Kostner is crammed with around 500 local businesses that cater to their tastes: butcher shops, pharmacies, and more than 100 restaurants offering everything from mangonadas—fresh sliced mango spiked with chile and lime and drizzled with savory tamarind sauce—to toddler-size mariachi suits and live doves.
Cremeria La Ordeña (3234 W. 26th) has a bulk section to rival any Whole Foods, with an array of chile-lime snacks (pepitas, white beans, chickpeas, and peanuts) and a deli case full of fresh cheeses, sticky-sweet cajeta (goat’s milk caramel), and a dozen different kinds of fresh mole. (I left with a quarter pound of the deliciously smoky black Oaxacan variety.)
In its splendorous variety, the bustling 26th Street commercial district is certainly proof of the strength and vibrancy of Chicago’s Mexican community. But sales at some local businesses fell as much as 40 or 50 percent this winter, Di Paulo says, after Donald Trump’s election sparked deportation fears among undocumented immigrants, who stayed home instead of shopping. The corridor lost as many as a dozen businesses as a result. “There was a jewelry store, a dress store, a quinceañera store—luxury stores,” he says. “Not like grocery stores—disposable-income-type places.” Business has since rebounded, he says, thanks in part to a shop-local campaign he helped spearhead—around 60,000 people showed up for the Taste of Little Village festival in early June.
