Jose (Cha-Cha) Jimenez , one of seven founders of the Young Lords street gang and the founder of the Young Lords as a national human rights movement.He was born in Caguas, Puerto Rico of country folk or Jíbaro parents, on August 8, 1948.
Early years
Eugenia Rodriguez Flores of San Lorenzo,Puerto Rico is mother to Jose (Cha-Cha) Jimenez.She never attended a formal school but grew up within a Catholic convent until the age of 15.Soon after leaving,she married Antonio Jimenez Rodriguez of the barrio(neighborhood) of San Salvador in Caguas,Puerto Rico.They lived together by Maracal,the calf carved road now concrete that leads into and meets up with the Morena road, where she was from at San Salvador's La Plaza.La Plaza for years was Don Arroyo's Colmado;a drug store,pool hall and party store rolled into one.The "titeres" or the local mischievous teens then hung around barefoot like Huckleberry Finn, sitting on large bolders.At times they would trek down the creek passing groups of women doing their laundry,rubbing, and slapping soapy clothes against the rocks.When they finally reached nature's waterfall, they hung onto roots and tree branches on both splashing sides, to climb down the steep cliff and swim naked at the "Tinaja's" bottom pot lake.Since some of these "titeres" had whirpooled down to the deepest crevice and drowned;the barrio of San Salvador discouraged swimming at the "Tinaja." This and spectacular cockfights held within the tiny circled stadiums, on high hilltops for easy get away, could not be enforced.San Salvador had no police station and this was the accepted life.The "titeres" mostly girl watched,joking around,seeking attention in front of the large Coca-Cola sign attached to the front wall, as the store's marquee.This "titeres" pasttime of more than a century exists today.It is a coming of age for young boys attempting to hide underclass action,from the feared gossip of controlling neighbors.Thats difficult in the lush green rolling mountain tops in Puerto Rico's caribbean countryside.Then,there were farmed vegetables of pana,yuca,yautia,malanga,tobacco and mountain coffee beans near the Guinea and chicken coops.Fruits of Guava,mango,papaya,pineapple,banana plants and coconut trees were also in abundance,next to bamboo and nearby sounds of a coqui(toad) filled dribbling creek.Their house was one room,wooden framed, with a thatched roof made of palm leaves.It was always warm and open, similiar to the once add ons or aggregado homes of peasant Jibaros that once sold their labor in that area to large plantation owners.In fact, the unrelated plantation farmer Don Jimenez parceled and sold some of his remaining land to Gregorio Jimenez, who was Cha-Cha Jimenez's grandfather.Eugenia and Antonio's limited furniture consisted primarily of a bed in this one room home.The entire family slept on it.Nearby other relatives,it also provided privacy and protection from the sun and the tropical mist rain.
Eugenia soon gave birth to Antonia,her oldest daughter.Within a year Antonia died from severe influenza but more from lack of medical attention and education.Around this same time,Cha-Cha Jimenez was born at the city of Caguas on the street called El Millon,to be close to the hospital.Dona Genia as she is known,soon boarded a small two engine plane and took her new son to New York City.There,they climbed unto a Greyhound bus and traveled to the migrant camp near Boston where Tono was worried, waiting for her.She spoke no english and this was her first time traveling alone outside of Puerto Rico.The Italian migrant farm owners were hospitable.They rented the family a tiny house,near the greenhouse where the tomato seedlings were housed for winter and made Tono its caretaker.Dona Genia improvised her own job: ironing Sunday clothes for the migrant farmworkers.
The family moved in less than two years to Chicago to be closer to relatives.Teenage Dona Genia instantly landed work in a downtown candy factory.Later as she raised her family,she worked piece work in a few TV parts factories.Dona Genia also volunteered and contributed to the organizing of the Daughters of Mary (Damas de Maria) in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood.The Damas de Maria's mission promoted Catholic teachings to Latinos who could not understand English nor afford to enroll their children in a Catholic school.
Dona Genia lived near Holy Name Cathedral, at the northside of downtown in one of the first two Puerto Rican barrios in Chicago named by Puerto Ricans: La Clark.But in 1950,she rode city busses to the southwest of downtown, to attend Spanish mass at the mostly Mexican parish of St.Francis, on Roosevelt Rd. Later by the early 60's,she and other Hispanos would help organize Spanish language masses at:Holy Name Cathedral,St.Michael's and St.Teresa's churches.In the 1950's,more attention was being given to the newly arrived wave of Puerto Ricans,as Cardinal Stritch opened up a Cardinal's Committee on Spanish Speaking and placed Msgr. Edward M. Burke as its director.Monies were channeled via Jack Eagan to Father Leo T. Mahon who worked with the Saul Alinsky styled Woodlawn Organization's Latin American Committee.This organization,in the 70's would later provide monetary support to Marcos Munoz for the local Cesar Chavez Farmworkers Organizing Committee that was picketing the Jewel stores.The Farmworkers were joined many times on their picket lines by the Young Lords and their supporters.
Dona Genia in the grassroots was not aware of how to seek nor to manage non profit funding,nor was she polictical.She was only impassioned about being christian and improvised and networked,in a more cost effective way.Communications asking for support were sent up the ladder from the parish blocks, to Father Don Headley,Father John Ring,Father Katherine and Father Hoffman, with friends or relatives in the Damas de Maria or the Knights of St. John of the other councils.The goal for support was to schedule speakers that would lead the neighborhood rosary services, in the mid western section of the Lincoln Park neighborhood.Dona Genia pushed alone at times during this Latino expansion in Lincoln Park,as she watched many become complacent.Still others sought to take the main credit.But for her it was God's will,a calling not a career.It was the only way to accomplish her mission.The voids in her skills made her feel insecure.However,when there was minimal support and no other choice, she found courage to lead the rosaries herself.Now it was Dona Genia who was the one being sought out to lead these neighborhood rosaries.
There were many days that Dona Genia walked door to door with her children and other Latino families throughout the Lincoln Park community. They combed mail boxes for spanish names, to recruit sponsors for these Stanly or Avon party styled, rosary cafesitos.Local churches were asked to print flyers that would announce these prayer meetings.And they were posted inside stores,laundermats and Latino businesses, in the Lincoln Park neighborhood.It would become a massive Catholic undertaking,more organized and family oriented than some of the smaller churches do today.The living rooms became packed with parranda parades of Puerto Rican pilgrims.They entered these homes singing cultural hymns, ready to pray and to celebrate with speeches.The proud Latino pilgrims greeted and hugged each other at the doorways, as brothers and sisters.They took up donations for the Damas and Caballeros councils, prayed for the sick and dead, and gave acknowlegements,recognitions and well wishes to families and individals.It included special event annoucements and a petition signing.Their mission was simple:to work toward celebrating a mass in spanish, inside the local American church.When the quota of petitions was finally reached,local priests would gladly announce at the regular english Sunday service, the start of this new spanish language mass.Puerto Ricans were proud and elated,humbly uplifted by this common folk victory.
Dona Genia also taught crowded catechism classes of several months duration to neighborhood youth in her living room.The room was dimly lit with lamps.And furniture was laid out like a home school,in a circle of mostly chairs instead of sofas.There was always an altar with lit candles:a picture of San Martin de Porres,a statute of St Jude and a picture of the Virgin Mary of the Perpetual Heart.When some parents of the children would visit,they would ask Dona Genia to pray with them.Dona Genia's religious orientation,the living room altar, and their Latino spirituality frame of reference, made some of them think of her as some kind of healer of native holy remedies.In fact her features resemble an indigenous Taina and she proclaims it proudly. It is also grassroots cultural custom of the carribean and easily assumed.Dona Genia did find later a more caristmatic Roman Catholic style that was finally acceptable and more akin to her style of worship.However,she was taunted by some relatives for her passionate community service work.But since the time of her days in the convent,Dona Genia's life has always centered on her being a devout Catholic.Her difficulty was in reading and writing,especially in english.It was only her sincere humbleness and charisma that enabled Latino children,to accept memorizing each question and repeating to her each answer, with a yes ma'am and no ma'am in spanish.When Dona Genia felt the youth were well prepared enough in cathechism,Father Katherine of St.Michael's was summoned to review the questions and answers with them.He was greeted like a Mayor coming to visit the neighborhood to hand out awards.When graduation day finally arrived,these lower income children polished themselves up in their new Sunday dresses and navy blue suits and ties.They walked proudly
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