Sara Cano-Gerringer, a native of Monterrey, Mexico, decided to follow a dream when she was ready to get married to her U.S. fiancé. She asked friends how to make the dream a reality and was directed to Roberto Ferreyra, a master in indigenous traditions, who performed an authentic Aztec wedding for her in Chicago.
“It was amazing,” Cano-Gerringer said of her wedding. “Eighty percent of the people in the wedding were not Mexican, and to this day they keep telling me about the time they had.”
Chicago’s current Hispanic population is around 1.8 million, and around 80 percent of this group are of Mexican descent. The Mexican community features many traditions nearly identical to those at home because of its presence in Chicago—from ceremonial practices like Cano-Gerringer’s and authentic Mexican food at neighborhood restaurants to comprehensive ethnic media. This fact is not surprising, considering Chicago and Mexico City are sister cities.
Chicagoans of Mexican descent keep visions of their past homes near with The Tribune Company’s Hoy, the city’s only daily Spanish newspaper and the second-largest Spanish paper in the country. Cano-Gerringer works as a marketing analyst for the paper, and part of her job is to ensure that the paper covers issues relevant to the Mexican population.
Hoy gets distributed free at 2,500 racks and retail locations in 133 zip codes throughout the Chicago area and has become the Spanish-language paper for Mexicans who want to stay informed about both their lives in Chicago and news from their home country. Nearly 500,000 people read the paper each day.
The paper’s coverage often tops that of major newspapers, finding issues unique to the Mexican population, and Hoy has expanded its distribution throughout the city and suburbs as its readership spreads to other neighborhoods. “We have the opportunity to really dig in and cover stories that many weekly papers can’t,” said Kim Benzk, Hoy’s sales marketing director.
Benzk is not Hispanic but works at Hoy because she realized the importance of the market when working at Telemundo, a Spanish-language television station. “I don’t think people realize the importance of the Spanish market in Chicago,” she said. “It’s a great opportunity for growth.”
As one out of every six Chicagoans is Hispanic, Mexican participation in the city’s affairs goes beyond culture and media. According to the Little Village Chamber of Commerce, that neighborhood provides the second-highest sales tax revenue in the state of Illinois; behind only the Magnificent Mile.
Festivals for holidays such as Cinco de Mayo reach many neighborhoods and involve both the Mexican and non-Mexican populations. Another way to reach Mexican readers, according to Alejandro Solorio, the newspaper’s marketing manager, is to produce a top-notch sports section. The Mexican population follows both U.S. sports teams and teams from Mexico, especially the soccer teams.
“Mexico was one of the few countries in Latin America to have the Olympics within the last 40 years. Nineteen sixty-eight was a huge year for Mexico,” said Solorio