Chaotic street closures, scuffles with police prompt city officials to consider new ways to celebrate Mexican Independence Day
As revelers across the city this weekend waved flags and honked horns in honor of Mexican Independence Day, a chaotic undertone tarnished the celebration with the sudden downtown road closures that trapped drivers Friday and Saturday nights and bouts of mischief among the mostly peaceful street parties that sometimes escalated to violence.
The weekend came with “lessons learned,” Mayor Brandon Johnson’s deputy chief of staff Cristina Pacione-Zayas told the Tribune.
The mayor’s office wants “to be able to lift up and ensure that celebration is able to happen, and that we are lifting up culture and people’s right to celebrate independence,” she said.
She and other city leaders told the Tribune they are considering new efforts to better manage the weekend, including possible organized events downtown, where thousands came together for unofficial gatherings.
Unplanned road closures block drivers
The city planned no street closures before the weekend’s celebrations started, Office of Emergency Management and Communications spokesperson Mary May told the Tribune then.
But as cars and revelers on foot filled downtown streets Friday — many waving flags, some launching fireworks and even one intrepid chef spotted grilling atop a truck bed in traffic — the OEMC announced shortly after 8 p.m. it would block roads into Chicago’s downtown area. Intersections from Halsted Street to DuSable Lake Shore Drive and from Division Street to 18th Street were blocked, with residents and workers allowed through at 10 access points.
Meghan McDonough learned of the closures the hard way.
The River North resident was driving onto an I-90 southbound express lane when she suddenly noticed cars ahead of her reversing. Police had just blocked the exit, she realized. She had to reverse back onto the interstate’s main lane.
Back on the interstate, she quickly realized she couldn’t get off: her Ohio Street exit was also closed.
“And the next one was closed. And the next one was closed,” she said. “And no signage either.”
Cars on the northbound lane were stopped “like a parking lot,” she said.
“It was just like somebody’s backyard,” McDonough said. “Completely parked, bumper to bumper. They just stopped and were having a party.”
She took I-290 and got off at Ashland Avenue, slowly making her way back to her neighborhood. The closures cost her two hours of driving, she said.
Police didn’t check her ID when she passed through the intersection into downtown. She imagines she wouldn’t have dealt with them if they had, she said.
“I was so angry. I was tired,” she said.
The 47-year-old supports people celebrating, she said.
“If you say you’re going to close off the streets because there’s going to be a lot of people, great, fine,” she said.
But what resulted Friday night was “scary,” she added.
“In order to be safe, they created a lot of unsafe situations. And they weren’t transparent,” she said.
On Saturday morning, the OEMC reiterated on X, formerly Twitter, that there were no planned street closures for the second day of celebrations. But before 7 p.m., the office had again announced downtown streets were closed to cars.
The downtown street closures meant Seth Blumenthal’s commute from West Town to his Streeterville home took over three hours.
“I personally support the celebration,” he said. “Obviously the city needs to do something to control traffic during this, but it just seems like a lot of people weren’t prepared for the amount of area that they cordoned off and how severely they cordoned it off. I think it left a lot of people unprepared.”
It typically takes Blumenthal, 48, about 20 minutes with traffic to drive home from the bar he is working to open near Ashland and Grand avenues. But Saturday, attempts to get through the closures downtown took him down to 18th Street, back up to the West Loop and through streets jammed to a standstill. He finally talked his way through a closure before having to show ID at another checkpoint.
“Now I’m back in Berlin,” he recalled texting his wife.
He should have taken the “L,” he said, but he drove to the bar so he could pick up a friend and some tools to work on the space. When he left around 7:15 p.m. to head home, he didn’t realize the restrictions to get downtown would be so strict. Public transit is no longer his default mode of getting around because he feels he doesn’t have time to wait for buses and trains while working a full-time job and trying to open a bar, he said.
Blumenthal said he had never experienced such closures and traffic around downtown, even when access to much of the downtown area was restricted during 2020 unrest following the death of George Floyd. The closures Saturday limited access to the central business district on a busy weekend night in good weather, he said.
“This culture that we can just shut down access to downtown, it has consequences, and it feels like a more authoritarian thing,” he said. “I feel like it created something that was a lot worse than had they done nothing.”
The closures were put into effect to “restore traffic flow and ensure emergency vehicles could pass through the area,” said May, the OEMC spokesperson.
“All closures were put into effect only when it was deemed necessary due to large car caravans creating gridlocked traffic in the central business district,” she said.
Pacione-Zayas said the closures were primarily managed by the OEMC and police. They were not planned, but were ultimately deemed necessary to ensure first responders could move throughout the city, she said.
The mayor’s office is considering downtown Mexican Independence Day celebration options, she said.
“You want to be able to have a central event that people can rally around and be a part of,” Pacione-Zayas said, adding that accessible neighborhood celebrations are also important.
Mayor Brandon Johnson praised the Mexican Independence Day weekend as an “amazing celebration” at a news conference Monday.
“Red, white and green. The flags, the culture, the outfits, the creativity, the vibrancy that Mexican Americans bring to the city of Chicago, really around the globe,” he said. “It’s just remarkable … what a beautiful display of culture.”
The city has a responsibility to create safe spaces for celebration, he said. Ideas for how to improve the celebrations are “already rushing in,” Johnson said.
“I didn’t realize how many people have my cellphone number, and people have strong recommendations,” he said.
Any turmoil from the celebrations should compel city leaders to be proactive next year rather than finger point, said Teresa Fraga, president of the Mexican Cultural Committee.
The city’s attempts to stop people celebrating downtown exacerbated chaos, angering some revelers who felt undermined by the new mayoral administration, but also those who were affected by the traffic, Fraga added.
“It put people against each other,” she said. “City leaders need to meet the young people and come up with a plan. We need a celebration that is respectful and regulated, but we need people to stand up to recognize that.”
The flag-waving car cruising is nothing new, dating back to the 1970s. Chicago’s Mexican community has grown significantly since then, Fraga said.
“It’s important for people to recognize our presence in the city. We also work, we also pay taxes here,” she said.
It’s concerning that the mayor and the Chicago police considered it appropriate to close access to downtown and request identification from those who live or work there, Fraga said.
Massive celebrations ‘99.9%’ peaceful despite police attacks, Little Village alderman says
Ald. Silvana Tabares, 23rd, worked with emergency response authorities to prepare for gatherings in her Southwest Side ward near Midway Airport. She also persuaded some Pulaski Road businesses to block off their parking lots to prevent meetups and car stunts, she said.
But as she listened to police scanners, the chaos she heard unfold prompted her to call the holiday a “black eye” for Chicago’s Mexican community filled with “vile, ignorant and embarrassing” behavior.
People in crowds in her ward threw bottles, rocks and fireworks at police, she said. On Sunday morning, sanitation workers cleaned away anti-police graffiti, she added. She pinned the actions on people who came from outside her community.
“I’m not going to tolerate that, not in my ward,” she said. “Our local community is not the Wild West.”
Tabares, who praised the “courage and professionalism” of police, called on other elected officials to share opposition to such attacks on officers. The city should better organize celebrations next year, she said.
“Something new has to be done, because we can’t repeat this next year,” Tabares said. “The new administration needs to look at ways families can celebrate safely together. If we invest in that, we’re going to cut down on lawlessness.”
Just north of Tabares’ ward up Pulaski Road, a young regional Mexican band, El Malo, was performing at the 49th Street intersection Friday surrounded by a group of people dancing when police abruptly approached them with shields and sticks in hand to stop them from playing, said the band’s manager Pedro Marroquin.
“We were just playing and people were dancing peacefully when the police attacked us,” said Marroquin. Police did not ask the group to stop or the people to disperse before walking into the crowd, he said.
Video of the incident shared widely on social media prompted some viewers to demand the city pay for the $10,000 of instruments and equipment reportedly broken. According to police, there is an internal investigation about the allegations.
Other attacks targeting police led to arrests across the city. Police body camera footage captured Esmeralda Aguilar, 24, of Cicero pepper spraying officers in the 200 block of North Wabash Avenue around 2:30 a.m. Sunday, Cook County prosecutors alleged Monday.
Three officers were taken to the hospital. Prosecutors charged Aguilar with four felony counts of aggravated battery of a peace officer during an initial court appearance Monday. Judge Mary Marubio ordered she be released while awaiting trial.
“This is a violent offense. The allegations are that you caused physical harm to police officers,” Marubio said, admonishing her that the release order would be revoked if she commits another offense. “I’m balancing that with the presumption of innocence, ties to the community, employment history, that you are a caregiver to a minor.”
On Sunday, prosecutors charged Arturo Rodriguez, 46, with a felony count of aggravated battery of a peace officer. They alleged the Cicero man hit a police officer lying on the ground in Little Village early Saturday morning in the back of the head with a wooden flagpole.
In a related attack, someone hit another police officer in the head with a flagpole, severely cutting the officer’s ear, according to a police report.
Ald. Michael Rodriguez, 22nd, called the attacks that happened on the border of his Little Village ward an “atrocious experience.” A police commander told him the officers were doing better, he added.
But as he labeled the attacks “egregious,” he said attention should be focused on the huge crowds that did not become violent during the neighborhood’s sprawling celebrations. An estimated 400,000 people attended the 26th Street Mexican Independence Day Parade, making it one of the biggest parades in the country, he said.
“I am sure 99.9% of the people who came to that were celebrating the culture, our beautiful impact of the Mexican community,” he said. “I’m very, very proud we were able to facilitate joy in Little Village.”
Rodriguez recalled visiting the parade, an annual highlight, as a child. He is open to working with city officials to organize other gatherings, including downtown celebrations, he said.
“We need to double down on that joy,” he said.
The people who committed crimes should be held accountable, Rodriguez added.
“But we need to continue to facilitate the joy of our people, and celebrate our greatest strength as our city, which is our diversity and our migrant spirit,” he said.
Chicago Tribune’s Alice Yin and Madeline Buckley contributed.
