page_title: Mexicans in Chicago
section_title: Institutions
hierarchical_section_title: Mexicans in Chicago / Institutions
caption_attribution_description: English: The National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago.
context_page_description: There is a Mexican American community in the Chicago metropolitan area.
context_section_description: The National Museum of Mexican Art is located in Pilsen.
  Mexicans focused on improving their own neighborhoods and establishing their own organizations to do so after the 1920s. Fraternal organizations and mutual aid groups or mutualistas were established; the latter promoted positive views of Mexicans, financially assisted families facing deaths, unemployment, and/or illnesses, and promoted Mexican nationalism.
  By the middle of the 20th century newer organizations had been established. The Committee on Mexican American Interests promoted  Mexican American student councils to encourage students to participate in higher education, promoted the G.I. Bill in the post-World War II period, and established a project with the Mexican Community Committee of South Chicago to gather potential recipients of scholarships and applicants to universities, and doing so by asking high school teachers working in Chicago neighborhoods with large numbers of Mexican-origin students to provide lists of names. Circa the middle of the 20th century the Mexican Community Committee of South Chicago and the Mexican Civic Committee of the West Side worked with LULAC to promote the value of getting an education among Mexican-American youth. In general the newer organizations worked within existing power structures to promote education instead of trying to establish their own independent educational programs.
caption: National Museum of Mexican Art
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