Irapuato, Guanajuato
Luis Gabriel Aguilera was born in Irapuato, Guanajuato, Mexico. He was smuggled into the United States at six months of age by a coyotaje couple to live with his parents and two siblings in Chicago. The lower middle-class working family resided first in the Humboldt Park neighborhood in the early 1970s, then a mostly lower middle-class Puerto Rican community, and from the mid-1970s in McKinley Park. Aguilera was influenced by the predominantly Polish, Irish, and Italian members of that community while also spending time in the nearby, mostly Mexican-American neighborhoods of Pilsen and Back of the Yards.