ICE at The Bean and the Meaning of “Little Village” in Chicago
The contradiction of surveillance, Mexican foodways, and who gets to move freely in the city
Last week, a photo made the rounds in Chicago: ICE officers in uniform posing in front of the statue of Cloud Gate down near the loop. The photographer cues them to smile, and instead of saying “cheese,” they say “Little Village.” Cloud Gate is known more widely as “The Bean”, a mirrored sculpture in the shape of one of the most essential foods in Mexican, Guatemalan, and other Latino communities that live in La Villita (the neighborhood’s name to these folks). Seeing this group of agents stumble up the first piles of snow this year to sightsee was frustrating at best.
It is a telling reminder of the presence of these agents in our city. Little Village is a predominantly Mexican neighborhood and one of the communities most disrupted by ICE raids. Using the name as a joke, as a stand-in for “smile,” is the kind of normalization that allows enforcement to blend seamlessly into civic life. Fiona and I went to an event where Balthazar Enriquez, the Little Village Community Council President, described the fear these officers have brought to daily life. Children are afraid to go to school. Mothers contemplate going to the supermarket. Loved ones do not come home. Balthazar and his council have found non-violent ways to push back, but it affects your entire psyche.
From Mez’s corner in Back of the Yards, where our building has its fair share of anti-ICE graffiti, we spend our days working with mesquite beans. Beans have always been about sustenance, continuity, and belonging. They can be shared as a seed to grow in a garden or cooked simply in water with salt to pass at a table. Legumes revitalize soil by putting nitrogen back into it, and they have always been a rib-sticking source of protein, vitamins, and fiber.
That is what makes this image of ICE officers so grating. They are casually invoking the very community whose food traditions they destabilize. The foods that built so many neighborhoods of Chicago, like beans, tortillas, and tamales, are the foods of the people they seek to remove. To use that imagery as a punchline is to miss the weight of what these foods represent.
The Bean reflects the city back at us. Sometimes what it reflects is uncomfortable: who gets to wander downtown freely, who gets surveilled, who gets to say a neighborhood’s name lightly, and who carries it heavily. And meanwhile, the bean, the actual bean, continues doing what it has always done, feeding the people who keep this city alive, despite everything.