Pilsen Heroes: Coralia Barraza, Victor Pichardo

• November 17, 2009

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What a neighborhood can be is largely a function of what its residents and the people who work there do. On a day-to-day basis, their actions – organizing block clubs, mentoring the children of incarcerated parents, providing shelter to homeless people, tending a neighbor’s garden – may not be heroic in the popular sense.

But those actions, and countless others like them, are what make a place what it is. And the people – the community heroes – saluted by the New Communities Program lead agencies and their partners are the ones doing the heavy lifting, often with little acknowledgement or reward.

The community heroes for Pilsen are Coralia Barraza and Victor Pichardo. Congratulations to them and all of the other community heroes for their commitment to improving Chicago neighborhoods.

Coralia Barraza

Coralia Barraza, principal at Orozco Community Academy in Pilsen, has a picture in her office of a tiny house in Guatemala, nearly a shack.

It’s where Barraza and her seven brothers and sisters were raised. After high school and college in Guatemala, Barraza came to the U.S. illegally and started a classic American immigrant’s tale of hard work.

“I spent my first years working in factories, sending money to my family in Guatemala, and helping my parents finance my siblings’ education,” she says. After becoming a legal immigrant in 1978, she enrolled in Truman College to learn English. She transferred to the National College of Education, where she earned her teaching degree.

She earned a master’s degree from DePaul while teaching in CPS schools, and a master’s in School Administration from Northeastern University in 1994; that same year, she became the assistant principal at Orozco. She’s been principal at the school since 2002.

“For me, and I know for a lot of her students, she’s a real inspiration,” says Alvaro Obregon, The Resurrection Project’s NCP manager. “Coming to this country, undocumented from a rural area is a common experience in this community, and she shows you can do anything. She’s really taken the school to another level, and she’s the kind of principal that watches out for her kids.”

Victor Pichardo
When Victor Pichardo was at the Latin Grammy Awards in 2007, nominated with his group Sones de Mexico for Best Folk Album, he bumped into one of his former students – who also was at the ceremony as a nominee.

That anecdote tells you about Pichardo in a nutshell: his incredible talent, his passion for the musical culture of Mexico, and his ability to teach. Born and raised in Mexico, where he learned how to play more than 50 different instruments, Pichardo started Sones de Mexico in Chicago in 1994.

He has produced commissions for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Sinfonieta, also been nominated for a Grammy, and twice been the recipient of the coveted Illinois Arts Council Fellowship award.

Fifteen years ago, Pichardo started a mariachi program at Benito Juarez Community Academy to continue Mexican musical traditions for a new generation in Pilsen. In 2007 and 2008, he fulfilled a long-held dream by co-founding similar programs at two local elementary schools, Orozco Community Academy and Cooper Dual Language Academy.

Now, children can learn the music from grammar school through high school in the Mariachi Musical Bridge program. “He’s a driving force in our community,” says Alvaro Obregon, the Resurrection Project’s NCP manager. “With arts in the schools being cut right and left, someone like Victor, with his passion for our music, really shines through.”

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