Manuel Barbosa
Oral History Transcript
Oral History Audio
Name of Interviewer: Enrique Alvear
Date of Interview: June 15, 2016
Location: Elgin, IL
Interview Language: Spanish
Manuel Barbosa was born in 1947 in San Luis Potosí, Mexico. When he was two months old, his parents crossed the US-Mexico border and established in a small town in Texas. As a five-year old, Manuel started working as a farmer in the cotton harvest. At that time, the whole family moved to Nebraska and obtained permanent residency through his sister’s U.S. citizenship. Then, Manuel’s family went to live in Elgin, Illinois, to work in the fields picking tomatoes, betabel, and cotton. During his childhood, Manuel frequently visited relatives in Reynosa, a US-Mexico border town, and visited San Luis Potosí every two years. Manuel began his education in Mexico and continued in a Catholic school and later attended a seminary in Elgin, Illinois. He went to college at Benedictine University and majored in English Literature. After that, he got a job as a high school teacher while he studied law in the evenings in Chicago. Becoming a lawyer in 1977, his first job was with the Kane County State’s Attorney in Elgin. From 1980 to 1998, Manuel Barbosa was Chairman for the Illinois Human Rights Commission. Working as a lawyer for the State’s Attorney, he joined the Republican Party and was nominated as a Federal Judge in Kane County, Illinois. In the 1980s, Manuel Barbosa participated in the creation of the “Asociación de Clubes de Oriundos Potosinos en Illinois” (ACOPIL) serving as the legal assistant of the federation of clubs from San Luis Potosí, Mexico. ACOPIL has been mainly dedicated to collect funds and support several social programs in the state of San Luis Potosí. ACOPIL has also contributed in promoting the culture of San Luis Potosí in Chicago through several events and traditions such as the semana potosina. Manuel has two daughters and one son. He is the author of The Littlest Wetback. From Undocumented Child to United States Federal Judge, a biography about his migratory trajectory in the U.S. He has been a board member of the Metra and the Northern Illinois University Law School, and has also collaborated with the Benedictine University. Barbosa served as a judge for the United States bankruptcy court, Northern District of Illinois. He was appointed for a fourteen-year term on March 23, 1998 and retired from the court in December 2012.
