Name of interviewer: Enrique Alvear Date of Interview: July 3, 2016 Location: Palatine, IL Interview Language: Spanish
Born in 1963 in the village of El Parral, Monte Escobedo municipality in Zacatecas. He came to the U.S. without documents in 1975 and is now a naturalized U.S. citizen. Ricardo returned to El Parral, Zacatecas in 1992 and began his hometown club the same year to finance projects to bring electricity, sewage, roads, and internet access to Parral and scholarships for Chicago children. He established the Miss Zacatecas Beauty Pageant. El Parral club was one of the founding organizations of the first Federation of Zacatecano Clubs in Illinois. He married a U.S. born Mexican-American woman and they had two children. Ricardo owned an income tax business at the time of the interview. His family of eight moved to several nearby locations including Wheeling and Hoffman States because they frequently faced overcrowding restrictions when renting. Police would sometimes kick him and his brothers when they got off the school bus. There were no bilingual programs in the first year he attended school in Palatine as a teenager.
