The Great Depression brought a number of destructive effects to St. Louis in the 1930s, including the historical disappearance of a Mexican community in south St. Louis.
Most members of that enclave, numbering in the several thousands, lived east of Broadway in south St. Louis and worked at laborers’ jobs, said Daniel Gonzales, St. Louis County’s historian.
But as in other Midwestern cities, the St. Louis Mexican community vanished in the 1930s when unemployment, racial prejudice and Mexico itself unintentionally conspired to push them out.
Still, one remnant of that community remains: Our Lady of Covadonga.
Founded in 1915, the Catholic church served what was known as the “Spanish Mission.” It was named in honor of a legend crediting the Blessed Virgin Mary with helping Spain defeat Muslim invaders in 722 at the battle of Covadonga.
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“The Spanish immigrants came to St. Louis around the turn of the (20th) century and found work at the Edgar Zinc Works in Carondelet,” Gonzales said.
The Mexicans began arriving at the same time, but the Spaniards did not allow them to live near them in Carondelet, Gonzales said.
But because of the common language, Mexicans attended church with the Spaniards, said Gonzales, whose research indicates that 30 percent of the Spanish Mission was Mexican nationals.
At first, the mission was served by Carondelet churches tied to other ethnic groups, like the Irish’s St. Columbkille (demolished in 1952) and the German’s St. Boniface, which still remains.
But then in 1915 — at 7100 Virginia Avenue, in a former Methodist Church built in the 1890s — Our Lady of Covadonga opened.
The pastor was the Rev. Jose Pico, a Mexican refugee who had fled his home country because of the revolution.
“Records indicate he was very active in seeking new members, and would organize sporting tournaments and show films,” Gonzales said.
In fact, Pico was so active that “he ended up angering neighboring parishes” by poaching some of their existing parishioners.
The church closed in 1920, and the structure was bought by a council of the Knights of Columbus. In 1921, the council provided space for Our Lady of Covadonga to reopen. This time around, the church operated until 1932. After it closed, the building served as a home to Nazarene churches from 1932 until 2008, when it became the Carondelet Christian Center.
Over its life as Our Lady of Covadonga, the church averaged about 100 people for Sunday Mass and witnessed 43 marriages and 183 baptisms, Gonzales said.
Gonzales said the stock-market crash spurred the exodus of Mexicans from St. Louis, but that was not the only reason.
“At the urging of the Mexican government, which wanted its people to return home, railroads like the Missouri Pacific offered reduced fares to get them to go back to Mexico,” he said.
And finally, the racism.
“Many people blamed Mexicans for taking low-paying jobs away (from white Americans) and also for clogging up the welfare rolls,” Gonzales said.
“But neither were true. It was actually Eastern European immigrants who were doing that,” he said.
Nevertheless, the church closed, the Mexicans left, and much of the history went unrecorded. “Because they were usually incredibly poor and frequently on the move looking for jobs, they were not a community that could assert its own history,” Gonzales said.
Underscoring that point is the section on Carondelet in the publication “History of St. Louis Neighborhoods” by Norbury L. Wayman.
In the portion about churches, Wayman mentions more than a dozen different ones, including two black congregations and a Welsh mission.
But no mention is made of Our Lady of Covadonga.
“That’s the story with many cities in the Midwest. You go to find the Mexican story and they’ll say there is no story,” Gonzales said. “But if you dig deep enough,” he said, “you can find it.”