On a sunny day in Little Village in September, Jackson Pedron and his wife, Carolina Hidalgo, stood next to each other and prayed, as they have done thousands of times before.
They raised up their hands. Under a large white tent in a parking lot, heat radiated from the concrete. A pastor for New Life Centers stood at the front of the church gathering and reminded people in the crowd to treasure where they came from. “Your culture is a gift from God,” he said.
Pedron and his wife have known each other for 24 years but didn’t get married until they walked to Chicago from Venezuela with their four children in the fall of last year. They had planned to for years, but never actually went through with it until they made it here safely…