“Little Chicago”

Aguilar was quite a booming town during it’s heyday, and was called “Little Chicago” because gangsters cooled off there and bootleggers were abundant. During Prohibition almost all families living there produced wine, whiskey, and moonshine for their own use and to sell on the side. Al Capone is said to have visited Aguilar in the early 1920s. The dance halls and card rooms, complete with prostitutes, did lively business with the rowdy miners. There were tunnels under the streets of Aguilar, probably to hide the moonshine. Most tunnels were destroyed when sewers were put in the town.

It’s been said by my Cuca cousins that the family left Valdez because of the anti-union violence. They said they left in the middle of the night owing the padrone rent money. John Pilati told me that businesses like his parent’s grocery store were being paid with chickens and furniture, or not at all. I only hope that my Grandfather didn’t stiff the Pilati Meat Market in Aguilar.

John remembers when the LaRosa family left Aguilar. John’s home was right behind the LaRosa Shoe Repair building. He said that Jasper (my Dad) stopped to say “goodbye” and promised to write to him, though he never did. When they actually left Aguilar to go to Chicago is not certain: however, my father’s application for citizenship shows he had been in Chicago continuously since 1923. “LaRosa Shoe Repair” appears in the 1928-1929 Polk Business Directory for Chicago, Illinois, and the LaRosa and Cuca families are listed in the 1930 census for Chicago.

Note: My information about my father, Gaspare LaRosa, and his sisters and brothers while they lived in Las Animas County, is very limited because that generation all died very young - before the age of 50 years old. None of their children, myself included, was particularly interested enough to ask the right questions while our parents were still alive. Therefore, my information is based on published records and a few family stories.