Luis Gabriel Aguilera

Early life and education: 1973–2009

Luis Gabriel Aguilera was born in Irapuato, Guanajuato, Mexico. Irapuato is "located at the foot of the Arandas Hill (in Spanish: cerro de Arandas), in the south central region of the state of Guanajuato" According to his memoir, Aguilera's life in Irapuato was short-lived, as he was smuggled into the United States at six months of age by a coyotaje couple to settle with his father and mother in Chicago. The lower middle-class working family resided first in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood in the early 1970s, then a mostly lower middle-class Puerto Rican community, and then later on, along with his two other siblings, for most of Aguilera's adolescent and teenage life in Chicago's working-class McKinley Park neighborhood in the late 1970s to the mid 1990s. Aguilera recounts being influenced by the predominantly Polish, Irish, and Italian members of that community while also spending time in the mostly Mexican-American neighborhoods of Pilsen and Back of the Yards neighborhoods, neighborhoods north and south of McKinley Park, respectively speaking.

Elementary school education

Aguilera attended public school for one year at a Spanish-English bilingual school, Ruben Salazar, when The Chicago Public Schools district school was located in the McKinley Park neighborhood. He spent the rest of his academic years in private schools, graduating from the now defunct SS Peter and Paul grade school in 1987, the school being a part of the Catholic parish of the same name. The parish complex, consisting of a K-8 elementary school and church was a parish "originally founded as a national parish for Polish immigrants, SS Peter and Paul parish lost its exclusively Polish character as Catholics of many national backgrounds joined the congregation..."

High school education

Aguilera was accepted into Quigley Preparatory Seminary South in 1991. Quigley South was a multicultural, all-male "high school administered by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago from 1961 through 1990."^[3] Located on Chicago's South Side, the seminary was innovative on many levels. "A decision to integrate new technologies with the traditional academic rigors of Quigley led to the establishment of a computer lab in 1983, one of the first Chicago-area high schools to do so, complete with Apple IIe's."^[4]

"The Archdiocese announced the controversial decision to close Quigley South as of June 1990 and combine it with Quigley North into Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary at the original downtown site for the 1990 Fall term. For several weeks in early 1990, Quigley students and alumni from both institutions picketed the mansion of Cardinal Joseph Bernardin and published a full-page ad in the Chicago Sun-Times"^[5]." Aguilera would finish his senior year at Archbishop Quigley, an institution that resided no more than a city block from Chicago's Magnificent Mile, the downtown setting with its skyscrapers and concrete streets in stark contrast to the idyllic environment of Quigley South's open-space landscape.

College education and post-graduate schooling

Aguilera attended The University of Chicago from 1991 to 1995 and received his bachelor of arts degree with a concentration in Latin American Studies from said school. Aguilera received his master of arts in teaching from National-Louis University in 2009 as part of an accelerated masters program for an alternative certification teachers program for professionals desiring to work in low-income urban schools.

Author and writer: 2000–present

Aguilera is author of a memoir, Gabriel's Fire, published by The University of Chicago Press in April 2000. He has also written on topics like the Iraq War and education matters for Chicago's Spanish-English Extra Bilingual Community newspaper; has written for electronic dance music Zines; and has self-published a 9-page essay on corruption in public education which has gained the readership of 36,000 viewers on Scribd alone as of March 2017.

Gabriel's Fire

The publisher describes Gabriel's Fire as "not just an account of race relations and street life in the inner city, nor of the plight of the immigrant and the dilemma of class identity for a "minority" family. Gabriel's Fire also movingly recounts the peculiarly daunting and inspiring moments of a particular age, riddled with confusion, desires, and duties and recorded by an exceptionally observant and articulate young man...Both a picture of American culture of the 1980s and 1990s and a coming-of-age story, Gabriel's Fire counters mainstream and mass-mediated images of the inner city, Hispanic culture, and troubled youth..."

Praise for the memoir has come from Mexican-American poet, novelist, journalist, critic, and columnist Luis J. Rodriguez (Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A.) and now-deceased American writer Piri Thomas (Down These Mean Streets), both of whom wrote blurbs for the book's jacket.

In The Routledge Companion to Latino/a Literature (edited by Suzanne Bost, Frances R. Aparicio), the editors write: "Aguilera, in Gabriel's Fire (2000), engages the limited success of non-violent party crews as an alternative to gangs. In Aguilera's text, racial tensions in the neighborhood beget violence such that party crews, non-violent youth belonging groups, eventually become part of gangs. For the protagonists of both Aguilera's and Sanchez's texts, housing segregation and restricted economies contour the formation of youth masculinities. The neighborhood binds these men and provides them with few options for productive male identities unless they leave it behind."

American reporter, author, and journalism instructor Kari Lydersen, wrote on June 26, 2000 the following of the work: "Aguilera's book does focus on the intricacies and experiences of a Mexican immigrant growing up in one of Chicago's Latino-Polish neighborhoods. And he isn't afraid to talk about this experience: the culture clash between him and his parents, the economic struggles of immigrants, the racial tension between Latinos and white students in the schools. But the vulnerability Aguilera exposes in his youthful persona allows the book to transcend the token Latino narrative and become an informative and often humorous memoir about a boy growing up."

Lydersen followed up with a more detailed interview with the author for The Chicago Reader: "Luis Aguilera was starting to get upset reading a review of his memoir, Gabriel's Fire, in Publishers Weekly. For one thing, the review said Aguilera was once a gang member, when in fact a central theme of the book is his opposition to gangs and his disappointment when they started recruiting in the electronic "hip-house" music scene that was a mainstay of his late-80s youth. Then Aguilera got to the part of the review that talked about his mother dying. Last he'd checked she was still alive and well, living in the southwest-side neighborhood where he grew up."

DJ

In his memoir, Aguilera describes his three-point entry into the electronic dance music world at around 12 years of age in 1985 via 1) listening to DJ mix radio programs at home presented by WBMX radio station; 2) frequenting Chicago's now defunct record stores: Loop Records and Importes Etc. in the city's South Loop and Printer's Row area at the time to purchase Disco, House music, Hi-NRG, New Wave, and Industrial music in vinyl format; and 3) the favorable associations made when traveling to the Original Maxwell Street Market and watching breakdancers perform to the sounds of Newcleus' "Jam on It" (1984) with his father at his side. The memoir goes on to explain Aguilera's bedroom DJ status as a teen while a member of an all-male teen Latino youth club, the Ultimate Party Crew.

It is the rave party circuit that has provided Aguilera with the most visible outlet and documented footprint for both DJ mix releases and public DJ performances.

DJ mix releases

Title | Date | Genre | Format

Musician, composer, and music producer

Aguilera began producing electronic music in 2010. He has produced for musical artist Angel Alanis, his own Full Spectrum label, and Wikimedia Commons. Aguilera has also arranged music for Polish techno producer Michael Kuszynski on his full-length album, Early Collected Works.

Extended plays

Year, Title (Label)

Singles

Year, Title (Label)

Public domain music for Wikimedia Commons

Language teacher

In 2007, Aguilera was accepted into the Chicago Teaching Fellows, an accelerated masters and teaching program aimed at drawing in professionals outside of the education field into Chicago Public Schools' classrooms, with a focus on mostly low-income urban students. And in 2009, Aguilera received his master of arts in teaching from National-Louis University in 2009 as part of this accelerated masters program designed also for alternative certification.

Aguilera was a high school Spanish language teacher at Bronzeville Scholastic Institute (part of the Chicago Public Schools) when he was fired in 2009. In three separate legal suits, Aguilera claimed that he was fired because of racial and ethnic discrimination and a memoir he had published nine years previously, which chronicles his experiences as a young Mexican immigrant and details a relationship he had with a teacher while he was a minor, violating his First Amendment rights, due process, etc.

Aguilera filed city, state and federal suits against The Board of Education of the City of Chicago and respondents via The City of Chicago Commission on Human Relations, the Illinois Department of Human Rights, and in The United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division. The Board of Education of the City of Chicago maintains that Aguilera was fired for having an inappropriate relationship with a female student but offered no definition of what they deemed "inappropriate."

At the federal court level, the Board moved for summary judgment and to "strike Aguilera's response." In September 2014, the Court wrote that "the Court denies the Board's motion to strike Aguilera's response but nonetheless grants its motion for summary judgment." With regards to procedural due process, the Court writes: "Rather, the disciplinary policy is a “procedural guarantee” which, “whether relied on or not, [does] not establish a property interest protected under the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause." Id. Because Aguilera has not produced any evidence to overcome the presumption in favor of at-will employment, the Court finds that Aguilera had no property interest in continued employment with the Board and his procedural due process claim must therefore fail." The case was dismissed on technical matters.

Aguilera was a high school Spanish language teacher from August 2013 to May 2016 at Hammond Academy of Science and Technology. He left teaching in 2016 to pursue his career in music.