Jose Cha Cha Jimenez

José (Cha-Cha) Jiménez (born August 8, 1948) is the founder of the Young Lords as a national human rights movement. It was founded in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago on September 23, 1968. Cha-Cha was born in Caguas, Puerto Rico, to Jíbaro parents, Eugenia Rodríguez Flores of San Lorenzo and Antonio Jiménez Rodríguez of the barrio of San Salvador in Caguas, on August 8, 1948.

His mother Eugenia Rodríguez arrived from Puerto Rico in 1949 and took José to New York City, then to a migrant camp near Boston where they were reunited with José's father, Antonio Jiménez. They rented a work cabin from the Italian family-owners of the migrant camp. However, in less than two years, the Jiménez family moved to Chicago to be near other relatives. There, his mother worked in a candy factory and did piece-work in several TV factories. Doña Genia also volunteered and contributed to the organizing of the Catholic Daughters of Mary (Damas de María) in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood.

Cha-Cha Jimenez lived with his family near Holy Name Cathedral, on the Near North Side, in one of the first two Puerto Rican barrios in Chicago. It was named la Clark by Puerto Ricans. Orlando Dávila, who later founded the Young Lords street gang, graduated from one of Doña Genia's neighborhood catechism classes and became one of José's best friends.

The original mission of the Young Lords street gang was protection, recognition and reputation. When the group became political it was about self-determination for Puerto Rico other Latino nations and community control. These intertwined culturally with gaining respeto for Latinos from white Lincoln Park gangs. When the Young Lords initially formed, the white gangs viewed Hispanics as a disruption to the Lincoln Park neighborhood. Most of the new Hispanic children in Lincoln Park were forced to join some form of a street gang or neighborhood "club."

During the 1960s, the city's urban renewal program, which originally pushed Puerto Ricans into Lincoln Park, began to force them out again. City planners argued that it was necessary to make Lincoln Park an inner-city suburb, in order to attract professionals and increase tax revenues and to profit from housing turnover.

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