Buena Tierra Run Club Running for the Soul of Milwaukee

The idea arrived mid-race, somewhere along the 26.2 miles of the 2023 Chicago Marathon. Patrick Chaves was running through Pilsen, a predominantly Latino neighborhood on Chicago's southwest side, watching the streets fill with familiar energy, familiar faces, familiar food, and a familiar sense of pride. And then the thought hit him: Milwaukee has a neighborhood just like this on its Southside. But there was nothing there for Latinos to gather and run together. Nothing at all. That single observation, born in the middle of a marathon, became the seed of something real.

A Run Through Pilsen That Changed Everything

When Patrick and co-founder Mylah Rice crossed the finish line of the 2023 Chicago Marathon, they carried more than medals back to Milwaukee. They carried a question that demanded an answer. The two had run down 18th Street in Pilsen together, a stretch alive with murals, music, and the unmistakable texture of a Latino community in full expression. For Patrick, it crystallized something he had long sensed about his home city. Milwaukee's Southside is home to a thriving Latino population, and yet the running scene, in all its growing visibility, had not made space for that community. Not in a way that felt genuinely theirs. One month after that marathon, Patrick brought the idea to Mylah, and then to friends Carter Amundson and Jesus Hernandez. The buy-in was swift. In November 2023, the four of them hosted their first run. Seven people showed up. Seven people standing together at the start of something none of them could fully see yet.

Good Land, Good People, Good Reason to Run

The name Buena Tierra is not decorative. It is foundational. Translated from Spanish, it means Good Land, which also happens to be one of Milwaukee's oldest nicknames, drawn from the city's Indigenous roots. For Patrick and his co-founders, the name was a way to claim that identity openly, to say that this city belongs to its Latino residents as much as to anyone else, and that their stories deserve to be told in the spaces where community forms, including on the road. The Buena Tierra Run Club is, by its founders' own description, a space by Latinos for Latinos. That framing is deliberate and important. It is not a passive welcome but an active one, a declaration that this crew was built with a specific community in mind, and that its purpose runs deeper than logging miles. The crew's mission, published plainly on their website, speaks to physical health, mental health, and the desire to shift the narrative around wellness in the Latino community. Running, here, is a tool. The larger goal is transformation.

From Seven Runners to Two Hundred and Fifty

By any measure, the growth of Buena Tierra Run Club over its first two years has been striking. That inaugural run of seven people has expanded into a community of more than 250, a number that came into sharp focus when the crew celebrated a milestone meetup and watched the crowd fill the space around them. It was the kind of moment that makes founders pause, look at each other, and understand that what they built has taken on a life of its own. The crew gathers at Zócalo Food Park, a location that carries its own significance. Zócalo, named after the great public squares of Mexican cities, is itself a gathering place rooted in Latino culture. It sits as a natural home base for a crew that understands the importance of place, of choosing spaces that reflect the people in them. Running clubs often treat their meeting point as a logistical detail. For Buena Tierra Run Club, it is part of the statement. Membership is open to everyone and completely free. There are no fees, no barriers, no paperwork. The only requirement is showing up. That accessibility is intentional. When the goal is to bring running to a community that has historically been underrepresented in the sport, the last thing you want is a financial hurdle standing at the door.

Repping Milwaukee in a Way That Speaks to You

One of the quieter but telling signs of a crew's resonance is what happens with its gear. People who run with Buena Tierra Run Club tend to wear the brand proudly, not just as athletic apparel but as a form of local identity. Repping the Buena Tierra name is, for many members, a way of repping Milwaukee itself, specifically a Milwaukee that has not always seen itself reflected in the city's cultural exports and public image. The logo and name carry meaning that goes beyond running. They carry belonging. That sense of belonging extends to the crew's vision for the next generation. Patrick, Mylah, Carter, and Jesus built Buena Tierra Run Club with an eye on the future, on younger Latinos in Milwaukee who might not yet see running as something for them. The crew wants to change that. They want a kid growing up on the Southside to look at a runner in a Buena Tierra shirt and think: that could be me. That is for me. Running as aspiration, but also running as inheritance, something passed deliberately from one generation to the next.

Health as a Collective Conversation

The health dimension of Buena Tierra Run Club's mission is not incidental. Latino communities in the United States face disproportionate rates of chronic health conditions, and the cultural conversation around fitness, mental wellness, and preventive care has often excluded or overlooked those communities. The founders are clear-eyed about this. They are not running a charity or a clinic. They are running a crew. But they understand that when you get 250 people moving together, when you create a space where physical and mental health are treated as community values rather than individual concerns, you are doing something that matters beyond the sport. The word "narrative" appears in how the crew talks about its purpose, and it is the right word. Narratives shape behavior, shape expectations, shape what people believe is possible for themselves and their families. By building a visible, proud, Latino-led running community in Milwaukee, Buena Tierra Run Club is actively participating in the rewriting of a story. They are not waiting for running culture to become more inclusive. They made it inclusive themselves, from the first run of seven people onward.

An Open Invitation to Milwaukee's Southside and Beyond

Buena Tierra Run Club does not require anything from you except a willingness to move. The crew is open to everyone, free to join, and rooted in a neighborhood with genuine character and warmth. Runs depart from Zócalo Food Park, a place that already knows how to welcome people. The founders are present, accessible, and genuinely invested in the people who show up. If you are in Milwaukee and you want to run with a crew that knows exactly what it stands for, follow Buena Tierra Run Club on Instagram for upcoming runs and events. The crew that started with seven people on a cold November evening in 2023 has grown into one of Wisconsin's most distinctive running communities. It began with a thought that crossed Patrick's mind on a street in Chicago. It belongs, now, entirely to Milwaukee.