Photo by Netzai Sanchez.
Food insecurity and hunger are rampant in Tijuana, where progress battles poverty.
A youthful organization of Americans and Mexicans has joined the fray.
Tijuana Comida No Bombas (Food Not Bombs) is a volunteer alliance that opens up a soup kitchen on Wednesdays and Saturdays in Tijuana’s downtown area where anyone can volunteer and cook for people in need.
Christopher Chambers, one of the founders, said food is not a privilege, it is a right.
Chambers, 24, a Seattle native, happened upon Tijuana four years ago while doing volunteer work. He and friends decided to start a Food Not Bombs chapter in Tijuana.
Food Not Bombs started in the 1980s in Massachusetts as a protest movement against nuclear energy and warfare, Chambers said, but evolved into serving free meals to people in need.
Seattle native Brii Thomas, 22, said serving the hungry feels right.
“A lot of people see us as extreme anarchists and hippies, but we are just normal people doing this,” she said.
Chambers agreed.
“It’s not an organization in the traditional sense, it’s really just an idea that if you want to do a Food Not Bombs,” he said. “You get veggies, make a vegetarian meal and serve it in a public space to whoever is hungry.”
He said the concept catches on because it is simple and unaffiliated to political parties or businesses.
“Too often we’ve seen here that people have ulterior motives when they do things like charity work and we want to simplify things,” he said. “Some places are very faith based and they will have people listen to a service before they give them a plate of food and that’s something we feel really weird about.”
Enrique Morones, founder of Border Angels, said members of Tijuana Comida No Bombas “do great work and have supported our efforts.”
Hugo Castro, Border Angels Tijuana liaison, said Border Angels worked with Food Not Bombs in 2013 when they were directing a migrant movement in the El Bordo refugee settlement in the Tijuana River.
“On August 7th 2013, we started a camp with deportees to demand the stop of police oppression against deportees,” he said. “Food Not Bombs Tijuana helped.”
He also said that from August to December 2013 Food Not Bombs provided meals to migrants as well as cell phones so migrants could call the U.S.
Running Food Not Bombs with six people does have its challenges, said Chambers.
“As far as paying for this place right now, we’re doing it out of pocket,” he said.
Chambers said some members have unorthodox sources of income.
“That guy has a job, she works seasonally, one does tattoos and I was hit by a car, so that gives me a little bit of a living,” he said. “One part, the rent, is kind of unsustainable. All of the food comes from donations from markets nearby, so we don’t spend any money on food, but the goal is definitely not to be doing things out of pocket, to be self-sustaining.”
“We actually go to the markets and ask for the food, and usually it’s just the food that they’re going to throw away,” Thomas said. ”Sometimes they give us new stuff, but we go twice a week and ask them. We usually get pretty good food and we use what we can to make the meal.”
The informal nature of the volunteer process is sometimes a challenge, Chambers said. “Some days we have 15 volunteers and other days we have two,” he said. “What we lack are people interested in this kind of work. We have all of the resources that we need, we really just are lacking community involvement, so we see less folks coming in to volunteer and more people coming in to eat.”
Thomas said those served are often deportees and migrants, some of whom also volunteer.
Rigoberto Hernandez, 66, is one such volunteer. A native of Quintana Roo, Hernandez said he crossed the border into the United States when he was10 years old, but was recently deported.
“Like most people around here, I got deported and lost my papers,” he said. “I was walking around hungry and somebody told me that I could get a plate of food here, so I came by and they gave a plate of food.”
Chambers said Hernandez just needed a break.
“He started eating here, then hanging out and cutting veggies with us,” Chambers said. “We helped him move a few times since he’s been here, we’ve seen him get a job, get all of his papers in order and get on his feet. “
Tijuana’s Food Not Bombs recently acquired a four-story building called Pangea near their small kitchen. Chambers said he hopes to generate some income to run the kitchen full time and establish a library, clothes rack and computer access.
Thomas said that the top floor of the building will be run as a hostel while the bottom three floors will be used for workshops and galleries, a café and a stage for shows to generate income for the cause.
“We’re trying to figure out all these different business models between a business and a nonprofit,” Chambers said. “So what we want here is really to show that there are these resources available, to show that there’s this model of doing things that has the potential to be completely self-sustaining, and encourage other people to get involved.”
The team is unusually devoted, Chambers said.
“We believe this way is more personal than charity, its solidarity and we’re going into this with a lot of optimism and a lot of faith that’s coming from an almost irrational place but we really feel that this is where we should be and if we do it well, it will work out. We’re all in. This is our life.”
