When la casa mágica drifts into sight, everything changes.
At least for a short, happy while.
A small wooden house on wheels rolls into the downtrodden colonias of Tijuana, bringing the arts to children in need of some color and hope. Inés and Eddy are back.
NTIVO is a portable art center created three years ago by Eddy Lizarraga and Inés Solano. Their mission is to help kids living in some of the rougher neighborhoods of Tijuana. El centro is two meters wide and three meters long, a mighty might for the underserved and overlooked.
Lizarraga said it is important for kids to learn visual art, dance, music and theatre. Art has transcendent power to inspire, inform and reach young people’s hearts, he said.
“It is a way to heal,” he said. “It heals you and it heals the person beside you.”
NTIVO is a place where kids can explore their creativity and dream big, Lizarraga said. Kids in poverty-stricken colonias lack opportunities, he said, something el centro works to change.
Solano and Lizarraga both said they learned empathy at a very young age. Lizarraga said his father could turn strangers into friends by putting into practice the famous motto ayuda al prójimo (help others).
Solano recalled a time her father came home with a truck full of green Christmas cookies and how they drove to a colonia to give them away. She said she would never forget her father’s smile and the unbridled joy in the recipients’ faces.
“Kindness lives inside everyone, but sometimes we forget it,” she said.
La casita was born in the fertile imaginations of Solano and Lizarraga, but neither had experience building such a thing. Fueled by their desire to push NTIVO forward, Solano said they started to build in her parents’ neighborhood. Curious neighbors loved the idea, she said, and offered to help.
Solano said respeto is paramount when visiting a new colony. It is not unusual to find a person in charge who takes care of the people residing there. They are generally weary of visitors. Asking for approval is the first step in a three-day stay, she said.
Kids can approach on their own, Solano said. They draw near with curious eyes and soon la casita becomes a creative playground, filled to capacity with los niños y esperanza.
Workshops feature popular Mexican artforms like woodcut. Guest artists drop in to teach the kids their specialties. A wall on the house latches off and hangs from the installation to form a humble stage for theatre artists.
Paloma Hinojoza brought her three-year-old son to the art center. He was amazed by all the activities he could do inside the small house, she said, as children drew, painted and sang. Completely immersed, they were brought closer together.
“It was very beautiful,” she said. “Eddy introduced music to my son.”
Bright and hopeful smiles of the children are the best part of NTIVO, Lizarraga said. Just speaking about them brought a big smile to his face and happy tears to Solano’s eyes. Lizarraga said the work is hard, but the children’s excitement makes it worthwhile.
Poverty is hard to witness, Lizarraga said. Most of the colonias are haunted by hunger, drug addiction and crime. Solano said it is sad to see kids lacking in so much—even love.
Reporting mistreatment to the police in Tijuana is pointless, Solano said. She can provide the kids with emergency numbers and tell them that what they go through is not right, but a hard truth she had to swallow was that some things are beyond her ability to change.
“It took me a long time to realize that I’m not Superman,” she said.
Solano said she would have loved something similar to NTIVO when she was a kid. Getting involved in arts education as an adult altered her outlook.
“If I had access to this as a little girl, my perspective on a lot of things would have changed,” she said, “including things that we do and how we interact with each other.”
La casita has deteriorated over time. A tire burst and the wood on the walls creaks and wobbles.
Lizarraga said the portable center has remained stationed for a couple of months and it needs to be reinforced.
They started a GoFundMe page called “Ntivo: Bringing Therapy to Endangered Youth” with hopes to repair damage and get closer to their dream of a permanent art center. Solano said they hope to remodel the house, perhaps even building a better one.
Lizarraga said he does not hold claim over the project, but encourages its global expansion.
“I need to eat and I need to live,” he said, “but to me it is more important for the children’s outlook in life to change. They are the ones who will have this world when we are gone.”
