NOGALES, SONORA — Doña Lupita Mota grabs her cane and pink Betty Boop tote bag, blows a kiss to her two cockatiels, and says goodbye to her 76-year-old husband before she heads out the door.
She has to be at the Home of Hope and Peace by 9 a.m.
It’s not far, but the 73-year-old totters up a steep dirt road, then grabs on tight to a metal railing as she pulls her way to the top of a long stairway that winds up the hill.
Every day she can, she makes the trek to help prepare lunch for more than 100 hungry children from impoverished neighborhoods. This might be the only warm meal they have all day.
The Home of Hope and Peace is a grass-roots organization that works to empower Nogales residents to create their own opportunities so people don’t feel forced to immigrate to the U.S., risking arrest or death in the desert.
The center is in the heart of the area it aims to help. To the north is the steel border fence. To the south, tiny houses, some held in place by old tires, cling to the hillside.
“It’s about building a more just community in order to have a generation of boys and girls who don’t only see the border as a place of deportations and misfortunes,” said the center’s director, Jeannette Pazos, “but also of opportunities.”
Existed for four years
The organization has existed for only four years, but the idea — and the community of mostly women who want a better life for future generations — is much older.
Esther Torres, the pioneer of the lunch program, opened up her home near the center 36 years ago to children she saw who were in need.
She started feeding soup and tortillas to a handful of them as their parents scavenged the nearby landfill.
Before she knew it, there were dozens of children at her door.
“It was as if we had a party at the house every day,” she said.
A few neighbors joined her, and together they made lunch bags with sandwiches, fruit and juice for more than 100 children.
Later, they started to knock on doors, to visit area maquiladoras and ask for assistance. Those who had relatives on the U.S. side would also take letters with pictures of the children and distribute them at their churches.
Eventually, Torres and the others were able to buy the land where the Home of Hope and Peace now sits.
“Then we thought, why not offer education?” Torres said. “Many of the women would come and ask us to write letters to their husbands,” who often were in the United States.
Together with Border Links, a Tucson-based group that aims to increase public awareness of border issues, they built a classroom and opened a Plaza Comunitaria with computers donated by the Mexican government, so people could get their elementary and middle school diplomas.
The center now has a big cafeteria with a commercial kitchen, a playground, a community garden and dormitories for when groups from the U.S. visit to learn about the border and the school.
Twice a year they put on a camp where children rotate through different stations, including dance, sports, values and handcrafts; they learn about peace and their rights as children.
City hurt by violence
The drug cartel wars of the late 2000s in Nogales deeply affected the children here. Some lost parents or close relatives to the fighting. Some witnessed shootouts.
“Peace is something we have to work on every day,” Pazos said. “It’s a commitment to the community.”
And at the Home of Hope and Peace, everyone has something to contribute.
People from the Tirabichi, the nearby dump, helped build a rooftop made of plastic bottles and a chicken coop made of old furniture.
Students from U.S. colleges come down to visit and volunteer. Together with local artists, they have painted murals depicting the unity between both countries.
“If we don’t help ourselves, no one is going to do it for us,” Pazos said.
A reality of the border is low wages, a high cost of living and sometimes violence, she said, but also a community that is organized and seeks the common good.
Nogales is home to people from the south who migrated to work in the growing maquiladora industry and to those who tried to cross into the U.S. but either never made it or were sent back. About a third of the population lives in poverty.
Many around the Bella Vista neighborhood, where the Home of Hope and Peace is located, work as street vendors or sweeping the roads. The lucky ones have jobs in a maquiladora, where the minimum wage is about $5 a day.
A way out of depression
Most of the volunteers who help run the center are from the neighborhood. Some are migrants themselves.
Doña Lupita arrived in Nogales in the late ’70s from the central state of Jalisco. With her 11 children gone from home, the center was a way out of her depression.
“With so many kids, I would ask God, ‘How is it possible that I’m all alone?’” she said as her eyes swelled with tears. “I would spend all day curled up on that sofa.”
She started going to the center to take drawing and painting classes. But then her husband developed a heart condition, and she had to quit to take care of him.
As he got better, she returned to the center, this time to learn how to knit and crochet.
As part of the co-operative, women make medallions commemorating a female migrant who died in the desert. They also make handbags out of plastic grocery bags, and they knit sweaters, slippers, even dishwashing sponges to sell. They keep 60 percent of the profit, while 40 percent goes to the center.
A couple of years ago, Doña Lupita started volunteering in the kitchen.
“I like to come and talk and laugh with the other women,” she said.
Inside the kitchen, everyone has a chore to do.
Wearing a yellow apron, her black hair pulled back with a headband, she starts by making the soup.
“It smells good, abuela,” one of the women from the center says as she walks in.
“Who do you think made the soup?” Doña Lupita asks with a smile.
While the food is cooking, she sits on a plastic crate and rubs her aching knees.
Some pull out their yarn and needles and get to work. They consult each other when they get stuck and ask for advice when they’re unsure about how something looks.
As groups of children start to trickle in at about noon, wearing their navy blue or beige school uniforms, the women get to work again.
The kids wolf down the soup and beans, and then run to jump on the merry-go-round, making it spin as fast as they can.
As the day wraps up, Doña Lupita grabs her bag and waits for someone to help her get home.
Even with her cane, the long stairs and the steep road are hard for her, even harder than going up.
But she’s determined. She’ll be back tomorrow.
