Tijuana’s Poor : <i> Casa de los Pobres</i> Center Is Stop of Last Resort for the City’s Needy

The line of perhaps 50 men snaked along the wall of the pink cinder-block building, across the rutted street from the taco stand, liquor store and used-clothing outlet. Their faces were weathered and unshaven, their clothes torn and dirty, and they spoke wearily of their desire to seek a better life on el otro lado , or “the other side”--the common border euphemism for the United States.

The young ones could still muster some enthusiasm for the idea, but somehow one knew it was a trip the older men would never make.

“Maybe in a year or two I’ll cross over to the other side,” said Carlos Viramontes, a 30-year-old native of Tijuana whose companions in line seemed to be from just about every state in Mexico. “The pay here is just not enough for rent, food, transportation. It’s just not enough . . . .”

Viramontes and his companions may someday make the journey north, but for now their daily destination is a humble place called Casa de los Pobres, literally “House of the Poor.” The men in line were among the more than 1,000 people who would be given free hot meals that day.

Each day hundreds of poor Tijuana residents come to this church-run center seeking food, clothing, medical treatment and various other services--everything from counseling to money for a bus ticket back home. Although such church and private relief organizations also play an important role in the United States, particularly for homeless street people, in Mexico and other Third World nations groups such as Casa often serve as crucial last-chance providers for entire families who live on the fringe of society.

Their presence is especially critical in rapidly expanding Latin American cities such as Tijuana, whose population has boomed with migrations of poor peasants from Mexico’s rural interior. Mexican border cities suffer from a unique burden: The presence of the United States is a major attraction for impoverished migrants, who often settle in makeshift dwellings on hillsides and canyons on the city’s outskirts. These areas lack running water, electricity or decent sewage--conditions that are ripe for various diseases, particularly when coupled with their inhabitants’ poor diet.

“In the United States we assume these people are inevitably caught in the social safety net,” noted Father Tom Lucas, a newly ordained Jesuit priest and native of California who has worked with Casa on and off for nine years, an experience that he said inspired him to become a priest.

“But in Mexico there simply isn’t enough of a safety net to catch these people. . . . What we notice is that people who stay healthy and are strong usually make it, either by finding work here or by crossing over (to the United States). . . . But the weak, the sick, the disenfranchised, they get stranded against an unmoving wall.”

The desperate need evident at Casa vividly illustrates the wild paradoxes that characterize life along the U.S.-Mexico border, a place where ostentatious wealth and dire poverty are separated by a boundary line drawn by map makers more than a century ago.

Half a dozen lepers are among the regular clients of the Casa’s clinic. Each month, new tuberculosis cases are diagnosed.

From the balcony of the Casa’s new dining room, above the lines of hungry people waiting for free meals, one can see as far north as the shimmering bank buildings of downtown San Diego.

“That,” said Lucas, directing a visitor’s gaze toward San Diego, “that is the world of Oz. It’s the Emerald City next to Dante’s Eighth Circle of Hell.”

Lucas likes to refer to Casa as “all the corporal works of mercy under one roof,” and the facility seems to fit the description.

Each weekday, 1,300 hot meals are served during the breakfast and lunch hours, and an additional 325 are delivered to prisoners in the city and state jails, where meal service is sporadic. Each week volunteers distribute more than 600 bags of groceries, includings such staples as flour, tortillas, milk, beans and eggs.

The outpatient clinic serves almost 500 patients a month, and an equal number of free prescriptions are filled. Major cases are referred to area hospitals. Bundles of used clothing are given away each day.

Last month, the Casa provided shelter to 38 refugees from Central America. Scholarships and school expenses are provided for 24 students, from first-graders to university students. Dozens of grade-schoolers take their lunch at the facility, enabling them to attend school.

Seven orphans live there. Needy people receive loans. Everything is free.

Although it is a Roman Catholic facility and staffed by four nuns, the church provides no direct funds and the entire $20,000 monthly budget is made up of donations, mostly from the United States, according to Sister Armida Andrade, the administrator.

Food, medicine and supplies are also donated in large amounts. Incredibly, only about one-third of that amount is guaranteed, so the Casa faces frequent 11th-hour reprieves in a constant battle to meet its expenses. The two physicians at the clinic work for only $40 a day.

“Sometimes we go to bed at night not knowing how we can pay our bills,” said Sister Armida, a dark-eyed, good-natured woman who has been at the Casa for 13 years and has become adept at making desperate last-minute telephone calls to various benefactors. “Then in the morning a check arrives, and vans filled with food arrive, and we’re saved again.”

On a recent morning, John Zackowski from Orange County was delivering several batches of donated food--including 40 turkeys for Thanksgiving, a holiday that is celebrated by some residents of Mexican border cities. “I think there’s a lot of love here,” Zackowski said.

Indeed, a sense of good feeling and sharing seems to be almost palpable at the Casa. Founded 28 years ago by an order of Franciscan nuns, the Casa has grown from a single building to a multifaceted social service center.

Housed in a cluster of institutional-type buildings not far from downtown, the facility nonetheless manages to avoid the dark, depressing aura that fills most government agencies and private soup kitchens, and instead emanates a feeling of brightness and concern. Poor people interviewed said they were treated with respect.

“The food here is really pretty good,” said Socorro Aguilar, a 30-year-old single mother of five who had brought all her children along and was sitting in the courtyard outside the dining room. “I’ve been coming here for a year and a half, since I haven’t been able to find work.”

The Casa’s secret, officials say, is the staff of about 60 volunteers. All are themselves poor neighborhood people, many of whom came to Tijuana from the Mexican interior seeking a better life. A handful are paid about $8 a week, but most agree to work in exchange for a bag of groceries each week. They seem to enjoy their work.

“I am a poor person, a humble person, like the people we help,” said Gabina Navarrete, a 42-year-old mother of five who manages the food storeroom and seems to be bursting with energy and enthusiasm. As she spoke, she sat on a cardboard box filled with cans of vegetables, her blouse and jeans stained with flour that she and other volunteers had been placing into smaller bags for distribution.

“I came here, I think, 19 years ago . . . from (the state of) Sinaloa. . . . I wanted something better for my three children, I wanted them to learn how to read. My husband, he wanted to go over to the other side to work. He wanted to go alone, because it’s difficult on the other side with a family. I said, ‘We’re a family. Whatever we do we do together.’ . . . So many women, their husbands go to the other side and were never heard from again, and they are left here with children to care for.”

The family stayed in Tijuana. At a low point in her life, after she had seriously burned her right leg with boiling water, she came to the Casa seeking help. She was treated well and decided to remain as a volunteer. She has been there for 12 years. Her family--she now has five children--is doing well, she says.

“I see the people coming here, just like I was, and I want to help them,” said Navarrete, obviously trying hard to express the depth of her feeling. “They are humble people, as I am a humble person.”

In the face of the pressing social needs of Tijuana, the Casa can only provide a limited amount of help. Consequently, the sisters are trying to open up a new facility--to be known as Ciudad de Misericordia, or City of Mercy--on a 160-acre tract south of Rosarito Beach.

The land has been purchased, but efforts are under way to raise funds for construction, water and sewer hookups, and other expenses. The facility would serve as a home for the terminally ill, mentally retarded and aged.

“Many of these people have no place to go,” explained Sister Armida, noting that the limited public facilities in Tijuana are already full. “Some stay with their families, but others have no families, no one to take care of them. Some live on the streets.”

Each weekday, the street people and poor of Tijuana make their way to Casa de los Pobres. Some walk for one or two hours, to save the bus fare.

At each mealtime, dozens of children come alone and accompanied by their mothers. All the women seem to have children, but most men seem to come alone, many explaining that they have come north looking for work and have left their families behind in the Mexican interior.

“I’ve been coming to eat here every day,” said Rony Raul Morales, a 17-year-old native of Mexico City who had been in Tijuana for two weeks. “I’ve been sleeping in cars, on the streets, wherever . . . . I’m planning to go over to the other side once I contact my aunt in San Diego. Here it’s just too hard to make a living.”

Until he makes it to el otro lado , however, he’ll be found in line at Casa de los Pobres.