UC SAN DIEGO-ALACRÁN
Community Station
We must move beyond hospitality to inclusion
The UC SAN DIEGO-ALACRÁN Community Station is located in the Alacrán Canyon, a precarious Tijuana settlement near the border-wall that has become a shelter to hundreds of Haitian and Central American migrants. The UC SAN DIEGO-ALACRÁN Community Station is our fourth, and newest Community Station site.
Location + Partnership
Alacrán Canyon, Tijuana, BC, Mexico
The Alacrán Canyon is an informal settlement at the periphery of Tijuana adjacent to the borderwall, located in the most vulnerable section of Los Laureles Canyon, ravaged by the impacts of trash and erosion.
Embajadores de Jesús
Embajadores de Jesús is a religious organization led by Tijuana-based activist-pastor-economist Gustavo Banda Aceves and activist-pastor-psychologist Zaida Guillen. Together they acquired a small parcel of land many years ago in the Alacrán Canyon, just ½ mile from our UC SAN DIEGO-DIVINA Community Station site.
It was always their dream to build their home and their church on this land. But in the last years they decided instead to build emergency housing to shelter hundreds of Haitian refugees after the City of Tijuana turned its back on them. What began in 2016 as a few small structures built with their own hands, and the hands of the immigrants they house, has incrementally evolved into a full-on ecology of housing units and public spaces threaded into what seems like impossible canyon topography, ready to receive new arrivals by the hundreds and to absorb a variety of community uses and social support programs. They have named the project “Little Haiti.”
In 2019, the so-called “caravan” began to arrive in Tijuana. Gustavo and Zaida opened their doors to all, because, as they say, Central Americans, Mexicans, and Haitians are all a part of the same humanity.
Physical Infrastructure
With limited resources, our partners began construction of a refugee camp to provide shelter for migrants who continue to arrive in Tijuana in waves.
Social Infrastructure
As the needs of refugees become more complex over time, charity is not the appropriate model for building an inclusive society. We need to move from hospitality to inclusion.