Tijuana Justice — The EnviroJustice Campaign for a Safe, Sustainable and Just Community
If you drive through certain parts of the city of Tijuana you will be amazed by what you see. A modern downtown. Large industrial parks with the names of consumer products and brands we are all familiar with and have in our homes proudly proclaim their existence. In certain parts of the city you will be amazed at the explosion of new housing being developed all around you. It reminds you of what is happening in many new communities in the United States.
However, if you drive a bit further just over the hill and out of sight, and if you look a little closer, you come upon some other things that are not so proud and not so inviting. You will find many of the big industrial buildings now standing empty as companies move their operations across the ocean to where the labor rates are even cheaper than in Mexico. All that is left is the industrial waste and pollution that flows unchecked into the Tijuana River and leeches into the neighboring communities.
And you also find the forgotten people, those who came to Tijuana to work for substandard wages in the big factories and assembly plants to raise their standard of living, those forced to live in dirt-floored shacks made of cardboard or the sides of discarded garage doors next to or nearby the industrial parks because they had no transportation.
And now, with the factories and plants closing, the jobs are going, too, and all that is left for many are the unfulfilled dreams of a better life and the chemical poisons that are invading their groundwater, their meager living spaces and their bodies and destroying their health. Even though there is modern, new housing being built up all around them, it might as well be a million miles away because they do not have the financial resources or the political power to flee the living hell they endure.
EnviroJustice is proud to join other environmental and faith-based organizations in promoting environmental justice in Tijuana, Mexico and to be a part of the solutions to the crisis that unchecked expansion of industry has reaped on the city. Tijuana Justice is another segment of the EnviroJustice campaign for safe, sustainable and just communities.
en todo, Amor — An EnviroJustice Documentary Film Project
As part of the campaign, EnviroJustice is producing en todo, amor, a documentary film that will tell the story of these people and their conditions.
It will also tell the story of faith communities who have been going to Tijuana for almost thirty years to give of their time, their talents, and their hearts to make the forgotten people’s lives a little bit better, one, two or three houses at a time.
The film will dramatically show how lives and communities have been changed, not only for the Mexican poor but for the Northern Californian well-to-do.
En todo, amor, in everything, love.