Together, we can stop anything they throw at us

A Tijuana activist's strategies to fight for a better world in the time of Trump

Devi Machete distributes supplies recently in Tijuana. (Video screenshot).

Far away from walls, surveillance cameras and concertina wire, most Americans have no clue of the realities facing migrants or the people who live along the US-Mexico border.

There is too much superficial coverage and propaganda, too many lies about immigration and the people seeking refuge in the U.S.

That’s why it’s important to hear from those who live and work at the border, to get a more nuanced perspective — especially with a second Trump administration looming, and its threats of mass deportation, and racism and cruelty on steroids.

Devi Machete has lived in Tijuana since 2018, when they and other humanitarian activists co-founded Contra Viento y Marea, El Comedor Comunitario, a mutual aid society focused on food justice, based about a mile from the U.S. port of entry into California.

Devi, 37, was born in Arizona and spent several months a year during their childhood at their grandmother’s farm in Zacatecas, Mexico.

“I really loved Mexico from an early age coming here, and I always felt at home here,” Devi said. “And then going back to Arizona, I remember feeling very conflicted, like there was a huge culture shock for me, and I felt like I just didn't belong in the U.S. for a long time. I really wanted to come back here, and so I think that's also why I feel like I have ended up living here as an adult, because I've just always felt much more at home on this side of the border.”

When they lived in the U.S., Devi volunteered with organizations fighting for environmental justice, food justice and LGBTQ+ rights, and worked for not-for-profits, PACs and SuperPACs, focusing on media and opposition research on Republican candidates in federal battleground races. When migrant caravans from Central America began heading north to Mexico in 2018, Devi went to Tijuana with the Hecate Society, a queer-femme media collective they co-founded, and started the first exclusively LGBTQ+ shelter for migrants in Tijuana.

For five years, Devi and others with the volunteer-led Comedor served free, homemade hot meals five days a week to anyone in the community.

Since last year, the Comedor has been in transition — to a different building in the same gritty section of Tijuana, focusing on regular food, clothing and hygiene kit distributions, animal rescue and a free school that started last year.

Devi and I had two lengthy conversations on WhatsApp recently, one shortly after the U.S. elections in November and again early this month.

Devi’s insights into organizing against cruelty and fighting for a more just and peaceful world are more relevant than ever as a second Trump presidency begins.

“I feel that people in the U.S. are really amping up their organizing, and I'm really excited about that,” Devi said. “All the roles are essential, but I feel like my role has always been to be more of a person in the line of fire. And so I think that's why I've ended up in Tijuana.”

Here are excerpts from our conversations, edited for length and clarity.

Q: Do you sense more fear, more trepidation as we get closer to Jan. 20? What do you hear in Tijuana?

Devi: On this side, I feel that people are very worried about the deportation. The federal government and the state government are working together to open six new migrant shelters in Tijuana (25 total in the westernmost state of Baja California). They're calling them shelters, but they're warehouses where migrants just set up tents. They were initially planning to use the sports complexes like they did when the caravan came (2018), but they're going to be running warehouses where they're going to be putting migrants, and most of them, I think, are going to be southeast of the city, which is away from the downtown area. So that's concerning, because migrants or refugees and deportees need to be around the downtown area because they might have an appointment with a doctor at a free clinic, or they might need access to free food services, which are usually downtown.

How Trump will mimic Mexico’s use of the military

Devi: One of the things that has been flagged as a concern, and rightfully so, is that Trump has said that he will use the military to enforce a mission, whether that's rounding people up using, I don't know, the army or what branch of the military is unclear. Maybe expanding ICE, expanding the number of Border Patrol, but those are already militarized. And so it's not like this is a new development altogether. There seems to be an expansion of the militarization of the police and ICE and Border Patrol, but it also is something that we've seen and been dealing with here in Mexico, in Tijuana, where the military here is being used already. It started under AMLO (former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador). He created the National Guard. We had a Federal Police, and the Federal Police were so corrupt and so inept that it was finally time to do something. And so the reform that AMLO came up with was to abolish the Federal Police and to start the National Guard. And then the National Guard was used to go after migrants, to enforce immigration law, and that's been brutal. And so that's kind of like the mirror of what is going to happen in the U.S. It's been happening here.

An alarming ‘growth market’ for private prisons

Devi: With Trump talking about deporting millions of people, it would require having detention centers. That would be like creating hundreds of deportation centers, and that would require an infrastructure that's much larger than the current U.S. prison system. And so we're looking at the expansion of private prisons and private detention centers. We're looking at the incarceration of women and children as their new growth market, for example. Those things are really alarming.

Q: I think a lot of ICE agents and Border Patrol have been waiting impatiently for four years to get back to doing what they want to do. Unfortunately, the administration will know how to correct the mistakes it made last time, and it's going to be more cruel and more vicious.

Devi: People are very fearful of what's coming, and rightfully so, for sure. I think we all are preparing for the worst. The times merit a response that is worthy of all our attention. And I think the reason that a lot of us that are here now, are here because we’re needed. This is our mission, to do something about this situation. And I feel that for myself, this is why I'm here now, why I'm alive now, is to help turn the world in a different direction, and try to get people to be the best version of themselves and always working on that, not just preaching but doing. We're up against the machine, but I think we are able to defeat the machine and it's because we have the numbers. There's more of us that care about the world, that care about each other, that care about the planet, than there are those that want to destroy it, that want to destroy everything, and if we only show up together, we can stop anything that they throw at us. And I think if we're able to organize effectively, not just through symbolic gestures of solidarity, but direct action in ways that actually stop the things that are coming, prevent them as much as we can, that we can be effective.

Q: Is this what you meant by putting our bodies on the line?

Devi: There’s a quote (from UC Berkeley student activist Mario Savio during a 1964 campus protest) about how we should put our bodies into the gears of the machine in order to stop it, if we need to, and not be afraid of doing that when the moment is right and when we feel we're called to it. And nobody can tell others when that moment is. Everyone has to decide for themselves when that moment comes, if it comes for them, if that's their mission. Not all of us are needed to do that. Others are needed to do support work, and that's valid and essential. There's no task that is more important than other tasks when it comes to organizing in a movement. I think we're all needed. We're all in it, putting our bodies in the gears of the machine if that's necessary, because I think in the end what we are sacrificing is not just our own person. It’s fighting for the generations yet to come, for those of us that have no voice and are unable to do so for those that that have privilege enough to do so, and we all have certain degrees of privilege to pull back some of the horrors that they want to enact. We should and we must, if we’re called to it.

We need more than soldiers to win this battle

Devi: What does that mean, exactly, putting our bodies into the gears of the machine? Well, that means that we take on a certain amount of risk if we need to, if we can. If you're undocumented, maybe you shouldn't be at the front of marches where people are going to get arrested and batoned or pepper-sprayed. But others that are documented can, and so we weigh our risk. But if you're a disabled person maybe that's not your goal either. So every person has to decide that for themselves, and I don't think we should shame people for not all doing that or all being soldiers. We need more than just soldiers to win this battle. We need people who are distributing food, people that are helping with healthcare or medical care, with daycare. All the roles are essential, but I feel like my role has always been to be more of a person that is in the line of fire. And so I think that's why I've ended up in Tijuana. But I also believe in building, not just acting as a buttress to the harm that's coming for others. But also, I really believe in building a vision of the world in which we are all cared for and loved and appreciated, and that’s the work of the Comedor itself.

Devi and another member of El Comedor put up a poster outside a health clinic in Tijuana before serving free homemade meals. Photo by Jim McKeever 2021.

Q: How do we make inroads with the apathetic, and show them that migrants are real human beings who are suffering and in need of solidarity?

Devi: I’ve been thinking about how we combat being overwhelmed and this question about, how do we break through apathy, or how do we humanize those who have been criminalized effectively in the mind of many people, and have been turned invisible, because they're not.

I mean, the detention centers, like the prisons, are kept at distance from the public. They're in a lot of rural areas. Reporters aren't even allowed in a lot of the times. And so it's intentional, to keep people from seeing the depravity of the whole thing and the brutality under which people are kept, but I think the question about how do we make people visible, or how we break apathy is sharing their stories, letting them become human in the eyes of those that have no experience with having migrants in their community, or don’t know the situation migrants are in.

I think a really effective way of humanizing folks is sharing their stories and talking about them, not just as victims, but as agents, as rational actors who make decisions that are best given the overwhelming circumstances that they're facing of neglect and poverty and a lot of cases, violence. So I think that's a really important way that we can shed light on this for those that are disconnected from reality.

Q: Can we talk about your family background and growing up in Arizona in the 1990s, in Maricopa County?

Devi: This was when Sheriff Joe Arpaio was still controlling a lot of the policies and politics of that county, and he's very anti-migrant, and was going after migrants particularly hard for, you know, a driving infraction. People would get arrested because they wouldn't have access to driver's licenses if they were undocumented, and so that would lead to deportation. That would lead to the sheriff's office coming after you for minor infractions. People were getting arrested and treated like violent criminals, and any knock at the door as a child could be the police coming to deport my mom. Growing up with that fear shapes your mind, shapes the way that you view the world, where you have to walk on eggshells all the time, being aware of your surroundings, trying to keep your profile limited, avoiding confrontations or anything that would make you stand out in public so as not to attract attention to you or your family.

‘You’re a wetback, get out.’

Devi: There were situations, for example, where we were at the grocery store and the people working there would accuse me as a child of shoplifting because they didn't want my mom in the store because she was visibly Latina. So in order to kick us out from shopping there, they didn't just say, oh, you know, “You're a wetback, get out.” I think a lot of them would pretend that it was because there was something being done wrong that would give them an excuse to expel us. And so they would accuse me of shoplifting, so that my mom would leave. It was an attempt to criminalize migrants — “You’re speaking Spanish here, we don't want you.” And of course, there were and are other circumstances where folks were just called wetback and kicked out for that reason alone. But there was also the more common, more pernicious attacks against the Latino community and we would not be allowed into certain stores, or we would typically try to avoid going into other neighborhoods that were predominantly white, things like that. And so we did live with a lot of fear growing up. I think that makes me aware, and as a child, even though I was a U.S. citizen, it didn't matter because my parents weren’t, so I lived like I was undocumented.

Q: I’m wondering about best practices of resistance, and you had mentioned lessons from fighting apartheid in South Africa.

Devi: We should be looking at what was done in the past and using that as a map to move forward. To get a sense of courage, sometimes we need to look to examples of others who have been in the line of fire and have turned out bravely to support their communities and have supported their causes and their movements and risked everything for what they believe in, and were successful in their cause. I think the Vietnam War example is one that's very fresh for a lot of Americans who faced those horrors and were involved in organizing and so have a lot of experience to share.

There's been a lot of groups that have done work that we at Contra Viento y Marea have found inspiration in, and we find a lot of inspiration in the work of Nelson Mandela fighting against the apartheid regime in South Africa. The apartheid regime, the way that it operated, has a lot of similarities to the ways in which, for example, the Tijuana municipal police operates — where they run black sites, where they disappear migrants all the time by handing them over to the cartels, by working with certain cartels. We see a lot of similarities in the way the South African regime also operated in denying human rights based on race. The discrimination, for example, that Haitian and African migrants, African diaspora migrants, face in places like Tijuana, is also very real and in some ways similar.

Q: You had mentioned the importance of organizing out of hopefulness and not fear. But hope is hard to come by.

Devi: It’s very easy to fall into despair and begin to feel overwhelmed by what’s happening with the election of Trump. I think organizing from a position of hopefulness is important because we have to remember what we're fighting for, not just what we're fighting against. What we're fighting for is a world in which we all have the right to have free, nourishing meals, that we have access to a home that is dignified, that it’s possible to be unified with your family. That these things are human rights, and that we all deserve to have them, regardless of our immigration status or where we were born, or what language we speak, or what our gender or sexual orientation is, that those are things that should be fundamentally guaranteed to every single person on this planet, and that we fight for those things because we believe that we all deserve those things, regardless of who we are.

Devi Machete with engineering students from UC San Diego who installed a water filter and built planters for El Comedor in Tijuana.

Q: How do we get through to the rabid, anti-immigrant, Trump-supporting, Fox TV watchers?

Devi: I think to talk about populism, because that seems to resonate with them and Trump's messaging to them has been around populism. And I think we can talk about how the displacement of migrants and refugees has been caused by the U.S. itself. Our foreign policy is what has led directly to the displacement of millions of people from their homes, whether that's because we invade their countries and steal their resources, or whether we, through climate change, have intensified the displacement of people through the burning of fossil fuels, which have made many places of the earth uninhabitable, and then we see people fleeing from those conditions. But those people are not the enemy. They, in fact, share more in common with you and I than you'd share with Trump.

I don't know if they think of migrants or let's just say non-white people, I don't think they see them as human beings. That’s where that is coming from, and that's where I feel like there are a lot of lessons from South Africa … those kinds of dehumanizing arguments about people not being able to have access to basic needs because they're not white. And how do you deal with that? And how do you, I don’t want to say work with them, but how do you reconcile the way that they hold these views, and how do you try to bring them in to understanding the world in a different way? That’s where I’ve gotten a lot of inspiration from Mandela and from (organizer and anarchist) Emma Goldman. She's really awesome. The way that she approaches is very direct. She just speaks to what people are thinking and seeing and feeling, without sugar-coating things. And so I like that approach to politics.

‘All of us just want to be loved and love others.’

Devi: I think the conversation has to be, Well, do you see these people as your own family? Can you see them as worthy? If that was your family, would you want that for them? It’s hard. But I think trying to get them to understand that, if that was your family, would you want them to be neglected like that? Would you want people to be treated like that? And the other thing is the elite, or the Greg Abbotts of the world and the Trumps of the world, they don't care about you. They don't care about your suffering. They just want to exploit you, and they want you to support their their agenda, but they don't want to give you anything in exchange for your support. So you should ask them to give you something in exchange, ask them to do things like provide free housing or free health care or other essentials for the people that vote for them and for everyone, really. Trump is a politician, and if you hate politicians because they're liars, how can you reconcile your belief in a politician like Trump when you very clearly seem to know that politicians are the right hand of the devil. I think in the end, all of us just want to be loved and love others, and we can do those things, but I feel like we’ve just become so entangled in so many different pools of bullshit. I wanted to say ideology, but it's beyond ideology, it’s just bullshit.

Letting go of hatred

Devi: I hope that for the sake of our our species, we're able to learn to not just tolerate each other, but love each other. And that is very challenging at the moment, but it's not impossible. I do have hope for folks, even those that are most rabid and in their hatred of others. I have hope for them, because I feel like their hatred will get them nowhere. And in the end, it hurts you as well, right? It doesn't just project outward and hurt others, and that toxic energy, it stews within you as well, and it does harm you to hold onto so much hatred. And in the end, letting that go feels great. I think there can be a point where people will feel like their hatred is killing them, and they will have to let it go. And when they do, they’ll feel a catharsis and say, OK, I’m ready to listen.

To learn more about El Comedor, or to support its efforts with a donation, visit its Facebook page. By the way, the colloquial translation of the phrase “contra viento y marea” is “against all odds.”