On a Saturday morning in October, just steps from the hubbub of the Arcata Plaza on the corner of 11th and F Streets, the Jardín Sanctuario is humming. A cheerful crowd comprised of gardeners, volunteers, Cal Poly Humboldt students and shoppers from the nearby farmer’s market circulates among terraces glowing with sunflowers, marigolds and tall stalks of heirloom corn. At the top of the slope on the hilly corner lot, a small open-air stage is being used by Indigenous women practicing traditional dances. Conceived as a safe space offering welcome and solace to undocumented members of the Latinx community, the Sanctuary Garden has been maintained since 2021 by members of Centro del Pueblo, a Humboldt organization with offices in Eureka and Arcata and organizers serving communities from Miranda to McKinleyville, dedicated to working for the empowerment of Indigenous Migrant and Latinx communities.

“This is an environment that we love and care for, and it’s been building community since 2021,” Centro del Pueblo Executive Director Brenda Pérez said. “It’s not only about harvesting corn, it’s also about bringing people together and creating an emotional impact.” Doing the work here hasn’t always been easy: in the past, garden caretakers have had to contend with hate crimes and acts of targeted vandalism. But the garden has also elicited an outpouring of support. Today, almost a year has gone by with no incidents, and the placard bearing the garden’s name is larger and more colorful than the one that was previously defaced. More people than ever seem to be turning out on Saturday mornings to learn more about Centro del Pueblo’s work, help tend the garden, or simply admire the sunflowers. I sat down with Pérez at Wildberries on a September morning to talk about Centro del Pueblo’s work with the garden and with the Indigenous Migrant and Latinx Communities.

Due to its visibility, the Sanctuary Garden has introduced many area residents to Centro del Pueblo’s work. But it is only one of several projects that the group is spearheading in the community. Others include a campaign called “Know Your Rights” and “Sister Flower,” a program for women who have survived violence during a migratory journey. This past year, an alliance with Cal Poly Humboldt made it possible for Centro del Pueblo to use video technology for two new projects that connect with migrant people by imparting video editing skills, encouraging them to tell their stories in an audiovisual format. “We started to ask for help after the hate crimes at the garden,” Pérez said. “We reached out to the city, and we reached out to Cal Poly. We were pushing to put our stories out there so that people could see the faces behind the garden, and hopefully feel compassion, and stop the attacks.”

The first of these projects, titled “Echando Raíz in Humboldt County: Stories From Our Latinx and Indigenous Immigrant Community,” uses the Spanish language phrase for “putting down roots” to designate a multigenerational initiative in which workshop participants write their own scripts, select images and music, and present self-made videos about their lives. This initiative was launched by Pérez and by Dr. Cinthya Ammerman Muñoz of the Native American Studies program at Cal Poly Humboldt. “We’ve been creating stories about migration, people and plants, around the Sanctuary Garden, and also telling the stories of the people that grow their own food there. We are trying to bring awareness and compassion toward the migratory process, so that people can learn about these people’s experience from listening to their voices,” Pérez said. “Echando Raíz” was funded in part by a Research and Creative Projects for Equity and Justice Grant from Cal Poly Humboldt. It was supported by equipment loans from the Cal Poly Humboldt Library, with additional support for production provided by the California Arts Council.

A companion project, “Seeds of Hope,” takes the form of a video editing workshop that provides Latinx youth with video editing experience, with a focus on stories about preventing suicide. Through this Latinx Youth Suicide Prevention Program, created by Centro del Pueblo members in collaboration with the Latinx Clubs and Centers of Cal Poly Humboldt, Eureka High School, Arcata High School and Fortuna High School, participants aged 14 to 25 are learning to create bilingual audiovisual content to deliver messages of hope to their peers. Videos produced during the project’s first year were shown on the Cal Poly Humboldt campus this spring in the context of a festival Centro del Pueblo organized; they can currently be accessed on the group’s website. “Our purpose is, with participants’ permission, to bring those migrant stories out in the open and make them part of students’ experience on campus, so that they can reach more people. Particularly in an institutional context, for people to be able to tell their own stories, it was key to create that environment of trust - because Cal Poly is a place that is exclusive and hard to access,” Pérez noted. “I have interviewed women who had been living in Humboldt County for 35, 40 years and had never before been on campus.”

Pérez is originally from Chalchicomula, a small city located in the state of Puebla in central Mexico. She had been one of the original members of Centro del Pueblo, which was founded in Arcata in 2016, before returning to her country of origin. After coming back to Humboldt County in 2017, she got involved with the community once again, becoming the group’s leader and the public face of its organizing. Her repeat migrations mirror the experience of many in this region, she said. “People come and go from Humboldt County; it’s very dynamic in terms of migration and social mobility.”

Experiencing her own migratory journeys has led Pérez to feel deep compassion for the people she works with. “I think every person lives a unique experience in terms of their migratory journeys. But I am able to identify myself with other migrants because of my background - having my family affected, being myself affected. I work to have their trust. It’s all part of being a community organizer, which is a big engagement, and also a big responsibility.” Many members of the community that Centro del Pueblo serves “check all the boxes for being vulnerable… being migrants, being women coming from an Indigenous background, and also being socially isolated” in Humboldt County. “Through organizing, we can overcome that.”

Before coming to the United States, Pérez had worked previously as a community organizer in places including Chiapas and Mexico City, so it felt “natural” to carry those skills and that commitment into her new home. “I found Centro, and I found a place there, and I found the conditions to grow as a person and as an organizer.” She remembered that in 2016, the year she arrived, there had been “a context of polarization and danger, because of the political climate and the elections. There was physical violence. I was new, and I felt insecure. I told myself, okay, as a woman of color, I need to build my safety network. We became part of bigger networks to protect each other, and that has been successful.” The initial goal of Centro del Pueblo’s work with new migrants is often to help create environments where they can feel safe. “We work to overcome that fear. And then, it’s like, okay, let’s be positive. Let’s flourish in a different way. Let’s think in different rhetorics, let’s think in other logics, because we cannot always be reactive; we want to be proactive.”

Being proactive about reaching migrant workers in Humboldt County has meant adopting diverse methods of outreach to connect with people living in remote places, as well as with those working in the cannabis industry. “Because we need to reach people who may be in Southern Humboldt or ‘on the mountain,’ where Internet access is limited, we use the radio; we also create our own magazines. We print out our content, and we distribute it all over the county.” Humboldt’s size, remoteness and rugged terrain pose several challenges, Pérez noted, making it for instance difficult for migrant workers to access legal aid. There are no legal services for immigrants available in Humboldt, Mendocino, or Trinity counties: migrant people in search of legal counsel must travel to Santa Rosa or San Francisco. Centro del Pueblo is currently fundraising to support bringing legal experts in on a regular basis and having their services be free, or subsidized, for low-income families. “We need legal resources urgently, to complement the other services we provide. If we can address that need here, in northern California, I think that will be amazing.”

Centro del Pueblo also works proactively to make change by seeking to remedy a lack of information and education that exists around the United States immigration system, among migrants and native-born residents alike. Group members educate about the steps necessary for becoming a citizen or legal resident, at the same time seeking to provide new immigrants with information about the way the U.S. electoral system works. Often, Pérez said, recent immigrants are unaware that immigration processes and policies in this country can be subject to abrupt and radical change, depending on the outcome of the four-year voting cycle. In 2024 the political climate loomed as a concern once again, as the year-long campaign leading up to the United States presidential election featured strident anti-immigrant rhetoric as a mainstay of Republican messaging.

The election’s outcome means that many of the people Centro del Pueblo serves may face significant new challenges in years to come. But despite the disappointing national result, Pérez said that she and other members of Centro del Pueblo continue to be inspired and encouraged by the sense of goodwill emanating from the local community. “It’s been amazing, it’s been growing, and it’s something that makes us keep working.” Building trust among neighbors from different backgrounds, she said, “has taken that time and effort. But it has been worth it.”

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To learn more about Centro del Pueblo or make a donation to support its work, visit the group’s website at cdpueblo.com.

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