Doña Esther Re-Open La Antigüita After Eviction

Doña Esther is a tether. She is the reason why I continue to be committed to migrant justice in such a place as Tijuana. Apart from G@za, Tijuana is one of the most militarized border spaces in the world—its edges are sharp razored fences and its skies are metallic, as helicopters, drones, and heat sensors rise above to condemn irregular movement night or day.

Amongst this great canopy of surveillance, Doña Esther persists. An Indigenous migrant from Oaxaca, a Zapotec woman, a mother, a deportee, a chef, an organizer, and somehow they still haven’t got her.

But what is getting her now are those more discrete forms of quotidian violence that all peoples racialized under colonial capitalism face, the violence that threatens and invades the simple struggle to live--the struggle to have housing, safety, and economic stability in a world that tries to keep them dispossessed and immobile.

Doña Esther is being evicted from her tamalería, La Antigüita. Not only is La Antigüita being taken from Doña Esther, it’s being taken from all of us….

from the recently arrived migrants who know it as a place to find a warm tamale and a warm greeting, from the deported mothers who have held it as their meeting place and as a place to weep for their children on the other side, from the local unhoused population who know no acceptance except from the tamale they are given without judgment at La Antigüita, from the children who run from the streets to this safe place with a señora and her dog named Regalito, from the aspiring organizers, mutual aid collectives, NGO directors who know that not only is food served at La Antigüita, but that vital information about migrant shelters is dished out with a tamale, from the gringo border crossers who want to “be in the know” about what is going on in Tijuana, from the artists, cultural producers, academics from all sides of the border who find at La Antigüita a beautiful site of true community care, and, in the end, Tijuana is being robbed of itself, of its true roots of being a place in which violence is in constant battle with migrant struggle, a struggle that will never, never stop as it is nourished by itself, by a woman named Doña Esther and her tamaleria, La Antigüita.

En fin, Doña Esther’s eviction is an eviction of all of us who claim to be committed to migrant liberation, who struggle alongside and with all peoples who nourish our collective liberation.

This is a call to keep this struggle nourished. More specifically, since Doña Esther’s eviction notice—she has until December 31st—she has found a new place to reestablish La Antigüita and her food justice mutual aid project, Comida Calientita, and she needs us to get this center of food and migrant justice back on its feet. This means that she not only needs help with the moving costs, but also with rent, and we know well that people who experience eviction are not afforded the time, stability, and essentially, capital, to be able to make it easily out of dispossession and poverty. So we are asking for real support here, support that will return La Antigüita, Comida Calientita, and Doña Esther to the community in Tijuana for the long run. Below I have laid out what that support looks like in a realistic time frame.

December 31st, 2023:

Hiring truck and help to move $200

Restock of restaurant equipment in new space $600

January-June 2024:

Rent/month: $700

$700x6months= $4,200

Total: US $5,000

Lastly, I want to reiterate how supporting Doña Esther is not just a contribution to an individual migrant activist, but rather it is a contribution to radical migrant struggle, anticolonial struggle, and in the end, to our collective liberation.

En solidaridad.