Stockton migrant center to close after losing funding

STOCKTON — Dozens of immigrant families for the past eight years have found refuge, information and empowerment at an unassuming office off of March Lane.

But with the lease up and no funding secured, the center is set to close next month.

“Centro de la Cultura Campesina” started as “Proyecto Voz” under the American Friends Service Committee organization in 2010 in a small office at a building at 211 E. March Lane, said Luis Magaña, a longtime immigrant and farmworker rights activist who runs the center. Eventually, there was a demand to have a bigger space and thanks to a discount from the landlord, they were able to move into a bigger first-floor office.

The $700-a-month rent and utilities are paid through an American Friends Service Committee grant, but it recently ended, Magaña said. There are other foundations offering grants but it’s a very competitive process. And while the center’s members have raised some money, it’s not enough to commit to a lease.

Over the years, the center has offered workshops, forums and cultural events, but to its members, it’s also a sanctuary.

When rumors of immigration raids were rampant last year, many people turned to Magaña and the center for accurate information. When a young Lodi farmworker drowned in Ripon earlier this year, the center opened late one night to help his family. Documented or undocumented, immigrants said they knew they could turn to “Centro de la Cultura Campesina” for help.

“We don’t close at 5 p.m.,” Magaña said in Spanish. “People come in at any time that they need help.”

Jose Luis Hernandez found the center seven years ago when he sought information about a work-related issue, he said. The 30-year-old farmworker heard through word-of-mouth that the center and Magaña helped people working in the fields.

Since then, Hernandez has continued visiting the center, going as often as two to three times a week.

It’s a place where he’s learned he has rights as a farmworker, he said. He was taught about not being afraid to speak out or allow people to abuse those working in the fields.

“I like it there because it has a family atmosphere,” he said in Spanish. “You can share what’s happening to you and you spend time with other people who also work in the fields. You leave feeling guided and more confident in yourself because you learn your rights.”

Hernandez worries about where the members will go next.

“They’re going to take away our home,” he said. “We’re going to feel like they clipped our wings.”

Magaña said the center has hosted talks with Mexican artists and performers, the consul general of Mexico in Sacramento, organizations like the ACLU and California Rural Legal Assistance, attorneys and law enforcement officials. And when a law that allowed undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses was enacted, officials with the DMV visited the center.

Recently, the center’s members organized the Dia Cultural del Maiz Criollo to honor the significance of corn in Mexican culture. A large Day of the Dead event — where the altars reflect the plight of migrant workers, victims of violence in Mexico and Stockton, and people crossing the border — is held every year.

Everything done at the center is rooted in activism and with the mission to educate and empower people through their culture in order for them to organize, said Magaña, who joined his father in the fields picking tomatoes and asparagus when he was 15. It’s about people learning to recognize their value so they have confidence to take part in causes that affect them.

“Culture becomes an educational and empowerment tool,” he said.

About five years ago, Maria Hernandez Vargas (no relation to Jose Luis Hernandez) started visiting the center because it hosted forums about important themes.

“We receive a lot of information about matters affecting our community,” she said in Spanish, using immigration and civil rights as examples.

Hernandez Vargas also is part of the Yolopl Tonanzin Aztec dance group that practices for free at the center. Magaña allowed the group to rehearse there every Sunday, and in return, the group allows anyone to participate for free.

She said she’s sad to think about where they’ll move to next or whether they’ll still be able to have meetings and reunions.

Magaña has been searching for a new place. He said there’s a church that may lend them space, but it’s been difficult to find a new place because they want to display their murals, and Magaña added, the group, which stages marches and rallies, is thought to at times be too political.

“It has a price,” Magaña said of his activism.

Said Magaña of losing the center: “This won’t stop our work. It will limit it.

“It is going to close the sanctuary that we have here for the people; their refuge, their home where they can discuss their ideas and their opinions about injustices that are happening.”