Los Niños Trip 2023

By Nate Newlove '25

Twice a year for the past few decades, Cate students have been crossing the U.S./Mexico border by foot and doing service work in Mexican communities in need. Cate works with an organization called “Los Niños” which means “the children.” People from Los Niños look for communities that need help with manual labor or a shot of hope. Alonzo, who works at Los Niños, tells Cate exactly what these communities need, and we help however we can. The Los Niños trip is for helping communities in need and giving new perspectives and knowledge to all who attend.

Cargo Across the Border

Our trip began with some difficulties. Before we left the Mesa, our group was given 21 boxes of new clothes from a local school to be donated in Mexicali. These boxes were to be carried with us as we crossed the border on foot. After checking our luggage, the border patrol told us we could not take the boxes with us through the border for wholesale tax reasons. We were devastated. We knew that these clothes would have helped so many people in need. At that moment, we all realized that even with good intentions, sometimes things don’t go your way and you have to accept that. This was a humbling experience because the whole situation was completely out of our hands. Luckily, as we were leaving a few days afterward, Alonzo’s son was able to pick the boxes up and drive them across the border.

Concrete Laying

Making concrete is not as easy as it may seem. Prior to this trip, my only experiences with concrete were seeing the big spinning trucks that concrete gushed out of. I assumed concrete came in that form and the process was easy. Boy, was I wrong. When we arrived at a preschool in a brick-making community called La Ladrillera (meaning the brickyard), we were greeted with numerous 100-pound bags of cement. Everyone was given a shovel, and the work began. Three wheelbarrows full of sand and rocks had to be thoroughly mixed in with the cement. Under Alonzo’s guidance, we used buckets to scoop water from a wheelbarrow and dump it on our piles. As the sour smell of concrete filled our noses, our hearts filled with pride. We had just completed a task that was daunting and, frankly, extremely hard. After laying the concrete along the edges of the fences of the school, we were exhausted. The realization that people in these communities have to do that every day for hours on end was crazy to think about. This gave us a whole new perspective on how people make their living, and how what we think is hard is nothing compared to others.

The Los Niños trip provides all who go with such new and powerful perspectives and ideas on how the border should be run. It is an eye-opening experience that anyone who has the chance should take up.