A Place to Call Home

"There’s a whole bunch of kids and teenagers who are now joining gangs, and making gangs, and using drugs and doing stuff like that. And I know they imitate the guys in LA."

By Jorge Nuñez

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Deported to Tijuana from L.A., 23 year-old Jorge Nuñez has had a year to adjust to life in city where he was born but has never lived. Back in the U.S. he was in a gang and served time in prison. Now he dreams of starting an organization where cholos and gang-members learn to build homes for poor families in neighborhoods like the one he lives in now.

I thought I was like...one of the only people here that spoke English that comes from el otro lado, and stuff, that was deported. And the more...I look around, I mean there’s all kinds of people here that have been deported...

We’re all in the same situation now, and we’re all moving forward, trying hard to live life at every moment and build a better future at the same time.

We are heading from the border to my house right now. You can see these hills from the distance. That’s like where I live.The streets look like you are in Los Angeles...except more into the hills and deep inside, it just changes. It’s a lot of poverty.

Like there’s a whole bunch of kids and teenagers who are now joining gangs, and making gangs, and using drugs and doing stuff like that. And I know they imitate the guys in LA and California and stuff. And really I think it’s just cause they have no guidance, they have nowhere else to turn to. I mean, where else are you going to turn to...And so they join these gangs for people who agree with them and I mean its not something positive and that’s what I’m trying to prevent here.

We just turned off the main road here... we come to this point where there’s no more pavement, it just ends, it’s just dirt road.

Like the house to the left over here, I mean the whole family speaks English. There’s some gang member from San Diego who lives there...’cuz I’ve seen the tattoos that are affiliated with gangs and stuff...And I know if he said something, if he was to do a program, like the one that I’m thinking of, they would listen to him...cause they like look up to him, cause he’s from el otro lado... I think they have a different posture when they’re hanging with him, like they’re tougher, stuff like that.

And I’ve been deported and I was a gang member from over there and maybe before I would have loved having them as my little foot soldiers or whatever. Now instead of doing that...I want show them that there’s a better future, and there’s a better way. I want to open their minds and my plan is to have them build homes for people who can’t or don’t have money to build their homes...who are struggling, who deserve to live better cause they’re human beings, like everyone else...

If I got this program up and going, I think that ten years from now you wouldn’t see...old garage doors and patches of wood and stuff for the walls and stuff like that. You would like see well-built homes for the size of the family and you wouldn’t see as much poverty as you see now. If these kids get involved in this program, which I am hoping that they will...society will look at them so much different and they will see them as human beings, as themselves, you know?

We are going to pick up some books that I need for my Spanish course. ¿Qué tal, cómo está?

MAN (on tape)
Bién, Bién.

TEACHER (on tape)
vamos a escribir, saquaste cinco.

JORGE
Y de cinco no lo pasé?

TEACHER (on tape)
No. No lo pasaste. Vamos a escribir.

JORGE (on tape)
O.K. Está bién.

I just flunked on my Spanish. I have to pass Spanish to get my Jr. High certificate so I can go to high-school and then to a university. And I flunked my Spanish. They said, “You did great in all your other exams but Spanish you have to do all over again.” So I was like, oh man!

But I can speak Spanish...Puedo hablar el español, no más que para escribir y todo eso, mi gramatico no está muy bién.

When I was in L.A., like every time I left my house, I would feel like maybe I wasn’t gonna come home, you know. Like I was gonna get killed, I was gonna get hurt, arrested or something. And here...I know I’m not gonna get killed coming home. And I think that’s the best part…And it’s just the struggle, I love the struggle. I can just see its benefits...

Even though we aren’t rich, we weren’t even middle class over in California, we lived better off and our homes were better...

And I think that that should be the number one priority for governments around the world, to have their people live well, before everything else. So I’m trying to do this on my own, and it’s like throwing a rock at a comet but I’m throwing it pretty hard and I’m going to make it. I’m gonna see results.


- Jorge Nuñez’s story was produced by Youth Radio’s International Desk in association with National Geographic.