The "free store" warm migrants stranded in Ciudad Juárez

Given the pressing need for thousands of people in the north of the country, a group of activists has launched the "free store", a project in the Mexican Ciudad Juárez to support migrants, displaced and disadvantaged donating and reusing clothing.

"This support is father because there are those who have no clothes and so we can relive a little.I come with my husband and my two children, "Marcelina Hernández, a migrant woman from Guerrero, told EFE Wednesday, who has been living in this border city for a month.

Marcelina is one of the many people who in recent months has gone to some of the 28 spaces open throughout the city to help the most needy, in a project that also seeks to recycle and reuse clothing garments to also take care of theenvironment.

Another beneficiary is Yeimi Olivas, also displaced from Guerrero.

"This help falls good for us because sometimes we don't have to buy clothes and I have four children.I am looking for 'shorts', shirts and footwear, "said the woman while one of her five -year -old children ran through the content store.

As explained, the family - which left the region for the poverty and violence they suffered - is in Ciudad Juárez indefinitely while they hope that the United States is pronounced on its asylum application.

Their stories reflect the situation of tens of thousands of migrants on the border, where many live while waiting for their opportunity to cross the neighboring country.

The region lives an unprecedented migratory wave with 147.000 undocumented.000 undocumented.

Migrant precariousness

After a long journey and the payment of many of them to coyotes (traffickers of people) to reach the Mexican northern border, most migrants arrive with hardly any resources.

In this context of enormous difficulties in solving their most basic needs, projects such as "free store" - which supports all types of low -income people - are an oxygen ball for many of them after hundreds or thousands of kilometers under theirfeet.

And daily between 30 and 40 migrants visit the enabled enclosures.

"If I were a migrant for me, this space would be rewarding," Julio César Morales, founder and part of the coordination network of this program, who also recalled that reuse objects avoid contaminating the planet.

"Migrants are difficult cases to treat.They arrive without shoes, cold, and within our possibilities we help them.All are grateful and unbelievers because it becomes a dream for them to dress their children, "said Guadalupe Celis, a volunteer who knew the place - open at the beginning of the year - through social networks.

Mostly migrants come from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador or from southern Mexico, said Celis.

Solidarity economy

According to Morales, the project was born from a trip in Berlin, Germany, where there are similar stores that sought to support the most disadvantaged and propel the solidarity economy, since it is the citizenship itself who delivers the objects.

Today, in the downtown area of this industrial city, what years ago was a bar is now a "free store" to deposit clothing, shoes, books and household items, among other products.

Once the donated items arrive in the place, the clothes are classified as that one that is for children, man and woman.

There is everything necessary to be able to wear a person from a person, and even accessories.

"When you see their faces and happiness when we take clothes and shoes you realize that the brands do not matter here," Celis concluded.