ByTony Nuñez (view article at Good Times Santa Cruz)

December 14, 2021

When Daniel “Nane” Alejandrez returned home from the Vietnam War in the 1970s, he says that it was clear that his true fight had just begun. 

“It seemed like I came from one war to another one,” Alejandrez says.

A son of migrant farmworkers from Texas who was born in a cotton field in Merigold, Mississippi, Alejandrez says violence and poverty among the Chicano population in his eventual hometown of Fresno had reached a dangerous tipping point. And after he arrived in Santa Cruz with hopes of earning a film degree at UCSC, Alejandrez says he remembers seeing the same violence around Santa Cruz County’s Chicanos.

It was clear then that if anything was going to improve in the community, he says, the change would need to come from within.

“We knew that no one was coming to our communities,” he says. “We had to rise ourselves.”

Alejandrez is the executive director of Barrios Unidos, a nonprofit he first started as a volunteer organization in 1977, and then officially incorporated in 1993. For more than 40 years, Barrios Unidos has helped tackle the social issues affecting Santa Cruz County’s Latinx youth, while also playing a key role in the move toward restorative justice in this area and beyond.

Barrios Unidos, which at a time had 27 chapters throughout the nation, does this through preventive programs offered at its headquarters in Santa Cruz, dubbed The Spot. There the organization offers afterschool programs, a food pantry and job training through its silkscreen business, recording studio and tiny-home project in which youth are taught how to construct the small houses.

It also does the work that many organizations would not: working with incarcerated individuals—both youth and adult offenders—that society has allowed to fall through the cracks. On top of steering youth in juvenile hall away from a life behind bars, Barrios Unidos offers an adult ReEntry program and Prison Project that addresses recidivism by dealing with one of the largest root causes of crime: a lacking support system.

Alejandrez says that at a recent visit to Soledad State Prison, Barrios Unidos had some 40 men graduate as “Peace Warriors,” taking an oath of nonviolence. The graduates, Alejandrez says, had been in prison for as long as 46 years. 

“All those men at some point didn’t have someone in their lives as kids, and they made wrong decisions, or they were involved in the wrong things,” he says. “And they all said, ‘If we had somebody like you guys, it would’ve made a difference.’”

Participating in Santa Cruz Gives for the first time in the holiday crowdsourcing campaign’s seven-year run, Barrios Unidos aims to make a bigger difference in 2022. The organization’s “Big Idea” for the upcoming year is “Santa Cruz Cares for Kids,” an initiative that would build on the nonprofit’s popular after-school program for children ages 5-17.

Barrios Unidos’ youth offerings are unique. The organization not only provides a safe place for kids, but also emphasizes cultural teachings that are sometimes not passed down from the previous generation because of split households. Alejandrez says Barrios Unidos helps these young people, the majority of whom are Latinx, reconnect with their roots.

“You have to teach that, you have to keep that alive so they feel proud of who they are and they know who they are,” Alejandrez says.

It’s this pride in what Barrios Unidos calls the “authentic self,” Alejandrez argues, that will ultimately bring about change in the Latinx community. It’s not lost on him that the majority of kids in juvenile hall are Latinx residents from Watsonville, and that the county’s jail population is 58% Latinx. In contrast, he says, there are few Latinx people that hold key positions of power in the county.

“There’s an inequity there that needs to be addressed, and if we start educating our young kids in a safe place to look at that dream and say, ‘One of these days, I’m going to be the district attorney or the judge in this county,’ then we’ll start to see real change,” he says.

Alejandrez’s impact on the community and his impressive resume could serve as inspiration for young people, too. He’s been mentored by Harry Belafonte, Delores Huerta and Danny Glover. He’s also traveled to Columbia, El Salvador, Kenya and Tanzania to share his teachings. In addition, he’s spoken to the United Nations multiple times about Barrios Unidos’ work, and was most recently awarded the Chief Justice Earl Warren Civil Liberties Award, an honor that has gone to the likes of Thurgood Marshall and Rosa Parks.

Even more rewarding, Alejandrez says, is seeing some of Barrios Unidos’ alumni now leading organizations throughout the country.

“This community has given me and my family so much,” he says. “I have to give back.”

But his work is far from over, and in many ways, the battle he took up some 44 years ago has only become tougher because of the ongoing housing crisis and the economic downturn as a result of the pandemic.

“We have to give a way for our young people that were born and raised in this county, whether it be Watsonville or Santa Cruz, a way to be able to stay here,” he says. “In the long run, that’s what we’re trying to create in Barrios. We can have a place for kids, we can have teachings for the community and we can have housing. But we can’t do it alone. That’s why we need the community to step up.”