CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico – Five young boys from a colonia on the outskirts of town held onto anything their hands could find as they drove over bumpy, dirt roads in a trailer loaded with bicycles.
The driver of the blue pickup truck that was towing them was Chet Wright from nearby Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Wright, 67, is an electrician and said he was currently “half retired”. Twice a month he visits Juárez on bicycles that he repairs in his home shop on the US side of the border – many of them fished from the scrap heap of the South Central Solid Waste Authority in Las Cruces or donated by the local bike shop Outdoor Adventures.
He also transports donated furniture and other relief items on behalf of the nonprofit Siguiendo los Pasos de Jesús (SPJ) based in El Paso, Texas, which has built hundreds of homes and other facilities for families in an area with no running water or other basic infrastructure.
Wright estimated that he had delivered nearly 1,500 bikes to the area over nearly five years. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic closed the border and stopped deliveries from March to November, but the project has since resumed.
He founded “Bikes For Juárez” as a non-profit organization in 2020 and funds his operations by donating money and selling repaired bicycles to pay for chains, tubes, tires, grips, insurance and fuel for his return trips.
According to the project’s Facebook page, each bike sent to Juárez costs him around $ 20.
When volunteers in the SPJ workshop unloaded furniture, an 18-year-old woman named Melanie sat on a bike for the first time in her life, trying it out and laughing shyly while others adjusted the seat and handlebars for her.
Wright recalled growing up in Las Cruces as a child until he was 10 years old. He learned to ride a bike that belonged to a friend’s sister.
In middle age he began passionately with mountain biking and soon discovered that he enjoyed “tinkering” with bicycles. Inspired by a visit to a bike shop in Durango, Colorado, which repaired discarded bikes and distributed them to children in poor areas, Wright started a similar project.
“You can only see the joy on their faces”
While distributing hundreds of bikes in Doña Ana County, Wright said, “Most children on this side of the border can get a bike.” He knew that there were families near the US-Mexico border who survived even more severe poverty. He just needed someone who knew the terrain.
That led him to the founder and director of SPJ, Jane Fuller, who has supported families in the Colonias since 2000.
On this trip, Fuller’s vehicle took Wright through streets muddy from recent rains to a neighborhood where she slowed down and honked several times as children and mothers ran up to each other and shouted, “Bicis!” – short for bicicletas.
The scene was cheering as Wright watched as an adult SPJ volunteer and the boys started handing out bikes and quickly deciding which were best for which riders.
It took a full three minutes to delete the trailer, and Wright – who spoke limited Spanish – promised he’d be back with more soon.
“You can just see the joy on their faces,” he said. “It is an opportunity for me to give a little joy to a child who would probably never get a bike, at least until they grow up.”
It was also clear that Wright trusted the children. He said he hadn’t heard of theft or resale of bicycles. Fuller recalled that their only disagreement over the years they worked together came when a child first claimed a bike after receiving one on a previous trip.
She intervened, but Wright overruled her. He adheres to a firm principle that no questions are asked: “If a child in need needs a bike, it gets a bike,” he said. “You never know how they lose their bikes.”
While driving through the Colonia, Wright investigated storm damage in an area with homes made from materials ranging from concrete blocks to pallets. The roof of one house had blown off the structure and landed upside down nearby.
On dozens of trips, Wright said he had seen “heartbreaking” scenes of poverty and social discrimination within the community, particularly towards indigenous peoples, but saw the community as resilient and vibrant and said he liked to come here to see how Children are whipped around on two wheels – a rare sight four years ago.
“No matter how insurmountable a problem seems, you still have to do what you can,” he said as he finished his lap and prepared to drive home, the empty trailer bobbing noisily over potholes and rocks.
Algernon D’Ammassa can be reached at 575-541-5451, [email protected], or @AlgernonWrites on Twitter.
Comments are closed.