Centro de Unidad Popular Benito Juárez, Inc., is a California Corporation organized exclusively for one or more of the charitable and educational purposes in Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code

 

Unidad Popular was established in the year 2000, by a group of indigenous Mixteco.  Unidad Popular was established due to the lack of information, assistance and services to the Indigenous Community. And was set up a volunteer support system for more indigenous immigrants arriving in the Central Valley to harvest the world’s fresh food supply. 

 

The mission of Unidad Popular is to advocate for the health, housing and basic human rights of indigenous people.  We  provide unparalleled assistance to the most vulnerable and low-income families that are discriminated or marginalized due to their language, culture, and traditions.  For which Unidad Popular set up a volunteer support system for more immigrants arriving in the Central Valley to harvest the world’s fresh food supply. 

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“In California, farmworkers in general and particularly the poorest ones, the indigenous, are undercounted by all the official census takers.[1]  The inability to gather information about the indigenous population has led to widespread unawareness of this community’s needs; and, in some cases, service providers may even be unaware of the community’s existence. 

 

The language barriers and the unique cultural traits of the population make it critical that special customized programs be designed and implemented to accommodate the significant differences with other Mexican immigrants and the substantially greater barriers to access that the indigenous population faces.  Under current conditions, the service providers, who more often than not would like to render the highest level of service possible, are being asked to accommodate a population that they do not know or understand.”

 

Throughout the year, Unidad Popular has successfully organized and collaborated in multiple events that relate to Culture and Traditions that reaches out to the most vulnerable families of California.  The events consist on bringing back some of the traditional events held in the State of Oaxaca to California with the concept of “Desde Oaxaca para California”.  Unidad Popular does not only bring assistance from other agencies and business but also members of the community who value its concept of “Rescantando nuestra Tradición y Cultura Indígena” (Rescuing our Indigenous Culture and Traditions). 
 

Besides our Education forums, UPBJ host and collaborate Culture and Traditional events such as:
 

1. Building Healthy Community (BHC), Participation and Collaboration

2. Copa Benito Juárez (Benito Juárez Tournament), 2nd Week of April

3. Census 2010 Partnership Program for Kern County

4. Guelaguetza in Oxnard Cal, Last Sunday of March

5. Día de los niños (April 30)

6. Scholarship Program for Students in CC, CSU, CS (NEW)

7. Festival Mixteco, Sunday closes to June 24th (End in 2008)

8. Guelaguetza Bakersfield, Cal.  2nd Week of October

9. Binational Health Week Of  Kern County

10. Dia de los Muerto, last week of October

 

Our goal is to have participation from the Indigenous Community in our many cultural events that in their home was commonly organized year by year for hundreds of years. 

 

[1] See I. Jacobs and E. Kissam, “Census 2000 Undercount of Immigrants and Farmworkers in rural California Communities,’ report for the California Endowment, 2002 and S. Gabbard, E. Kissam and P. Martin, “The impact of Migrant Travel Patterns on the Undercount of Hispanic Farmwokers”, Bureau of the Census, 1993