NEW YORK – The thousands of Latino immigrants who have arrived in New York since last summer face endless challenges, including food, and many are hiding to clandestinely cook meals in shelters that remember your own countries.
And while they’re grateful for the help they’re getting from the authorities, complaints about ‘tasteless’, ‘cold’, ‘greasy’, ‘raw’ or even ‘spoiled’ food are causing an uproar.
The banning of cooking, for security reasons, in hostels and hotels paid for by the city has made a problem that arises three times a day even more difficult.
Many go to services in churches or various NGOs to obtain food which they cook with in shelters, assuming the risk of being discovered, or sometimes borrowing the kitchen of friends or relatives.
“A lot of people cook in secret, trying not to let security (in hotels) find out. Sometimes I cook for myself and my son in an (electric) pot”, an Ecuadorian woman who arrived three months ago and who hides his little pot. before any research.
“The food was a very big culture shock for me,” says the woman, who is staying at the ROW Hotel, on Eighth Avenue between 45th and 46th Street in Manhattan, seized by the authorities to make it a refuge in a few steps. of Times Square.
MOUNTAINS OF FOOD IN GARBAGE
Recently, the tabloid New York Post – not exactly a friend of immigrants – published a photo taken by a hotel employee: it showed a huge trash bag filled with trays of food provided to emigrants that had barely been opened. .
“There are good days and bad days, but in general we don’t like it” because “they don’t season it like we do in our country”, says the woman, who says she lost several kilos.
Other immigrants denounced that the meals are “very spicy or all mixed up, the sweet with the salty”, and that “sometimes we separate it and eat it” because they have no alternative.
For breakfast and lunch they receive bread, biscuits, juice, fruit, water, salads and, in the afternoon, meat, chicken, pasta or rice. It looks, to say the least, like airplane food.
THE CHURCH UNDERSTANDS THEM
Lutheran priest and activist Fabián Arias, of San Pedro Church in Manhattan, visits at least three times a week with clothes and food such as canned soups, cereals and milk, which he takes to hotels for immigrants so they can have alternatives.
He says he gets complaints “all the time” about the meals and considers it “an oversight” by the city because “they gave out food in poor condition and with expired dates”.
The priest also distributes donated food such as onions, potatoes, fruits and vegetables during a distribution he carries out in the neighborhood of Queens, where immigrants like the Peruvian “María” (fictitious name ), arriving six months ago, who a friend allows her to cook at home for a few days because the food at the hostel where she is staying in the Bronx “doesn’t taste like anything.”
“María” prepares food for several days, which she keeps in the refrigerator of her dormitory at the hostel and reheats in the microwave to feed her children and her husband.
Angie is Colombian and also goes to the pantry to prepare food for herself and her 9 month old daughter.
“I have an electric cooker (in the room of a shelter), everyone cooks there but we cannot let them find these things” because they are confiscated, he says.
She knows she can be detected by the smell of hostel staff, but, she says, “the smell of marijuana also comes out and they don’t mind, so why should the smell of food disturb them?
She says she cooks because she “don’t like junk food” which “has no taste or salt or anything. If there was someone who cooked with love, you wouldn’t see a food waste to landfill”.
MISSING “LA HABICHUELITA”
Some say things have started to change: Ligia and Ericson, who also lived in hotels where the food they were given ended up in the trash, say that in the past two weeks they have received hot meals that they can eat.
“People missed the little rice, the spaghetti, the little beans,” says Ericson and assures that the food has “improved a lot”.
“You have to be aware and grateful for the help, because they receive us in a country where we have no one,” he humbly says.