The Ultimate Border Project is a multi-organizational collaboration to bring the sport of Ultimate to migrant populations in Mexico and beyond; and to develop within the Ultimate community an understanding of the migrant population and migrant issues, based on direct contact. The motto of the Ultimate Border Project is Solidaridad es Ultimate, to emphasize the importance to this project of promoting solidarity between and within communities and organizations.

Beginning in August 2019, LA Throwback Foundation members made the first of many trips to Tijuana from Los Angeles, to learn firsthand about the conditions in which migrant populations awaiting asylum hearings were living. Thanks to our collaboration with ARIA Discs (since terminated), we were able to give discs to the kids we met in the shelters, and we had the pleasure of taking them out to learn to throw. We recognized that many of the youth in these shelters may spend many months there, and often are much in need not only of interesting recreational activities, but more importantly, of connection with community outside the shelters. Meanwhile, within the areas in which they are sheltering, as well as in the country in which they seek refuge, the secure members of the communities often treat the migrants as a threat, a foreign element to be extruded, rather than as fellow humans to be known and embraced like any other.

Over the course of many subsequent trips, we met with a number of people providing a variety of services in the shelters, who were inspired by the idea of connecting the Ultimate community with the migrant community. In particular, longtime migrants rights activist Hugo Castro, and Luis Guillermo Gomez Rosales of Psicólogos Sin Fronteras BC, each were excited about bringing such a project into the work they were already doing in the shelters. Thanks to an intro from Abe Emmanuel, we connected with the local ultimate community in Tijuana, led by Rafa Contreras of Baja Sunset Ultimate, who were very interested in joining in. Baja Sunset is the largest youth ultimate league in Mexico, and possibly in all of Latin America.

Together, we developed plans to connect ultimate players from Southern California and Baja California together with the migrant communities in the shelters, to share our love of the game and the relationships it makes possible.

We also approached the Los Angeles Pro Women’s ultimate team Los Angeles Astra to gauge their interest in participating. They were happy to agree, and even donated a $1000 apparel credit to support our fundraiser to help with the truly urgent needs of the shelters of Tijuana, as they struggle to cope with a drastic drop-off in donations and uptick in need resulting from the pandemic. We hope you will consider donating to one or more of the shelters with whom we have been working, and we look forward to sending you a gift, at our expense, in exchange for your direct donation to the shelters.

At the moment, plans we had to travel to Tijuana frequently and to fund (from proceeds of our 2020 Beach Ultimate Fest) bringing players from Southern California down to participate, are on indefinite hold. However, the kids are still stuck in the shelters, often with a lot of time on their hands. Hugo and Luis have resumed their service work in the shelters, while practicing social distancing, sanitary practices, wearing masks, and other precautions. We recently were able to award the first LA Throwback Foundation Ultimate Community Support Fund Grant to them to support their work in coordinating these efforts going forward. They are currently working with Baja Sunset Ultimate to work out how to conduct training sessions to teach the kids to throw and the basics of ultimate, while ensuring that people from the shelters only come in contact with those with whom they are already living, and not the instructors. This includes not sharing discs between people who do not already have exposure to each other. Doing so will give them a fun and healthy recreational activity, while they develop those killer throws that will rock the Ultimate world when we’re past the pandemic.

Once it becomes safe to do so, we look forward to resuming our plans of bringing interested Southern California ultimate players to Tijuana. In the meantime, we are providing whatever support we are able to provide to our partners in Mexico, while working to make sure that any such activities are carried out with the most extreme care and caution to avoid creating any new exposure risks to the novel coronavirus for anyone involved.

If you’d like more information or are interested in getting involved, please contact us at borderproject [at] lathrowback.org

Please note: all the pictures shown in which people are not wearing masks were taken during trips in Fall 2019, before the pandemic hit North America.