6 MAY 9-15, 2024 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Hiding in Plain Sight ARTHUR INFANTE HAS BUILT FOUR ENCAMPMENTS FOR MIGRANTS, AND HE’LL BUILD ANOTHER AFTER THIS ONE IS SWEPT. BY BENNITO L. KELT Y Under the afternoon sun on the last day of April, Arthur Infante bounced back and forth across a dry patch of land hosting the dusty migrant encampment he’d set up in March, getting people air pumps, tent stakes, pro- pane tanks, water jugs, heating equipment and bubbles for the kids. “The interesting thing is there are a lot of kids, and they’re happy, not a care in the world with them,” Infante says. “They don’t know their situation. They’re like, ‘You got bubbles for me?’ That’s their main concern.” A sculptor, Infante works with All Souls Denver, a nonprofi t that supports encamp- ments. But he also cares for migrants and homeless residents through his own orga- nization, My Mother’s Kitchen. For thirty years, he’s been giving out food and other supplies to those in need from the back of his pickup truck. More recently, he’s been building and maintaining encampments. In November, he began working with mi- grants, most of whom have come to Denver from Venezuela. Infante has opened and operated four mi- grant encampments so far, he says, including two on Tower Road. In late March, he built the foundation for this encampment in Central Park, located in the middle of a bare stretch under a four-lane overpass. It’s tucked into a spot where a creek and railroad pinch together, next to jagged rocks that take up the shade of the overpass, while the rest of the dirt and straggly grass stretch behind a fence, to the back of ware- houses and unfi nished construction projects. Union Pacifi c, the railroad company that owns the property, posted a notice on April 22 that the encampment would be swept on Monday, May 6. “Not only is trespassing on railroad property illegal, it is dangerous to be setting up camps within a few feet of railroad tracks,” says UP spokesman Mike Jaixen. “For their safety, we’re asking everyone in this camp to please leave railroad property.” But after the city and UP sweep the encamp- ment, Infante says, he’ll build another one and keep it hidden as long as possible, as he did here. Denver Human Services spokesperson Jon Ewing says the city isn’t interested in playing cat-and-mouse with Infante. “When we are not aware of an encampment or where it is located, it is all but impossible for us to help,” he says. “We have too much going on to play games, especially when it comes to people’s lives.” The encampment sits at the foot of a hill that has Union Pacifi c tracks on top, with no barrier between them. When it opened more than a month ago, the encampment housed about twenty people, but the head count has grown to more than ninety, including nineteen children. The City of Denver estimates that 73 people live here, including sixteen kids, a couple of teenagers and at least two pregnant women. A handful of migrants have cars parked here, none with license plates. While kids blow bubbles or ride on bikes through the dirt in the middle of the encampment, people continue asking Infante for various tools and supplies — and even though Infante could reach into the back of his pickup truck for just about anything, he comes up short of a car jack. With campers asking for things every few minutes, it’s easy to forget requests for trash bags or brooms, but Infante does his best to keep everything from food and sanitation items to phone-charging stations on hand. There is one big obstacle, however. “I’m fumbling through with my Spanish,” Infante says, admitting that he doesn’t speak the language. On this day, a team of service workers from various homeless organiza- tions happens to be at the encampment, so he asks them to translate (as he does the Westword journalist walking alongside him). Inside Infante’s Encampment Many of the migrants in the encampment say they have stayed in a city shelter and either didn’t like it or exhausted the time limit the city gave them. Others skipped the shelters and went straight to living on the streets. FaBiola Pineda arrived from Venezuela in Denver three months ago with her partner and three-year-old daughter. She stayed in a city migrant shelter during a stretch of cold weather that kept her there for more than 42 days, then the allowed time limit. (Now it’s down to two days.) They were discharged in February, and she lived on the streets until she found the Central Park encampment. “A friend told us, and she brought us here. I only have about seven days that I’ve been here,” Pineda says. “They say the women here are allowed to work in construction, and I did that in Venezuela. I don’t know about here, but if I get the chance, I’d do that.” Most of the migrants at the encampment are with family members; singles stay in one part, while families have a section reserved for them. “There are many in the encampment that have been in the U.S. for some time,” Ewing says, adding that “there may be some who bypassed the shelter system entirely.” Some residents of the encampment walked across Denver after being swept from a site outside Elitch Gardens in late March, Infante says. The rest of them mostly followed Infante from an encampment he’d built near West 48th Avenue and Fox Street, under a bridge closer to downtown, after it was swept. The Central Park encampment existed right under the city’s nose for almost a month. In fact, Denver offi cials didn’t know that Infante had been building migrant en- campments until the Central Park site was discovered in April, after Union Pacifi c reps and nearby residents reported it. According to Ewing, keeping encamp- ments secret also keeps Denver Human Services from helping the migrants there. “People involved with the encampment wouldn’t communicate any details around it, down to the location, so we couldn’t do any outreach,” Ewing says. “Because this encamp- ment was kept from us, we’re now getting started on providing outreach to every single person staying there. At the end of the day, we don’t feel like you walk thousands of miles to this country to live in a tent, so we’re going to do everything in our power to help them out.” The city typically receives information about encampments from migrants seeking city services or local residents supporting an encampment. “For example, we had a really good relationship with folks involved with the Elitch camp,” Ewing says. “If a family showed up, we could immediately drop by and help.” Infante says he understands Union Pa- cifi c’s concern, and adds that the company has been “really nice” about moving the encampment along. But he doesn’t feel the same way about the city. “The city is the one who comes out with cops,” he notes. Infante recently began handing out bus passes provided by the Department of Public Health & Environment, but he’s out at the moment — so most of the migrants at the encampment, such as Emerson Villareal, don’t know where they’re going after the encampment is swept. “We’ll wait until the scheduled day to see where we’ll go,” Villareal says. “All of us will leave together.” Infante is already scouting for a new encampment site. “We’re still looking for places,” he says. “We have, like, three differ- ent places we’re hoping for, but we’re trying to hide it because we get swept if people know. We can’t bring in volunteers, because then they say, ‘Oh, we helped out here,’ and then we get swept the next day.” While he landed on Union Pacifi c turf this time, Infante tries to stick to city property and “land that is away from people, that’s not in a neighborhood,” he says. “We look at drainage so we can put tents where there’s not a fl ooding issue. Fire safety is a huge thing, because we use small propane tanks — nothing large, so we make sure there’s no vegetation around or close by.” At this spot, he set up three tents to oper- ate as kitchens — two family kitchens and one for individuals. He dug trenches to make sure that water fl ows out when it rains or snows instead of pooling up under everyone’s tents. He also taught a few migrants to dig latrines, one for the women and one for the men. Migrants stopped using the latrines after the site was discovered and the city brought four porta-potties. For trash, Infante fi lls large Walmart grocery bags, piles them next to the bathrooms and takes the load with him in his pickup at the end of the day. He also keeps a census of everyone at the encampment. Each tent has a number so In- fante can track who’s living there. For safety, he takes pictures of every car that comes into the encampment along a dirt road. In the main kitchen, where Infante keeps a picture of his mother (hence the name My Mother’s Kitchen), he tailors meals to the tastes of Venezuelans, who have a tough time fi nding food they like in Denver. “I’ll make a caldo-type stew that they rec- ognize everything in there. Sometimes people bring something and they don’t recognize it; they’ll recognize the NEWS continued on page 8 KEEP UP ON DENVER NEWS AT WESTWORD.COM/NEWS In addition to shelter, Arthur Infante provides food and other supplies. BENNITO L. KELTY
