Editor’s Note: This article contains brief mentions of self-harm and police brutality.
Álvaro Quiroz is the first Mexican to be honored by the UN’s Young Activist Summit after having co-founded Brigada 12, a group of activists in the city of Guadalajara that, since 2020, distributes food and blankets to the homeless, a movement that has since spread to other cities, and to Colombia and the U.S.
He, himself, experienced homelessness before being invited to live in a shelter in the city, Quiroz says that, by helping others, he is also saving himself, and that people who live on the streets must not be seen as having no rights.
I come from a family that had many economic shortcomings.
The abuse, the bullying at school and home, as well as the economic strife I suffered, were complicated and made me withdraw from the situations I faced. My parents had a fruit and vegetable stall in the street and, as a child, I would sleep underneath it, on piles of cardboard. My grandmother would take care of me because my parents always worked. I was bullied a lot due to my sexual orientation and my physique and that lasted many years up until senior high school.
As a child, I was very withdrawn; I didn’t talk to people much and spent most of my time drawing. I express myself through my art, but I felt that it distanced me from others. Later, I sought a different life for myself, which led me to Guadalajara, where I now study visual arts at university. In my artwork, I mostly use oils and charcoal for painting.
The course I wanted to study, visual arts, didn’t exist in Atotonilco El Alto, the small town I come from. I wanted to study art as a way of escaping my situation. My motive was to study and seek other opportunities. But I ended up living on the street because I didn’t know anyone or have any friends in the city. A group of people rescued me and took me to a homeless shelter.
Álvaro Quiroz poses alongside his art, which represents social causes, and reflects his ideology as a person and as a young activist.
I tried to commit suicide twice. I didn’t see any opportunities for myself…
…and when I tried to take my life a third time, the people at the shelter rescued me. They helped me work through my emotions, talk about my problems, and grow as a person. That community was made up of people with various shortcomings: people who came from prostitution, who had worked in organized crime, or who were drug addicts — and their way of escaping their problems was helping other people with theirs.
So that’s how I ended up there, defeated. They began to work with me, to help me, it was an organization of a lot of people. They never judged me, they saw my problems as the most normal thing in the world. I had felt that I didn’t belong in this world, and they made me feel as if I were part of a family, and they told me to tell them my problems. In that homeless shelter they gave me the opportunity to study at the university and to work on my emotions.
We were 20 young people sharing a room.
I didn’t have any privacy and the bathroom was the only place where I could keep my things — my clothes, my blanket, my university homework — but it didn’t bother me because the love and the support that they gave me was much greater than my economic deficiencies.
“We are rich in spirit but poor in monetary terms,” they told me. They gave me the tools to move forward and they did so much for me. They said: “What we are doing for you is also for us, you want to get on in life and we also want to get on in life with you.”
Thousands of young people are recruited into drug trafficking in Mexico every year, and there is a lot of trafficking of minors. So much goes on, but I never watched the news. I found out about things from my companions at the homeless shelter; kids that had been in gangs, young girls that had been trafficked. They told me stories of their suffering, and how they had been recruited by drug traffickers and gangs because they felt the need to belong, and they told me of their pain and shared their experiences. I would talk about my experiences as a way of healing, so that the same would not happen to other people, and to not forget where I came from.
The COVID-19 pandemic was really tough. We didn’t receive any help from anyone. The government closed the doors on us, they wouldn’t let us work in the street. Many of my companions had been released from prison and they sang songs on the buses for money or sold things in the streets to survive. But we also saw there were people living on the streets who were worse off. So we shared the little that we had with them.
We believe that, if you help other people, you forget your problems.
We went out into the streets to distribute the little food that we had. We discovered the situation that other people were living in, and it felt like a blessing to be able to help them and create a sense of community. People were sleeping in the trees downtown so that the police wouldn’t see them.
Álvaro Quiroz distributes food to people with limited resources on the streets of Guadalajara, Mexico.
We came across mothers who wanted to protect their children, kids who were the children of sex workers, as well as trans people who couldn’t get the medicines they needed. We wanted to be the voice for these people, and not just give them food, but also find out what they needed so they wouldn’t have to live on the street. Many of them were drug addicts, and being addicted to a substance creates an alternative reality. They told me they preferred to be drugged so they wouldn’t suffer when people abused them.
We want to give people a second chance at life, make them responsible for their lives.
We organize art auctions to raise money to help people. I’ve always viewed art as a form of catharsis. My companions from the homeless shelter and I started bringing food to those in need. When we encountered people who required medicine, I reached out to contacts in the health sector for help, or we appealed to politicians to assist homeless children during Christmas. I also began speaking with business people to secure gifts for the children and became a spokesperson for the movement.
We started to connect everybody from the homeless shelter with drug rehabilitation centers, and reached out to businesses for school fees donations to help unhoused kids. Volunteers from the homeless shelter brought food and blankets. When we started Brigada 12 there were 20 of us, but little by little the movement grew and expanded to other states in the country. We named it ‘Brigada 12’ because we go out at midnight to help the homeless.
We kept a register of the homeless and soon realized some had disappeared. People told us that the police would arrive, round up the homeless, take their possessions, or even imprison them for being on the streets [during the pandemic lockdown]. I spoke with politicians to explain what was happening. The police beat people up, so we filmed videos and sent them to TV stations and the press to raise awareness of the issue.
Álvaro Quiroz
Álvaro Quiroz and fellow members of Brigada 12 walk together to distribute food and shelter to homeless people in Guadalajara, Mexico in February 2025.
Álvaro Quiroz
Álvaro Quiroz and fellow members of Brigada 12 distribute food and essentials to people with limited resources on the streets of Guadalajara, Mexico.
Álvaro Quiroz
People from different groups join forces with Brigada 12 to feed hundreds of homeless people living on the streets of downtown Guadalajara, Mexico in February 2025.
Álvaro Quiroz
Álvaro Quiroz and members of Brigada 12 stand together for a photograph on one of the nights where they were distributing food and essentials to homeless people around Guadalajara, Mexico.
People think homeless people have no rights.
They are treated like animals and I have faced obstacles for talking about this. I realized that, if we are not going to be listened to in Mexico, then we have to be heard in other parts of the world. And so I talked to an activist friend, a Mexican doctor, Giorgio Franyuti, who supported me and became my main ally. He taught me how to create a formal project.
We held art auctions, made and sold tamales and artwork to fund the trips, and I started receiving recommendations on how to address the issues here. I also began forging alliances with activists from other countries, global organizations, ambassadors, consuls, and politicians, all of whom joined the cause. As a result, I found myself becoming the global spokesperson for the issue. With these alliances, we began exploring ways to tackle the problem of homelessness.
The biggest challenge has been economic. The authorities are also a challenge; we never ask for their help, only that they leave us alone and allow us to do our work without interference. I’ve also received anonymous death threats from people who said they could kill me or make me disappear. Jalisco is one of the Mexican states with the highest number of forced disappearances. In a country like Mexico, where activists are murdered regardless of their global recognition, there exists impunity.
In Mexico, activists who received global visibility have been killed in the past.
They simply disappear or are murdered. People told me: “You’re very young, you live in a homeless shelter, you have no money, no means, and no knowledge, and if they come and shoot you and the kids at the shelter, what will happen?”
If I get kidnapped maybe the kids at the shelter will hold a protest, but nothing will happen because I don’t have any resources. I received anonymous phone calls in which people told me: “You’d better shut up or they’ll kill you or disappear you,” and that if I continued to highlight the problems then people in the government would feel uncomfortable.
Álvaro Quiroz poses for a portrait as he holds the Young Activist Summit award, which he received for his work supporting the homeless in Guadalajara, Mexico.
“If you do something else, instead of being the spokesperson for these people, finish your studies, open an art gallery, you could live longer,” a friend told me. He was just being honest, it wasn’t to frighten me. And I told him: “Yes, but that would be a life without a cause, and I prefer to live a shorter life but with a cause and a motive to fight and to help the people I care about and who have helped me.” It’s not about changing the world, but about changing the lives of the people in my world. Homeless people must not be invisible.
I have changed my life and the lives of those around me. It’s our allies that help us, an ally is much more valuable than a thousand dollars. All the work that we have done has been possible thanks to our allies. I'm just the reflection of the willingness of many people that have helped us. It’s easy to satisfy someone’s hunger, but the big challenge is giving dignity to homeless people, just like people gave me.
More than charity, what we need are allies.
We seek to substitute people’s shortcomings by creating a family. Well-meaning people are of more use to us than money. We have to listen to the people living on the streets to find out what they need.
I would describe myself as an artist seeking to enact social change from my own experience, to create activism that provokes social change. I’m a person with a lot of defects, I’m no saint, but the people involved in this project are not saints either, everybody has a problematic history and it's my defects that enable me to help other people. We are all human beings who feel that the world never gave us love, which is why we want to give love. I am just the spokesperson for a cause that is much bigger than I am.
Álvaro Quiroz and fellow members of Brigada 12 stand together during a food distribution in Guadalajara, Mexico.
You can contact Brigada12 by emailing brigada12.contact@gmail.com or irisartandsocialproject@gmail.com, or visit www.brigada12.org.
This article, as narrated to Adam Critchley, has been slightly edited for clarity.
The 2024-2025 In My Own Series is part of Global Citizen’s grant-funded content.