A Taste of Home: How Tijuana's Honduras 504 Provides Comfort for Migrant Families

Lilian Mejía patted out masa in the kitchen of her restaurant, Honduras 504 in Tijuana's Zona Norte, when she got the news that the migrant caravan arrived just two blocks away. Before she knew it, the dining room was at capacity. People spilled out of the restaurant and onto the sidewalk.

It was November 2018. More than 6,000 Central American migrants had arrived after a 2,500-mile trek through El Salvador, Guatemala and the entire length of Mexico to reach the border city. They were fleeing violence, poverty, extortion and political repression and hoped to reach the United States. Once the caravan arrived in the border city, many took shelter at temporary camps, like the Benito Juarez Sports Complex, El Barretal and El Chaparral Plaza.

The refugees were nearly all Honduran.

Prior to the caravan's arrival, Mejía says business at her small restaurant ebbed and flowed — sometimes only selling one chicken dish the entire day. But when the refugees showed up, Mejía said she got a jolt of purpose inspired by the resilience of the migrants.

"People waited over an hour to eat," Mejía recalls the frenzy of that day. "By 7 p.m. we sold out of everything. We had absolutely nothing left."

Since then, Honduras 504 (a reference to their country code) has become a touchstone and a safe space for Tijuana's growing Honduran community — and it has expanded the city's culinary offerings along the way.

"It's very beautiful. There are all of those cultures here," she says, pointing out the Japanese, Chinese and Greek restaurants on her street alone. "I have a client that is Japanese. When he comes in to eat he doesn't lift his head up from his plate. He just keeps his head down the entire time until he finishes eating his favorite plate of plantains and carne asada."

Despite the border coming to a standstill for asylum seekers, their arrival at Tijuana gave them hope of a possible future.

It was an ordeal that Mejía knew all too well.

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In 2010, Mejía's mother was robbed at gunpoint and shot in the stomach at her restaurant in San Pedro Sula, about three hours north of the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa. Doctors told her it was a miracle that the bullet didn't hit an organ. After the attack, Mejía said her mother no longer wanted to live in Honduras.

"She told me, 'I'm going to live' — and, after she recovered, she made her way north."

A year later, at age 21, Mejía left San Pedro Sula to join her mother in Tijuana. She took a bus from Honduras to Guatemala, arriving at Mexico's southern border, crossing in Talismán, Chiapas where she boarded a tricycle taxi into Tapachula. She somehow managed to blend in with the traffic of back-and-forth commuters going to sell and buy goods across the Suchiate River that separates Mexico and Guatemala and avoided being stopped by customs officials.

"I wasn't asked for anything," she says, still shocked by the memory. "Once I arrived in Tapachula, that is where I got on a bus that brought me all the way to Tijuana in three days."

Mejía considers herself fortunate. Once she reached the border city, where her mother was living in Tijuana's Colonia Castillo neighborhood — which Mejía describes as having a large Honduran community — she had basic resources lined up for her, thanks to her mom. She wasn't confronted with the hardships that many of her fellow country people faced on their journey to Tijuana, like finding a place to stay, access to food or the tools needed to navigate asylum.

"There are still a lot of people that need help and are still waiting," Mejía says, referring to asylum seekers who were subjected to the American government's "Remain in Mexico" policy and continue to wait in limbo. It was a sentiment echoed by Paulina Olvera Cáñez, director and founder of Espacio Migrante, a binational organization based in Tijuana that supports migrants, refugees and asylum seekers.

"It's been very problematic because these asylum seekers, who are looking for protection, had to wait in cities like Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez — the most dangerous cities in Mexico," she said. "Many people suffer kidnappings, assaults, rape and even murder."

But Mejía was slowly able to build a life in Tijuana. She obtained a work permit and began painting nails and doing hair. When she wasn't working, she'd go out on weekends to meet friends. "I've always been treated really well and welcomed by all the Mexican people and all of the Honduran people here," she said, acknowledging that the same experience can't be said for most migrants.

Shortly after, Mejía met her would-be future husband, José Aguilar, playing barajas (Spanish playing cards). "We met where all the Hondurans meet and get together to eat and drink, in Colonia Castillo," she says. After talking that night, they came to find out that they were from the same town in Honduras and that their families knew each other.
Mejía says it was an instant connection. The two married and now have a nine-year-old son, Jaden.

In 2015, Aguilar lost his job and Mejía wasn't working, instead, committed to the role of raising their son. "We were doing bad financially," she recalls. Stretched thin, the couple found themselves looking for ways to turn things around. Then they saw an opportunity.

Mejía says the idea to open a restaurant came about when her husband had a craving for pollo con tajadas (chicken with plantains). At the time, Mejía says there weren't any Honduran restaurants in Tijuana. "We thought, 'Let's try to sell our food,'" she says. Mejía's brother-in-law told them about a vacant space available in Zona Norte.

They opened their restaurant, Honduras 504 with mismatched dining tables, picnic chairs and paper plates. The details didn't matter. It was a place for family and friends, happy to be together, to share a taste of home. Drawing on memories of family recipes, Mejía offered dishes like pollo con tajadas (fried chicken served over a bed of plantains and topped with pickled cabbage), tamales, platano maduro (a plantain canoe with beans, ground beef, crema and cheese) and baleadas (thick flour tortillas stuffed with creamy red refried beans, scrambled eggs, crema and cheese) — a dish that Mejía likens to tacos, which you can find on every street corner in Honduras.

According to Mejía, Honduran cuisine centers around plantains, "Sure, they eat plantains in other Central American countries but in Honduras we take it to the next level. We use it in everything." She adds with a laugh, "We even have banana soda."

In 2018, Mejía petitioned enough signatures from the Honduran community to present to the Honduran Ambassador to Mexico, Alden Rivera to install a consulate in Tijuana. Mejía's actions, with the help of the community, established a diplomatic representation for the Honduran community in Tijuana in 2019. By then, more Honduran restaurants had opened up in Tijuana, but everyone acknowledged Honduras 504 as the landing strip for the community.

"It means a lot to have a restaurant from our country here, the people feel like it's a piece of their land," says Darwyn Medina, consulate of Honduras in Tijuana. In 2020, Honduras was hit hard by two devastating hurricanes two weeks apart, hurricane Iota and Eta. When this happened, Medina says Honduras 504 stepped up to help, hosting a donation drive and drop off point.

Mejía, now 31, says she has grown accustomed to welcoming new faces every day. "Back when we weren't well known yet, we knew each and every client," she says. "Now, new people come here daily."

Today, she's at her second Honduras 504 location that opened up eight months ago in Tijuana's Zona Rio neighborhood. Televisions broadcast soccer matches; tropical plants throughout the patio create a canopy of familiarity, and a mural on the wall of the enclosed dining room features a guacamaya, the national bird of Honduras, a plantain tree and the face of a man and woman — an homage to a mural found in her hometown of Honduras.

As Mejía sweeps leftover candy wrappers on the floor from a birthday that they hosted the night before for a 9-year-old Colombian boy, a family, a mother and father with their son, who looks to be the age of Jaden, walk through the front gate entrance of the restaurant. They're wearing backpacks and wheeling a suitcase. Mejía greets them with her infectious smile and tells them to sit wherever they like. They order baleadas and pollo con tajadas.

The family quietly enjoys their meal and moves on.

"The moment I set a plate down in front of a child, I get this overflowing feeling of happiness," Mejía said. "They tell me, 'Oh this chicken is delicious!' — it brings me so much joy that they love it and that I can give that to them."