CITY OF INDUSTRY, California (Dec. 26, 2025) — The image of a typical Christmas movie, with its bright lights and abundant tables, clashes with the reality of thousands of families who are forced to turn to food banks at Christmas to cope with the stifling inflation gripping the United States, which is hitting the Latino community with particular force.
It is barely three in the morning and Joe Nino, an elderly retired man, is already in line at MEND (Meet Each Need with Dignity), a poverty resource center located in the Pacoima neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, hoping to be among the first to fill his grocery basket, which is distributed twice a week. “The economic situation is very tough. I take food home for my own sustenance and for families who do not have a good economic situation,” the man told EFE.
Nino waits for hours in a line that keeps growing longer and that has at times served up to 600 people in a single day, providing sustenance to people in vulnerable situations in the state of California, a situation that becomes even worse during the holiday season. Victoria Hernández, a woman who has lived in the United States for 50 years, is another regular in this long line. She retired six years ago, but her pension is not enough to make ends meet. “What we get from Social Security is not enough… Food and rent—it’s very difficult,” she told EFE.
A SNAPSHOT OF HUNGER IN THE U.S.
The latest report from Feeding America, the largest food bank network in the United States, estimates that food insecurity has risen to affect 47 million people nationwide, of whom 14 million are Latinos. At the epicenter of this emergency is the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, the largest supply network, with the capacity to feed 1.2 million people each month in a region of some 9 million residents and with one of the highest per capita incomes in the United States.
“What you used to buy with $25 now costs $35 or $40,” a 60% increase due to inflation in recent months, Christina Quesada, the food bank’s director of Corporate Relations, told EFE. The food bank is located in the California city of Industry. Although the Consumer Price Index (CPI) fell in November to 2.7%, the cumulative impact on the basic food basket is already hitting middle-income families, breaking the stigma that only homeless people turn to these centers.
“It’s what we call the ‘working poor’: they have jobs, but maybe with their employment they don’t earn enough to be able to live,” Quesada added. “That anxiety, that need, that kind of desperation to find food for their families” has become a constant in households that, until recently, considered themselves economically self-sufficient, she explained.
SOLIDARITY AMONG COMMUNITIES
The impact of this crisis, worsened with the rise to power of U.S. President Donald Trump, is being felt sharply in cities such as Paramount, an enclave where 80% of the population is of Hispanic origin and which still remembers the immigration raids that triggered the massive protests in Los Angeles last June. In the midst of Christmas, initiatives have emerged that seek to close the gap through campaigns such as Grocery Outlet’s Season of Giving, led by Lourdes García and Paul de la O.
The supermarket chain has set up a strategic fundraising point with the goal of providing three million meals by December 31. Through rounding up purchases or direct donations, the residents of Paramount have woven a safety net to protect one another in a system that seems to have turned its back on them.
With information from EFE
