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FRONTeras Magazine Vol. 1 No. 4 Issue Osiel Peña swept floors for Coca-Colas. He was a kid in Miguel Alemán, Tamaulipas, watching a neighborhood carpenter turn chunks of wood into chairs, tables, doorframes. The shop owner let him hang around if he kept the sawdust off the floor. Payment came in glass bottles, preferably tall and cold. Eventually, the Cokes turned into pesos. By then, Peña wasn't just sweeping anymore. He had already been primed for this. His maternal grandfa

FRONTeras Magazine Vol. 1 No. 4 Issue Olivia Saenz wrestled with a paradox that gnawed at her conscience. "Las cosas de Dios no se venden." God's things aren't for sale. The pandemic had dismantled her husband's employment, and she harbored dreams of launching a spiritual boutique. But commercializing devotion felt like desecration. But her hands ached to create.  To string together beads and craft something beautiful from wood and wire. She prayed for clarity, for permission

FRONTeras Magazine Vol. 1 No. 4 Issue Cancer treatment happens in rooms full of people. Family members rotate shifts in hospital chairs. Friends organize meal trains and fundraisers. Husbands hold hands during chemotherapy infusions. Children draw pictures taped to refrigerators. The love is real, the support invaluable, but the fight itself belongs to one person alone. No one else can endure the nausea. No one else can tolerate the radiation burning through the skin. No one

FRONTeras Magazine Vol. 1 No. 1 Issue When Lucio Moya fires up the pit, the whole neighborhood pays attention. Born and raised in Roma, Texas, Lucio isn’t just another guy with a grill—he’s the culinary mastermind behind In Your Smokin’ Face, a barbecue catering business that’s feeding the very heart of South Texas: la música. From Grupo Frontera to Intocable, Lucio is the go-to guy for smoked meat, fire salsas, and that unmistakable backyard sabor. Like many Mexican-American

2025 FRONTeras Magazine Vol. 1 No. 3 Issue Katy Méndez is not the kind of photographer who needs her name in a caption. As a studio photographer, her photos have become a fixture of local life, capturing school photos, community events, and social functions without fanfare. But what remains unnoticed is how she lends her time and labor to her community consistently, without applause. It’s because she has struggled that she recognizes struggle in others. Méndez knows what it m

2025 FRONTeras Magazine Vol. 1 No. 3 Issue The road to Las Rucias curves west through sun-seared mesquite and heat-drunk gravel, past the Rio Grande’s sluggish bend and into a stretch of land history has largely abandoned. The war, supposedly drawing to a close, stalled here in the thicket and left a final mark. In November 1863, Union General Nathaniel Banks seized Brownsville to sever the Confederacy’s access to Matamoros. The Rio Grande became a lifeline for rebel survival

2025 FRONTeras Magazine Vol. 1 No. 3 Issue In the ’80s, a birthday meant a sheet cake from H-E-B, a gallon of Kool-Aid, and a fight for the only picnic table with shade at the park. Parents sat sweating through polyester while candles melted faster than frosting. Then came the ’90s, when Peter Piper Pizza and Chuck E. Cheese promised cool air and crowd control—if you didn’t mind sharing the space with four other kids and a mechanical rat. By the 2000s, someone got smart. They

2025 FRONTeras Magazine Vol. 1 No. 3 Issue Mercy Coffee and Tea Shop sits across from the Roma Post Office, where caffeine meets conviction. Opened in February 2025 by Roma native Synthia García, the shop has become a sanctuary for locals who want more than a quick drive-thru latte. It’s Roma’s answer to corporate coffee. Located at 1735 East Grant Street, Mercy Coffee and Tea Shop offers faith, flavor, and friendliness. Synthia didn’t start with espresso shots or frothy art.

2025 FRONTeras Magazine Vol. 1 No. 4 Issue Father Roy is a busy man. Getting an interview with him was no easy feat. Finally, on a sunny afternoon, right after a funeral, he carved out forty-five minutes to spare. In his office, Alexa hums old Americana from the 1940s while his dogs stretch beneath the desk. The conversation began with one question: how does a man become a man of God? As a boy, he listened to the Oblate fathers talk about their missions. "I thought that was k

2025 FRONTeras Magazine Vol. 1 No. 4 Issue She's not even from Texas. Let's start there. Jasmine Crockett is a borrowed native, a St. Louis girl in cowboy boots who showed up, claimed space, and doesn’t play nice with the political gatekeepers of the Lone Star State. That alone offends some people. They expect Southern women to be charming. Polished. At least local. Crockett is none of that. And she makes no effort to fake it. She didn't marry into a legacy or inherit a distr

2025 FRONTeras Magazine 4th Quarter Vol. 1 No. 4 Issue Last year, I was lucky enough to be chosen as the 2024 FRONTeras Person of the Year, a title that gave me great honor. The year has come and gone, and with it comes the bittersweet moment of transition. It is now my privilege to welcome the next person who will carry this meaningful recognition into 2025. Congratulations, Father Roy Snipes. The baton is now in your deserving hands. To "pass the baton," generally speaking,

2026 FRONTeras Magazine 1st Quarter - Vol. 2 No. 1 Issue Somewhere between the Instagram engagement announcements and courthouse weddings, Mexican-American culture has buried one of its most elaborate courtship rituals without a trace of its meaning. In Mexico and in some parts of Latin America, la pedida de mano, a formal request for a woman's hand in marriage, once required men to gather courage, family members, and occasionally a notary to draft letters attesting to moral

Representative Jasmine Crockett angered people when she compared some Latino voting patterns to a "slave mentality" during a post-election interview with Vanity Fair. Her words have been resurfaced and people are obviously losing their minds. But nobody wants to talk about whether she was right about the matter. In a December 2024 Vanity Fair interview about Kamala Harris's loss, Crockett was asked about race and gender in the election. Trump pulled 46 percent of the Latino v

The day before I met Omar Escobar at my office, I had offered to buy him breakfast, which he respectfully declined. Coffee, he turned down flat, too. That's a shame because food is great deflection when interviewing someone. So when he showed up the next day for our meeting, my hands were empty. He did, however, accept a bottle of water. As soon as he walked into the office, he was met with Juan Gabriel blasting out of my Monster speaker. He chuckled when I turned the volume

Roma ISD has a problem with consistency. The district accepts a football tunnel emblazoned with a candidate's name, then balks at cupcakes with a thank-you note. Letty Garza Galvan donated 300 cupcakes to Roma High School employees for Thanksgiving. Each cupcake included a small note with her name. The district demanded removal of her name, citing electioneering concerns. Garza Galvan, a former Roma ISD Board President with sixteen years of student advocacy, had also donated

I remember watching my boss come in on Fridays, jeans and a Metallica t-shirt, but still professional enough to lug an old but polished leather suitcase with him. He would plop on his chair and recline so far back he looked like he was hanging from a hammock, he would lift his feet on his desk and cover the entirety of his torso behind The Monitor newspaper. All I could see from my corner cubicle was his cowboy boots crisscrossed on his desk. It was the most impressionable th

The statewide spotlight zeroes in on Gocha Allen Ramirez. His reputation fractures. Public outrage piles on. Two rookie assistant district attorneys slipped into view while Ramirez absorbed every harsh glare. Those two — Abel Villarreal Jr. and Alexandria Barrera — emerged from depositions referenced in recent filings. Their versions of events present an odd contrast to the prevailing narrative. Transcripts reveal Ramirez trailed quietly behind them. His role appears peripher

Donald Trump pardoned Rep. Henry Cuellar on December 3rd. By December 9th, House Democrats were preparing to restore the Laredo congressman to his position as ranking member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security. It took six days for a man accused of selling his influence to foreign interests to reclaim control over more than $65 billion in annual federal spending. Cuellar doesn't just vote on border security. He decides which DHS programs get funded a

President Trump pardoned Texas Democratic Congressman Henry Cuellar and his wife, Imelda on December 3, wiping away federal bribery and money laundering charges that threatened to send the couple to prison. Cuellar was grateful on social media. On the same day, however, Cuellar filed for reelection as a Democrat. The heartfelt gratitude he expressed to Trump lasted approximately as long as a gentleman's handshake before a duel. By Sunday, Trump was raging on Truth Social, his

President Donald Trump issued a full pardon Wednesday for U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar, the 70-year-old Laredo Democrat who has represented South Texas's 28th Congressional District for over two decades. The pardon extends to Cuellar's wife, Imelda, who faced identical charges in a federal bribery and money laundering case. Federal prosecutors accused the couple of accepting approximately $600,000 in bribes between December 2014 and November 2021 from two foreign entitie