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FRONTeras Magazine Vol. 1 No. 2 Issue

FRONTeras Magazine 2025 Vol.1 No.1 Issue Before the balloon arches and neon signs. Before the Instagram-worthy backdrops and glittering marquee letters. Before you could only rent a prop by booking an entire salon, Brenda Elicerio knew that setup wasn't practical. With a tape measure in one hand and a dream in the other, she launched her own event prop rental business. La Madrina officially launched in 2018. Exactly one month later, the first gig came in: someone needed props

FRONTeras Magazine 2025 Vol.1 No.1 Issue

As Texas braces for arctic weather to blanket the entire state, Texans prepare with bottled water, shelf-stable food, and fuel for their generators. Seemingly, Latino families prepare for the cold weather with comfort food like arroz con leche, hot chocolate, conchas and marranitos, but winter wouldn't be winter without the iconic San Marcos. A what? A San Marcos is a blanket, not to exaggerate or be biased, that rivals your abuelita's warm embrace. A San Marcos is a family v

You know the one. The flowered nightgown your abuela wore, long enough to sweep the floor, high-necked, long-sleeved, probably with tiny pockets that held nothing but lint and power. It wasn't pretty. It wasn't sexy. And somehow, it was everything. And those batas got results. The vata doesn’t seduce—it commands. It’s a uniform for women who build lives, raise hell, and don’t try to impress no one. Cuenta la leyenda que with one single vata, a woman could secure ten kids, a p

Kanye West has issued a very public apology. In a recent Vanity Fair interview, the artist formerly known as Ye addressed skepticism surrounding his apology letter, insisting the gesture stems from genuine emotional distress rather than commercial strategy. "This, for me, as evidenced by the letter, isn't about reviving my commerciality," West stated. "This is because these remorseful feelings were so heavy on my heart and weighing on my spirit." The statement raises an uncom

The Rio Grande Valley is running out of digits, and the cultural implications cut deeper than logistics. The 956 area code, synonymous with Valley identity since its 1997 assignment, will exhaust its available number combinations by early 2027, according to the North American Numbering Plan Administration. State regulators plan to announce a new overlay code sometime in 2026, forcing the region into a telecommunications identity crisis that residents never requested. The mech

At Dr. Daria Milton’s clinics, care starts with the staff—not just the patients. On Friday morning, the phones go quiet. Calls are transferred, screens light up, and 47 employees across four South Texas offices—Rio Grande City, Escobares, Zapata, and the posh Pediatric Care Center Corporate Office—log into Zoom for an in-house training. Lili Ojeda, the Administrative Director, is what happens when you mix tough love with just a sprinkle of casual Friday. She has a pleasant BR

The internet exploded when Taylor Swift and Blake Lively's private text messages surfaced in court documents, but everyone focused on the wrong scandal. Forget Justin Baldoni. The real revelation is watching two best friends navigate the brutal reality that sometimes your ride-or-die is also kind of a nightmare, and you love her anyway. Blake Lively accused Baldoni of sexual harassment during filming of "It Ends With Us" and claimed he orchestrated a smear campaign. Baldoni c

Not all friendships are created equal. Some people will bleed you dry and act shocked when you finally cut them loose. Start with the emotional dumpers. You know the type. They show up, unload their entire psychological inventory like you're a storage unit, then bounce feeling refreshed while you're left processing their unresolved trauma. Venting and genuine emotional processing are different sports. One is screaming into the void for temporary relief. The other requires sit

George Strait is a Republican. He is. Not on paper, of course, because that would mean accountability, but in all his actions, Strait has been very obvious about who he supports, and it's not the people who listen to his music. The King of Country stood next to Donald Trump at the Kennedy Center. He smiles in photos with Greg Abbott, the governor who has turned the Rio Grande into a deadly obstacle course of buoys and razor wire. Strait doesn't hide his politics—he just doesn

There was a time when America believed in itself the way a teenager believes in summer—endless, sunlit, and promised. Don McLean caught that feeling just as it slipped through the fingers of the time. American Pie wasn’t only a song; it was a vigil. A long, circling goodbye to a country that thought tragedy was an interruption, not a condition. “The day the music died” marked more than a plane crash. It marked the moment when innocence stopped being renewable. Buddy Holly, Ri

ICE is here. The inevitable is happening here in Starr County and all across the Rio Grande Valley. Social media is filled with photos of people being detained. There is impotence. There is anger. There is fear. And sadness. That suffocating feeling in the air has a name: anomie. South Texas is a border region. The people who live here know immigration enforcement. But this is different. Now people are being detained at gas stations, at stores, at churches. Now filming an arr

When Northgate Market floated the idea of a gigante concha rolling down the streets of Pasadena for the Rose Parade, it wasn’t just another pretty float — it was a dare to one of the most traditional stages in the country to make room for us. It was an invitation for Mexican-American families, from East L.A. to the Rio Grande Valley, to see something deeply familiar placed unapologetically at the center of the national gaze. Because let’s be honest: that giant pink concha was

Got a ringing in your ear for the last two days? A wheezing in your chest that won't go away? Forget ChatGPT. Forget WebMD. One message to the group chat and you expect a clear diagnosis. Who cares if your cousin just finished their first semester as a medical assistant. He should know this shit by now. Right? In any Mexican-American household, when a kid announces their acceptance into any medical program, the entire extended family exhales in collective relief. Finally, som

The world won't stop screaming. Every ping on the phone delivers fresh disaster. Every headline promises the end of something. Doomscrolling has become a reflex, and the brain can't process one crisis before three more arrive. The desperate need to fix something, control anything, takes over when the entire system seems built to self-destruct. Start here: figure out what's actually yours to manage. Most of what floods the news feed lives completely outside anyone's individual

Grok just delivered the most delicious clapback in artificial intelligence history. Elon Musk's own chatbot, the one he built presumably to combat what he considers censorship on other platforms, just ranked him number one on its list of accounts spreading the most misinformation on X. The irony is equivalent to his net worth. Grok was asked to identify the five X accounts most responsible for spreading lies and misleading information. The AI analyzed aggregated data from 202

People treat kindness like a loan shark treats money. Everything comes with interest, invisible repayment plans, and the nagging suspicion that someone's keeping score. Accept a compliment and watch the mental gymnastics begin. Someone says your hair looks great, and suddenly you're offering detailed credit to your stylist, the humidity levels, and possibly divine intervention. This isn't etiquette. It's a pathology masquerading as good manners. Decades of transactional think

Every December, South Texas transforms into a retail battleground where American holiday shoppers face friendly rivals: Mexican nationals armed with shopping lists and crossing permits. Paisano season officially kicks off on Black Friday. Late November, early December is when families from across Mexico descend upon border cities like Laredo, Roma, Rio Grande City, McAllen, and Brownsville. They come bearing cash, dragging empty suitcases, and wielding determination that woul

Let's operate under the assumption that hell exists. That fire and brimstone wait somewhere in the cosmic basement for humanity's worst offenders. That every Sunday school teacher warning kids about eternal damnation wasn't just engaged in elaborate fearmongering. Fine. Hell is real. Except according to the Bible itself, it's currently empty. A vacant torture chamber waiting for opening day. God apparently runs damnation like a delayed construction project, postponing the gra