Roma Remembers the Schools No One Remembers Anymore On a rainy Saturday morning in Roma, Texas, a dozen guests crowded together at the Roma Birding Center and became students again. Dora Perez Villarreal hosted "School Years Out in the Ranch," a traveling exhibition covering sixty years of Starr County educational history that exists in no archive, no curriculum, and no official record. Sponsored by the City of Roma, the event drew residents into a conversation about ranch sc

Martie Garcia Vela has been watching elections since she was 18 years old, working polling sites in the Dallas-Fort Worth area while putting herself through college. She knows the process. She knows what compliance looks like and what it does not. So when she filed a formal election complaint with the Texas Secretary of State following the March 3, 2026, General Primary Election in Starr County, she was not speaking from speculation. "I believe our free and fair elections are

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

Rose Benavidez boasts about billions. The president of Starr County Industrial Foundation touts figures that would make most economic development directors weep with envy. Over four billion dollars in investments across the past decade. Six thousand jobs created. Wind farms, solar projects, and retail developments transforming one of the poorest counties in America into an emerging powerhouse. The numbers sound staggering despite Starr County maintaining the highest unemploym