Historia Viva: To My Friend Santitos

As Women’s History Month comes to a close, I don’t find myself reaching for names in textbooks or distant figures cast in bronze. My thoughts stay here, rooted in Starr County, with someone who is still very much writing her place in history—one page at a time.

This is for Maria Santos Salinas, Santitos, because what she represents is not just memory. It is Historia Viva.

I’ll be honest, I come to this with bias. The kind that only exists when love and time have been woven together for so long that you can’t separate one from the other. She is my friend. And maybe that’s what makes this harder to write, because our beginning isn’t marked by a single moment. It lives somewhere in the blur—shared conversations, exchanged ideas, quiet understandings. I don’t remember exactly when we met. I just know she’s always been there.

I remember her as a writer before the world had a chance to name her one. A teenager already carrying something deeper than most of us could articulate. We would share thoughts back then, two girls drawn to paper, to words, to the idea that writing could hold what we couldn’t say out loud. I remember one thing she told me clearly—diaries were sacred. Untouchable. Not meant for anyone else’s eyes. That stayed with me. I went home and hid mine, not out of fear, but out of respect for what lived inside those pages. Even then, she understood something about truth—that it needed space to exist without interruption.

I remember her poetry too. There was something undeniable about it. Honest, unpolished in the best way, fearless without trying to be. And that hasn’t changed. If anything, time has only sharpened what was already there.

What has stayed with me most over the years, though, are the letters. Her handwriting—careful, intentional, unmistakably hers—carrying words that never tried to impress, only to connect. Just a hello, sometimes. Just a check-in. But those letters held weight. They arrived when they needed to. They reminded me that even in distance, there was someone who saw me, who thought of me, who took the time to write something real in a world that was already starting to rush past itself. I still have them. Every single one.

And now, I watch her build something that carries that same intention, just on a larger scale.

She grew up with ink on her hands—the kind that stains your fingertips and leaves its mark whether you notice it or not. That imprint is still there, just no longer confined to newspapers on a kitchen table. It lives in FRONTeras Magazine, in every story she chooses to tell, in every voice she refuses to let disappear. Her fingerprints are now in the vastness of the internet, marking every memory of every story.

Because while everything around us has shifted—scrolls replacing pages, speed replacing reflection—she chose something different. She chose permanence.

FRONTeras isn’t nostalgia. It’s a refusal to let our stories become temporary.

In a region that has too often been spoken about but not truly heard, she created something that speaks from within. Stories that sound like us. That feels like home. That carries the weight of lived experience without asking permission to exist. She writes about the frontera the way it is, not simplified, not softened, not packaged for anyone else’s comfort.

And that matters more than people realize. Because when local stories disappear, so does the memory of who we are.

But what makes her work resonate isn’t just what she builds, it’s how much of herself she is willing to put into it. She writes about motherhood in a way that unsettles people. Not because it’s wrong, but because it’s honest. There’s no performance in it. No attempt to wrap struggle in something easier to accept. She speaks about exhaustion, about love that doesn’t always feel gentle, about the kind of responsibility that reshapes your identity without asking first.

And people don’t always know what to do with that kind of truth. But she writes it anyway. That’s who she is. Someone who doesn’t adjust her voice to fit what’s comfortable. Someone who understands that truth isn’t always soft but it is always necessary.

And somewhere in that honesty, we share something deeper than friendship. We share loss.

The kind that doesn’t fade with time. The loss of a mother. The loss of a father. The kind of grief that doesn’t resolve itself neatly, but instead becomes part of how you move through the world. It shows up in quiet moments, in memories that arrive uninvited, in the understanding that some absences never stop being felt.

And still, she continues.

She builds. She writes. She creates. Not because it’s easy—but because it’s necessary.

FRONTeras didn’t come from abundance. It came from sacrifice. From doubt. From long nights and hard lessons and the kind of persistence that doesn’t get talked about enough. And yet, she made something that stands. Something that matters. Something that is already becoming part of the record for this region.

That is not small work. That is legacy.

She would be the first to say she didn’t do it alone—and she’d be right. It took two fierce women willing to meet the challenge head-on. But even Martie will tell you this: Santitos is the force that keeps FRONTeras moving forward, the one who pushes its boundaries in ways only she dares to.

And maybe that’s what I want people to understand most—behind the magazine, behind the stories, behind the name—is a woman who has carried both love and loss, who has given more than she’s ever asked for, and who continues to show up with a pen in her hand and something real to say.

For me, she will always be more than all of that.

She is my friend.

The one who taught me that words matter.

The one who reminded me that truth deserves protection.

The one whose letters still sit in my hands like something steady and unchanging.

And I am grateful—not just for what she’s built—but for the simple, enduring fact that I get to walk through this life knowing her, witnessing her, and calling her my friend.

Because long after everything else fades, the work will remain.

And so will she. She is history in motion.

With Love, Janie and Martie.