These Stories Are Our Stories

As this year closes, one truth rises above the noise for me: I believe FRONTeras exists because people keep showing up. Showing up to read. Showing up to argue. Showing up to see themselves reflected honestly—without translation, without watering down, without permission.

This year, the stories I've written for FRONTeras did not aim to make anyone comfortable. They aimed to be real. I moved through border politics without the lazy narratives that flatten us into talking points. I moved through culture without using nostalgia as a crutch, and through identity without asking for approval from institutions that have never fully understood us anyway. I wrote from the Valley, for the Valley, but never only about the Valley, because I believe border life is not just local—it is foundational to this country's past and unavoidable in its future.

Many of my pieces this year began where polite conversations usually end: in the kitchen table arguments, in the campaign rhetoric that assumes too little of Latino voters, in the generational contradictions between orgullo and survival. I examined proximity to power, to whiteness, to respectability—and what it costs. I wrote about voting lines that feel like reunions, about communities constantly underestimated but never uninformed, about Starr and every county where Latinos are treated as a demographic to be managed rather than a public to be respected.

I believe meaningful conversation depends on the reality that we don't all agree. In my own work, I've committed to opening the conversation, having hard talks, and respecting different opinions even when we disagree. I see disagreement not as a threat to our future, but as the raw material of a more honest one. My goal has never been to erase differences, but to practice something I believe is rarer: staying in the room long enough to listen, to push back with respect, and to remember that relationship matters more than the last word.

What made this year's work matter to me was the response from readers. The messages that said, "I thought I was the only one who felt this," "Finally, someone said it." The debates that spilled offline into local government offices, school board meetings, family group chats, church parking lots, and late-night phone calls. To me, journalism that lives only on the page is incomplete. Journalism that moves people to think, question, and talk back is alive. Journalism (yes, journalism is the correct word) is essential.

To everyone that continues to support my work in FRONTeras: thank you. Thank you for trusting my voice with your attention, which is the most valuable currency anyone has. Thank you for holding me accountable when I miss something, and for defending the work when it challenges narratives designed to keep us small or silent. Writing for a magazine that is women-owned, Latino-owned, and community-driven means my work is shaped by lived experience, not distance.

I am especially grateful to those who understand what I believe deeply: that independent journalism on the border is not a luxury. It is infrastructure. It documents power where power would rather not be seen. It preserves stories that would otherwise be flattened or erased.

As I continue writing for FRONTeras into 2026, I will keep writing stories with teeth. Stories that refuse easy conclusions. Stories that do not ask for explanations. I will continue to write across county lines, across generations, across the false borders drawn between culture and politics, identity and policy, pride and critique.

This year reminded me why I tell these stories: because they are ours, because they matter, and because no one else will tell them the same way we can.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for supporting my work. Thank you for believing that journalism with guts still has a place—especially here—in our colonias.

I am honored to write alongside a badass, unruly group of Latina women at FRONTeras—leaders who embody courage, strength, and unapologetic pride. Together, we are a powerful force rooted in identity, resilience, and collective purpose.

Thank you.

@Janie

@alvarezjanie

Copyright © 2025 Janie Alvarez for FRONTeras.