Welcome to Fronterizo Magazine!

Although a version of this project was initially launched in the summer of 2024, I would like to take this opportunity to reintroduce Fronterizo Magazine which, in its current iteration, now features a new look, new publication guidelines, a slightly altered name, and, perhaps most importantly, a new mission.

One of the guiding tenets of this new version of Fronterizo is the seminal belief that, while the larger ethnic Mexican community both in the United States and in Mexico is far from monolithic, Mexicans of all nationalities are ultimately united by a shared historical, cultural, and political experience. This larger community is commonly referred to, at least in academic parlance, as the Mexican nation, an intellectual construct that I invoke frequently to refer collectively to both Mexican nationals and Mexican Americans. In the interests of semantical clarity, for lack of a better term, it should be noted that the nuanced concept of the Mexican nation should be distinguished from the Mexican nation-state and the Mexican diaspora, two related but distinct ideas.

And so, with this idea wired into its nerve center, the new Fronterizo, which is co-published with El Paso News, will attempt to create a space for both Mexican and Mexican American writers, journalists, artists, and community activists to come together, dialogue, and explore issues and conversations of relevance to the larger Mexican nation. To cite a more specific example of this collaboration, I am certainly hoping that this publication will, among other things, serve as a catalyst to promoting various forms of solidarity and cooperation between the Mexican American community and elements of Mexican civil society.

I am also hoping that, in the process of creating and developing this space, I along with other contributors will be able to promote an informed understanding of Mexico within the Mexican American community while concurrently conveying the value of embracing an enlightened and expansive definition of what it means to be Mexican American.

Given the difficulties of the current political landscape, it seems almost inevitable that Fronterizo will also be used at some point as a means to identify and address any expressions of anti-Mexican and/or anti-Mexican American sentiment emanating from any source. This space will accordingly be used to unequivocally demonstrate the Mexican American community’s resolute stance against the incoming Trump Administration and any figures, political or otherwise, who choose to accommodate it.

Of course, it would be disingenuous of me to fail to acknowledge that this project was also born out of a sense of deep frustration with what I perceive as the stark deficiencies of both local and national media coverage relating to our community. For far too long now, our stories have been ignored, dismissed, distorted, slighted, sanitized, and trivialized. Fronterizo is an admittedly tentative attempt to address this situation.

I fully understand, of course, that I have articulated some rather lofty goals for such a modest endeavor. I’d like to make it abundantly clear from the outset, however, that I am keenly aware of the inherent challenges and asymmetry of the quixotic crusade I am proposing. I am well acquainted, for example, with the marked divisions and political apathy that characterize elements of the Mexican American community. I am also familiar with the complicated and lamentable internecine conflict that exists, in some cases, between Mexican nationals and Mexican Americans. Finally, I also recognize that this project is likely to face some very determined and well-positioned adversaries and critics as it challenges some of the orthodoxies and conventional narratives that have been deployed against our community.

Despite the array of formidable challenges confronting this project, I remain convinced that the goals I have identified are worth pursuing. Even marginal progress in achieving any of these goals in the form of constructive dialogue, for example, would be a welcome alternative to the current state of ambivalence.

In closing, I just wanted to acknowledge a debt of gratitude to Martín Paredes, a contributor to and the publisher of Fronterizo Magazine, for having the vision and courage to take a chance on such a speculative project. Martín, of course, knows a thing or two about confronting difficult odds. He has been fighting a war of attrition against local media outlets and other entrenched interests almost single-handedly for decades now.