Alejandro Heredia offers something far more valuable: the messy, beautiful truth of lives lived between languages, cultures, and identities

While the border is commonly depicted as a site of danger or crisis, Ruiz shows it as a place of community and care. Families move between cultures with ease, switching between Spanish and English, crossing bridges and borders not in fear but as a part of daily life. This depiction honors South Texas as complex, vibrant, and deeply American.