Raúl Marcelo Reyes Torres

In 1989 I was born in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, México, where I grew up watching American cartoons and movies, listening to American rock music, and enjoying the feeling of new clothes, toys, or groceries bought on the American side of Rio Bravo. This “binational attachment” followed me to Monterrey where I decided to study and practice journalism in 2008. I started college with the idea that I would love to work creating shows or publicity for the “Ad Council”. Because since I was a kid, I noticed differences between American and Mexican radio or American and Mexican TV commercials, and the Ad Council had the noblest, creative, and useful spots of all. But then I started to learn about how hard news was made and their impact on society, and the Ad Council era finished before I graduated in 2012. I returned to Nuevo Laredo in early 2014 and start working in El Mañana newspaper. There, my idealistic bubble pops in less than three months, but my editor encourages me to keep looking for “rat tails” on neolaredoan’s politics. Because in my head, it’s easier and safer to find, pull out and exhibit the rat from the tail than it is from the head. Much of my data wasn’t used at all. And because of that and other several decisions, moments, and coincidences, I maintained a safe distance with journalism and now I’m running a 3-year-old coffee roaster business called “Habemus Cafe”.