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Two Southern Arizona journalists, including Tucson Spotlight Editor Susan Barnett, are featured in the new season of a podcast showcasing untold stories from the U.S.-Mexico border.

First launched in 2020 by award-winning journalist and Conecta Arizona founder Maritza Félix, “Cruzando Líneas” aims to reclaim the narrative of the U.S.-Mexico border. Its second season, which debuted last month, covers a range of topics including elections, food and sports.

A new episode is released every Thursday, with the season finale set to explore Felix’s own journey of becoming a U.S. citizen, a process that took 18 years. 

“It was just journalists with no experience in podcasting trying to tell good, uplifting stories about the border. We launched it and it was extremely successful,” Félix said. 

This season, the podcast opened up its pitch process to community members and journalists in order to give more people a chance to share their stories. 

Barnett and Liliana López Ruelas are among the Southern Arizona journalists whose stories will be featured in the second season.

López Ruelas, a long time journalist and former editor of La Estrella de Tucson, the former Arizona Daily Star’s Spanish-language newspaper, was featured in the first season.

This time around, she’s sharing a deeply personal story about her husband, Wander Perez, a baseball player from the Dominican Republic. 

“I had always wanted to tell this story and I had never found an opportunity, until I made this pitch,” López Ruelas said. 

In 2006, Perez was recruited to play baseball in the Minor Leagues and arrived in Tucson for spring training. He and his teammates struggled with language barriers and finding housing. Despite these challenges, Perez continued to play baseball until an injury resulted in his being released from his contract. 

“In the Dominican Republic, baseball is everything,” López Ruelas said. “Many kids quit school just to play and for many Dominican players, it’s a hard story after they get released because baseball is all they know.”

Instead of returning to the Dominican Republic, Perez decided to stay in Tucson, finding work and spending his free time at the park, practicing baseball until he was ready to play again.

He eventually earned a spot in the independent leagues and later the Philadelphia Phillies. 

Another injury sidelined his career again, this time for two years, and when the pandemic hit, that marked the end.

Turning to another passion, Perez decided to sell his mother’s traditional Dominican Style empanadas.

In July 2021 he opened Empanadas El Dominicano, a family-run food truck that’s one of the few places in Tucson offering Dominican food. 

Barnett’s episode explores similar themes of resilience and the pursuit of the American Dream. The podcast gave her the opportunity to speak with her family about their struggles with immigration and life on the border. 

Her episode touches on three significant time periods: 2008, 2012 and 2017. Each marks a time when her father was deported and its impact on their family. 

In 2008, her father was able to drive his truck into the U.S. when the checkpoint closed on Thanksgiving. By 2012, stricter border policies made his second deportation far more dangerous. He crossed the desert, risking his life due to SB 1070, a controversial bill aimed at preventing illegal immigration. 

“There was more infrastructure and surveillance on the border, which led my dad to take the most dangerous route,” Barnett recalled. “He was dehydrated and almost became one of the statistics of those that were left to die in the desert.”

Her father was deported again in 2017 during President Donald Trump’s first term. That time, he didn’t return.

He now lives in Nogales, Sonora.

Each deportation made it harder for him to cross. Barnett said her father’s experiences ultimately inspired her to pursue a career in journalism. 

“As a journalist, I feel empowered to tell people my family's story because it's not unique. This has happened to thousands of other families,” Barnett said. “Even if it doesn't reach a wide audience, it's going to reach someone, and it's going to touch someone.”

Isabela Gamez is a University of Arizona alum and Tucson Spotlight reporter. Contact her at gamezi@arizona.edu.

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