Armando Vidrio García, Puerto Vallarta Native, to Represent Mexico in Mr. Universe Pageant
With a dazzling smile, years of athletic training and a deep love for his hometown, 20-year-old Armando Vidrio García is preparing to represent Mexico on the global stage this October at the prestigious Mr. Universe pageant in Colombia.
Armando Vidrio García, a Puerto Vallarta native
A native of Puerto Vallarta, Vidrio earned the title of Mr. Universo México Riviera Maya 2025 earlier this year, marking only the beginning of a promising journey in international pageantry. Now, he’s turning to his community for support as he raises funds to cover travel, accommodations, and the wardrobe needed to compete against top-tier contestants from around the world.
“This opportunity is a dream come true,” Vidrio said in a recent interview. “Representing Mexico, and especially Puerto Vallarta, fills me with pride. But I know I can’t do it alone. Every bit of help brings me one step closer to that international crown.”
To support his journey, Vidrio has launched a GoFundMe campaign and is inviting locals to a Meet & Greet event on July 25 at Joint. Boutique Hotel and Co-Work, where supporters can get to know the pageant contender and take photos with him.
Vidrio, who is openly gay and an advocate for inclusivity, says Puerto Vallarta has always embraced his identity and talents.
“Puerto Vallarta is in my blood,” he said. “It’s where I grew up, where I discovered my love for sports and performance. The city supports its artists, its athletes, and its LGBT community. It’s a beautiful, accepting place, and I’m proud to represent it.”
Currently a first-year student at the Escuela Normal Superior de Nayarit, Vidrio is pursuing a degree in Physical Education. When he’s not studying, he trains as a high-performance cheerleading athlete and gymnast, having competed at the state, national and international levels.
“I’ve always believed that if I can help others grow and believe in themselves, it’s an honor to be that pillar,” he said. “That’s why I chose to become a teacher. I want to inspire the next generation to be active, confident, and proud of who they are.”
Vidrio’s previous pageant experience includes being crowned Mr. Juventud Nayarit 2024, a title that helped catapult him to the national stage. Now, with Mr. Universe in sight, he is focused on preparing physically, mentally, and financially for the international spotlight.
“This isn’t just about me,” he said. “It’s about showing the world the strength, spirit, and beauty of Mexico.”
While there’s no set target for how much he hopes to raise, Vidrio said the funds will go toward custom outfits for multiple competition categories, flights to and from Colombia, lodging, and meals during the weeklong event.
“Every peso counts,” he said. “Whether it’s $50 or $500, your support means the world to me.”
How to Help
Supporters can meet Armando Vidrio in person on Friday, July 25 at Joint. Boutique Hotel and Co-Work in Puerto Vallarta. He will be accepting donations and sharing his journey with attendees.
To donate online, visit his PayPal Account here.
“More than anything, I want people to know that dreams can come true with hard work, heart—and community,” Vidrio said. “Let’s bring this crown home to Mexico.”
Contact:
For more information on the event or donations, contact Joint. Boutique Hotel and Co-Work or follow Armando Vidrio on social media.
Intuit announced today a month of special programming and resources to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. The series begins with a roundtable conversation of Hispanic business leaders including actor, author, and philanthropist George Lopez.
In today’s economy, many Latinos in the United States are struggling with inflation – identified as the number one barrier to achieving financial goals, according to a recent survey by Intuit QuickBooks. Hispanic and Latino entrepreneurs are quick to recognize the contributions of both their families and communities to their success: 95% give credit to their family for their career success, and 75% have also benefited from the support of their local community. Despite the impact of inflation, an overwhelming majority (91%) of Latino consumers are able to achieve some or all of their long-term financial goals. This percentage is even higher among Latino business owners, with 96% saying they are able to achieve some or all of their business goals. Still, there are challenges for Latino consumers and business owners. Overall, 62% of Latinos surveyed would benefit from more help to achieve their financial goals and just 7% feel they have enough money to plan for retirement.
Arnulfo (Tuna) Tuñon-Ortiz is a Mexican American neuroscientist who advocates for making STEM accessible to underprivileged and underrepresented communities.
Genesis Arizmendi
Genesis Arizmendi is a Mexican American teacher and speech therapist, Genesis has spent the last 15 years focused on improving educational outcomes for diverse children with and without disabilities. Arizmendi earned her Ph.D. in Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at the University of Arizona in 2019. Arizmendi has worked as a certified and licensed speech-language pathologist in public schools and in outpatient rehabilitation settings, specializing with pediatric Spanish-English speaking populations. Her research and clinical interests are focused on the improvement of clinical practices and educational decision-making for culturally and linguistically diverse populations. Arizmendi also is a recipient of the Distinguished Early Career Professional Certificate given by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
Mexicans Playing Baseball in an Indiana Steel Town is a story about the early lives of a group of Mexican Americans who call themselves the “Old Timers of Indiana Harbor.” As a group, the Old Timers either were born in or arrived in Indiana Harbor at a very young age in the 1910s and through the 1930s. They are the original Mexican residents of Indiana Harbor, a section in the city of East Chicago, Indiana, that stood directly across from one of the largest basic steel mills in the world at the time, Inland Steel. It was a very industrial and urban environment. Indiana Harbor, or “The Harbor” as most Old Timers say, served as a destination stop for many Mexicans migrating to the Midwest from 1910 – 1950 in search of “one of those high paying jobs” at Inland Steel and other steel mill plants.
The Harbor became the center of the growing Mexican community in Northwest Indiana before and after World War II. It is within these general social and historical conditions that the development of baseball and softball teams in Indiana Harbor provided a recreational activity enjoyed by many in the Mexican community. The playing of baseball also became a simultaneous expression of their developing U.S./American identity and their developing Mexican identity.
John Fraire is a Chicano, Educator, Playwright, Historian, and Political Activist. A former university vice president with nearly 40+ years experience in enrollment and student affairs, Fraire has led the fight for inclusion, diversity and justice throughout his career. An opponent of standardized testing and other exclusionary admissions policies, he has developed programs that helped diversify and stabilize enrollments at several institutions. For nearly two decades, Fraire served as a consultant to the Gates Millennium Scholars Program where he helped train and lead the readers who evaluated applications from Latino students.
Only about 4% of the city’s 7,200 historic properties are connected to minority communities.
Last year, Regis University history professor Nicki Gonzales spoke with Denverites about the city’s Chicano history. They weren’t necessarily famous or notable residents. They were regular people whose family stories make up the rich fabric of Chicano history here.
Their reactions were the most rewarding part of a long process to catalog the stories for a new landmark report about Denver’s Chicano, Latino and Mexican-American history, Gonzales said.
The faces of the people she spoke to would light up with excitement as they shared stories they weren’t accustomed to sharing with anyone outside their own families.
“It wasn’t written down, it wasn’t in the mainstream and it was like people realized that their family mattered and it was part of this larger history of the city,” Gonzales, the first Latina to serve as state historian, said. “And for me, I mean, I’m very much a people person and, and that, that’s what it’s all about for me.”
Gonzales, who grew up in Denver and whose family is originally from southern Colorado and northern New Mexico, helped put together the unique project for the city. More than a year after announcing the project, the city released the final report on Monday. Titled “Nuestras Historias: Mexican American/Chicano/Latino Histories in Denver,” the 192-page report is just one piece of the entire project, which includes an interactive map highlighting historic places across Denver and a 31-minute documentary titled ¡Qué Viva la Raza! Honoring a Denver Legacy.
The report focuses on things like religion, education, labor, commerce, politics, arts, neighborhood life, and the Chicano Movement, a civil rights movement that fought for worker’s rights, and equitable healthcare, housing and education for Chicanos.
Nearly 30 percent of Denver’s roughly 715,000 residents are Latino.
Some of them, like Gonzales, can trace their roots back to present-day New Mexico and southern Colorado, while others are children of Mexican immigrants, or are second- or third-generation Mexican Americans, or identify as Chicano, a term that came into prominence during the 1960s. Some people identify by multiple terms; Gonzales, for example, identifies as Mexican-American and Chicana.
The report says Hispanos — decedents from Spanish-speaking New Mexicans and southern Coloradans — were already in Denver when gold was discovered in the 1850s, which prompted more to come to the city.
A Senior City Planner stated more than 300 people in the city contributed to the project. The city held public meetings, conducted one-on-one interviews, and offered an online survey to let people provide feedback. From the start the city was very intentional about making sure it reached out to Mexican-American, Chicano and Latino communities through different channels.
“We really wanted this to be from the voices of people within the Mexican-American, Chicano and Latino communities in Denver” said the Senior City Planner.
It notes familiar names like civil rights icon Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales and Polly Baca, the first Chicana to serve in both chambers of the state legislature. It highlights places like West High School, Smith’s Chapel and Aztlan Theatre as places where Chicanos gathered and developed their identity.
The document will be used to help preservation efforts.
Denver has hundreds of landmarks and numerous historic districts claiming a special connection to the city’s history, but the majority highlight contributions made by the city’s white residents. Only about 4% of the city’s 7,200 historic properties are connected to minority communities.
“So we’re not really telling full history,” said the Senior City Planner. “That was really a big push of why we did this project is that we want to ensure that we’re not just representing the white male history of Denver, that we are representing the total, rich fabric that the city really has, and that makes it unique and makes it what it is.”
Councilmember Jamie Torres is exploring a way to make the Aztlan Theatre a historical landmark. The report will also be used to inform the area plans that help guide how neighborhoods should grow.
Torres, who identifies as Chicana, said she doesn’t want the project to become an archive: “It should be living, people should still add to it.”
There are also plans to use the report’s findings for walking tours led by Historic Denver and Denver Architecture Foundation this summer.
The report might be done, but Gonzales wants to keep working on collecting the city’s Chicano history. She wants to get grant money to write a comprehensive history of the city’s Latinos.
“I was so moved by the number of people who, who just wanted to tell their story,” Gonzales said.
In an attempt to revitalize Chicano culture and teach Chicanos the Nahuatl language, Yan Garcia organized learning sessions to teach those wanting to learn and participate. This occurred in a public park due to the lack of a traditional institutions or formal spaces for such sessions. However, the group of Chicanos and others who were meeting in the public park to learn were eventually kicked out of the public park by police.
Let's recognize all the women who get up everyday and work to create a better Mexico
Olimpia Coral Melo
She is a Puebla activist recognized for promoting the creation of a law against digital abuse in Mexico.
The Olympia Law criminalizes the dissemination, reproduction, display, marketing and exchange of sexual content through digital media, without the consent of the person present in such content.
Michelle Couttolenc
She is an audio engineer specialized in cinema, she is recognized for having won an Oscar in the category of best sound for the film Sound of Metal in 2021.
In 2006 she began her professional career in the film industry, during which she received 12 nominations at the Ariel Awards and has worked on films such as The Labyrinth of the Faun and I am no longer here, among many others.
She is co-founder of the Mexican studio Astro XL, where she mixed a part of the sound of the film that would give her the recognition of the academy.
Kenti Robles
She is a soccer player born in Mexico City recognized for becoming the first Mexican woman to be part of the Real Madrid women's soccer team.
She has won 6 Spanish leagues and 4 Queen's Cups. With the Mexican team, she has played two world championships, she is a gold medalist of the Central American and Caribbean Games and a bronze medalist of the Pan American Games.
In her career she has been part of different teams such as Atlético de Madrid, FC Barcelona and Real Madrid FC.
Valeria Luiselli
She is a writer and essayist born in Mexico City who has published in newspapers and magazines such as Letras Libres, Él País, The New York Times, among others.
She has lent her voice as a translator in the Immigration Court of New York in defense of Central American migrant children.
Valeria has earned the ovations of the German critics, as she has been called the new revelation of Latin American letters.
Among the recognitions she has received are the 2021 Dublin Literary Award for her literary novel focusing on the migration crisis titled Sonoro Desert and the 2018 American Book Award for The Lost Children. An essay in forty questions.
María Amparo Casar
She is a sociologist, political scientist, professor and researcher known for being the current president of the NGO Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity.
During her career she has published books, articles and research in different media.
She focuses on the study of Congress, the presidential system, executive-legislative relations, parties, elections and corruption, transparency and accountability.
She has joined national and international business organizations, financial groups, research centers and banking institutions, among others.
Sarah Rafael García is an award-winning author and multimedia artist, community educator, curator, and performance ethnographer born in Brownsville, Tejas and raised in Santa Ana, California. She’s author of Las Niñas and SanTana’s Fairy Tales and coeditor of the anthologies Pariahs and Speculative Fiction for Dreamers. García has over 13 years of experience as an Arts Leader and is founder of Barrio Writers, LibroMobile, and Crear Studio — all art programs initiated as a response to build cultural relevance and equity for BIPOC folks in Orange County.
Sarah Rafael García Captures Santa Ana’s History and Gentrification Through Fairy Tales
García has returned periodically to Santa Ana, often witnessing attempts by developers to gentrify the city. In 2016, she went back again, this time as artist-in-residence at Cal State Fullerton’s Grand Central Art Center in the Artists Village — where she became a modern-day Brother Grimm, transforming the community’s stories into fairy tale format. A multimedia installation based on her Santa Ana fairy tales was on view at Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana in May 2017.
Writing has been a fixture in her life, ever since her father died unexpectedly of an aneurysm in 1988 when she was just 14. At the time she, her Mexican immigrant parents and her sisters, Suzanne and Nydia, were living in Santa Ana. García describes the city as, “the largest border town without a border, with its 80 percent Mexican-American population.” Here, the writer became steeped in the joys and race-inflicted sorrows that come with living in such a community. Issues like gentrification weren’t just headlines, but were reality living outside her window.
After her father’s death, her mother Sara received a life insurance settlement and moved the family to the mostly white community of Rancho Santa Margarita. They relocated there so that García and her sisters could attend better schools, her mother asserted. Yet this move became a culture shock for the girl of color who was surrounded by perfect blonde classmates.
Last year, she began transforming her childhood memories and desires into fairy tales. Reaching this epiphany followed decades of study, moving many times, extensive travel and a variety of jobs.
García’s nomadic life began when she moved out of her home right after high school to live on her own and attend Irvine Valley College. At IVC, she studied creative writing, sociology and Spanish, while paying her own tuition. “I didn’t even have a computer and there were semesters when I took classes without purchasing the required books. I wonder how I survived it all,” recalls García. Through her fierce determination, she transferred to Texas State University in Austin while working full-time at a center for at-risk youth. After graduating in 1998 with a sociology degree, she worked in high-end marketing jobs in Los Angeles (one with a window overlooking the Hollywood sign). In 2004, a neighbor began stalking her. Unable to resolve this problem, she fled L.A. for a job teaching English in Beijing, China. She lived and worked there for 18 months.
During her stay there, she began composing stories of her family life in Santa Ana. By 2006, she had completed 20 stories. she compiled them into “Las Niñas.” She then left China, and researched an appropriate publisher for her book.
She returned to Santa Ana in 2008, discovering to her dismay that the place was drastically changed. She worked at tutoring jobs, promoting her book, and giving back to her community by starting the non-profit Barrio Writers (BW) program. BW counsels teens from underserved communities through spontaneous reading, grammar, creative writing, higher education and cultural arts. The program now has eight chapters in California and Texas.
García moved to Austin, Texas in 2010. Two years later, she returned to Texas State for graduate studies.
“I started writing feminist short stories incorporating some of the characteristics of fairy tales and fables in order to offer a counter narrative to female narratives, as a way to turn the male gaze back on society, making society accountable for sculpting our stereotypes.” She received her MFA in creative writing from Texas State in 2015.
García soon started writing a new collection of fairy tales, inspired by her Santa Ana childhood memories. She crafted a proposal based on these stories in a bid to become artist-in-residence at Grand Central Art Center, which caught the eye of its director. “It was wonderful to see Sarah’s stories written from the perspective of someone who spent her youth in this city,” he says. “Her innovative approach shares community histories, past and present.” Her proposal won her a one-year arts residency at the Center, where she lives what she calls a “fairy goddess” life. Without having to worry about paying the rent or utilities, she gained the peace of mind to concentrate on her stories of Santa Ana.
There are six stories in “SanTana’s Fairy Tales” (in English and Spanish). These include “The Carousel’s Lullaby,” expressing longing for a carousel. She also tells cautionary tales about what might occur in Santa Ana with the threat of deportation. In “Hector & Graciela,” she writes, “Police held heavy batons, threatening gente (people) to return where they came from, while piercing sirens foreshadowed an immigrant’s worse nightmare.”
Using words to paint pictures, García is chronicling in “SanTana’s Fairy Tales” the land that was once filled with a vibrant culture. “Where once Mexican culture was celebrated on Calle Cuatro, she explains, “today white-walled coffee shops and trendy barbers are replacing quinceañera stores and chasing away fruteros (fruit vendors).”
In the story “The Wishing Well,” García also describes her own experience as a writer: “So on this new day when La Fuente [fountain] flowed water again, she knew what was to come, it was up to her to separate the realities from the city’s past lives, she knew she had to write it all down to let la gente decide what is true.”
Grand Central Art Center’s director remarks, “Sarah brings an amazing energy and passion to her work. Her sense of community, deep connections and especially her writing project open greater dialogue.”
As a Latina artist herself who has long admired Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, García visited Santa Ana’s Bowers Museum in April 2017 to view its “Frida Kahlo: Her Photos” exhibition.
“I realize as women we forget to celebrate our life journeys simply because we are still navigating through them,” she remarked, “and sometimes we forget to look back. How many times have we thought, I wonder if Frida ever knew that this would be her life now?”
So many people in Uvalde have a shared history, and some of that history runs right through Robb Elementary School - a place that was part of the Mexican American community's struggle for racial equality.
Almost every victim in Uvalde was Mexican American. That reflects the town, which is mostly Mexican American, too. It played a central role in the fight for Mexican American equality.
NPR's Adrian Florido picks up the story from here.
ADRIAN FLORIDO, BYLINE: I'll start with Josue Garza. He goes by George.
Morning.
GEORGE GARZA: Good morning.
FLORIDO: I met him at his house a few blocks from Robb Elementary. He's 83 now. But in 1965, he was a brand-new Mexican American teacher at Robb.
G GARZA: It was a typical Mexican school.
FLORIDO: By which he means it was in bad shape - no landscaping, no playgrounds for the kids - a white principal, he says, who said there was no money for that stuff.
G GARZA: They wouldn't pay for a penny for anything.
FLORIDO: So Mr. Garza started raising money and donations for a basketball court and a running track. And he asked the principal for permission to plant three-foot baby pecan trees.
G GARZA: Well, who's going to water them? I'll take care of it, sir. And I assigned three or four trees to every student, and I would give them a quarter for them to water the trees, take care of it.
FLORIDO: Uvalde in the late '60s was a segregated agricultural town. Its white residents lived on the east side and sent their kids to Dalton Elementary. The Mexicans lived on the west side and sent their kids to Robb.
OLGA MUNOZ RODRIGUEZ: In those years, you could drive by Dalton Elementary on the Anglo side of town, and it was beautifully landscaped. The grounds were kept. You know, they had paved driveways.
FLORIDO: Author Olga Munoz Rodriguez was a young mother in the late '60s.
MUNOZ RODRIGUEZ: Then you walked to Robb - it was very obvious that the maintenance of the schools was different.
FLORIDO: Robb Elementary's principal and almost all of its teachers were white and spoke only English. The parents were all Mexican or Mexican American. Many spoke only Spanish. So they celebrated George Garza's arrival as a fifth-grade teacher.
MUNOZ RODRIGUEZ: George Garza was approached by many parents that didn't speak English. And he would go to Mr. Shannon, the principal, and be a translator for the parents.
FLORIDO: They complained about the school's conditions, about teachers who spanked their children for speaking Spanish. They had lots of complaints.
MUNOZ RODRIGUEZ: So that was something that the principal was unhappy with.
FLORIDO: George Garza remembers that the principal started to feel undermined by Garza's efforts to improve the school and that he finally turned on Mr. Garza when he started taking graduate courses in education.
G GARZA: He says, you're a double-crosser. How come you're trying to get your master's degree? You want my job, don't you?
FLORIDO: Mr. Garza said, no, he did not. But as the school year neared its end, he got a letter from the superintendent. It said...
G GARZA: It is in the best interest of Robb Elementary School and the Uvalde Independent School District that your contract not be extended.
FLORIDO: What reason did it give?
G GARZA: None. None.
FLORIDO: Word that he was going to be fired spread through Uvalde's Mexican west side. On the night the school board was set to finalize the decision, a huge crowd of parents showed up, including Olga Munoz Rodriguez.
MUNOZ RODRIGUEZ: Of course I was there. And I'll divulge something that I rarely talk about, but it is so painful. The school board met in a very small room around a very large table, so the people that were able to get in were against the wall and just packed real tight.
FLORIDO: She was packed in next to a white man.
MUNOZ RODRIGUEZ: And I hear him tell the Anglo person next to him, this place is bad enough to get tuberculosis.
FLORIDO: That night, Rodriguez said, a lot crystallized for Uvalde's Mexican school parents.
MUNOZ RODRIGUEZ: That's the way they thought about us. They didn't think, these parents care about their children or a teacher they respect, or they want to improve their children's education. They just were Mexicans, and we should be worried about being around them.
FLORIDO: Mr. Garza's son, Ronnie, was a student at Robb and was at that meeting that night. He remembers when the school board took its vote.
RONNIE GARZA: Six to one they voted to not renew my dad's contract. The parents walked out upset. They were devastated. And one lady in the crowd, Manuela Canales, started chanting, walk out, walk out, walk out, walk out. The crowd started chanting it.
FLORIDO: It was April of 1970, and parents started pulling their children out of school. Mexican students at Uvalde High School walked out, too - some 500 students in all.
ELVIA PEREZ: It started in April. And so then we were out of school for the rest of the year.
FLORIDO: Elvia Perez, then a Uvalde High School senior, became one of the walkout's leaders. They drafted a list of demands. They wanted more Hispanic teachers in Uvalde. She remembers the night protesters went back to the school board to deliver the list.
PEREZ: I remember walking across the street. And for some reason, I just looked up, and I looked up the barrel of a Texas Ranger's rifle. They were on the roof with their rifles pointing down at us.
FLORIDO: What did that feel like?
PEREZ: I was heartbroken. I was heartbroken because I thought, I am an American citizen from generations. And all of a sudden, we're being treated this way.
FLORIDO: The walkout lasted six weeks. Volunteers came from San Antonio to tutor children who'd walked out so they wouldn't fall behind. But at the end of the school year, the walkout fizzled out. Although their demands weren't met, Perez says the walkout was a success in another way.
PEREZ: Because that's where people began to stand up and to ask that their voices be heard and that their needs be met.
FLORIDO: After the walkout, one parent filed a federal lawsuit to force Uvalde to desegregate its schools. After years of litigation, she won. The fight to get the district to comply took decades more. Today, Robb Elementary is 90% Latino because that is what this town looks like. Most white people have moved away. But Mr. Garza's son, Ronnie, who's now a Uvalde County commissioner, said, look, now almost all the teachers are Latino, too - many born and raised here.
R GARZA: So we're growing our own now. You know, we're having people that are born and raised here in Uvalde becoming teachers, role models.
FLORIDO: Two of those role models, Eva Mireles and Irma Garcia, were murdered in their classroom along with 19 children. And now people in Uvalde are starting to ask a painful question - what'll happen to Robb Elementary? Should this symbol of the fight for Mexican American equality in Uvalde be torn down? It brings Ronnie Garza to tears.
R GARZA: I get emotional thinking about that.
FLORIDO: The community will answer that question later. Right now, it's grief. Every day, people bring flowers and stuffed animals to the sprawling memorial growing on the school's front lawn under the shade of some giant pecan trees - the ones Mr. Garza planted more than 50 years ago because he wanted to make Uvalde's Mexican school more beautiful. The trees are massive now, sturdy, and they are beautiful
