By: Axlin Lucio and Kimberly Lua

 Bordertown a show released in 2016, in a city in ‘’Mexifornia’’ (the southern border of California), starring two families. One story arc follows a stereotypical Mexican family, while the other follows a White family. Both families are neighbors trying to cope with each other day by day. As the creators of this show claim it to be a cartoon to help send a message to America about living around a different race, the message can be bring many benefits or cause controversy.Lalo Alcaraz and Gustavo Arellano portray the Mexican-American family as patriarchal (led by a man), whose income comes from landscaping and gardening, though successful.The American family is represented as not having culture. Yet in many perspectives this cartoon was made to break racial boundaries.  “To us, it was revolutionary to show a Latino family on an animated sitcom, and the first time ever on network television,” Arellano said. As said by many this shows opens up the Chicano empire. We don’t see many latinos or diversity in the American shows.  

 ‘’It wasn’t meant to be racist but it was seen as racism’’ said senior Daniel Rios, as we showed him the first episode of Bordertown. He explained to us his view of Mexican-latinos: ‘’They don’t always get cherished for how successful they really are, they are not just gardeners.’’ He expressed to us the feelings he had while watching it believing that even though it’s not a lame show, it comes with a lot of interest as it is comedy based. Yet he spotted out a lot of stereotypes that he didn’t like. At the end of the day Latinos and Whites will always be stereotyped. Indeed the first step to bringing in a Latino family and bringing Mexican culture on television was a success.

 In our opinion we didn’t find the show racist, although it did have certain allegations about Mexicans that are not true, but  made the show a bit more funny. We don’t always tend to see a Mexican family on television, especially in a cartoon. When Fox released this show, they sure did expect to get a lot of critics yet the creator knew it was meant for a good cause — ‘ to  break racial boundaries.