For many, San Ysidro can be the ugly duckling in San Diego County. But the residents of this border community say, “Basta! Enough is enough!”

Many things have changed in San Ysidro, and its residents are out to prove it.

“San Ysidro is an important part of San Diego County and an important cultural region for Latinos in this state,” said Andrea Skorepa, chief executive officer of Casa Familiar, a social services agency in San Ysidro. “We are the epicenter for many issues, movements, and catalytic events”.

Casa Familiar, through its cultural arts center, The Front, is organizing one of those events, Fronteras Festival, a multi-day celebration of everything San Ysidro that includes music, art, and family activities from May to July.

“Every year, the community comes together to celebrate its heritage,” said Leticia Gomez Franco, gallery & exhibitions director for The Front. “As most towns can trace back their birth to people who wanted a new beginning, an opportunity to build a better place, so San Ysidro continues to build on this hope, and we continue to flourish as a community of families who love our little town by the border.”

The festival starts off on Saturday, May 17th, with Día de San Ysidro, an annual event that serves as a community celebration and resource fair at the San Ysidro Civic Center from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Día de San Ysidro features a Mass Creativity Workshop with artist Perry Vasquez, sponsored in part by the New Children’s Museum. It also includes live performances by local musicians, food, raffles, and kids’ activities.

“We celebrate San Ysidro Day every year on the Saturday closest to May 15th, which in the Catholic Saint Calendar is the day of Saint Isidore, patron saint of laborers and farmers for whom the town of San Ysidro was named after,” Gomez Franco said.

And to continue proving that San Ysidro is a vibrant, cheerful community, on May 30th Fronteras Festival will host Cumbia Fronteriza, a night of cumbia, and other tropical sounds by some of the most talented alternative cumbia musicians in Southern California.

The event includes bands such as Viento Callejero, Cumbia Machín, and Los Rikacha.

“San Ysidro has its own roots to cumbia with such artists as Joe Serrano y su Combo Latino, who wrote the then poplar song Mi Pueblito San Ysidro way back in the 70’s,” said DJ Bob Green, who will also perform in the event and who is co-owner at The Roots Factory, a cultural center in Barrio Logan that is co-sponsoring Cumbia Fronteriza in San Ysidro as a form of “cross-barrio fraternizing, as Gomez Franco calls it.

“The festival is a celebration of the musical diversity that exists within the genre,” Green said.

The Fronteras Festival continues on June 12th with Whysidro, a solo exhibition with James & Einar de la Torre, two Baja California artists who recently captivated San Diegans with their unforgettable art installation in the elevators of the new San Diego Central Library.

The De la Torre brothers, who were awarded a residency through the San Diego Foundations Creative Catalyst Program, paired up with Casa Familiar’s The Front art gallery the De la Torres’ have set out to create an entire new body of work inspired by their connection with the U.S./Mexico border.

The result is Whysidro, which the brothers describe as “work that explores the visual dynamics of border life, the emigrational experience and aspects of acculturation.”

For Gomez Franco, the De la Torres brothers have left their mark in San Ysidro.

“To have them here, immersed in our community, sharing stories with our youth, translating these narratives into their artwork,” she said. “This is a story about us, a story that is birthed here and that will travel the world encased in lenticular panels as a testimony of their year in our little border town.”

Fronteras Festival ends on July 10th, when the De la Torres brothers have an artist platica at The Front.

For a complete schedule of events in the Fronteras Festival, please visit facebook.com/thefront147.

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