Navarro is community opinion editor at The San Diego Union-Tribune. She is a transfronteriza who lives on both sides of the border.
San Diego, CA
Opinion: Mexican is not a nationality, it’s a state of mind
When Costa Rican-born ranchera singer Chavela Vargas rose to international fame in the past century, she was asked in an interview if she was Mexican and she said yes. Immediately, reporters asked her how come she was Mexican if she was born in Costa Rica and her answer immortalized her. In a more folkloric way, she said that Mexicans are born wherever they want.
When someone asks me “Where are you from?” I tend to give a longer explanation than most people. I usually say, “I was born in San Diego, and raised in Tijuana,” because I have always felt like I am from both sides of the border, and because just like Chavela, I feel Mexican even if I wasn’t born there.
I am American because my parents decided to have my birth on the northern side of the border. According to them, the day after I was born, I was brought to Tijuana. (When recalling that story, my father remarks that no child seat was required to leave the hospital back then.)
And my case is not unique. In Tijuana and in other parts of the world, some families decide to pay to have birth deliveries in the United States. Just like Baja California Gov. Marina del Pilar Ávila, who lives in Mexicali and decided to have her youngest child born in Imperial Valley in 2022.
During my school years, when Tijuana was a smaller city, I had classmates, friends and later in life even colleagues who were born on the northern side of the border. Some, like me, have decided to use their American nationality to work and others don’t.
These are not “anchor babies,” so please don’t even start arguing that. These are middle or high-income tourists who pay for a birth delivery service in a foreign country, and as long as they pay the hospital bill, there’s nothing illegal about it.
While American, being raised on Mexican soil had a powerful effect on me. During my younger years, I went to school in Mexican classrooms, traveled around many Mexican cities and fell in love with the culture of my parents and ancestors. Back then, I was convinced that I was Mexican, because my skin gets goosebumps while listening to the “Mexican National Anthem” the same way that it does with “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
When I became the mother of an American boy in 2012, I made a big effort to raise him bilingual and I even moved back to Tijuana to enroll him in a Mexican school for four years. I feel proud when I see that he is fluent in English and Spanish, and ashamed when he tells me of the racial slurs he has been called by those who believe he is not American enough. Last year, he visited Mexico City for the first time and he quickly learned that just standing in front of the Zócalo in Plaza de la Constitución is one of the proudest moments for any Mexican.
Since he was a little boy, our favorite Mexican celebration is on Nov. 2 for Day of the Dead, and on Sept. 16, we have our second favorite Mexican celebration, Independence Day.
I usually watch the TV transmission from Mexico City and directly from the Zócalo plaza. We see when the president recreates “el grito,” or the shouting, that was the call that triggered Mexicans to start their independence fight against Spain’s crown in 1810 and then he rings the bell, just like the priest Miguel Hidalgo, the father of Mexican independence, did it in his church.
And without food our Mexican celebration wouldn’t be complete. That’s why I learned to make pozole, a classic Mexican dish, that transports me back home.
While neither my son nor I were born in Mexico, we know our Mexican heritage is there, in my food and in our souls. We both know we are connected with our roots because like Chavela makes clear, being Mexican is more than a nationality, it is also an attitude, a state of mind and a way of life.
¡Viva México!
San Diego, CA
San Diego’s cost-of-living committee led big policy fights in 2025. The City Council is ending it.
A year after creating a special committee on cost-of-living, the San Diego City Council is shutting it down.
Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera, who chaired the committee, said he was content to let it die as the council had plenty of work to do completing policy initiatives that started there.
The committee took on some of the most high profile and divisive issues that the city considered last year, such as the successful effort to increase the minimum wage for tourism workers to $25 starting in July 2026.
But it also operated just as city officials passed new and increased fees that added to residents’ cost of living. The city’s new monthly trash fee, hikes to parking rates around town and increased charges for using city facilities all hit residents’ bottom lines this year.
Elo-Rivera stood by approving those fees with one hand while trying to combat costs with the other.
“The cuts on the table that those fee increases mitigated or avoided — library, recreation center and park hours services — were things the community said they didn’t want cut,” he said. “The fees we established were the most fiscally responsible way to avoid those cuts.”
Elo-Rivera is still pushing two other cost-of-living initiatives that could pass in 2026. One is a joint effort with the county to ban landlords from charging hidden fees tacked on to rent. The other is a potential June ballot measure to impose a $5,000 per-bedroom tax on vacation rentals or second homes.
“I completely understand why someone would say, ‘If you want to fix the cost of living, don’t raise these other costs,’” Elo-Rivera said. “We proposed a vacation home tax for the specific purpose of having the things that city residents want and deserve, without the cost of that resource falling on the backs of middle class and working class San Diegans.”
San Diego this year also became the first city in the country to ban grocery stores from offering digital-only deals, another initiative that started at the committee.
Elo-Rivera said the fees the city passed this year “only made it more important to have urgency to address cost-of-living increases driven by corporate greed, those that are disproportionately felt by everyday people.”
Councilmembers Henry Foster III and Marni von Wilpert also served on the select committee. Elo-Rivera credited them for stepping up.
“Everyone wants to talk about affordability, but nobody wants to own it,” he said. “There’s a tension there, but those two weren’t afraid to stand next to this issue and wrestle it.”
SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — A local mother is raising awareness about holiday theft after her children’s Christmas presents were stolen from their family home.
Meanwhile, San Diego police are warning people to be wary of scammers and thieves this time of year when the department sees a rise in these types of crimes.
“All the gifts that were hidden from my children were all gone,” said Kristin Lyons.
Plans for a Christmas surprise are now a loss for her two boys. Just before 3 a.m. Friday, a holiday grinch was caught on camera walking up the family’s University Heights driveway.
“It was a male. Jeans, gray sweatshirt, black backpack, a brown Padres hat and he came in on a bike,” said Lyons.
The alleged thief used a flashlight to search their carport before leaving with arms full.
“It was a big bin full of like 30 or 40 gifts wrapped,” according to Lyons. She explained the gifts included a scooter, shoes, clothes, and toys for her 3 and 4-year-old sons.
“They may not be very expensive items, they were very sentimental and personalized for the kids,” said Lyons.
Her neighborhood is located off Park Blvd. and Adams Ave. “We’ve had a lot of foot traffic, which has increased a lot of the crime as well.”
She said she and her neighbors rely on security cameras for safety, but hope police increase patrols after filing a report.
“There’s crimes of opportunity,” said SDPS Lt. Cesar Jimenez. He added that typically thieves look for easy targets.
“They’re looking for homes that are empty. They’re also looking into windows, and if people have all their presents, they have their Christmas tree by a window with all the presents underneath, then that’s a big temptation,” said Lt. Jimenez.
He advised residents to avoid placing their Christmas tree right by a window and to make sure packages are secured and out of sight.
Meanwhile, Lyons said she wants others to learn from her experience and isn’t letting this bring her and her family down.
She added that a neighbor found a partially wrapped gift dumped in the area and returned it to her after they saw her Nextdoor post. She’d like others who may stumble upon more gifts to also post about it on the Nextdoor app in the University Heights area, and she will keep an eye out.
The Husker football program announced its second hire to the coaching staff on the morning of Dec. 19.
Though it was first reported on Dec. 11, the university took to social media Friday morning to make it official that former San Diego State edges coach Roy Manning would be following defensive coordinator Rob Aurich to Lincoln. Per his coaching bio on the Huskers.com website, Manning will be in the same assistant role at Nebraska for the 2026 season.
The news marks the first defensive assistant hire for Aurich as a Husker and comes roughly a week and a half after the dismissal of Terry Bradden as defensive line coach. While Manning is not a 1:1 replacement for Bradden, he is expected to oversee a smaller position group as the Huskers look to overhaul their defensive scheme under its new leader.
With that in mind, here’s everything you need to know about Nebraska football’s newest defensive hire.
Manning arrives in Lincoln with a dozen years of defensive coaching experience at the Division I level, spanning multiple power conferences included the Big Ten and Big 12. He has coached at three of the 10 winningest programs in college football history, including Michigan, USC, and now, Nebraska. Most recently, Manning worked under Aurich at San Diego State, where the two were instrumental in engineering one of the nation’s most dramatic defensive turnarounds in 2025.
At San Diego State, Manning coached the Aztecs’ defensive edge players as SDSU produced one of the best defensive seasons in program history. The Aztecs led the nation with three shutouts and ranked fifth nationally in scoring defense, allowing just 12.6 points per game. San Diego State also finished seventh nationally in total defense and first in the country in red zone defense, something the Huskers finished 2025 second-to-last in. He helped oversee a unit that made a 17-point improvement in scoring defense from the previous season.
Prior to his time at San Diego State, Manning spent two seasons at USC as the Trojans’ assistant head coach for defense and outside linebackers coach. Before USC, Manning coached cornerbacks at Oklahoma from 2019 to 2021, helping the Sooners win two Big 12 titles and reach the College Football Playoff. His defensive backs were a major factor in Oklahoma’s ability to generate turnovers and limit explosive passing plays, with multiple All-Big 12 selections and an NFL Draft pick emerging from his position group.
Manning’s coaching career also includes stops at UCLA, Washington State, Michigan, and Cincinnati, giving him experience coaching nearly every defensive position group, along with special teams and even offensive roles early in his career. A former Michigan linebacker and NFL veteran, Manning has been part of championship programs as both a player and a coach, contributing to conference titles in the Big Ten and Big 12 and appearances in multiple conference championship games. His winning pedigree now carries over to Nebraska as he joins Rhule’s staff, tasked with returning the Huskers to a top defensive unit in the country.
Rhule emphasized that Manning’s addition to the staff is about adding a coach who understands defense holistically. “Roy has experience coaching defense from front to back,” Rhule said. The versatility was a key factor in the hire, allowing Nebraska to add a coach who can connect the front seven with the back end of the defense with more seamlessness as Aurich invokes his new scheme.
Continuity was another major theme in Rhule’s comments, as Manning joins Aurich after the two brough whole sale improvements to the Aztecs this fall. “Along with Coach Aurich, he was a key part of the defensive transformation at San Diego State this past season,” Rhule said. Nebraska’s head coach highlighted the trust built between the two coaches and the value of bringing in staff members who have already proven they can work together at a high level, particularly when installing a new system and expectations from day one.
For Manning, the move to Nebraska represents both an opportunity and a responsibility tied to the program’s history. “Nebraska Football is one of the most storied and respected programs in the entire country,” Manning said, expressing gratitude to Rhule and excitement about joining the Huskers staff. Manning added that he’s eager to begin building relationships within the program and help spark the same improvements the Aztecs did in 2025 in his new defensive room.
With Manning’s hire now official, Nebraska appears to be adding a coach with a proven track record of defensive success. In 2025 alone, the duo of Manning and Aurich helped San Diego State record 32 sacks in 12 regular-season games. For context, Nebraska finished the 2025 season with just 19 of its own.
No matter how it’s framed, Manning arrives in Lincoln with the pedigree and experience to match. With 15 of Nebraska’s 18 listed defensive linemen currently underclassmen, Manning will have the opportunity to develop a young corps with the same traits that defined his most recent defensive stops.
While Nebraska is still expected to continue its search for a true defensive line coach, Manning’s addition gives the Huskers another proven developer with lengthy Power Four experience. The reunion of former San Diego State coaches Aurich and Manning brings immediate credibility to Nebraska’s defensive rebuild. For Manning, it represents a return to Power Four football. For Nebraska, it’s a hire that appears positioned to accelerate the program’s defensive progress up front.
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