It has been about 18 hours since she left Santiago, Chile, where she finished second at the 2023 Pan American Games. Now, traveling from Santiago, through Atlanta and then Houston, she has returned to Laredo, Texas, as the city’s first homegrown Olympian.
As soon as the plane lands, one of Lozano’s coaches, Michelle Vela, sends her a message: “There’s a lot of people here.”
Lozano reads it and responds, not giving it much thought: “Alright, cool.”
She figures there might be a dozen well-wishers in the airport. For sure some family, probably a few friends and maybe a local reporter.
“I’m just letting you know so you don’t freak out,” Michelle adds.
She and her husband, Eddie — who also coaches Lozano — know Jennifer better than just about anyone else. They know when she gets nervous, she talks a lot. They know the Olympics is something she has chased for years. And since she has come home with her biggest win, they know she’ll want to celebrate by eating chicken alfredo at the nearby Olive Garden.
From her arrival gate, Lozano walks beneath Laredo International Airport’s bilingual signs. When she turns the corner to take the stairs down to the lobby, whistles, claps and cheers erupt from those who’ve gathered. There are more people here than she imagined. It’s family, friends, old coaches, former teachers and, since Laredo’s on the U.S.-Mexico border, it’s media from both sides of the river with two names — the Rio Grande in Texas, the Rio Bravo in Mexico. Even the mayor and other local politicians are here. Other travelers walk toward the crowd out of curiosity — some joining the celebration — and in the end there are hundreds who welcome Jennifer Lozano home.
“Oh my God,” she thinks to herself. “No way this is happening.”
She worries she’ll start to sweat and tells herself to stay calm, but nervous energy has her skipping down the stairs. The Pan Am Games silver medal swings from her neck and across her shirt where her initials and nickname — La Traviesa; the troublemaker — are written on the front. The band from her old high school breaks into the theme from “Rocky.” Lozano smiles a big smile. It feels like a movie.
It always feels good to come home, but this time feels different. In the past few years, Lozano has returned from fighting for the U.S. national boxing team in places as far away as Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Germany and Ecuador. Places she read about in school but never thought she’d see. Places she’d return from and there’d only be a couple of people welcoming her home. She has had great success, but there have been times when she has felt overlooked along the way, either because she’s a woman, or from Laredo, or both. Of course, until now, she hadn’t been an Olympian.
After hugs and handshakes, smiles and pictures, thank-you’s and quick interviews, several people give speeches, some mixing English and Spanish. Laredo mayor Victor D. Trevino proclaims today, October 29, 2023, as Jennifer “La Traviesa” Lozano Day. Her former principal says she has made everyone proud. Her mom thanks everyone for their support, and Eddie yells “We’re going to Paris!”
“It’s been a long road,” Lozano tells the crowd. Her voice is amplified by the microphone and hides how uncomfortable she feels as the center of attention. She’s just 21 years old but she has been chasing her Olympic dream for over half of her life. It has been a difficult road too, she says, scattered with the potholes of doubts and losses. And she has been on it so long that once what she imagined became real — being handed a literal golden ticket reading, “You’re going to Paris 2024” — she almost fainted.
“Being from somewhere where no one had ever done it was hard,” Lozano continues.
People in the crowd nod as she speaks. They know sometimes when you go out past familiar places, you can’t help but feel doubt. Out there, where no one near you has been, is where excitement and fear live side by side.
In Jennifer Lozano, they see a reflection of who they are and where they come from.
IT’S EARLY MARCH now, about 5:30 in the morning and Lozano has finished a 4-mile run through one of Laredo’s main streets. It’s quiet. The cool breeze is full of moisture and though it’s supposed to reach 93 degrees, right now it feels perfect. If all you knew about the border is what’s shown on the national news and movies, you’d be surprised by how peaceful everything feels.
“We usually do 5 miles, sometimes 6, but today we’re trying to take care of our feet,” Michelle says. She and Lozano run together.
Michelle was born in Laredo too. Then she moved to Los Angeles until her father got sick. She was 15 when she returned. It was a culture shock. “Everybody was so touchy-feely,” Michelle says of Laredo. “Everybody was kissing on the cheek. It was awkward, but friendly, very family-oriented.”
They run hours before the South Texas sun bakes the air. Before traffic and the city’s more than 256,000 people fill the streets on their way to work, to school and across the river, back and forth across two countries and between two Laredos.
Of the United States’ 1951 miles of southern border, half of it — a whopping 1254 miles — is in Texas. And in Texas, all the borders are marked by the Rio Grande. Here, the river twists and turns so the separation isn’t just north from south, but also east from west, there’s Nuevo Laredo in Mexico, and Laredo in Texas. Like all border cities, the two Laredos — or “los dos Laredos,” as they’re called here — exist in the shadow of indifference from their respective state and federal governments. Not quite Mexico, not quite the U.S., but an in-between place.
And yet, because of their location, $320 billion worth of trade came through the two Laredos last year. (The majority of the goods are auto parts.) There is so much trade that there is an agreement between Texas and Mexico to double the size of one of the international bridges from eight to sixteen lanes in the coming years. And, because the vast majority of those goods just pass through, there’s a proposal to build another highway out of Laredo. Laredo’s population is 95% Latinx — mostly of Mexican heritage — and the poverty rate is almost 10 percentage points higher than the rest of the United States. With rising temperatures and Texas’ extended droughts, the city is projected to run out of water by 2040.
“A lot of people leave and never come back,” Lozano says. So old the city was founded decades before this country. So isolated it once served as the capital of a short-lived nation. The white, red and black flag of what was the Republic of the Rio Grande still hangs outside its former headquarters, a building a few blocks from the river and a few miles from the street where Lozano sold bottled water for gas money so she could travel to fight in tournaments.
“When I was a kid, I used to think Laredo was the world,” she says. Back then she couldn’t imagine what was out past the limits of what has become the country’s largest inland port. Out where it’s mostly open land between the giant warehouses. As she talks, she lifts the toes of her right foot off the ground to stretch its muscles and tendons.
“I have plantar fasciitis on both feet,” she explains. Her running shoes have custom-made insoles so expensive she wouldn’t have them if the national team didn’t provide them. When she’s at the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Training Center in Colorado, trainers tape her feet before runs and physical therapists help her recover when she’s done.
It’s different when she’s home.
“Out here, I don’t have the resources,” she says. “I just have to be extra cautious and make do with what I have.”
JENNIFER LOZANO IS HUNGRY. There’s no metaphor here.
Her hair’s wet from a shower following her morning run. After eating a Greek yogurt, she rests on the couch in the living room of the Velas’ home while drinking a Gatorade Zero. To maximize focus, whenever she trains for a tournament or, in this case, the Olympics, she stays with Michelle and Eddie.
Her hunger’s nothing new. To be a boxer is to make peace with discomfort. Sometimes it’s a punch to the face. Other times it’s running on sore feet. Right now, it’s the most pressing of pains: a growling stomach. Lozano can’t afford to weigh much more than her preferred fighting weight of 110 pounds.
“I grew up as a chubby kid, definitely skipped 110,” Lozano says. “I was so insecure about my body,” she continues, remembering how even in the South Texas heat she’d wear sweaters with a long-sleeve shirt underneath to hide it.
When the national team finally called — so unexpected she thought it was a scam — she’d been fighting at 119 pounds. Since opponents in her weight class were taller, she was giving up too many physical advantages, especially reach. The national coaches told her that to have any shot at the Olympics she had to fight at 110 pounds.
“Screw it,” she said. “I’m going to do whatever it takes.”
Lozano stays hungry, so the weight cuts aren’t as painful as they once were. She used to sprint while wearing a sauna suit, then sit in a car with the windows closed and the heater at its hottest setting. All on an empty stomach. There were times she felt like she’d pass out.
“If I ever got sponsored by Whataburger, man, it would be crazy,” she laughs. Of all the food she can’t eat during training, the burgers are what she misses the most. She’ll eat Whataburger every time she’s in Laredo and doesn’t have to watch her weight. “But only here,” she adds.
LOZANO GLIDES ACROSS the ring in a Laredo gym a few hours from where the Rio Grande ends. She wears a white, long-sleeve shirt with the U.S. flag on one side and the Mexican flag on the other. She punches at something not there; in the same way she has spent most of her life chasing the unimaginable. There are 142 days until the Olympics begin. She warms up as Eddie watches.
He still remembers the first time she walked into his gym where, every day, about 60 children and adults train. He remembers how she wore baggy basketball shorts and a tank top with a T-shirt underneath that went down to her knees. She’d been training at another gym, going there since she was getting bullied as a kid for being overweight and — since contradictions exist everywhere — for only speaking Spanish. After a few months, she wanted to fight. The trainer there told her no. He said fighting wasn’t for girls. Lozano’s mom looked around and found the Velas’ gym.
“She just came in and said, ‘I want to fight,”’ Eddie says. She was just 9 years old.
He started working with her as he does with anyone who wants to box. First, he teaches the basics. How to step forward and back, side to side, all while never dropping the hands below the chin or crossing the feet. The things you can’t teach come next: to fight without being afraid. Some kids say they want to fight and then get punched in the mouth, taste blood and never return. Others get punched and return for payback. After that comes technique. And since it’s what he knew from when he fought — his professional career ended when he was 22 years old after a motorcycle accident in 1996 — Eddie taught Lozano the Mexican style of boxing.
