La Gordiloca goes to court

Traffic had once again ground to a halt on the interstate highway that cuts through the Texas border city of Laredo, and Priscilla Villarreal did what any good reporter would. The social media personality and citizen journalist grabbed her phone and texted a police source, fishing for information. Villarreal consistently breaks news about day-to-day crime and traffic incidents in the city of 250,000—almost all Latino. The audience knows her as La Gordiloca, an affectionate nickname that translates to something like “Crazy Chubby Lady.” It’s a moniker she embraces. Her “Lagordiloca News Laredo Tx” Facebook page is often the first with videos from the scene of breaking news. She communicates with more than 200,000 followers through meandering, expletive-filled Facebook Live streams. They’re mostly in Spanish and peppered with snark and slang particular to the stretch of Texas-Mexico border where she lives. In unfiltered, often rambling videos shot from her phone, Villarreal hypes local businesses, rants about city and county corruption scandals, and occasionally fundraises for charities.

Villarreal makes news almost as often as she breaks it. Her rush to be first has generated some embarrassing errors with wide-reaching consequences—and spawned a subgenre of Laredo Morning Times stories setting the record straight. Yet, she maintains a loyal following and is quick to note that her audience eclipses established local media outlets like the Morning Times, my former employer. Her popularity “has to do with the way I say things,” Villarreal tells me. “Because my news is raw. I’m not editing anything. No sugarcoating anything. I put it out there.” She’s been such a thorn in the side of local officials that, by the time she sent texts about the highway traffic jam in 2017, they already had her in their crosshairs. Those texts to her source vaulted her to the front line of a fight over press freedom. In a lawsuit now before federal appellate judges, Villarreal alleges local officials used the traffic text to retaliate against her and violated her constitutional rights. The incident that triggered Villareal’s text was the death of an official with a federal law enforcement agency who killed himself by jumping off a highway overpass. It was the kind of story traditional U.S. media outlets would approach with caution, likely omitting the very details she sought. But Villarreal, who stumbled into journalism with a heart-rending video of police and paramedics trying to save two child homicide victims, quickly went live with the official’s name and employer.