Interview Transcript

Lena Benavides

A: I first came to this conference in 1996 as a student from Caldwell High School, and it gave me my first scholarship to go to BSU, and that's honestly what made the biggest difference of me going to college.

Q: Talk a little bit about where you are now.

A: I went to Boise State University for two years, and then I transferred to New Mexico State and I finished my degree there. Now I am at Harvard University getting my Masters in education

Q: What do you remember when you were at Salome [Ramirez's] age that made an impact on you? What feelings do you remember from that time?

A: I remember just being very happy that so many of my friends were getting scholarships and just feeling really content that so many of these people were going to make it and go out into the real world. I was definitely not expecting to get a scholarship to go there, and I was one of the last ones, actually, that got a scholarship to go, and it just made such a big difference. I can look back and see that these are the kids that need help, these are the ones that their future is incredibly bright if they can just get the assistance they need. That's why I come back every year to help out.

Q: Were there things, new knowledge, that you learned at the conference that you had not thought about them before and new ways of looking at things.

A: Definitely. I remember the engineering class that we took: there was just all kinds of information, like a calculator being a binary system. I was like what's that, how come they only use two numbers? Just having a group of Latino students together and seeing that there was so much talent in our group and there were so many people that really cared about us getting into college.

Q: What do you hope to be doing?

A: Eventually, I want to come back to Idaho and really help out the Hispanic community. I decided to go into bilingual education to really help our students out, because I felt there was a desperate need for ESL students, for migrant students, to get that assistance and that mentorship that they need as they grow up in this society.

Q: Did you have a lot of education in your family or is this something that you are the first college-educated, explain a little bit about your family?

A: I have two older brothers: one of them graduated from 6th grade and the other one finished 5th grade. My mother went up to second grade, so I am the first one in my family to graduate from high school and college. Actually, even to go to Harvard, nobody would have ever dreamed of me ever going there.

Q: And your father?

A: Actually, my dad has been out of the picture for a long time.

Q: How do you respond to people who feel that there are these types of conferences for Hispanic youth and other opportunities, scholarships whereas maybe some poor White people don't have that advantage?

A: That is definitely a real issue that is going on in our society, but I think that regardless, if people are from a low socioeconomic status and White, it still doesn't take away that we belong to a marginalized group. We still have the highest dropout rate in the country, we are still not getting paid as much as other people get paid, that we still have to try twice as hard, that we still get discriminated because of our language. There are so many issues that are involved in being who we are and having to represent that. It's like a person looks at you and they don't see who you are because of your talent, but they look at you because of who you are physically, and they start making stereotypes of you. Maybe she's not what her family used to be and they are the ones that got all the benefits of being White and she's not getting them now. But that still doesn't change what we as Hispanics have been through and are.

Q: So it's becoming a balancing?

A: Exactly!

Q: There is a lot of controversy over bilingual education, do you feel strongly about bilingual education?

A: I definitely feel very strongly about bilingual education. I feel that I have never met a parent who wants their kids not to learn English, never. All parents want their kids to know English, but I think there is a difference between being able to be bilingual and being able to have that pride of knowing that when someone looks at you and they speak to you in Spanish, that you can respond to them in Spanish. I think it's been detrimental to students--even some of my own nieces and nephews--that don't speak Spanish because they feel like "people look at me and they see I am Latino and they think I speak Spanish but I don't" and they feel really bad. And so I think that if they would have had that bilingual education when they were little, they would have grown up with the perception of just being proud of their language and their culture and their family and not having to feel sorry for themselves.

Q: Did I forget to ask you anything that you think is important to you to say about the conference or about the themes that are involved here?

A: There is so much to talk about the conference. There is definitely a lot of support, but I think there has to be a lot of follow-up with the students to make sure that they finish college, to make sure that they continue to receive the mentorship, even if they cannot receive all the money throughout the years, if they receive the mentorship that they need. And I think that the Hispanic Symposium is incredible at bringing people back and allowing them to be mentors to the next generation.

Q: And that is what you want to do?

A: And that is exactly what I have been doing, and what I hope that every single student that is coming here as a high school student will come back in the future and be to future generations.

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