Chemeketa Voices

Crossing the Great Divide:
Manuel Guerra

Manuel Guerra has a passion for statistics. He can trace the compulsion to a single event in his life.

In the early 1990s, Guerra had the opportunity to attend Notre Dame on a football scholarship, but when he decided against leaving his family, he enrolled in the College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP) at Sacramento State College in California.

Despite a desire to continue his education, Guerra crumpled under the same pressures that many of today’s Hispanic students still experience.

“I felt like I was taking money away from someone who could do better in the program, so I went back to doing what I did best, helping my family in the fields,” said Guerra.

Now 36, Guerra, director of student retention and college life at Chemeketa Community College, still has moments when he feels like one of the “bad” statistics.

The great divide

Guerra crossed into the U.S. illegally with his mother in 1975, he was four-and-a-half.

“My father had come over two years before. I’d actually thought he’d left us,” said Guerra.

The trip across the border started in the back of a van. Guerra remembers crying a lot and being cold when the van ride ended in the mountains.

“I ended up lying on the ground and my mother covered me with leaves to keep me warm. Then we were split up to continue the trip,” he said.

Guerra, who had a relatively light complexion, was sent in a car with the Anglo wife of one of the trip’s organizers. He posed as the woman’s son while his mother took another route to avoid checkpoints. The mother and son reconnected the following evening and took another 14-hour drive to Mendocino County where he they met up with his father.

The family took up residence in Potter Valley, Calif., and began working in the fields of the area’s farmers.

From the moment Guerra took his first step into a U.S. classroom, he was treated differently. He was the only student in his K-12 school that spoke Spanish.

“I was placed in special ed and I didn’t get put with the mainstream students until the third grade,” he said.

For a long time, he was his family’s and his community’s only connection to the English-speaking world. He would attend school for the first few weeks each school year, get to know his teachers and then take home independent study kits to use while he helped his parents picking grapes or making wreaths. He also became the local community’s social worker.

“At the age of eight, I was translating for men in court who had charged with a DUI, pregnant mothers at their doctors’ offices and for fair wages and better treatment for farm workers.” Guerra said. “It was just part of what I did for the people around me.”

His family applied for, and was granted, amnesty under the conditions of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

Guerra describes attending his mostly white school in Potter Valley as “crossing a bridge between two cultures.” He benefitted from his light complexion, but it wasn’t until he discovered athletics in middle school that social pressures from his classmates began to lessen. He played football and basketball and was a four-year varsity baseball player.

“I started varsity football at about the time kicking soccer-style was becoming popular. When they went looking for someone who could help the team make that change, they found me,” said Guerra.

Guerra hadn’t played soccer except in gym class with the rest of his teammates, but he proved a natural and found that athletics opened other doors. He was class president freshmen, sophomore and junior year and student body president as a senior. Time spent on the Academic Decathlon and debate teams honed his ability to express his views on prejudice without personal emotion, another skill that would serve him well.

Football was going to be his ticket to Notre Dame when one of his mother’s employers, an Irish alum, took it upon himself to arrange it.

“I was going to be staying with his mother and grades and athletic ability were going to pay for college,” Guerra said. “I even missed our school’s playoff game to attend an orientation at the school.”

But, when it came time to commit to the school, Guerra couldn’t do it.

“It was too far away. There was this sense of ‘familia’ and we that needed to stick together. Even today there’s a lot of pressure on the oldest children in Hispanic families. And it wasn’t so much about me leaving, but who was going to help once I was gone,” Guerra said.

Being the town social worker and having a girlfriend, who didn’t want to follow him to Indiana, gave him deeper ties that he wasn’t willing to cut.

“When it came down to it, I doubted whether or not I could do it,” he said. “I still don’t think my Mom’s boss has forgiven me.”

Plan B

Just as he was prepping for high school graduation, Guerra’s teachers made one last full-court press to get him enrolled in college. He entered the CAMP program at Sac State, but he was unprepared for the cultural hazing he would endure.

“For the students in the program it all became a game of who was more ‘Mexican,’” said Guerra. “And because I would always be seen talking to white kids and black kids, I was viewed as a sell out.”

He dropped out of the program and went back to work in the fields.

Guerra continued taking courses intermittently at Mendocino Community College and continued working toward better treatment for the families in his immediate community.

In addition to working in the fields, Guerra worked a string of entry-level jobs, mostly with social service organizations.

“I would learn as much as I could at each position and then move to a larger organization at a new entry-level position,” he said. “With a new wife and a baby on the way, I realized that if I wanted to help my family I needed to help myself first.”

When Mendocino needed a director for its High School Equivalency Program (HEP), Guerra was hired based on the strength of the references he brought with him. A year later he became the college’s CAMP director. Interestingly, Guerra modeled the Mendocino programs after the one established at Chemeketa Community College, which was the top progam in the nation at the time.

Finally on a path of increased responsibility at work, Guerra’s community service ties were pulling him in opposite directions. While members of the Hispanic community were urging him to increase spokesman presence on the streets, Guerra was focusing the changes he could institute behind the scenes.

A more conservative friend told him the path to true change started with civic engagement.

 “It made me realize that if the clinic wasn’t providing the services our community needed, I needed to get on the board. That’s what I was doing, but many people in the Hispanic community have different views of how we can affect change,” Guerra said.

His civic duties took time away from his family and eventually began affecting his physical health. Three years ago, when he and his wife moved to Portland for her new job, Guerra welcomed the opportunity to step out of the spotlight.

No more excuses

Three months after the move north, Guerra was hired by Chemeketa Community College as its HEP director. Completing his bachelor’s degree was a condition of his hiring.

Guerra had never lost his desire to complete his degree, but like many of his peers, there was always an excuse.

“Because I was a minority, there was always an excuse for why I didn’t finish college. There was always someone telling me it was okay,” said Guerra. “In hindsight, I realized what I needed was someone to kick me in the butt and tell me to get my crap together.”

At Chemeketa, he also found a proponent in his new boss, Cheryl Falk, Chemeketa’s dean of regional student services.

“Manuel has the ability to express himself sincerely and passionately---causing one to want to jump on any bandwagon he might be leading,” said Falk. “Each time we met, I brought up the fact that I could see a bright future for him at Chemeketa, but a brighter one if he could finish his education---or at least finish the next step of his education.”

Guerra credits Falk as one of the driving forces behind him deciding to enroll at Portland State University. He’s scheduled to complete his degree in social science by June 2008. It won’t be the piece of paper that matters most, however. The greater achievement will be in the cold, uncaring numbers.

“Once you leave the CAMP program, you’re a statistic. You’re either one that got the B.A., or the one that didn’t. I’ll finally be one of the good ones,” he said.

By Eric A. Howald. Have a great Chemeketa story? Send us an e-mail.

Updated October 2, 2007 by Marketing and Student Recruitment.