Eleuterio Navarro

Student

“SMC is a wonderful learning environment for Latinos. But you’ve got to get involved. A lot of learning happens outside the classroom.”

Eleuterio Navarro seems well on his way to becoming a literary lion. “I’m president of the Latino Literary Society, and my club and others brought over Ruben Zamora, the second runner-up in the El Salvador elections, to speak to us. And since then, the media comes to SMC a little more often.” Eleuterio is also publisher of his club’s 16-page bilingual newsletter. “And right now I’m working on an article about the poverty that exists in the Mexican state of Chiapas.” He’s also writing poetry and will soon be publishing an anthology by SMC Latino students. But the future wasn’t always this bright for this eloquent champion of Latino writers and culture.

“When I went through the system, I had so much trouble learning English. Instructors I had in high school didn’t care and weren’t sympathetic. And then, when my father passed away, I dropped out and went to work.” But Eleuterio quickly decided that manual labor wasn’t for him. “And I owe a lot to so many great instructors at SMC who’ve helped me,” he says. Eleuterio will get his AA in Ethnic Studies this summer. “I’m the first in my family to graduate from high school and then go on to college. My mother has been very supportive and my brother now also goes to SMC. Hopefully, he’ll also take off and explore the horizon and have such learning experiences as I’ve had here.”

Eleuterio plans to move on to the Latin American Studies program at UCLA. But for now, he’s trying to bring a couple of local Chicano writers to campus. “SMC is a place where the more involved you become, the more you’re willing to put something into it, the greater is going to be your return.”

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