There will be ceremonial recognition for Sacramento State Chicano and Latino graduates on Sunday in the University Union Ballroom. The event will be especially meaningful to economics and Spanish double-major Nancy Preciado and her family.

Bilingual and multicultural education professor Margarita Berta-Avila said Preciado’s graduation does not only symbolize her success, but also that of her family and others.

“She represents the perseverance and determination to obtain a degree,” Berta-Avila said in an e-mail to The State Hornet. “Her graduation counters racist/discriminatory stereotypes and, most importantly, Nancy’s graduation symbolizes the sacrifices, struggles, joys and efforts of her family and herself to obtain one’s goals not only for themselves but for all – because one’s accomplishment is all of our accomplishment.”

Preciado, the youngest of eight children, immigrated to America with her family when she was 10 years old. Being the youngest in a family of farmworkers motivated her to excel academically, she said.

“In Mexico, my time was divided between school and farm work. It was then that I understood that my hands were useful but my head was far more productive,” Preciado said.

In less than two weeks, she will be the first in her family to graduate from college.

“It’s like winning the lottery in my house. For farmworkers, education is a luxury and my older siblings couldn’t afford such a luxury,” Preciado said. “For many of them college was not a choice, and that always motivated me to excel academically.”

She said she chose economics as a major because she believed if she has knowledge of economic policies, she can help change these policies to benefit migrant and guest farmworkers.

Guest farmworkers are people who come to America from Mexico to work the jobs no one else wants to work, like in the tobacco fields, Preciado said. These guest workers often have poor living conditions that aren’t much better than where they came from, she said.

Preciado became a College Assistance Migrant Program intern and a McNair scholar during her more than four years at Sac State.While interning for the 10-week program in summer 2005, Preciado went to North Carolina to work with guest farmworkers.

“They’re living in shacks and they don’t have any drinkable water. They have bad living conditions, and we try to work with them to improve those conditions,” Preciado said. “It’s a different type of experience when you see guest workers with those conditions and they come from Mexico and have those same conditions here.”

As a McNair scholar, Preciado made research proposals and conducted studies focusing on the economic conditions of small farm workers in Mexico.She studied the effects of Procampo, a program that supports the agriculture of small farmers.

“It’s a program in Mexico that gives money to farmers as a way to alleviate the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement,” Preciado said. “I looked into where the money was going, whether it was actually reaching small farmers in the Mexico.”

In her research, she found that rural farmers were not receiving the money from the program as much as the farmers closer to urban areas in Mexico.

Preciado’s friend and senior business major Claudia Rodriguez said her accomplishments tell younger generations of Chicano and Latino students that they can also graduate.

“I think she’s an inspiration, considering the graduation rates of Latino people of color; they are relatively low,” Rodriguez said. “We are on the other side of the statistic.”

Berta-Avila said Preciado is the kind of student who goes beyond her expectations.

“She is an individual who goes above and beyond, will follow through with all responsibilities and at the same time figure out how to help others in the process,” she said.

Preciado is also a member of the Chicano Latino Recognition Ceremony Committee and helped plan the event for several months.

The recognition ceremony will be conducted in Spanish, so the graduates’ parents, who don’t speak English, can feel involved in their children’s graduation, said Preciado’s friend and senior business major Isabel Ibarra.

“As a Latina, our culture tends to include family into any celebration we have. That’s key so we also have to make it work for them,” Ibarra said. “One thing that makes our environment work is language. We have to have a ceremony where they feel comfortable and feel involved.”

Preciado said her success would not have been possible if not for the resources she found at Sac State.

“I was able to find resources like the College Assistance Migrant Program (and) the Educational Opportunity Program,” she said. “If it wasn’t for those programs, my family and I probably wouldn’t have made it.”

In the fall, Preciado will attend the University of Texas in Austin to pursue her master’s degree.

“Knowing Nancy’s character, she will continue on with her education with the purpose of giving back to her community,” Berta-Avila said.

Cahil Bhanji can be reached at [email protected].