From the Ranch to Harvard

Words and Photos by Monica Salazar-Jimenez

Al final del día, podemos soportar mucho más de lo que pensamos que podemos.

Frida Kahlo

Guadalupe Toumayan-Mireles is a Latina with a doctorate from Harvard. She has worked  at Santa Monica High School since 2006 as a Spanish teacher. 

Early Life

Toumayan-Mireles grew up on a ranch in Atotonilco, Mexico, a one-hour drive from Guanajuato. She was the youngest daughter of five. With her dad, she would go milk the cows at dawn for breakfast. As her first job, she would carry the corn from the mill. 

Toumayan’s father joined the Bracero Program which was when the U.S. “permitted millions of Mexican men to work legally in the United States on short-term labor contracts.”  Her father went to the United States and left her mom and sisters behind. There were small planes that would pass with the fertilizer and fall on all the farm workers. Her father told her that what he earned from working they would take out what he ate and his rent. The little he had left he would send to her and her sisters in Mexico.

Her father passed away after three weeks of coming from the United States. Her family had to move to Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico which was the city. Toumayan describes it as having culture shock and assimilating into her own country. Since she came from living on the farmland to the capital city, she had to learn how to be accepted. She changed her accent and began to study and find that stability in her life. She had never gone to school until her sisters pushed her to always study. Then tragedy struck, again. 

On September 19, 1985, an earthquake happened in Mexico. It struck Mexico City and shook everyone. She remembers that they canceled classes and work for more than three months. Toumayan was sad that she was not able to go to school. Her family decided to move to the United States so that they could all learn English and become bilingual. This opened up more job and school opportunities for them.

Toumayan and her family ran through Tijuana and were not able to speak about the things that happened at the border. All she could say was “the horrible things that happen at the border.” When they arrived in the United States her older sister made sure that her only focus was education. Toumayan loved what she was doing in the United States and then decided to not go back. The way she helped was by staying here and studying and then sending money to those in Mexico.

Toumayan enrolled at Santa Monica College to study English. When she enrolled in her class the professor thought that she was an idiot because she did not understand the English language. The professors always asked her for clarification but thought just because ‘Latinos’ speak Spanish that she was considered ignorant. This gave her the desire to overcome her challenges, in this case the language barrier.

She continued studying and transferred to California State University Northridge. She loved studying and loved education and she couldn’t show it because of the language barrier. 

It was wrongly interpreted that she didn’t want to study because of said barrier.

Tounayan was studying for her master’s in education. She was finally able to show that she was not dumb or an idiot as others felt and her self-esteem grew.  She said she would give presentations “que hay Dios,” they were the hardest ever. 

She became a teacher at Santa Monica High School and put her daughter in a private school. When she went to her daughter’s Parent-Teacher Conference she got upset.

Her daughter’s teacher said she had to wait for the parents to get their coffee first. She was immediately stereotyped, everyone thought she was a cleaning lady or a nanny. She had already received her master’s in education and they quickly had a translator sent over, 

“Never once did they ask me ‘Do you need a translator?’”

They would never speak to her at parent-teacher conferences. 

“Once they realized I was a teacher they disregarded it all because they knew I was a teacher in the district.”

Toumayan went to a conference in which they spoke about how Latino parents don’t care about education. She said it’s not that Latino parents don’t care about education, it’s the culture in Latin America questioning whether a teacher is wrong because they are professionals. In Latin America, the teacher will contact the parent if they need them, but in the United States, they do not respect that. They told her she was biased because she was a Latina mom but also a teacher  

In her class, the students told her “The day that you become a doctor and you have evidence we will believe you.” She challenged them and she applied at Northridge for her doctorate and chose her ESL teacher from SMC because she never gave her a topic she didn’t know and she would present it. 

Toumayan told her who she needed to talk to so she could fill out the paperwork for her doctorate degree. She entered the program which was hard for being the only Latina and only Spanish teacher doing her doctorate with a strong accent in English. They didn’t understand her and no one wanted to be in her group and no one wanted her in her group because of her accent. 

“The system is much different here, what they think is funny, to me is a disrespect.” 

She joined a group full of people from the middle east who supported her and wanted her in their group. She applied to the Harvard program along with her classmates and when she applied they asked her “You’re applying? “ they snickered. She went to Massachusetts for her interview. Harvard asked what her first job was and she responded honestly that her first job was harvesting the fields on her ranch in Mexico. Harvard asked why she didn’t just get a VISA. Her response was impacting “If I had a visa I wouldn’t have come here, that’s why I crossed illegally.” 

Why are you the right fit for our doctorate program?

 Toumayan answered, “My knowledge is fresh and I want to share and collaborate with all the educators at Harvard.”

They gave her a scholarship to go do it at Harvard. Her colleagues did not like that she was given the opportunity to go to Harvard. The program was for four semesters in the summertime. There were humble people in her program and was positive compared to others and loved the experience.

When she graduated from Harvard she asked them to make her steal the Mexican flag. 

Harvard questioned her why? 

She said that the whole point is to inspire the students that they can make a difference and achieve their goals.

Toumayan’s dissertation was on Latino Parents and education. She says this became the topic for her dissertation after she realized what everyone in the United States thought of Latino parents and their children’s education.

Univision was going to interview them after her Harvard graduation at SAMOHI but they did not allow her to do the interview. Shoutout LA interviewed her during the Pandemic.

She had the students collect clothes and she herself collects them and sends them to organizations for children in Tijuana. 

RELIGION

“The principles that religion instilled in me from my childhood marked my life to reach my goal. Hoping to improve my life, the faith that my mother instilled in me based on the Catholic religion was the driving force for my Ph.D. In my work as a teacher in a public school, the education I received based on my religion has helped me instill values and principles in students.”