Use your power and feel: An interview with Gaby Pacheco
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U s e yo u r po w e r a n d f e e l : An i n t e r v i e w w i t h Ga b y Pa c h e c o
A l e x a nd r a Dé l an o Al o n s o The New School, NY
Latino Studies (2016) 14, 118–124. doi:10.1057/lst.2015.54
Gaby Pacheco arrived in the United States when she was eight years old. “I am here by accident,” Gaby said in her speech at The New School commencement ceremony on 22 May 2015. Her parents decided to move from Guayaquil, Ecuador to the United States to give her and her siblings better opportunities. She was always the optimistic one in the family, the one who spoke up, the one who volunteered to do things, the one who wanted to help others, so it is not by accident that she became one of the leading voices in the immigrant rights movement. In 2005, Gaby founded the Florida immigrant youth network, Students Working for Equal Rights, with a focus on advocacy for immigrants’ access to education. There, in 2008, she met three other undocumented students with whom she led the national Trail of Dreams; a four-month campaign walk from Miami to Washington, DC, that ignited a national movement focused on the struggle of undocumented youth. In 2012, together with United We Dream and thousands of immigrant youth activists around the country she helped persuade President Obama to implement the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, one of the most significant changes in immigration policy in recent years. She was the first undocumented Latina to testify before Congress. She was co-director of the Bridge Project (a project with the mission to connect individuals from across the political spectrum to achieve immigration reform that © 2016 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1476-3435 Latino Studies www.palgrave-journals.com/lst/
Vol. 14, 1, 118–124
Interview Gaby Pacheco
is sensible and workable for all) and is currently program director of The Dream. US, the largest private scholarship fund for DREAMers, with US$81 million raised to date and more than 2000 scholarships awarded to undocumented youth for four years of college. To sum it up in her own words: “While the country’s law only gave me the choice to live in the shadows, keep my head down and be scared, I chose to stand up for my dreams and those of others.”1 Gaby is the first DREAMer to receive an honorary degree. José Antonio Vargas, her close friend, and her guest at The New School commencement received the same honor from Colby College a few days later. These awards add to the widespread recognition of immigrant youth activists around the country. They also present us with important questions about what has led to this recognition, but also about the many millions of young people whose struggle is still invisible, unrecognized and unresolved as Gaby noted in her speech: “When 43 students in Mexico are kidnapped and killed by their local government: feel; when a black young person gets killed by a cop: feel; when a young mother gets separated from her child as she is being deported: feel; when a student’s dream of going to college is crushed by their lack of i
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