Pomona People - Carla Maria Guerrero

Read About More Pomona People

Carla Maria Guerrero is only hours away from turning in the rough draft of her senior thesis project, so forgive her if she’s feeling a little, well, conflicted. “I love it even though I hate it,” she says of the writing process.

The thesis project has been quite literally a journey, taking her into the heart of Mexico, down dirt roads, to the tiny farming village where her father’s family comes from.

Thanks to a grant obtained through the College’s Latin American Studies program, Guerrero was able to live in Central Mexico for two months during the summer before her senior year. She gathered in-depth oral histories from her relatives in the tiny rural village, surrounded by hills and valleys that are dotted by cactus. The stories pricked at her, too. She heard tales laden with poverty, hardship and flecks of hope.

Guerrero started off planning to write about the impact of agrarian reforms in Mexico in the 1930s, through the prism of the town her family came from. But one of her professors challenged her to make it more personal, and she wound up with a first-person narrative recounting her family’s dramatic story. Ultimately, it answers the question of why she is here in the U.S. today, with the narrative set against the wider backdrop of Mexican history.

Writing in this more personal way has been a challenge for Guerrero, more accustomed to conventional history papers. She also worries about how her father will react when he finally reads the paper: Did she truly do justice to his family’s story?

But she has grown to love the process of interviewing people. She even enjoyed the research process of spending hours digging through dusty documents at government offices in Mexico. And through all the ups and downs, she has been able to turn to her professors for encouragement.

“After I finish a chapter, I’m just, like, ‘I never want to see this again in my life,’’’ she says. “But then I’ll turn it in and my professor will read it and she’ll say, ‘Carla this is a really wonderful chapter.’ Then I’ll read it over and I’m like, ‘oh, it’s really good.”’

Guerrero is the first in her family to go to college, but, once again, she has found faculty members have helped her along. “I’ve taken classes with a couple professors who have been so wonderful and just so supportive, who have basically ingrained it in to my head that I do belong here and I should be able to feel comfortable here,” she says.

In the end, her 80-page paper was well-received, not only by her professors, but also her dad. He was close to tears reading it. Then came graduation, where her parents and two younger sisters proudly watched her become the first among them to receive that college diploma: “My family was just crazy-proud.”

Through the Pomona thesis project, she decided to become a writer. Today, Guerrero is in graduate school at USC studying journalism, and she feels confident she can excel there and beyond. “I’m really glad I chose to go to Pomona,” she says.