Fresno’s Save Mart Center swells with pride as Chicano/Latino grad ceremony returns

When Xiomara Ramirez Maciel graduated high school, her plans were initially to leave the United States to be with her parents in Mexico.

“I didn’t think it was good for me to go to college because I didn’t know how I was going to pay for it,” the liberal studies major said.

But with help from her high school teacher filling out financial aid forms and from her friends finding a place to live and a car, Ramirez Maciel, who graduated from Redwood High School in Visalia in 2017, figured out a way to pursue her dream.

On Saturday night, her aunt, cousins, and friends watched the class of 2022 grad walk across the stage at the 46th annual Fresno State Chicano/Latino Commencement Ceremony. A common thread that ran through the ceremony for the hundreds of grads was the dedication of success to their family.

And after a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic, the stadium was swelling with proud family and friends for Fresno State’s last official ceremony of the year.

Ramirez Maciel said, however, two special people were missing from the celebration: her parents.

Her mom and dad were deported from the country when she was 11 years old. The then-fourth grader initially went with her family to Mexico, but she found attending school there difficult.

“My Spanish, when it came to reading and writing, it wasn’t the greatest,” she said. “I told them that I couldn’t go to school there.”

Ramirez Maciel said she was lucky she had an aunt who lived in Visalia who welcomed her during the school year.

She visited her parents every summer but said she gets emotional thinking about how they can’t be with her to experience the big milestones in her life.

“A lot of people always ask me, like, ‘That’s so hard, I don’t know how you do it.’ (But) I’m very used to it,” Ramirez Maciel said. “It’s been a long time I’ve been without them, but when it comes to moments like this, like even during my high school graduation, I really wish they were there.”

Fresno State Class of 2022

Saturday’s ceremony crossed seamlessly from Spanish into English and back again and included a reading from Juan Felipe Herrera, the 2015 U.S. poet laureate who grew up in Fowler. Fresno State President Saul Jimenez Sandoval also gave a speech in Spanish and English.

It was Maricarmen Cuevas’ second time walking the stage at the Chicano/Latino ceremony. She earned her bachelor’s degree in 2020, and, on Saturday, she walked for her master’s in business. This time, she’s dedicating her success to her grandfather, Nicolas Odilon Cuevas Nieto, who suddenly passed away last summer.

For Cuevas’ project, she created a brand for her grandfather’s pulque, which he used to make and sell in his hometown of Charco Frio, in Queretaro, Mexico. Pulque is an alcoholic drink made from fermented agave, the same plant used to make tequila.

Cuevas, who is from Hanford, told her grandfather about her project, but “he passed away before I could start writing about it or researching,” Cuevas said.

She has thought about putting the project idea into real life, though with her grandfather’s passing, his pulque is no longer being sold.

She chose to move forward with the project “because I needed some sense of closure, and I feel like just writing down his story and then working on something that meant a lot to him, it really provided me closure.”

Andrea Lizeth Ramirez Arana, a Spanish literature graduate, felt at 21 years old, she was starting all over again after coming to the United States and not knowing any English. She studied industrial design at the Universidad de Guadalajara, but her credits didn’t transfer.

She learned English and transferred from Fresno City College to Fresno State with a 3.81 GPA and landed on the Dean’s and President’s lists.

She spent her time in college also raising her 10-year-old daughter alone after her husband passed away.

She said her daughter looks up to her now.

“She’s so happy and excited,” Ramirez Arana said. “She knows my professors and all that, so she’s super, super happy and proud. She’s always telling her friends and all that stuff.”

Ramirez Arana said she’s going back for her master’s degree so she can eventually teach elementary school dual immersion classes. But not before taking a year off to be with her daughter.

She said working full-time, attending school, and raising her daughter was a lot of pressure that she didn’t realize she had gone through until now.

“It’s easy to tell now,” she said. “Looking back, I’m like, ‘Wow, I did it.’”

The Education Lab is a local journalism initiative that highlights education issues critical to the advancement of the San Joaquin Valley. It is funded by donors. Learn about The Bee’s Education Lab at its website.

This story was originally published May 22, 2022 at 6:51 AM.