By Kate Wallace
Time waits for no one – that’s something that Berenice Juarez heard from her father and has taken to heart.
The Spanish Transfer Pathway student has been in the US for the past six of her 21 years, but she’s already overcome many obstacles, and she plans to help others through similar hurdles.
Juarez grew up in a little town called San Francisco in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, where she lived with her grandmother and spoke Zapoteco, a language native to the indigenous people of Mexico. Her parents were in Chicago at the time, not to return until Juarez was five years old. She had to get to know her parents, but they passed away just two years later. For the next six years, she continued to live with her grandma, then when Juarez was 13, her grandma— her only family in Mexico—passed away.
“I was alone in Mexico.”
But she didn’t give up. She had two aunts living in Swanville who helped her come to join them, and she found herself working at age 14, milking cows for 12-14 hours a day. In addition to the hard work, there was the language barrier, and Juarez did not like the way she was treated.
“I wanted a better future for me, and for my family,” she explained.
She decided to go to high school. She met a family who connected her to a social worker and helped her get a green card, and then moved to St. Cloud and then Sauk Rapids, all while learning English in school and Spanish at home. The first year in high school was hard, but she persevered. In 2022, she graduated from Sauk Rapids-Rice High School.
The family she is living with recommended coming to SCTCC after graduating because it’s affordable and close to home.
“I like it over here. I think it’s fantastic.”
While she’s working on her Spanish Transfer Pathway degree, Juarez is also involved in TRIO Student Support Services, where she helps out with tutoring and greeting students. It’s a welcoming environment and it’s helped her meet a lot of people from different countries. She’s also a member of the LatinX Club on campus.
After finishing her degree at SCTCC, Juarez is planning to transfer to St. Cloud State, where she’ll work on getting a bachelor’s degree in social work. The social worker who helped her after she decided she’d had enough with milking cows made a huge impression. And after meeting so many people from different countries and seeing the similar obstacles they overcame, Juarez realized that social work was the path she wanted to follow.
“I really enjoy helping. They told me their stories and I saw that I was not the only one who passed through difficult things. I saw that the community needs help,” Juarez told me. “I know that sometimes it’s difficult to continue on with the language [barrier] or difficult things. There are many people around us who can help us, and we can look for that if we need help. We have a lot of help around us.”
With the three languages of Zapoteco, Spanish, and English in her pocket, she’s sure to help many people in the St. Cloud area, where she wants to stay.
“It’s cold but it’s fine,” she smiled.
Juarez’ relaxed demeaner shows nothing of the difficulties she’s overcome to get to where she is, which is testament to her determination and also a level of stability she’s found.
“Never give up, like my grandma used to say,” Juarez encourages. So far, she’s made good on that promise, and she has nothing but support and time ahead of her to continue to make a difference.