Truth, Be Told

Leaving the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas for undergrad five years ago was, in many ways, one of the most challenging moments of my life. As a ­first-generation college student, second-generation immigrant, and former ESL student, I had no clue how to navigate the world outside of my border town. It was scary to move somewhere I had never been before, but I couldn’t give up the full-ride scholarship I had just gotten at Swarthmore College. 

Living thousands of miles away from home, I painfully watched the area I was born and raised in gain national attention. High-ranking politicians were suddenly riled up about a “border crisis,” calling for endless amounts of money to ­fix issues that, in my 19 years of living a 10-minute drive away from México, I had never experienced — and yet somehow these politicians claimed to know my home better than I did, even though many of them had never so much as visited. 

As I witnessed my home become politicized for agendas that had nothing to do with my people’s best interests, I also began to see many folks from home buy into these politicians’ campaigns. It was disheartening to see people that deeply loved and cared for our border town share social media posts that were flat out untrue, but truth seemed not to matter because the effects of these misinformation campaigns were successful regardless. Many of those politicians won their elections based on lies and half-truths. 

Seeing all of this happen while not being physically present was difficult. To know that my people were being systematically deprived of resources and opportunities that would enable them to influence national conversations, to hear others with no connection to our border speak about us, speak for us, that was my driving force, the reason I committed to the work of nurturing my community’s own agency and self-actualization. 

Since my freshman year of undergrad in 2019, I have worked with 15 plus national nonprofi­ts and community development groups, leading various projects aimed at bettering the conditions of immigrant communities across the country. I’ve worked with the Biden transition team to increase representation in political appointments; published an international, bilingual reporting project with the Pulitzer Center that focused on deported U.S. immigrant veterans; and advocated on Capitol Hill for federal-state partnerships in increasing access to higher education. 

This work is ultimately what led me here, to the Harvard Graduate School of Education and to the Poynter-Google News Initiative Misinformation Student Fellowship program. As a fellow, I spent my fi­rst semester of grad school at Harvard simultaneously working with La Esquina TX, publishing Spanish pieces on policy and immigration misinformation. Though the fellowship was only a semester long, I remain committed to equity work through my other roles at the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University and the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. I am currently creating a portfolio of equity leadership strategies for municipal implementation and researching the effects of nonviolent misdemeanor prosecution on vulnerable populations. 

As I get closer to graduation this May, I feel blessed that I get to directly influence and advocate for the needs of my people; but I also know the work is far from over. Though I know I will never have all the answers, I remain grounded in the words tattooed on my body: “Where life is precious, la vida es preciosa.” The butterflies inked on my skin, the cactus heart, the Mexican Eagle with bluebonnet flowers around it — my tattoos are reminders that I am the result of the folks that came before me, of their willingness to cross borders and rivers to create a better life.

That’s my driving force, really. I remain deeply committed to this work, to the work of bettering the social conditions of marginalized and underrepresented communities across the country, because our truths know no borders; they transcend them, just like my folks always have.

Ramiro Hernández, Ed.M.’24, is in the Education Leadership, Organizations, and Entrepreneurship Program. He was one of 10 Poynter-Google Misinformation fellows working in local newsrooms on projects aimed at curbing the spread of misinformation