Yahir Coronado Herrera

Read more of Yahir's story

What is your favorite memory from your time at CU Boulder, so far? 

My favorite memory here from CU is definitely when, a year ago, I along with three other co-founders started an organization called LSA, which stands for the Latiné Student Alliance (LSA). We celebrated our anniversary in August; we’ve grown a lot. We created this organization as a place for advocacy and a space for many Latiné-identifying individuals. Something we need to realize is the Latin community is very big. It’s something that includes more than 30 countries, and we needed to create an alliance, not even an association, it’s more of an alliance where us students come together and create that community here. I think that’s my favorite memory because the way we always saw it, it was one little dream of ours and it’s really big now. We’re a nourishing organization and I think that’s one of my favorite memories so far.  

What is something you would like to accomplish before your graduation? 

I definitely want to create a place here on campus that’s just for our Latinx/é students. Colorado State University (CSU), Sko Buffs, but CSU does have a place called El Centro, “The Center,” which is basically a place where Latiné-identifying individuals go to build community. It’s where they find resources, it’s a place where they can study, and essentially, I want to establish that here at CU. I understand it’s a longer project, but I want to start on it now that LSA has continued to grow. But it’s one of my biggest goals here on campus and hopefully I’m able to achieve it even if I achieve it after I graduate.  

What life lesson have your experiences here taught you that will be valuable beyond CU? 

I think [the lesson is] you are the author of your own story, especially here on campus. I came [to college] thinking that everything was going to be just as simple as high school and it’s definitely not like that. Being the first one in my family to attend a university, it was also a shock; I thought I could rely on a lot of things. Don’t get me wrong, I have been able to rely on a lot of things but at the end of the day it comes down to me and the story that I want to write. You do write your own story and not every story is perfect. It’s not supposed to be perfect, and I think we have to understand that there are always going to be challenges and obstacles in the way. I think that’s one of my biggest takeaways as a student here. 

What one word describes your role or a quality you bring to our campus community? 

Definitely “first-generation.” First-generation students are those students who are the first generation [in their family] to attend college. Not only am I the first one in my family to attend college, but I have three older siblings, and they decided to go a different route but are still successful to this day. I feel like [first-generation] holds such a beauty to it because that word not only comes with challenges, but also with a lot of achievements. The way I’ve always seen it is breaking barriers. We were often silenced back in the day and probably to this day we still are silenced. But any little effort we can make as first-generation students on campus is teaching the future generation that everything is possible. Those challenges we once faced in life, many challenges that many of our parents had, are challenges we might be facing to this day, and I think being that first-generation is a beauty especially on this campus.  

Do you feel like this word encompasses all your contributions, or is there more to share?

I think a lot of being [a first-generation student] is also being a proud student of color. When I first got here my first year, I was very intimidated. I walked around campus, and no one really looked like me and I felt like an outcast. Especially coming from a predominantly Latinx high school institution, I was really shocked. I did get that thing called “culture shock.” I remember part of me really didn’t want to accept that and another part of me was like, “it’s just going to get better.” As the days went on, I did have a rough time finding that connectivity, and it wasn’t until my sophomore year I really started finding my community. Once I found my community, that’s when I was like, I’m a proud student of color. I’ll rep that to whoever and that’s something that will carry me.  

What is the significance of the location we’re at today? 

I decided to choose this location right behind me which is known as “Los Seis de Boulder,” or “The Six of Boulder.” Los Seis de Boulder is [dedicated to] six Chicano students who fought for activist rights in the 1970s. They were students who occupied Temporary Building 1. This building was occupied after these students fought for financial equity here on campus. These students suddenly lost their financial aid and were unaware as to why that happened. Back in the day there was a lot of unfairness going on in higher institutions. These students continuously fought until they were unjustly killed. Three of them passed away in Chautauqua Park and the three others passed away in a local restaurant in Boulder. Until this day, they still don’t know who caused this [unrighteous] act. This location holds a lot of significance to me because I do identify as a Chicano student. It comes both from my Mexican and American roots, and it’s a place that brings peace and comfort especially at a Primarily White Institution (PWI).  

There was a committee that Guillermo Ramírez, also known as Memo, the Program Manager for Latinx Students, Intercultural Engagement at the Center for Inclusion and Social Change, started last spring. He invited me to be on the committee, and I’m always looking for room to grow so I said yes. We didn’t really think of the shirt just quite yet because it is kind of like the first year CU Boulder decided to have this committee. August gets here, and he talked to me about the possibility of starting a shirt. I was always down for it; I was like, I can totally help you design the shirt. It was going to be a challenge, especially because we are representing every Latin country. Although we do come together under the term “Latin,” and we are a family, we’re so diverse within that family. That’s when I started doing research and I went home, and I told my mom the story. I told her they were asking me to design this shirt, and it’s a shirt that’s not only going to signify something for me but also for other students that identify within that community. We thought and thought about any animal, plant, or symbol that we could use to captivate all 30 plus countries.  

I told my mom I didn’t know what to do because if I chose, like, a cactus, that’s very predominantly seen in Mexico, and I want to represent every country. That’s when my mom and I started doing research we found out that the agave, which is what we see on the back of the shirts, is a plant that is seen in all Latin America—which is Mexico, going down to Central America to South America. It’s a plant that’s grown across every country basically, and I thought we could use it as symbolism. You usually find the agave in pots, so I thought, what if we make the pot a round shape like a globe and we include Latin America on that globe. That’s when my mom and I started talking, we put Latin America as the pot, we saw the design and we loved it.  

The next thing was colors. Obviously, the traditional colors of the planet are blue and green, but we wanted to choose colors that symbolized more of our Latin heritage. We thought of brown because brown is a predominant color in the Latin community. When we show the shirt, the color also has that significance.  

Once we had that, I told my mom I thought it needed a quote; what do we live by as Latin-identifying families? It goes back to that idea [of being] first-generation and many of the sacrifices our parents had to make. I come from immigrant parents who immigrated from Mexico, and it was a challenge getting here. It was a sacrifice-to leave their country, leave everything behind, leave their family behind and come [to America] for the wellbeing of not just [themselves] but also for the future family they wanted to build. It’s astonishing to see I’m not the only one who has this story. A lot of students have this story, and it makes us who we are. It’s our whole identity and at the end of the day that’s what motivates us to keep going.  

That’s when we came up with the saying [on the back] and it says, “que el destino que plantes se convierta en realidad” which means, “may the destiny you plant become reality.” It has to go hand-in-hand with the agave because an agave is planted and you’re planting your dream. You want that dream to become reality, and for many of us that dream is being a first-generation scholar, earning our degree and showing the future generation that it’s possible. 

I fell in love with the shirt, and I sent Memo the initial design, but I felt like we needed a little bit more. That’s the design you see on the front which says, “desde la raíz hasta el corazón,” meaning “from the root all the way to the heart.” [The image] starts as a root, it goes through our heart, and exiting the heart is a root with a buffalo on there. When I thought of that design, I thought that when you look at a heart, it looks like it has roots. The root would be going in from the outside, which is our family history, the history we come from-our heritage. I saw that as our root that goes into our heart, our dedication to being a student, and comes out as the students we are today.  

My mom helped me with the saying. I asked her, “what’s something you would think of?” and she is the one who came up with dreams-your dream becomes reality. At the end of the day, we’re all planting our own seeds here. We want those seeds to nourish into something big and something that stays.  

That’s the whole idea of the shirt. I do take huge pride in that every color on the shirt has a significance, and I’m very thankful because it is one of the first the represents National Latinx/é Heritage Month on our campus. Memo and I were just speaking, and we want this to continue. I may be the first, but I’ll never be the last. Hopefully there are other students who are interested in the years to come who want to share their story through a shirt as well.  

I was walking around campus the other day, and I told my mom I saw students wearing the shirt we designed, and I saw a huge smile on my mom’s face. I took a shirt to all my siblings; I even have nephews and nieces, and I took them a shirt as well. My nephew came home one day and said, “look tío! I am going to wear this shirt to school tomorrow.” That fills me with pride because, like I mentioned earlier, I am the first one to attend college but because of that I don’t want to be the last one. It is my goal that hopefully my nephews and nieces do follow in my steps one day and attend college. But until then, I going to keep fighting for our place on campus. I going to keep fighting for I going to keep fighting for those students who identify within that Latiné background and within the first-generation community because it all stems from my family's history. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the sacrifices my mom and dad made by coming to this country.  

Lourdes Herrera-Zuñiga: Pues, me sentí bien orgullosa que mi hijo me haga pues echo parte de este proyecto, este pues es un orgullo pues grande, grande enorme para mí. Estar este pues apoyándolo a él en todo lo que yo pueda en mis posibilidades y para adelante. 

Well, I am very proud of my son for being, well, a part of this project. It is a great, great huge pride for me. To be, well, supporting him in every way that I possibly can and going forward. 

What is something you hope students feel or recognize when they see this shirt on campus? 

If you see this shirt on campus, never forget that you belong here. There is a place for you here as well, especially, like I mentioned earlier, we come to a PWI where it’s hard for us to feel accepted, hard for us to feel welcome here. I think that’s why we also decided to have the design on the back [of the shirt] and not in the front. Because when you’re walking around, you focus a lot on what people are wearing on the back. We wanted to blow it out on the back and not just have it be minimal because we wanted that to be a reminder that you belong here. Your story is always going to be welcome here even if there are challenges and barriers. We just want this family to grow. These places weren’t really built for us back in the day. They weren't made thinking of us. It roots back to the history of Los Seies de Boulder-they didn’t want us here. Let that serve as a reminder that they fought for us, they’re here for us now and it’s our turn to fight now for the future generations to come.