WE are strong, smart & Powerful
As she walks into class, her joyous smile radiates and her cheerful “Hola!” greets the familiar faces sitting at the desks. She slides in to the chair next to me and quickly asks me how my day has been. I hesitantly reply with a “Stressful! I’m over it!” as I scribble all over my paper.
She looks at me with a soft smile. “I took that class. Do you need any help?”
Dulce Galindo’s instinct to prioritize everyone else’s needs has grown out of her upbringing by two of the most selfless people: her parents. A first-generation college student, Galindo has made Reinhardt her home for the last two years. The challenges she has faced and overcome in her young life have molded her to be a kind, hard-working, passionate student that Reinhardt is lucky to have.
Dulce Danira Galindo Navarro was born in Acapulco, Mexico, on September 1, 1994 to Rene Galindo and Dulce Navarro. Her mother quickly grew protective of her first daughter as the young Dulce struggled to overcome hepatitis, bronchitis, and asthma. Though she was young, she remembers, “I got sick every two weeks and I had to get shots every other day, so it was really hard for my parents. Especially since I was their first born.” In a country with few doctors, prices for treatments were expensive, and Dulce watched as her parents made sacrifices to afford what she needed. Her mother taught high school while her father took on miscellaneous jobs.
Her childhood was spent under the care of her abuelita, her grandmother, with whom Dulce says her favorite childhood memories were made. Her abuelita had a pop-up clothes
clothes shop where Dulce would spend the days running around and pretending to help her out.
“I loved going to her house, too,” she reme-mbers, “because I knew she would make us fresh memelas, one of my favorite foods.” Her grandmother didn’t say much, but instead showed Dulce the importance of love
by making sure she and her sister were always taken care of.
However, life was soon to change dramatically for the Galindo family. Mexico’s economic crisis led to an unemployment rate (the percent of the labor force that is without jobs) that more than doubled between 2000-2010, and the percentage of people living in poverty climbed to 40% by 2001 (http://www.indexmundi.com/). As a result, more and more Mexican people began migrating to the United States in hopes of finding the
By Karina Rodriguez
Photograph By Karina Rodriguez
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