Juan José Real - Law Student 

The LHS Scholarship Recipient

 

The idea for my applying to Law school began forming during my last years at Hunter College and crystallized fully while taking one of the last courses required for my Geography Major, titled “Border Wars.” In class we analyzed the history of the border between Mexico and the USA: how the US Border Patrol was formed, and how the situation evolved (almost) into what we have today. I graduated from Hunter College in January 2013 with a 3.89 GPA and was accepted into CUNY Law for the fall of 2014. I will have to rely entirely on financial aid in the form of Federal Government loans to cover my cost of attendance. In this vein, the generous scholarship offered by the Latinas Hat Society would be very welcome support. I grew up in Montevideo, Uruguay, and moved to New York in 1991. I lived through the final political upheavals of the last dictatorship, joining half a million people clamoring “NO” in the streets when the military proposed a change in the constitution that would have allowed them to remain in power—a huge demonstration in a country with a population of only 3 million.

Given my background, I naturally gravitate to all issues relating to Latin America. I worked as a journalist in Uruguay and also in New York, specifically for Notimex, the Mexican News Agency. I also spent some time in Ciudad Juarez/El Paso on the Texas border with Chihuahua, working for a local newspaper in 1994. My main interests are issues centered around immigration, the border and population displacement.