Marcelo Ramirez, a 2017 graduate of the Latin American and Caribbean Studies (LACS) bachelor’s program, has long been driven by his desire to understand the world around him and his place in it.
Growing up in Florida as the child of Ecuadorian immigrants, Ramirez learned early on how to navigate the tension between his home’s culture and the challenges of being a minority in a predominantly white community. “Once you step out of the house — especially in a place like north central Florida — you really get the sense of what minority is,” Ramirez said.
But it wasn’t until 2008, while interning with the Obama presidential campaign, Ramirez discovered the power of collective action and community-driven change, and he began to see how groups could mobilize around shared identities to create meaningful transformation, marking the start of his deeper engagement with social justice and activism.
Years later, Ramirez found himself in the Jackson School’s Latin American and Caribbean Studies program, where he learned to connect the dots between his own lived experiences and the broader patterns of history.
“I had already by happenstance found community organizing and political organizing through the Democratic party, and I wanted to just get more formal education to be able to maneuver around initially, because I felt like maybe the lessons I could learn from what LACS taught me could be applied to understanding Latino trends politically,” he said.
During his time in LACS, Ramirez explored trends of polarization, the manipulation of public sentiment, and the fragility of democratic systems. He saw clear parallels with the historical struggles in Latin America, where movements rose and fell not by chance, but through deliberate forces that shaped public opinion. This work culminated in his Task Force capstone, where Ramirez and his teammates looked at migration from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador to the United States.
“Something about the robust offerings that Latin American and Caribbean Studies gave was fulfilling for somebody personally like me … [it] gave me this foundation to identify parallels that had happened in Latin America’s past, and how some of those lessons can be applied to today’s political discourse, especially amongst the modern American body politic.”
After graduating, Ramirez took up several positions in the cannabis industry, working largely to address the social inequities in the newly legalized market, recognizing how the communities most affected by criminalization were excluded from the economic benefits of legalization.
“It was just really interesting seeing the interaction between communities, communities of color, and local government and government at all stages, taking really much of a stock focus on how they saw this cannabis market emerging, affecting them socioeconomically,” Ramirez said. “A lot of the times, the folks who were getting put away for cannabis use didn’t reflect the newly created owner, class, and operator class of the market now.”
Later relocating to San Diego, Ramirez served as the organizing director for the California State Democratic party during the 2022 election cycle; he now works for the County of San Diego as the community engagement manager. Ramirez’s work in California has brought him face-to-face with the complexities of a binational region, one where the boundaries between countries blurred in ways both challenging and beautiful. The deep divisions that often accompany political borders weren’t just academic concepts to him; they were realities lived by the people around him.
“I was able to leverage a lot of my pre-existing career choices and career directories with what I was able to amplify with the degree out of LACS and through the Jackson School,” Ramirez said. “[I was] able to position myself and merge those two worlds in spots like being a community engagement manager at a border district for the fifth major largest county in the country.”
Now, as Ramirez sets his sights on public office, his mission is clear: to bring his passion for social justice, deep understanding of history, and commitment to equitable solutions to the forefront of political discourse. Reflecting on his journey, he credits his time in LACS with helping him identify a unique connection to the work he now pursues.
“We found each other, the major and I,” Ramirez said, adding that “I was very grateful that something called to me, not just to the Jackson School of International Studies … but to the niche focus of being able to identify with culturally what can be offered through Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the policies that they investigate and research.”