Encontrando La Voz
- La Voz Latina
- May 9
- 3 min read
Escrito por: Dulce Ortiz 🇬🇹
After being gifted a broken tripod, 14-year-old Alexa Figueroa saved up all her money to buy herself a Fujifilm camera. Emocionadamente, ella se puso a crear documentales y videos de los cambios de temporada en Prince George’s y de la vida en El Salvador.
When she was little, Figueroa would often accompany her mother at her housekeeping job while her father worked in construction. Recuerda vívidamente el trabajo difícil de sus padres, pero también la forma en que la sociedad los trataba por tenerlos.
“My mom would always tell me, ‘I want you to be someone in life.’ And because she thought that cleaning wasn't really a noble profession, I always knew I wanted to go to college or do something else,” she said.
After being accepted into the C.D. Mote, Jr. Incentive Awards Program at UMD, Figueroa decided to pursue journalism because of her passion for filmmaking.
During her first few years, she experienced conflicting feelings about her major, as she felt that she didn’t belong in the journalism space due to her identity.
“I never thought about being Latina when I was in high school, middle school—it was just something that was a part of me, and I was just who I was. But when I got here, I felt like my whole entire existence revolved around that, because it was so obvious that I was different from everyone else in my classes,” said Figueroa.
Decidió agregar una especialidad en español para ayudarla a encontrar un espacio que la aceptara cuando los de periodismo no podían. Even then, she felt like it wasn’t enough.
“Even though I wasn't born in El Salvador, everything that I am at home is Salvadoran,” she added.
Consequently, Figueroa wanted to create a newspaper that gave her an outlet to express her Salvadoran culture while giving student journalists the opportunity to write about their interests in an inclusive space. After discovering a preexisting Latino newspaper at UMD, she decided to begin the process of reviving el periódico, La Voz Latina.
Desde la primera publicación en 2022, su equipo ha crecido a más de 40 miembros, algo que ella nunca se imaginabá.
“I like to think that people don’t normally read or listen to news. But I think that La Voz has made people want to read and listen to news because it is focused on them and their community, and I think that is so beautiful to see,” she said. “It’s like a labor of love where everything was worth it for me in the end.”
In her time at UMD, Figueroa was also able to experience an internship with NASA en español, the organization’s rapidly expanding Spanish-language department. After graduation, she plans on finding a job in communications for the federal government and hopefully ending up at NASA.
Through it all, she looks back on her journey as a reflection of her life motto, dicho por sus mayores inspiraciones, su hermano y su mamá: "Just go for it because the worst that someone can say is no.”
“Never think anything you do is worthless because you never know how it can change the lives of others. Always dream big! Shoot for the moon, even if you miss amongst the stars.” - Henry Figueroa
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