Esther Cuesta Santana ’02, ’09MA, ’15PhD Earns Prestigious Revolutionary Spirit Award
Alumna Esther Cuesta Santana has been named the recipient of the 2022 UMass Alumni Honors Revolutionary Spirit Award.
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Alumna Esther Cuesta Santana ’02, ’09MA, ’15PhD—who received her BA in comparative literature—has been named the recipient of the 2022 UMass Alumni Honors Revolutionary Spirit Award.
Cuesta Santana is an accomplished activist, policymaker, and pioneer dedicated to deepening cultural understanding. She has been a member of Ecuador’s National Assembly since 2017, representing the constituency of Europe, Asia, and Oceania. Reelected in 2021, she is currently a member of the Committee on Children and Adolescents’ Rights.
Her lifelong commitment to creating a world that’s just and equitable for all undoubtedly exemplifies the revolutionary spirit of the university.
At age 19, Ecuador native Cuesta Santana moved to the United States on her own. Once she arrived, she worked, took English lessons, obtained permanent residency, and applied to colleges. She was accepted into the (then) Honors Program at UMass Amherst. For her honors thesis, Cuesta Santana translated three chapters of the novel of an LGBTI writer of Ecuadorian and Puerto Rican descent, noting that “Translating language is not just about the words. It’s, in essence, translating a world’s vision; how we understand the world. An immigrant is constantly in the process of translating.” The honors thesis experience deepened her research interest, leading her to pursue a master’s degree and a doctorate in comparative literature.
As part of her doctoral research, Cuesta Santana conducted ethnographic and archival research in a region of Italy that shares centuries of cross-migration history with Ecuador. During that time, the Ecuadorian government appointed her Consul of Ecuador in Genoa, Italy; two years later, she became consul general. Once she completed her dissertation, she accepted the invitation to return to Ecuador to serve as vice minister of human mobility.
She was nominated for this prestigious award by Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Studies and Honors Director Luis Marentes.