Alumni profile: Esther Cuesta Santana ’02, ’09MA, ’15PhD

Esther Cuesta Santana ’02, ’09MA, ’15PhD 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.

She is also president of the parliamentary group for the rights of people in human mobility, encompassing immigrants, emigrants, refugees, persons in need of international protection, returned Ecuadorian migrants, people in transit, and victims of human trafficking and human smuggling. She has been president and vice president of the Committee on Sovereignty, Integration, International Relations, and Integral Security of Ecuador’s National Assembly.

Previously, she held the position of vice minister of human mobility of Ecuador’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where she was challenged to manage the country’s migrant populations through policy decisions, and served as consul general of Ecuador in Genoa, Italy, implementing innovative and multidisciplinary government programs in close collaboration with Italian institutions to help Ecuadorian migrant families in Italy regain custody of their children. She also managed the recovery of thousands of pieces of Ecuador’s cultural heritage contained in Italian collections.

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.

In the United States and Europe, Cuesta Santana has published several articles on Ecuadorian migration, transnational migration processes of women, the consular service, and feminism, among other topics. Her poetry has been published in several languages, and she has published a testimonial about her own migration experience.

Cuesta Santana’s approach to creating public policy and legislation is grounded in her humanistic and interdisciplinary academic background, her capacity to listen to people, and the understanding that public service is a unique opportunity to serve the collective and improve people’s lives.

As a public servant and legislator, she has focused on defending and promoting migrants’ rights, and contributing to the construction of a society with more social justice and equity so that no matter where people are born or where their national origins are, they can have equal access to rights such as health, education, housing, consular services, social services, and financial services.

As she embodies the revolutionary spirit of UMass Amherst as a pioneer committed to deepening cultural understanding, Cuesta Santana was the recipient of the 2022 UMass Alumni Honors Revolutionary Spirit Award.