At John Brown University’s admissions building, in the office to the left, a handmade banner is draped across one of the desks. Its string is what looks to be yarn, and a series of paper squares containing the phrase “Congratulations, Marcos!” were hole-punched and tied together. The congratulations were earned by Marcos Gutierrez, an admissions counselor who earned his U.S. citizenship on Sept. 3rd, 2021.
Gutierrez is the assistant director of Admissions and Hispanic Relations at the university. He serves as the recruiter for Washington County and works heavily in community outreach and partnerships to recruit from Latino communities. Gutierrez was originally born in San Jose, Costa Rica, and grew up in Volcan, Panama, before moving to California at age 10. However, upon having trouble finding work, Gutierrez’s family moved once again to Northwest Arkansas, where his father found work on a chicken farm.
He attended Gentry Middle School and, later, Siloam Springs High School. When it was time to apply for college, Gutierrez’s options and opportunity to receive financial aid were severely limited, as he came from a low-income, immigrant family; however, JBU offered him a scholarship. “We made a lot of sacrifices to be at JBU because the scholarships were great and we didn’t really have a huge amount to pay. I would commute and work at the chicken farm. That’s how God provided for us for three years. In my last year, my parents lost their job, and we didn’t know how to pay, but a donor stepped up and helped cover some of the remaining balance… I was like, ‘I can’t believe that I have the opportunity to learn and further my education!’ I didn’t think that was possible.”
Gutierrez graduated with a major in kinesiology and a minor in family and human services. He came back to work in Admissions in 2016, moved by all the obstacles he faced in his admissions process. “I would remember the help that I got and I wanted to come back and give in a similar way,” he said. Gutierrez was only supposed to work in Admissions for two years, but he loved the team and the work and has stayed ever since.
When asked what it meant for him to have officially earned his citizenship, Gutierrez said, “For most of my life, because I left Panama when I was 10, most of my childhood is attached to that. And then my youth was spent here, so I’ve been in a place of being in two different places and not really feeling like I have 100% Panamanian or 100% American. For a long time, it felt like I didn’t belong in either place. So, a big part of my life was an in-between. I was a bridge of different peoples and cultures and things. For a lot of my life, I was really grounded in the idea that I was a citizen of the kingdom of God, and it wasn’t really that I wasn’t Panamanian because I am, or now a U.S. citizen, because I am, but that kind of place of not being either here or there helped me to grow in the grounding identity of being found in Christ, which was really comforting.” Gutierrez added, “But also, at the same time, I still experienced feeling out of place or that I don’t quite belong. And so, there’s a lot of repercussions to that, and I felt like I had to be in the shadows, as least seen as possible. That’s the way that I lived my life for a long time. So being a citizen, at least for me, means that I have some sort of legal standing I didn’t have before which allows me to be freer.”
The Threefold Advocate wants to congratulate Gutierrez on this important achievement in his life with the words: Meto , you did it!