FULLERTON : 8 Latino Students to Travel to Mexico City

Eight Latino high school students will be traveling to Mexico next week to participate in a solidarity conference sponsored by the Mexican government’s Children’s Services.

The students--Nancy Morales, Debbie Quinonez, Laura Melgoza, Esmeralda Ayon and Alberto Villegas from Fullerton High School, Haydee Cardenas and Ramiro Diaz Ibarra from La Vista High School and Francisco Duran from Troy High School--will represent Orange County and will be in Mexico City for a week with about 200 other high school students from throughout the United States.

This is the fourth annual conference in which hundreds of students travel to Mexico, at that government’s expense, to learn about Mexican traditions, folklore and customs, said Alma Buis, Fullerton Police Departments’s minority affairs officer. She is coordinating the program for the city’s participants this year.

Buis told the eight bilingual students earlier this month that they were chosen by their teachers and principals to take an expense-paid trip to Mexico and meet that country’s outgoing president, Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

“I’m so excited,” said Morales, 16. “This is going to be something that I’m always going to remember all my life. . . . I’m looking forward to going and really finding out the truth about my culture and learning how the school system works there. I have never been to Mexico City before, and now I get to go and even meet the president.”

Buis said the students were chosen because they excel in their schools’ academic, cultural arts, sports or social service programs.

The purpose of the Mexico trip is for the students to learn about their roots, Buis said.

“It’ll be an eye-opening experience that will teach them to understand the Mexican culture and to be proud of it,” she said.

As part of the program, the students will tour the ancient pyramids in Teotihuacan, meet teen-agers at local high schools and attend cultural events including folkloric dances, poetry readings and museum visits.