Elvia Pacheco, the director of individual giving for the United Way of Greenville County, was the keynote speaker for PC’s celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month.

A proud Latina’s journey from infancy in Mexico to naturalized U.S. citizenship in Greenville was shared with the Presbyterian College community this week.

Elvia Pacheco, the director of individual giving for the United Way of Greenville County and founder of the nonprofit organization LatinosUnited, said she is one of 62 million Latinos living in the United States – a bloc that is growing and will soon make up about a quarter of the country’s population.

“Just imagine more and more of us coming to this country and more and more of us being born here in this country,” Pacheco said. “We will have so much to contribute to the country a lot of us see as home now – the place I always hold so dear to my heart. I am proud to be Mexican, but by choice I’m a U.S. citizen.”

Latinos have made many contributions to the U.S., she said, by serving as inventors, entrepreneurs, professional athletes, musicians, writers – even a Supreme Court justice.

Pacheco’s journey to becoming the first member of her family to go to college and become a professional began humbly in Mexico as the daughter of two undocumented immigrants who eventually became U.S. citizens.

“I am proud of my roots,” she said. “I’m super proud of my parents and the sacrifices they had to make and the things they had to go through in order to get to the U.S. alive.”

Pacheco said her father illegally crossed the border into California in the 1980s and called for his wife and infant daughter to join him soon after. After an initial failure, a woman smuggled Pacheco into California using a false birth certificate while her mother joined them afterward.

“I imagine my mom having to deal with that while she was crossing,” she said. “She was missing her baby. This is where I get a little teary eyed because it still affects me because that was a huge sacrifice that my mom had to do.”

The family eventually migrated to Washington state, where Pacheco began school, and finally to Newberry in South Carolina, where she finished high school before college. For a few years in between, she and her parents returned to Mexico, where she struggled with her dual identity.

“My upbringing was very interesting because I learned that I didn’t belong here, nor did I belong where my parents were from,” she said.

Like many immigrant children, Pacheco said she was responsible for translating for her parents and helping them navigate a primarily English-speaking culture.

“I have been exposed to so many situations, whether we have to put a down payment on this apartment, whether we have to start the power, whether we have to get telephone service, the internet, this person broke their leg, let’s go to the ER and translate for them,” Pacheco said. “So, I’ve been exposed to a good bit of everything – and this happened when I was a kid. So, I learned responsibility as an early age.”

A commitment to live reasonably close to her parents led her to attend USC Upstate in Spartanburg and settle in Greenville, where she has built a solid career working for the Greenville Chamber of Commerce and the United Way and serving as a community liaison with the local Latino community through her nonprofit.

Along the way, Pacheco said she has grown comfortable being a child of two cultures.

“For the longest time, I was told that I’m not from here or from there,” she said. “But now that I am an adult and now that I’m more recognized as a proud Latina, I feel like both countries claim me. The U.S. is so proud to have me here. And in Mexico, they’re so proud to know that I was born over there and that I’m always so proud of being Mexican everywhere that I go.”