Hispanic Heritage Month Student Highlight: Susana Zavala loves honoring her Mexican heritage

Susana Zavala is proud to be a Mexican-American, with an emphasis on the Mexican. While her physical home has always been on Texas soil, her cultural home is in Mexico where she spent most of her time during her formative years.

Until she went to college, Zavala lived in the small Texas town on the border called Eagle Pass, but her first language was Spanish, and until fifth grade even her school was in Mexico.

“I basically grew up in Piedras Negras (Mexico),” Zavala said. “I crossed the (border) bridge from Eagle Pass every day to go to school.”

Now she lives in San Antonio with her husband, where she’s working on her master’s in public health at the UTHealth Houston School of Public Health in San Antonio.

After initially pursuing vision science and doing an optometry internship, Zavala decided optometry wasn’t for her, and in looking for another direction she stumbled into public health.

“In my last year of undergraduate I had an epidemiology course and I learned about epidemiology and biostats,” Zavala said. “And when I started to research that field, I saw that we had a school of public health here in San Antonio, and I thought, ‘Oh, that’s for me.’ It’s like a sign.”

Public health and particularly epidemiology grabbed Zavala’s attention because she said she’s interested in how diseases work and how they affect the human body.

“I really like how epidemiology works together with statistics,” Zavala said. “And I like that in public health, you’re helping the whole community, not just one individual.”

This year Zavala is working as a graduate research assistant for Anabel Rodriguez, PhD, an assistant professor in San Antonio. While she isn’t sure yet what career she’d like to pursue when she graduates, Zavala said her work with migrant farmworkers this year has been formative for her.

“Working with Dr. Rodriguez has really opened my eyes to seeing that I really like outreach and research,” she said. “I’m still debating whether I’ll get my PhD, but I feel that having a PhD would really help me be in that type of field.”

Zavala said she is encouraged by the example of Rodriguez, another young Mexican-American woman from the Rio Grande Valley, who overcame the challenges of her childhood to become a faculty member, researcher and advocate for her community.

“Seeing her succeed so much and hearing her story about where she comes from and how she and her family have struggled, to see her break out of her generational cycles is inspiring,” Zavala said.

Like Rodriguez, Zavala stays deeply connected to her Mexican heritage and cultural roots. She said she loves living in San Antonio where the Hispanic culture is strong, good Mexican food is easy to find, and she’s not too far from her childhood home.

On holidays and any time she gets a chance, Zavala said she loves going back home to visit her parents, and never misses a chance to cross the border into Piedras Negras, the city that she said feels like her real hometown. She holds dual citizenship since her parents are both from Mexico.

“I love being Mexican,” Zavala said. “I love the culture, the food, the art. The Mexican culture is very patriotic. We love our flag and we’re happy to say that we’re Mexican. We’re not afraid to show it.”