The financial aid added up. He’d attend for a couple of years and then transfer someplace else.
It wasn’t a glamorous reason to choose Wabash, but for an 18-year-old from Mexico who saw college as a means to financial freedom, it made perfect sense in the young mind of Josue Guerra ’11.
“I majored in math so I could make money,” he says. “It sounds ridiculous. Mexico’s education system expects us to know what we want to do when we’re 17 or 18 years old. We have to decide before university. These are high-end decisions. I was lucky enough to land at a small liberal arts college that really worries about the student and counsels them.”
Now, Guerra spends his time on the stage, in movies, commercials, and television. He recently had a role in the Netflix limited series “Somos.” In February, he and the rest of the cast of the FX pilot, “The Border,” finished filming.
Opportunities he would not have gotten had he passed up Wabash.
The College introduced a new world of art and culture through his classes and his extracurricular time on the stage. He took a course with an immersion trip to Italy and later studied abroad in France. Looking for something to do when he wasn’t playing soccer or studying equations, he auditioned for a play and ended up in a production in each of his four years on campus.
“I got to visit Europe for the very first time, thanks to Wabash,” Guerra says. “I was able to explore so much I know I would have never been able to if I was in Mexico, or even at a big school. There would be even more barriers. ‘No, it’s only for theater majors. Sorry, you can’t audition.’ But Wabash gave me that opportunity.
“I’d be more excited to learn my lines than to learn theorems,” he says with a laugh. “That should have been a red flag.”
A fellow math major shared with Guerra the book “Letters to a Young Poet” by Rainer Maria Rilke, which changed his perspective. The collection of letters in the book was sent by Rilke to Franz Xaver Kappus, who in the book’s introduction says he was “Not yet 20, and close on the threshold of a profession which I felt to be entirely contrary to my inclinations, I hoped to find understanding, if in any one, in the poet…”
“He said, ‘Read it. I think it’s going to help you.’ That book opened up a world of possibilities,” Guerra says. “It’s never too late to try things out and follow your heart. That’s what I’ve been trying to do.”
After Wabash, Guerra was accepted to a master’s program in fine arts at Columbia University.
“I wanted to stay in the U.S. a little bit longer and keep studying things that interested me,” he says. “I loved math. But it wasn’t my passion. I just did it because I thought it would help me make a living.
“Theater is my first true love. It opened up a universe of interaction and connection. I never thought about actually making it a career until my second year of graduate school,” Guerra continues. “That’s when things started falling into place. I just decided to not worry about the money anymore.”
Upon completion of graduate school, he was denied a visa so he returned home to Mexico.
“That was a blessing in disguise. In the U.S., I wasn’t Caucasian enough to be a John and I wasn’t Mexican enough to be a Juan,” says Guerra. “When I got to Mexico, they said, ‘Perfect. He’s got the English and the Spanish; book him for this role.’ Then things just started happening.”
He hopes when “The Border” releases early next year, the cast and crew get the green light to continue filming an entire season. Until then, Guerra is trying not to think too much about what might be but keep moving ahead to new roles and opportunities that present themselves.
“Whatever that next thing is, I don’t know,” Guerra says, “but I’m grateful for all this.”