It is 2046. My husband is in the kitchen attempting to make a decent breakfast and my two teenagers are sitting around the table, rushing to finish up their last bit of homework, preparing to take on another school day, from upstairs I hear “look! Mom made the front page of the New York Times”. At first it seems unreal, I scramble to find my reading glasses and quickly rush downstairs as my husband lowers the television volume and I begin to read the bolded title out loud “Karla Mercado, from immigrant to human rights activist, is inducted into the HSF Alumni Hall of Fame” My eyes begin to water as I continue to read the story, my story. “Born in Palmira, Colombia Karla Mercado migrated to the Dominican Republic with her family in order to escape the Revolutionary…show more content… After seven years in the Dominican Republic, encountering poverty first hand, Mercado’s family once again packed up and moved to the United States, settling in Florida where she began learning her second language, English, which came easily to her as she was a bright young girl who would go on to excel in her academics as well as her extracurriculars. Growing up three different countries, Mercado became more and more aware of the world around her and the atrocities that came with them, she quickly learned that war and poverty were universal and became set out to diminish much suffering as possible, essentially advocating for human rights internationally as well as in her own country. Following high school she received her bachelor’s degree in law at Florida International University, where she became deeply involved in amnesty organizations, women’s protests, and the black lives matter movement. From these experiences Mercado set out to become a human rights lawyer, eventually attending law school and passing the Florida State Bar
