Santiago Potes: First Latino DACA Recipient to Receive Prestigious Rhodes Scholarship

Santiago Potes is the first Latino student who became a DACA recipient to win the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship. 

Potes entered the United States as an undocumented immigrant from Colombia when he was four. 

According to CNN, he walked for the first time into Marina Esteva's talented and gifted classroom at Sweetwater Elementary School in Miami, Florida, during second grade.

Esteva said she immediately noticed Potes' intelligence and eagerness to succeed. Now, Potes became the first Latino DACA recipient to win a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship.

Potes will be one of the Rhodes scholars in 2021, the Rhodes Trust announced on Saturday.

Potes, who graduated cum laude from Columbia University in New York, acknowledges all his success to Esteva, the teacher he meets twice a week from second to fifth grade in grade school. 

Potes told CNN's Poppy Harlow that Esteva was one of the biggest blessings he had in his entire life. He added that his parents didn't study college.

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"My parents had me when they were 16 years old. So, Esteva became kind of like my first mother figure. She went out of her way to teach me an exciting education," Potes noted.

Such education included a lesson regarding what it meant to be a Renaissance man, a term that Potes took to heart. Besides his academic success, Potes is an accomplished violinist and fluent in nine languages, including Chinese.

Rhodes Trust wrote in their announcement that Potes had been a research assistant for the leading professors in philosophy, social psychology, physics, and neuroscience. Potes also won several college prizes for leadership and academic performance. 

Potes is widely published on legal issues concerning DACA status. He was among DACA recipients featured in a brief lodged with the Supreme Court to preserve DACA.

For her part, Esteva told CNN that Potes is a "complete" and a "well-rounded human being." 

"With the highest moral caliber, with a sense of justice, with a sense of what is excellence, and willing to sacrifice for excellence, not for show, but for excellence itself," added Esteva, who is a Cuban immigrant and refugee to the U.S. herself. 

The first Latino DACA recipient attributed his success to Esteva, saying he would not have reached this level of success if she had not told him from an early age that she believed he could do great things. 

Esteva, on the other hand, said she just spotted what was already innately in Potes as a kid.

The Latino student will study contemporary East Asia and international politics at Oxford University and he looks forward to working in national security in the U.S. 

Potes' scholarship program will start in October 2021. The Rhodes Scholarship, established in 1903, is the oldest international scholarship in the world.  

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