Student Government Leader Juan Calero Tells His Story
The SGA chair has worked to change NYU during his over four years at the university. You may have seen him around campus, and if you didn’t get him at first, you’re not alone.
In a West Village coffee shop, loud classic rock and Motown music blaring, fifth year senior and Student Government Assembly (SGA) chair Juan Manuel Calero Canaval entered and walked slowly and deliberately to the table. Calero removed his black Yankee hat and glasses, placing them on the table. He set his arms down, hunched slightly and looked forward.
I asked him about the paper he told me he had been working on.
“I’m going to look at World of Warcraft, the way in lore dynamics, within the mythology of the game, represents real-world societal contracts,” he said without missing a beat.
“The easiest example,” he continued, “is that the troll race within World of Warcraft is an amalgamation of African, African diasporic, Caribbean, Latin American and indigenous stereotypes.”
Calero added, “It’s a hot mess. It’s a little racist.”
Sensing my confusion (I’m more of a Madden guy) he reached for his phone in order to show me a video of a World of Warcraft character speaking in a caricatured Jamaican accent. Blood elves speak pretentiously, regular humans speak in American-accented English, the dwarfs speak in either an Irish or Scottish accent, he went on to explain.
While analyzing the politics of the in-game dynamics, he was politely interrupted by the barista, and ordered a triple — not a double, he insisted — espresso.
Capping off his summary of his World of Warcraft assignment, he quickly moved on to a different paper he’s working on. “The Catholic Church has no standing doctrine on trans or intersex people,” he explained. “I’m going to do a complex theological argument using queer [and] trans studies.”
“They just didn’t know where to place me.”
Calero was born in Colombia and moved to the United States when he was 4 years old. He first lived in Far Rockaway, Queens, before moving to Cedarhurst, Long Island. But in fifth grade, Calero was in for a more drastic change of scenery when he and his family moved to Harlingen in South Texas. His father, a doctor, had “limited options” in terms of where he could practice medicine due to his visa, Calero explained.
“To me, that was a big culture shock because my first experience in the United states was in Far Rockaway and everyone around me was Black or Latino,” he said, stirring two brown sugars into his espresso. “Then I moved to Cederhurst, where the majority were Jewish or Latino.”
Calero generally felt out of place in Texas, where his vernacular and accent made him stick out.
“When I moved to South Texas, and I would say ‘let me aks you a question,’ they’d be like ‘you’re saying it wrong,’” he said in a hyperbolic, snobby Southern accent.
And when he’d say words like “spiel,” Calero recalled, he would be met with confusion and puzzled looks.
“I was this random little Colombian kid who was, in their mind, talking like Black New Yorkers, but also like a Jewish New Yorker and they just didn’t know where to place me,” he said.
In high school, he jumped from clique to clique, outfit to outfit; he labeled himself a “jack of all trades,” and “social butterfly,” never finding a stable friend group. Calero was at times a rave kid, a gamer, an Abercrombie and Fitch-wearing preppy kid, a geek and a partier. He was forced to adjust to get along with many types of people, something he says has been a constant theme throughout his life.
Further, Calero said it was during this time that he began to harbor feelings of “self-loathing.”
For instance, he mentioned at the end of high school, he received plastic surgery because he “hated the way everyone talked shit about [his] nose.”
“I’m always having to navigate different spaces,” he said. “If you leave me alone and you just come to my apartment and just like chill with me, that is not enough for society and I have to perform different people in different contexts and it gets exhausting.”
Looking back, he wishes he had a found a cohesive community.
“That was kind of lonely. I realized later in life I like ritual. I like a daily routine,” he said. “And being a social butterfly … it’s not healthy for me.”
“My living room looks somewhat like a church courtyard.”
Calero’s heritage and nationality are important to his identity, and shape his worldview. He labels himself Afromestizo — part white, part Indigenous and part Black.
“Growing up, my parents were very aggressive and really indoctrinated me in, like, ‘you are Latin American and that means something. And you are Colombian and that means something. And you are Black, white and Indigenous and that means something,’” he said. “And I’m thankful for that, because I didn’t have to go through as deep of an identity crisis about what I am.”
Calero’s parents also made religion an important part of his childhood.
“My dad developed an icon fetish, to be honest,” Calero said. “Now my living room looks somewhat like a church courtyard.”
Calero’s Catholicism, particularly the communal aspect, continues to be important to him.
“For me, the Catholic Church is as messy as I am, and I think that’s important,” he said. “I think a lot of people use religion as escapism, but for me, I never affiliate myself with anything that doesn’t portray itself to be messy.”
He added, “I am Catholic because I am a hot mess.”
“That was one of the first moments I realized I didn’t want to die.”
Throughout his high school years, Calero experienced mental health issues, including suicidal thoughts, as well as drug use which came with a subsequent drop in grades and attendance. He was then suspended, and his acceptance to NYU’s Class of 2016 was rescinded. But a high school administrator and his parents intervened, informing the university of his struggles, and he was readmitted. Though he originally applied to begin his freshman year in 2012, the university would only permit him to start classes in the fall of 2013, leaving him a free year.
Calero spent the first six months of his gap year in Cali, Colombia, followed by time at a French language academy in Paris. He was hosted by an elderly French woman, with whom he developed a close relationship.
“It was as really cute. We would talk about politics, theology, history and identity,” Calero said. “She taught me, like, French aristocracy. Apparently she was raised in her French aristocratic Vichy, fascist context.”
Though Calero enjoyed his experience in Paris, it ended on a dark note. During a visit to Notre-Dame Cathedral in late May, he witnessed a suicide.
“It’s early afternoon and a man walks in, and I noticed something was off,” Calero recalled. “[He] pulls out a pistol and bang.”
He later discovered the man was Dominique Venner, a far-right, fascist sympathizing French historian. According to a manifesto and blog post he wrote prior to his death, he killed himself to protest same-sex marriage and France supposedly “falling into the hands of Islamists.”
The suicide had a lasting impact on Calero.
“In that moment I realized … there was an underlying current of fascism that was brewing under the fabric of society.”
The incident also gave him a newfound sense of ambition. “Witnessing suicide as someone that was suicidal, I think in that moment, that was one of the first moments I realized I didn’t want to die,” he said. “That gave me purpose in life, in some strange sense.”
“Being a brown boy growing up in the United States, you have to be all these different people.”
From the outset, Calero immersed himself in campus political life, becoming active in NYU PorColumbia, LUCHA at NYU and Phi Iota Alpha.
Still, he struggled with how to express and navigate his identities. “It’s always a question of what kind of not white I am,” he said.
Calero distinctly remembers his freshman year of college when one Black student leader called him a “tragic Mulatto.”
“It’s a literary trope that someone that is half Black, half white, usually someone that is light-skinned over-performs their blackness,” he explained. “So that made me feel like shit.”
Calero noted he is not unique in experiencing these struggles.
“Being a brown boy growing up in the United States, you have to be all these different people,” he said. “In certain spaces, you have to do that because otherwise people are mad rude and will dismiss you.”
Lately, however, he says he has opted to communicate naturally at all times, even in formal settings. “In my emails to [NYU President] Andy Hamilton, I’m like, ‘hey y’all, what’s good. How y’all doin.’ We gotta be doin’ this.’” Calero said. “I don’t want people to feel like they have to code switch. We should be real with each other.”
“NYU doesn’t care about you.”
During the first stage of his time at NYU Calero directed his sights on clubs and campus activism 2016. But when he first arrived on campus, many the communities he joined were, in Calero’s telling, “on their death beds” at the end of then-president John Sexton’s tenure.
“I do believe there is a relationship between the way Sexton controlled the university and managed the university and the sense of despair and lack of unity and sense of faith in the institution,” he said. “In fact, a lot of the student leadership that were my predecessors, they told me ‘NYU doesn’t care about you. The admin will stab you in the back. The faculty are not to be trusted.”
“Under Sexton, everyone was fucking miserable all the fucking time,” he continued. “Like, I really can’t name a single student leader my first two years on campus that was like ‘I love NYU and I am happy!’”
At the end of his sophomore year, Calero says one outgoing NYU administrator advised him to stop wasting his effort attempting to reform the university. “I obviously did not listen,” he said.
Indeed, in recent years, Calero has taken his activism to the student government. He first ran as a senator-at-large last year and was successfully elected as SGA chair for the 2017–18 school year. During his time at the helm of student government, he has established a close relationship with President Andrew Hamilton.
Calero, who often expresses frustration with various factions in the NYU community — College Republicans, white leftists, people who talk shit about him behind his back — both in person and in cryptic Facebook and Twitter posts, consistently has nice things to say about the president. After the Trump administration announced their plans to rescind DACA in September, he favorably compared Hamilton’s handling of the situation to how the concerns of immigrant students were treated under Sexton.
“I think when Hamilton came, that was an interesting change of pace,” he said. He also believes the beginning of Hamilton’s tenure was the first time social justice was explicitly made one of the university’s goals.
“I like to believe that Andy Hamilton recognizes that I believe in the university,” Calero said. “I think we’re at a point where we have a mutual understanding, even if our approaches are radically different, even if the things we’re most concerned about are radically different, I think there is, and there has to be, a complementary dynamic between faculty structures and administrative structures and student structures.”
The warm feelings are mutual.
Hamilton said in a statement via NYU spokesperson John Beckman that he “admire[s] the work he does on behalf of NYU’s students.”
“He is quick to call to account any other stakeholder group — be it the University Administration or faculty — if he thinks they are acting in ways that are at odds with his constituency,” Hamilton continued. “He sets an ambitious agenda, and is not especially daunted by questioning or taking on the status quo.”
Calero’s criticisms of the university stem from “a genuine desire to have NYU be the best university it can be,” according to Hamilton.
Asked about the accomplishments he is most proud of, Calero pointed to the Black and Brown Coalition’s (BBC) demands list to the university in 2015, an effort he spearheaded, as well as his presiding over the restructuring of student government.
Selima Jumarali, associate director at the Center for Multicultural Education and Programs, also believes the demands list is a big part of Calero’s legacy. In an email to Local, she said Calero is a “politically astute” and “adamant” advocate for creating change on campus.
“He has worked to build relationships across different identity and advocacy focused groups in order to engage in solidarity work across diverse social issues,” she wrote.
Assistant manager of Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives Krystal Mcleod, who has known Calero since 2015, echoed Jumerali’s sentiments. She sees his biggest achievement as making certain spaces on campus welcoming to minority students.
“I think Juan made spaces accessible to diverse and underrepresented students that were formally not places where those students would frequent,” Mcleod told Local. “Something that I always admire in that he looking for the future in terms of ‘who can I bring to meetings?’”
She said Calero is hard working, determined and leads by example.
“One thing that I’m really proud of that Juan is leaving behind is showing students that you can be unapologetically you and still access certain spaces and still be a student leader,” Mcleod said.
“This dude was covered in symbols and shit, so you’re like, ‘that’s interesting.’”
A week after we first met for coffee, Calero seemed to be looking forward to getting some rest during Thanksgiving break. He had refused a 10:30 breakfast meeting. “Do I seem like a morning person? I am literally Latin American Bruce Wayne,” he quipped.
Calero has been more of a night owl for awhile, according to long-time friend Adriana Gonzalez, a senior at NYU.
“I don’t mean to say this in a negative way but he’s always been kind of dramatic,” Gonzalez said. “Even as an elementary school kid, he was mysterious. Juan has been wearing all of the rings and necklaces and black forever. This dude was covered in symbols and shit, so you’re like, ‘that’s interesting.’”
Now, Gonzalez believes, “a lot of people are intimidated and overwhelmed by him,” but that they have no reason to fear Calero. “He’s a big teddy bear, really,” she said.
Like Gonzalez, Mcleod understands how some would be put off by him upon a first encounter.
“When I first met Juan, I didn’t get him,” she said with a laugh. “Upon first glance, Juan comes off quite intense … [but] his intensity was merely a sign of how much effort he puts into campus activism and governance.”
Calero is aware that he often raises eyebrows, especially for people who don’t know him well.
“I think I occupy a weird space in a lot of people’s imaginations,” he said. “I don’t know why. I really don’t know why.”
