Tutu Alicante
A Believer in Education and Empowerment
Tutu Alicante ’01 was born in and grew up in Equatorial Guinea, a nation that has suffered through two of Africa’s worst dictatorships. Since gaining independence from Spain in 1968, the government of this West African nation has been characterized by systematic incarcerations, disappearances, torture, and assassinations of citizens.
Despite more than one billion dollars in annual oil production revenue, over 75 percent of Equatorial Guinea’s 500 million citizens live on less than two dollars a day, without access to health care, education, or clean water.
Alicante, fortunately, was able to escape the poverty of his native country, coming to the United States in 1994 in search of an education and the means to find answers to the grave injustices he had witnessed in his homeland.
“My personal and family experiences in Equatorial Guinea are tainted with instances of government-sponsored abuse of power, corruption, and impunity,” he said.
When Alicante’s family home was destroyed by the government, his father told him there was nothing they could do about it—they just had to go on. “That’s when I realized I didn’t want to live in a country where there is nothing you can do to change the situation. I came to the U.S. to mobilize. Things had to change.”
To read the rest of Tutu Alicante's story, see the Fall 2009 issue of Tennessee Law Magazine.