4,000 New Citizens Take Oath : Rain Can’t Dampen Their Enthusiasm

Despite a brief shower, 85-year-old Jose Gomez had no complaints Saturday about the hours he had just spent sitting outdoors in the humid weather. Dressed in his best sports coat, tie and fedora, Gomez could only talk of the piece of paper clutched tightly in his hand.

“After all these years, I am an American citizen,” said Gomez, who proudly displayed the naturalization certificate he had received only a few minutes earlier. Gomez, who arrived in the United States from his native Mexico in 1923, spoke softly and then touched the tiny American flag he had tucked in his coat pocket.

“I love this country, and I was always happy here,” he said. “I kept saying I would become a citizen, but always tomorrow, tomorrow. Now I finally did. That makes this a special day. I am now a citizen.”

Landmark Day

For Gomez and more than 4,000 other Latinos, Saturday was indeed a landmark day at East Los Angeles College where Immigration and Naturalization Service officials said a record was set by swearing in the largest number of U.S. citizens from a single ethnic group at one time.

Planned to coincide with Mexican Independence Day, the swearing-in ceremony included immigrants from 19 countries including 2,546 Mexican nationals and hundreds more from El Salvador, Cuba and Guatemala, INS officials said.

One of those Mexican immigrants was Carmen Santos, 69, who had left her San Bernardino home near dawn and driven with her son to the naturalization ceremony. Still recovering from recent hip surgery, she sat in a wheelchair on the artificial turf of the college’s football stadium in which the ceremony was held and where she too was caught in the early morning shower--the first local drizzles since last May.

But when the skies had cleared and the national anthem began, Santos struggled to her feet with the rest of the crowd and said later that she was determined to make that gesture as a newly sworn “very happy” American citizen.

That patriotic sentiment was repeated throughout a highly emotional affair that saw the crowd cheer as a 25-foot-by-36-foot flag was unfurled in the stands and thousands of tiny flags were furiously waved. But when U.S. District Judge Manuel Real led the oath of allegiance and made the formal admission to citizenship, there were tears.

“When I was raising my hand and the judge was just in front of me, I knew this was real and I wasn’t dreaming,” said Jose Vasquez, a native of Guatemala who lives in Bell and was dressed Saturday in his U.S. Naval Reserve uniform. “My whole body was trembling.”

The emotions of the day even carried over to INS officials. Ben Davidian, the newly installed INS Western regional commissioner, who was presiding over his first swearing-in ceremony, said he felt “like a kid” in his excitement, and Ernest Gustafson, INS Los Angeles district director, noted that this was his last ceremony before retiring.

“I could not be more proud on my final day than to be at an event where 4,000 more people are added (as U.S. citizens),” Gustafson told the crowd, urging them to cling to their own ethnic heritages.

Gustafson and a private HispanaFest group were considered the driving forces for Saturday’s ceremony., which was timed for Mexican Independence Day. The anniversary commemorates the day in 1810 when a rebel priest, Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla of the city of Dolores, issued a call to arms against Spanish rulers that would become known as “Grito de Dolores” or the “cry from Dolores.”

Local celebrations on Saturday included an annual parade in East Los Angeles, a yearly cultural and commercial fair at Olvera Street downtown and festivities in Belvedere Park in East Los Angeles and elsewhere in Southern California.

But it was not just a day for celebration. Vendors were kept busy, and at the site of the swearing-in ceremony, recruiters were also in force. Los Angeles Police Department officers could be found there seeking Latino applicants, and both major political parties were competing to register the newly enfranchised voters.

One new citizen, Alfredo Hernandez of Lakeview Terrace, dressed in a gray tuxedo, walked away from a Republican volunteer and said he had just signed a voter registration card. Asked whether he signed as a Republican, he laughed and said he didn’t know what party it was for.

“It doesn’t matter,” he added. “I still have to read into it. But I can vote now. I am a citizen. That’s what matters.”