A Marriage and a Cause Go by Same Name

Armando and Belinda had a traditional church wedding, except for the finale.

They saved a shocker for the last minute, when the priest presented the newly married couple to guests gathered in the Catholic cathedral of San Antonio. Rather than the usual introduction--presenting Mr. and Mrs. Armando Ramirez--the presiding priest said he had “something very special” in store.

“For the first time, I am pleased to announce the new name that the couple has chosen--apellido,” said Father Rafael Luevano of Orange County, using the Spanish word for surname. “And so, I would like to present to their family, their friends and to the Christian community, for the first time, Sr. y Sra. Armando and Belinda de la Libertad.”

That was the first anybody knew that Armando Lopez Ramirez and Belinda Marisel Barrientos Garcia had chosen to change their names for love. Since their September reception, they’ve had a lot of explaining to do.

They both say they did it to make a statement. About togetherness. About equality for women. About freedom for all, which is what their new name means in Spanish--of liberty.

“It didn’t feel right for her to simply adopt my name,” Armando told me last week after officially filing a petition for a name change. “We knew we wanted to share the same name. So in the spirit of ultimate unity, we decided to choose a new name, but something that has significance and meaning.”

At first, they had tinkered with fusing surnames. But none of the combinations clicked. Gamez. Ramirecia. Garrez. They got the idea of a concept name after meeting Amalia de Aztlan, a Coachella Valley deejay who adopted the indigenous name of the Aztec’s legendary homeland in the southwestern United States.

“While our new name is symbolic, it’s also for us action-oriented,” said Belinda, who works in public relations for the Santa Ana Unified School District. “Liberty is something that we move toward, and try to help other people move toward through our public service careers.”

It Takes Some Defending

I’ve known Armando for more than a year, but I didn’t learn about this bold abandonment of convention until recently. When we met, he was working for the U.S. Census in Orange County, a polished and mild-mannered young man who seemed too straight-arrow to be an avid skateboarder, which he is. He seemed more like an engineer, which he studied to be. Or a bank executive, which he turned out to be.

Armando didn’t use his new surname last year in his unsuccessful campaign for a seat on the Santa Ana City Council. He ran as candidate Ramirez, the name he’s had for 30 years.

Politically, the new name would be distracting and confusing. How would anybody know he’s the same Armando who worked for U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D--Garden Grove) before moving on to his public relations job with the census and later to Wells Fargo Bank, where he’s now assistant vice president for community lending and investment?

It’s not easy to change your name, Armando discovered. Especially for an aspiring politician in a patriarchal society.

“People think we’re weird,” Armando said.

This week, I joined the Santa Ana couple at family court in Orange where they filed papers asking the law to acknowledge their new identity. Though they had been talking about this move for years, they found it was tough to follow through, both emotionally and bureaucratically.

So now this was the moment. It was their lunch hour on Tuesday. From a leather attache (compliments of the Census Bureau) they pulled out a folder and passed the papers to the court clerk.

They signed at 12:24 p.m. After paying the $193 fee, the clerk scheduled a hearing.

“I’m all excited,” beamed Belinda. “So March 20th is our court date. Check your Palm Pilot.”

Armando dutifully complied with instructions from the family computer expert. Later, over lunch at the Block at Orange across the street, I noticed their matching diamond wedding bands, carved with the Mayan symbol for creation.

That’s when it hit me. How similar they are, in personality, appearance and backgrounds. In fact, they look like they could be siblings. But they always hear that: Parecen hermanos. They hate it.

Armando and Belinda were born the same year (1971), only two days apart. They both have the same size and featherweight frame. They both drink tea and shun alcohol. They are both meticulously groomed and extremely organized.

They both came from blue-collar families, attended top East Coast universities and changed career paths in midstream. Armando started as an engineer at UC Berkeley and earned a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard; Belinda started in computer science at MIT and earned her master’s in public affairs from the University of Texas at Austin.

They met as undergraduates in late 1994, two Chicanos in Cambridge, exchanging glances as they crossed paths at a movie theater and at a protest vigil against Prop. 187, the anti-immigrant initiative that had just passed in California. They finally met a few weeks later on Thanksgiving Day, during a Chicano student forum at Columbia University in New York City. They were both too broke to fly home for the holidays.

Armando got up the nerve to ask her to dance. Belinda didn’t even notice that he didn’t know how. Later, they went to a coffee shop and talked until the sun came up.

They learned that their fathers had both worked as janitors. Imagine that. And now there they were, two working-class kids in elite academia, discovering a mutual passion for social justice.

That night, Belinda had spelled out what she looked for in a man. He had to be open-minded, for starters. Oh, and not judge people he doesn’t know. Armando wondered if he met the qualifications. Suffice to say they’ve been a couple ever since.

And Liberty for All

Not many men would give up their surnames as a gesture of solidarity with their wives. Women are expected to change their names when they get married. But men are expected to pass theirs on to their children.

Armando worried his parents might perceive his choice as a slap in the face. He admits his hard-working father struggled to understand his reasons.

So did I. But you must admire a man for taking a stand against male dominance. That’s especially important in the Latino community, where machismo contributes to domestic violence, alcoholism and other sins that suppress women. Taking a new name is a symbolic way to break those destructive cycles, he said.

And it’s also a way of letting the world know that he and his wife are one.

“She is intellectually and morally and every other way my equal,” said Armando de la Libertad.

To which Belinda de la Libertad smiled, extending her hands toward her husband like a game show hostess displaying a prize.

“You can see why I married him,” she said.

Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday and Saturday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or agustin.gurza@latimes.com.