El Salvador Reopens Consulate in O.C.

The Salvadoran government has reopened its consulate in Santa Ana, two years after closing the facility and forcing local emigres to conduct their business in Los Angeles.

The office will help Salvadorans secure passports, register marriages with the government of their native country and obtain death certificates.

The five-person staff will be directed by Consul Lorena Rendon, 38, who previously was an administrative director for the Salvadoran Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The reopening, an effort by President Tony Saca to improve relations with emigres in the United States, is expected to serve Salvadorans in Orange, Riverside, Imperial and San Diego counties. The Salvadoran government estimates 1 million Salvadorans live between Santa Barbara and San Diego, the largest population of Salvadorans outside that Central American country.

The consulate, relocated in a nondescript office complex on Golden Circle Drive, opened July 1. Margarita Escobar, vice minister of foreign affairs, inaugurated the office Monday night after meetings in Los Angeles with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in which she sought increased economic and civic ties with Southern California.

On Tuesday, the consulate waiting room was nearly filled with more than 100 immigrants.

Andres Martinez, 32, of Anaheim was seeking passports for two of his three children. He said he had obtained his own at the Los Angeles consulate but had to leave before getting his children’s passports because the process took so long. “For us, the opening of this office was perfect timing,” said Martinez, who plans to visit relatives. “We are going to El Salvador next week, and we don’t have the time for the traffic to Los Angeles or the waits.”

Emigres complained when the Santa Ana consulate was closed in 2003 and funding was transferred to a new consulate in Las Vegas, which remains open.

Consulates are also being opened this year in Elizabeth, N.J.; Nogales, Ariz.; Woodbridge, Va.; and Atlanta -- bringing the number of Salvadoran consulates in the United States to 16.

Santa Ana, where a majority of residents are foreign born, also has a Mexican consulate.

The office “will help our people in Riverside, Orange and elsewhere who had to miss a day’s work just to get to consulate,” said Enot Rubio, who heads Comite Salvadoreno El Piche, a civic organization. Even though he doesn’t need one until Christmas, Luis M. Flores, 60, of Lynwood took the day off from his job at a carpet factory to renew his passport when he learned about the consulate’s reopening.

“I put off going to the office in Los Angeles for three years,” he said. “But the minute I heard about this, I came right over.”