The concentration of SalvadorñThe agricultural zone of the Central Valley and the inhabitants of the Inland Empire receive with joy that they will finally have a consulate in their region, which will facilitate the processing of documents without having to travel to Los angelsthe city where the office they usually went to operates.
Cindy Mariella Portal, Vice Minister of Diaspora and Human Mobility of El Salvador, revealed in an exclusive interview with the Los Angeles Times in Spainñol that in eight weeks two consulates will be inaugurated in California, which will be in the counties of Fresno and San Bernardino. He also said that two more will open in the states of Minnesota and Arkansas.
“We hope to be able to inaugurate them the first week of April,” said Vice Minister Portal, assuring that in this way they seek to “shorten the transfer times of our fellow citizens, bring services closer to our community and, above all, because we know what time it represents for them and the importance of a document”.
In the opinion of Alejandro Letona, Consul General in LA, the two new offices in San Bernardino and Fresno were strategically selected, putting the interests of the Salvadoran community that lives in those regions first, so that now to process a document be closer to their neighborhoods.
“The opening of Fresno is not by chance,” said the consul, detailing that this city offers logistical feasibility and is central for its nationals who live in Mendota, Kerman, Firebaugh, Madera, Salinas, Tulare, Riverdale and Visalia, among other cities. of that region. “The idea is to bring services closer to the community where they are,” he said.
Currently, in California there are two consulates located in San Francisco and Los Angels.
Salvadoran immigrantsños in Fresno County preferred to travel 235 miles to Los angels (3 1/2 hours), although the San Francisco office is 158 miles (2 1/2 hours). But in the end, going to both cities means losing a day of work and spending money to get around, something that will no longer be necessary.
“Previously, to get my documents in Los angelsI left at two o’clock in the morningñana, one has to leave early, taking risks on those roads, sometimes sleep dominates one”, recognized Gustavo Portillo, a resident of the city of Mendota, who will be 35 miles away from the new consulate. It will take 40 minutes to get to the city of Fresno.
Portillo and many of his compatriots work in agriculture. Right now he is working on the pistachio harvest, then he will move on to planting tomatoes and picking grapes. “It will benefit us a lot (the new consulate), in the surroundings there are many Salvadoran peopleña. It would be a very big impact, ”he assured.
Due to the distance, the Salvadoran communityña in the Central Valley will be the most benefited.
“People are going to save time, money and have their documents up to date,” said Víctor Martínez, former Mendota city councilman and Salvadoran community leader.ñor, stating that now his compatriots are going to avoid spending $300 on transportation, what they sometimes paid on an express trip to Los Angels.
The opening of the two consulates, in Fresno and San Bernardino, is something that local leaders celebrate, because they consider it to be a correction and a positive change in the diplomatic management of the government of President Nayib Bukele.
In November 2019, under the management of Alicia Villamariona, the first consul general in Los Angeles of the Bukele administration, the consular windows and mobile consulates that brought services to Mendota, San Diego, Santa Ana, Palmdale, Oxnard, Bakersfield, Indio, Victorville and Riverside, among other cities.
Two days after the publication by the Los Angeles Times in Spanish about that decision, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of El Salvador announced that it was reversing that measure, which from the beginning was described by activists and local leaders as a setback. .
“In order to continue improving care for the Salvadoran populationñLocated abroad, the consulate general of El Salvador in Los Angeles, California, announces that the mobile services days will resume in January 2020”, said the official statement released on November 20, 2019.
Due to the pandemic, mobile consulates have been reactivated through August 2021 in Fresno County. These extraordinary days have also been taken to Oxnard, Palmdale and San Diego.
Guillermo García, community leader and agricultural worker in Oxnard, considered that the management of Consul Villamariona was a dark stage in the Salvadoran consulate in Los Angeles, because you could not talk to the official, she was not very accessible and “we felt like there was no consular representation.
The activist maintains that the arrival of Letona to the position of consul general in LA has given a positive turn to that government office. Garciaa considers that community organizations are now served and services have been improved.
However, now the discomfort is generated by the poor service and attention provided by the consulate of El Salvador in San Francisco.
“Every time we receive complaints from San Francisco, that’s why our compatriots choose to come to Los Angeles,” Garcia said.
According to Vice Minister Portal, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has set up a user service monitoring system that allows complaints about the services to be channeled, which can be sent by email to: opinion.usuario@rree.gob.sv, also through of the telephone line: 1- 888-301-1130.
Likewise, the official stressed that the claim made about the suspension of the mobile consulates had an echo. “The petitions and everything they were requesting at the time have now been heard,” Portal concluded.