Local Hispanic leaders praise historic nominee
By JILLIAN DUCHNOWSKI - jduchnowski@nwherald.com
WOODSTOCK – Municipal attorney Carlos Arevalo was pleased that the nation’s first African-American president nominated the potentially first Hispanic U.S. Supreme Court justice Tuesday.
Arevalo, a native of El Salvador, said Sonia Sotomayor provided an example of a Latina from a single-parent South Bronx household who worked hard and broke through a glass ceiling.
“It’s good for me to see it. It’s good for my kids to see it. It’s good for the public to see it,” Arevalo said. “It does speak volumes for how this country is changing.”
“It takes one person, and once you break that glass, it’s that much easier,” Arevalo said.
Arevalo is a municipal attorney for Marengo and Harvard who immigrated in 1980, when he was 14, and became a citizen about two years later. He joined other prominent area Hispanics on Tuesday in heralding the symbol that Sotomayor represented, as well as the qualifications that led her there.
The daughter of Puerto Rican migrants to New York City, Sotomayor graduated from Princeton University and Yale Law School. She became a federal trial judge in October 1992 and an appellate judge about six years later.
“This is a woman of tremendous achievement and ability,” said Jorge Ortiz, Lake County’s first Hispanic circuit judge. “I think she’s someone all Americans can be proud of.”
And she’ll likely be someone Ortiz, who also is Puerto Rican, will point to when he visits area schools to discuss the importance of education.
“Especially when you talk to children who come from so-called disadvantaged backgrounds, it’s important for them to have positive examples,” Ortiz said. “She will be clearly someone who’s very visible.”
But Ortiz and Arevalo agreed that her background and ethnicity should inform, but not dominate, her decisions.
“There is a component of who you are and what your experiences are that you will bring to the decisions you make,” Arevalo said. “In the case of a judge, however, in the legal system, there is a respect for established law and you apply that to what’s there. And you should be impartial.”
Considering the 41-year span between Thurgood Marshall being appointed the first African-American U.S. Supreme Court justice in 1967 and Barack Obama being elected the first African-American president, Arevalo predicted the first Hispanic president might be 20 or so years away.
“The nation is becoming so much more diverse, generally speaking, that that increases the chances for that to occur a little faster,” Arevalo said.
For Carlos Acosta, executive director of the McHenry County Latino Coalition, Sotomayor’s nomination also reflected Hispanic immigrants’ increased political involvement in the most recent presidential election. Acosta applauded President Obama “for really seeing the changes in the electoral community.”
But Woodstock attorney Mario Perez cautioned that Sotomayor had not yet had the opportunity to distinguish herself in her nominated role.
“Alberto Gonzales was the first Hispanic Attorney General, and I don’t think too many were proud of that fact,” said Perez, referring to Gonzales’ resignation in August 2007 amid several controversies and allegation of perjury before Congress. “It’s how she distinguishes herself.”
