When Maria Valles Vda De Bonilla moved to the United States from El Salvador 16 years ago - at age 90 - there was one thing she requested: To become a citizen.
She wanted to be able to vote in the adopted country she loves, something she was never able to do in El Salvador - first because it wasn't legal for women to vote, and later because the polling locations were too far away and the journey was unsafe.
Tuesday afternoon Nov 0,2018, at age 106, Bonilla sat in her wheelchair in a bright sapphire dress in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Fairfax County, Virginia, and took her oath of citizenship. She waved a tiny American flag and smiled, her eyes moist with tears.
"I am so happy, there are no words," said Bonilla, who was surrounded by 18 family members who came to celebrate their "abuelita."
Bonilla - who lives in Gainesville, Florida, with her daughter, grandchildren and great-grandchildren - is not registered to vote in Virginia, so she didn't get to cast a ballot vote in the 2018 Midterm Elections after her ceremony. But when you become a citizen at age 106, you're an optimist.
"Next time," she said, speaking in Spanish. "God willing."
It was a coincidence that the ceremony fell on Election Day, she was part of a routine naturalization ceremony with 12 other people from various countries, including Italy, India, Mexico, Cameroon and Thailand.
She's not the oldest person to be naturalized in this country. That honor goes to a Turkish immigrant who at age 117 took the oath in Los Angeles almost 20 years ago. But Bonilla is the oldest in recent memory, said Kimberly Zanotti, director of the Washington Field Office, who has worked at the office for seven years and in the Newark office for 18 years before that.
"It's fantastic," Zanotti said.
Bonilla was born on March 22, 1912, and lived in rural El Salvador, farming beans, corn, rice and lettuce for most of her life. She had 18 children, said her youngest daughter Bernarda Bonilla, 55. But only eight are still alive. Her husband died many years ago, nobody remembers exactly when, her daughter said. Her oldest child is now 75.
Women got the right to vote in El Salvador in 1939 when Bonilla was 27 years old. But she lived far from a polling location for many years and never made the trip. When she got older, she moved to San Salvador, where the streets were too dangerous for her to leave the house and vote, said her granddaughter Diana Cortez.
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