Paratrooper, son of dissident, becomes American Citizen

Photo By Sgt. Mike MacLeod | Pfc. Guillermo Woodberry-Lucena, a fueler with 307th Brigade Support Battalion, 1st Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division (Advise and Assist Brigade), will complete the Army's abbreviated naturalization process in a citizenship ceremony at Baghdad's Camp Victory, Nov. 11. Woodberry-Lucena fled Venezuela five years ago, when his mother, an outspoken critic of President Hugo Chavez, began receiving death threats.  

AL ASAD, IRAQ

11.12.2009

Courtesy Story

1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division Public Affairs

AL ASAD AIR BASE, Iraq — A U.S. Army paratrooper who fled Hugo Chavez's Venezuela with his dissident mother as a boy became an American citizen in a ceremony Nov. 11 at Baghdad's Camp Victory.

Pfc. Guillermo Woodberry-Lucena, a fueler deployed to Al Anbar province, Iraq, with 307th Brigade Support Battalion, 1st Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division (Advise and Assist Brigade), completed the Army's abbreviated naturalization process that, for him, reduced the administrative processing time from up to a year or more to just two months.

"The United States has given me and my family a new beginning, and I am grateful to call it home," said Woodberry-Lucena. "I had more opportunities to grow as a person in five years in America than I did 15 years in Venezuela."

The son of a British naval officer and Venezuelan lawyer, Woodberry-Lucena lived with his mother in poverty for many years and experienced political instability so bad that it forced them to leave the country, he said.

"When my mother became an outspoken critic of President Chavez, his supporters threw rocks at our house and sent my mother death threats," he said.

Woodberry-Lucena and his mother moved to Orlando, Fla., five years ago.

The young Venezuelan joined the U.S. Army for the educational opportunities it affords and to keep with a family tradition of service. All of the men on both sides of his family were soldiers or sailors.

"I feel a great deal of pride in their accomplishments and values," he said.

Woodberry-Lucena aspires to earn a degree in criminal justice at the University of Florida and fund it by joining the Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps.

• Date Taken: 11.12.2009
• Date Posted: 11.13.2009 04:55
• Story ID: 41511
• Location: AL ASAD, IQ