ROSA, ELVIRA NOT SO DIFFERENT.

Byline: MARIEL GARZA

THERE are some historical icons that are not to be messed with. This past week, I discovered Rosa Parks is among them.

You'll remember from high school history that Parks was the woman whose single act of defiance against unjust, racist laws in 1955 Alabama helped launch the civil-rights movement. For this, she has correctly ascended to legendary status.

But don't you dare draw any comparisons between Parks and anyone else not already canonized by popular culture. And most certainly do not call Elvira Arellano -- the 32-year-old Mexican illegal immigrant who was arrested in Los Angeles on Aug. 19 -- the Mexican Rosa Parks, as some have done. I and others (including Pilar Marerro at La Opinion) stepped into the fray last week noting the similarities between the situations of the two women that have drawn the comparison. From the reaction, you would have thought we were talking about Osama bin Laden, not a diminutive Mexican mother from Chicago who got deported after speaking out against U.S. immigration policy.

I would agree that Arellano is unlikely to become as famous or iconic as Rosa Parks. She's just not that compelling a media personality. As well, Parks' ascension from mild-mannered seamstress to Mother of the Civil Rights Movement came to be through a rare confluence of factors that aren't in evidence in the nascent movement of illegal immigrants.

Still, I find it curious that some are so sputteringly outraged by the suggestion that, to Mexican illegal immigrants, Arellano is just like Rosa Parks. I imagine that Parks herself would not only see the similarity between their situations, but might even be flattered that Mexican immigrants reached across tense racial lines to find a hero worth emulating.

Parks, like Arellano, lived in a society that didn't recognize her as an equal citizen, that subjected her to capricious and opportunistic laws and exploited her labor. She, too, was a woman who became an activist, dedicated to reforming the segregationist laws she felt were unjust -- an opinion which contemporary America now collectively shares.

Parks could probably also empathize with the bravery it took to publicly defy those laws. Yes, Parks broke the law, too! In her case, a Montgomery, Ala., city ordinance segregating the buses. It was no small matter; black people in the South in the 1950s were killed for less.

Arellano, who had gained some notoriety in the year she spent hiding in a Chicago church from immigration officials trying to deport her, risked not quite as much as Parks. But she knew going public with a speaking tour very likely meant arrest, deportation and separation from her 8-year-old, American-born son -- all of which happened.

Parks was also arrested, though not beaten, as many were in that time, and sent to jail by a government looking to send a message to the unhappy black population not to get any wise ideas. After their defiance, both women were buried in criticism by those who believed they had no right to speak out because of their inherent inferiority -- Rosa because of her blackness, and Elvira for her illegality.

Arellano might be a criminal to the legal citizenry of the United States, but she's a hero to millions of the illegal residents who are too afraid to do little more than keep their heads down, pick strawberries and hope for a day that the United States starts either enforcing its laws evenly or gets rid of them. Parks certainly wasn't a hero to the South's white establishment, which liked the segregationist society and its large population of subcitizens quite fine the way they were, but her single action was the force needed to launch a long-desired bus boycott.

Obviously there are many, many differences between the two women, from the color of their skin and personal circumstance to their legal and marital status. But the biggest one is that Parks, who never meant to be a hero, is a legend. (In fact, another woman, Claudette Colvin, arrested earlier that year, was supposed to be the NAACP's test case for a bus segregation lawsuit, but was dropped when it turned out she was 15, unmarried and pregnant. Luckily, Parks came along nine months later.) Arellano, meanwhile, will more likely be a footnote in the long tale of U.S. immigration policy.

Is Elvira Arellano the next Rosa Parks? Not likely, but it's not a bad thing for anyone -- black or brown, legal or illegal -- to aspire to.