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Saturday's cleanup at Riverside Park in Riverdale Park was more than just an effort to clean the Anacostia Watershed; it was first step in solidifying a partnership that spans thousands of miles.

Members of the Ipaltecos Ausentes, a local group of expatriates from Ipala, Guatemala, the Ipalan mayor and Riverdale Park officials and residents all pitched in during the Anacostia Watershed Society's 15th annual river cleanup and Earth Day celebration.

The towns of Riverdale Park and Ipala, Guatemala became sister cities in June 2008. Sister cities register with Sister Cities International, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that promotes citizen diplomacy through partnerships between American and international towns, counties and states.

But rarely is a local immigrant community involved with a sister city partnership, according to Irayda Ruiz, visiting professor at San Carlos University in Guatemala and an at-large director of American Planning Association, an organization that helps community planning initiatives.

Ruiz helped establish the partnership with Riverdale Park and said this is one of the first times a local immigrant community is being incorporated.

"In the past, sister cities started after World War II to keep peace with Europe, then it evolved to model transnational corporations," Ruiz said. "Now, this is the third generation of it."

Most local Ipalans live in Langley Park and Silver Spring, Ipaltecos Ausentes President Carlos Hernandez said. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 28 percent of Riverdale Park's population was Latino in 2000.

Ruiz said she and local Ipalans approached many municipalities surrounding Langley Park and Riverdale Park was the most enthusiastic about becoming a sister city.

Riverdale Park Mayor Vernon Archer said he wants to find ways to integrate recent immigrants with long-time residents of the community.

"One of the constant things that I, as a community leader, try to do is find volunteers to make Riverdale Park better," he said. "And if you've got one-third or so of the community that isn't integrated with the older part, they don't get the benefits of what the community has to offer."

For local Ipalan immigrants, the partnership is also a way to change a negative perception of Latino immigrants by incorporating them into public life and volunteer efforts.

"A lot of people, they think a lot of the Spanish people in this area don't do the right things," Evail Moroy of Laurel said as he picked trash out of the stream.

Moroy said he hoped that not only would local Ipalans follow their example of helping clean up rivers, but his countrymen back home, too.

Hernandez of Hyattsville said the Ipalan and Riverdale Park communities can learn from one another.

"We're building bridges of a relationship between our community and Riverdale Park," he said. "This was an example, today. I've never done it before in my life. I wish we could have some kind of project like that in Ipala."

Ipala Mayor Roel Perez Argueta arrived in Riverdale Park early Saturday morning and helped in the cleanup effort. He is in town until Friday and is spending the week meeting local officials, touring towns and attending community events. He said he wants to take back ideas to his town to implement, like the cleanup project.

"We can teach in our [schools] environmental projects, to not pollute our town," Argueta said in Spanish. "This is a good practice for us. We have a lot of rivers which are also very contaminated."

Archer said he's organizing a group of teachers to visit Ipala this summer to teach English to local children and an Ipalan dance group will perform at Riverdale Park Day this fall.

E-mail Elahe Izadi at eizadi@gazette.net.