Cuban actor Manolo Villaverde died this Saturday, January 10 in Daytona Beach, Florida. He was 89 years old.
Villaverde is remembered for his work on the television program “Qué Pasa USA?”, where he played the character of Pepe, the father of a family of Cuban exiles.
In fact, the Facebook profile that remembers this production said goodbye to him in this way: “Rest in peace Manolo Villaverde, our Pepe Peña (…) was not just a character: he was the Cuban father of all, guiding us with humor, love and wisdom.”
The series, the first bilingual television program in the US in living memory, was produced by WPBT, Miami’s public television station. It was broadcast between 1977 and 1980.
A life in relation to the USA
Villaverde was born in 1934, but traveled to the United States from an early age.
According to summarized The New Herald In an interview where he highlighted his vocation for painting, after studying accounting in New York and enlisting in the US Navy, in 1958 he returned to Cuba, where he immediately joined the University Theater of Havana.
Over time, he joined the casts of the most important dramatized spaces of the CMQ Television until 1964, when he went into exile via Mexico, after having been arrested twice for circulating propaganda against the revolution.
The Cuban journalist Wilfredo Cancio remembered him from Facebook in this way: “An actor with formidable acting abilities in both comedy and drama, Villaverde worked intensely in Spanish-language theater and television in the United States, but he will be remembered particularly for his participation in the memorable costumbrista program that marked a before and after in television production, Cuban-American identity and Hispanic culture in general.”
“My debut was in The tattooed rosealong with Norma Zúñiga. I remember that in the audience was Pepe Bahamonde, the producer of What’s up, USA?who suggested that I play Pepe Peña. And after refusing three times, I ended up accepting,” the actor recalled for the Herald.
Seven years ago, Villaverde, who was also a painter, attributed the success of the series to the fact that the reality of the immigrant is still very similar to that of when it premiered 40 years ago.
