El 12 de marzo/March 12th

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Photo from hectorbustamante.com. Click HERE. 
¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Héctor Luis Bustamante! (1972-  )

A Colombian-American actor who came to the U.S. with his family when he was twelve, Bustamante has been in multiple television shows, films, and video games. Recently, he was in Academy Award winning Mexican director Alejandro Iñárritu's virtual reality project Carne y Arena (Virtually Present, Physically Invisible), which explores the human condition of immigrants and refugees. The project premiered at Cannes in 2017 and was then featured at museums in Milan, Mexico City, and Los Angeles (click HERE for more on the Los Angeles exhibit). Participants in the short virtual reality project, which was based on extensive interviews by Iñárritu with immigrants and refugees he met, experience what immigrants from Mexico and Central America experience crossing the border while learning more about their life stories. Bustamante has said that the goal of the project was to simply tell the truth about the immigrants and refugees' lives and to let the viewers then make up their own minds. Bustamante, who was in New York City for 9/11, also has a deep admiration for the United States' military and has participated in projects communicating this, including the 2013 Caribe Road series (click HERE for interview with Bustamante about this series). Bustamante was always into the arts, as he was a 1989 Governor's School of NJ Art Scholar (and the art director for NJ Golf Magazine by the age of 18). He was in his high school's production of West Side Story, but after the drama teacher (who he did like) told him that he most likely wouldn't make it in Hollywood because of his thick accent, he decided to attend Parsons School of Design in New York City. He paid for school by working security jobs on the side, and in 1999 he moved to San Francisco for a good-paying job in security. While there, he attended Shelton's Actors' Studio, where he studied under mentor Jean Shelton. This eventually led to his first roles in television programs (The Agency, NYPD Blue). In 2003 he resigned from his security job and moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting full time. Learn more in this 2010 interview with him from Eye on Entertainment.

For resources for teaching Spanish, Level 1 through AP, CLICK HERE.


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