MIAMI.- Oscar Álvarez, an actor away from the spotlight and a fervent activist for the rights of immigrants, died on Saturday, June 13, in Miami, after suffering cardiorespiratory arrest. He was 85 years old.
The news of the death was confirmed by Álvarez’s widow, Isabel Cancio, who spoke with DIARIO LAS AMÉRICAS about her husband of five decades.
Álvarez had undergone hip surgery. And although he seemed to have recovered, his health deteriorated. He died at Jackson Memorial West Hospital, where he suffered three cardiorespiratory arrests.
“He had just finished the operation, he had fallen. He came out of the operation very well, but for a person of that age, sitting there, lying there, because he no longer had the courage to get up and do the exercises, to do all the therapy that he had to do alone at home, without anyone helping. He didn’t let me help him, because that always happens. The closest person never has influence,” Cancio said.
“They stopped him three times there in the hospital. He was very weakened, he didn’t have much desire to eat, he ate very little. He only got up with the walker to go take a shower. And that’s how he began to fade away. In January he weighed 181 pounds and he died at 156.”
Before emigrating to the United States in 1989, Álvarez worked as a theater, film and television actor in his native Cuba.
On the big screen, he was under the direction of filmmaker Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, known as Titón, in productions such as Hasta Certain Point (1983), among many others.
On television he stood out with characters in the so-called Adventures, fiction series for a young audience.
His time on stage was with the emblematic group Teatro Estudio, founded in 1958 by the brothers Raquel and Vicente Revuelta.
“Acting for him was freeing himself from many things. An actor frees himself when he is in the theater, rehearsing a play. All of that gave him a liberation of spirit.”
But upon arriving in exile with his young son, he had to work to make his way, although he tried to continue his acting career outside the island, where his wife was still with whom he reunited some time later.
“She tried to do something, but she had to support the child. In addition, the rehearsals, which were at night, took up a lot of her time, and she had to work early. She had to leave. I arrived two years later, because they punished me and didn’t let me leave,” recalled the also retired theater actress.
However, Álvarez found another vocation: civil activism. Until almost the end of his years he dedicated himself to being a defender of the rights of immigrants through a non-profit organization.
“He felt fulfilled when he managed to start working with Americans for Immigrant Justice, which helps immigrants from any country with immigration problems. He researched and learned so much about it that he became a paralegal. And he even had accreditation to go to prisons to interview prisoners. He worked there for more than 15 years, until he retired after 80, ending the pandemic.”
“There they adored him for the way he worked, that he didn’t stop until he found a solution. They made a documentary about a Guatemalan family that he managed to get citizenship. It’s called Visionarios, it’s on YouTube.”
Moved, Cancio described her husband as an “idealistic and righteous” man, who was against any type of injustice and who liked to serve others.
