Actor, producer and activist Wilmer Valderrama flew in from Los Angeles to speak as the Distinguished Speaker Series guest last Thursday night in the Performing Arts Complex in Edinburg.
Valderrama described what growing up in Venezuela and then moving to the United States was like.
“My mother and my father fell in love in Miami, and they married,” he said. “They had my sister and myself, and they decided back in 1983 it was time to return to Venezuela.”
Valderrama said he had not expected the need to learn English after moving to Venezuela.
“But man, I was really wrong,” he said.
Valderrama said he came from a small town where there was not much to do.
“So, I would go to school activities and decided to dance and sing and act,” he said. “I just did it for fun because there was just nothing to do.”
The armed forces, led by a general named Hugo Chavez, attempted to take power by force in Venezuela. Valderrama said his parents decided to sell everything and return to the United States in 1993.
“I was about 13, 14 years old,” he said. “They didn’t know how to speak English, and we came here, like every immigrant family, we came here to work.”
His father asked him to get the education that he and his mother never had.
“I decided I was going to be the first one in my family to speak English,” Valderrama said.
He learned English in eight months and continued to learn due to acting.
Valderrama would attend agent-submissions-only auditions and write down fake agency names and his pager number.
“I would sit next to the people auditioning, and I would look over to the left, and I would just memorize the lines over people’s shoulders,” he said.
Eventually, an agent he met helped him get the role of Fez from “That 70s Show.”
“My story is a pure example of the American dream,” Valderrama said. “The reason why that’s important is because the American dream only exists because immigrants make it happen.”
The audience cheered at his words before he continued.
“Because we have a commitment to ourselves, to our family, and a purpose. …We came here to work.”
He said the audience has an opportunity to redefine not just the generation, but the culture and what is contributed.
“In this very moment, there is a little bit of a conflict of who we are as a culture and what we represent to this country,” Valderrama said. “There’s some difference of opinion, and this is not a political statement. This is a human issue because from the Asian community to the African-American community to the Latino community to any immigrant who has come from around the world, multiple generations before us, came here for one purpose. They came to this land and brick-by-brick made it a country.”
He said young people are growing up with the word immigration and thinking that it’s a problem.
“I’m sorry?” he said with a small laugh. “Immigration is the biggest gift this country has ever had.”
The audience clapped and cheered at his remark.
“Immigration is the blood that goes through the veins of this United States of America,” Valderrama said.
Actor George Takei will be the next speaker for the Distinguished Speaker Series. For more information, visit https://www.utrgv.edu/involvement/student-activities/distinguished-speaker-series/index.htm.
