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Eduardo Verastegui, Mexican actor, producer, former boy band singer, Tamaulipas native and independent presidential candidate, was revealed as Mr. Amigo 2024 during a ceremony at Texas Southmost College’s ITEC Center on Thursday.
ITEC’s main hall was festooned with the colors of Mexico as mariachis and costumes filled the space with traditional sounds and colors. The packed event attracted officials from as far away as McAllen.
Providing remarks for the ceremony, before the big reveal by Mr. Amigo Association President Martha de la Garza, were Brownsville Mayor John Cowen, TSC Board of Trustees Chairwoman Adela Garza, state Sen. Morgan LaMantia, U.S. Consul General in Matamoros Brianna Powers, and Mexican Consul General in Brownsville Juan Carlos Cue Vega.
Cowen described the Mr. Amigo ceremony — back in sync with Charro Days and Sombrero Fest this year — as a “landmark event for us.”
“It’s one of my favorite events of the year,” he said. “To me this event is about celebrating our unity, especially in a time of geopolitical … issues around the world.”
Cowen said Mr. Amigo is also about friendship and “celebrating our common shared values.”
“We need more of that in our world,” he said. “I really want to thank the Mr Amigo board for all of their hard work and dedication. It takes an enormous amount of work to do this. I’m so excited about Mr Amigo going back to February and Charro Days and Sombrero Fest.
“That really amplifies the message of who we are, and making sure that our families and our visitors have a really amazing and fantastic experience over a longer period of time.”
Explaining the choice for Mr. Amigo 2024, de la Garza said the recommendation — along with a prediction — was actually made back in 2015 by her mother, Aurora de la Garza, who had been active in Mr. Amigo and who died in 2020.
“She wrote down on a piece of paper, a name,” de la Garza told the crowd. “And she wrote, president: Martha de la Garza.”
The “name” was Eduardo Verastegui, who that year appeared as Father Crispin in “Little Boy” and as Eduardo Furtillo in “Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2.”
De la Garza said she keeps the piece of paper in her safe at home, and then described the circuitous, unlikely journey that led to eventually landing Verastegui as Mr. Amigo.
“It’s not easy to obtain a Mr. Amigo,” de la Garza said. “After all, it’s all volunteer, right? We don’t pay anyone to come.”
Once the announcement had been made and the mariachis died down, she asked everyone present to take out their phone and find Verastegui on Facebook, because that’s where he would be live-streaming his remarks for the ceremony. The building’s wifi signal was weak, though, so that didn’t go quite according to plan.
But it didn’t matter: Verastegui himself — phone in one hand and bouquet of flowers in the other — was approaching the podium from back of the crowd, walking fast at the head of an entourage. Immediately everyone had their phones out and aimed at him. The producer of the controversial box office hit “Sound of Freedom” (2023), which Verastegui also acted in, presented the flowers to de la Garza and launched into a lengthy speech, switching between Spanish and English.
Verastegui recounted that at one point he wanted to be a lawyer, but gave that up and moved to Mexico City to pursue his real dream of being an actor and singer. He was with the boy band Kairo for more than three years, then started acting in telenovelas, he said.
“Back in the days in Mexico, if you wanted to make a living as an actor, you didn’t have so many options like today. … If you wanted to make a living as an actor you could either do soap operas, or soap operas, and that’s what I did for almost four years,” Verastegui said.
He went to Miami to record his first solo album, and on the way to Los Angeles to promote it ran into a casting director for 20th Century Fox, who asked him to audition for a role in a movie with Sofia Vergara, Verastegui said.
The only problem, as he told the casting director, he he could barely speak English.
“He said don’t worry about it, because 90% of the film you are going to be sleeping,”
Nevertheless, Verastegui immersed himself in English, landing the part and appearing alongside Vergara in “Chasing Papi” (2003).
His interests eventually led to more serious projects, such as “Sound of Freedom,” which purports to shine a light on the global child sex-trafficking trade. Much of Verastegui’s speech detailed the years-long, difficult process of getting the movie made. The film has been a surprise breakout hit at the box office, though it has also been the subject of criticism for how it handles the subject.
The outspoken anti-abortion advocate also touched on his long-shot bid for Mexico’s presidency. Verastegui has said he wants to end access to abortion in Mexico as well as child sex trafficking, and has said doctors who perform abortions should be imprisoned for a “minimum of 100 years,” according to a September Reuters interview in which Verastegui also described Donald Trump as “my friend.”
“Long live the United States, long live Mexico and long live liberty,” Verastegui said, winding down his long speech.
