Casiano Ancalle

Casiano Ancalle, a Quechua Indian, was born in Oruro, Bolivia in May 22, 1948. As Quechua was his first language, he learned Spanish as a second language when attending elementary school, and English when attending graduate studies in the US. He is married to Aleyda Reyes from Puerto Rico. He has five (5) sons and daughters. His acting skills have been put in practice late in his life, which was mostly spent as a political leader and a professional engineer. Going through heavy economical constraints and racial and religious discrimination all along his years attending public schools, he graduated from high school with outstanding grades; and later as a Civil Engineer at the Technical University of Oruro in 1970. After working for a year and a half as an engineer in Bolivia, he received a scholarship to the United States from the Latin American Scholarship Program of American Universities (LASPAU). He first attended graduate school at the University of Houston, Texas, and then graduated from The Pennsylvania State University with the degree of MS in Sanitary Engineering in 1975. His leadership skills sprang in his early youth. He was elected student president of the Aniceto Arce High School during the social unrest of 1964, motorized by the student's movement that ended in a military coup that overthrew President Victor Paz Estensoro from power. In 1969, during the turbulent years of the leftist military government of Gen. Alfredo Ovando Candia and the Teoponte guerrillas, he was elected President of the Revolutionary Committee of the students of the Facultad Nacional de Ingenieria (FNI) of the Technical University of Oruro. Because of his political stand, openly against Marxism, he was kicked out from the university but managed to graduate and move to the US. After finishing his studies in the US, and back in Bolivia, the President of Bolivia, Hugo Banzer Suarez named him President of the Development Corporation of Oruro to fill the regional political vacuum prevalent in those days. He was ratified in this position for all coming presidents until the Military Coup of July 1980; which overthrew elected President Lidia Gueiller. He was imprisoned for two weeks but managed to flee to exile on August 1980. He spent exile in Hagerstown, Maryland, USA, working as an engineer. As democracy returned to Bolivia with President Hernán Siles Suazo, he returned to Bolivia to be ratified as President of the Development Corporation of Oruro. He stayed in this position until the return to power of President Victor Paz Estensoro, who removed him from that position in 1986. Widowed from his first wife Diana Fernandez, he moved to Puerto Rico for a rest from public life in the middle of 1988. However in 1992, he joined the international movement of evangelicals committed to influence Latin American politics with Christian principles. So, he returned to Bolivia as the leader of a brand new political party named Bolivian Renewal Alliance. He ran for president in the 1993 national elections. His party occupied the sixth position among fourteen parties. He makes his living as a Civil Engineer. His professional career was done in several countries but mostly in Bolivia, United States and Puerto Rico; where in 1992 started his own engineering company, CA Engineering. In October 2014 and because of his Bolivian origin, he was approached by casting companies in Puerto Rico for the film "Our Brand is Crisis" starring Sandra Bullock. The film's director, David Gordon Green selected him for the role of Campesino Leader, and Ancalle flew to New Orleans to film his role. Right after filming, he was hired in Puerto Rico as a speech coach for the same film.