Daniel del Solar: Latino Media Activist Passes

Daniel at Congressman Honda's Washington D.C. office
June 13, 1940 - January 13, 2012

Daniel del Solar, Latino media activist, documentarian, videographer, photographer, and poet died today in Oakland, California, at the age of 71, after a long, valiant battle with metastatic prostate cancer. 

Daniel was born in Chile and grew up in Mexico, New York, Mill Valley and Santa Monica. After graduating from Santa Monica High he attended Harvard University. Daniel went on to a varied career in public media, from the KPFA-FM Comunicación Aztlán programming collective in the early 1970s to National Director of Training and Development at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) in Washington D.C. in the mid-1970s. 

As a leader in innovative multicultural public broadcast programming, he also worked with KQED-TV’s “Open Studio,” served as General Manager of KALW-FM, San Francisco, from 1985–1992, and as General Manager of WYBE-TV, Philadelphia from 1992–1995, with TV programs he produced broadcast by PBS stations in many cities, including Boston, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, and San Francisco. He was on the national board of Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting (CIPB). He also served as Development Director of the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts. His lifelong involvement with and contributions to Latino/a equality and culture include his work as co-producer of a weekly KPFA radio magazine, “Reflecciónes de la Raza,” contributions to the current KPFA weekly program “La Raza Chronicles,” and many other radio and video productions. 

With leading Bay Area poets, he was a founding co-editor of Tin Tan (a now legendary San Francisco Chicano/Latino cultural magazine). Many of his photographs have appeared in books, exhibits, and online, and will be featured in an upcoming book about the stepwells of India. He was a co-producer of “Chile: Promise of Freedom,” an audio CD distributed on worldwide radio by the Freedom Archives. He often reported on events in Cuba, Chile, Nicaragua, and Venezuela and was active in many Latin American social justice and solidarity movements. 

Daniel comes from a prominent Chilean family that can trace their roots to the original conquistadores of Venezuela and Chile. His father was the editor of a major Santiago, Chile newspaper. His mother Luchita Hurtado currently resides in Santa Monica, California and Taos, New Mexico. Daniel's mother later married noted Austrian and Mexican surrealist painter Wolfgang Paalen and UCLA professor and artist Lee Mullican.

At high school he met his long time friend musician Ry Cooder. Danny explained to me that he introduced Cooder to traditional Cuban Music. Apparently there is a scene in the Buena Vista Social Club movie where he receives a cassette. Danny gave it to him. On one of the later CDs Daniel is mentioned and thanked.

 Jesús Manuel Mena Garza notes: 

I remember Daniel for being a world traveler. He was always off to places I could never afford to visit. Daniel was a fervent supporter of Fidel Castro and Hugo Morales. Though I didn't care much for leaders for life, Daniel was unashamedly a supporter. I met Daniel in the early 1970s at KPFA radio. He was a vocal advocate for public broadcasting and was saddened by the increased commercialization of public media. I am hopeful that his media collection finds a home at a university archive. 

Daniel while on his many journeys always found a place to stay at my home in Southern California. We would talk about politics and technology, edit photos and videos. By the way, many years ago, Daniel and his late wife Susan Miriam Castelan married Annie and I on a cold-wintery morning in San Francisco. We wouldn't have had it any other way. 

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