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Carlos Jos\u00e9 S\u00e1nchez Jaramillo, the actor most famously known for playing Juan Valdez, has passed away at age 83. The New York Times<\/a> reports that the Colombian actor and painter died on December 29th in Medell\u00edn.<\/p>\n Confirmed in an email from the Colombia’s National Federation of Coffee Growers<\/a>, S\u00e1nchez’s death comes some 12 years after his retirement from the role of Juan Valdez, a character he donned for almost 40 years. As the NYT notes, the Valdez character\u2014and by extention S\u00e1nchez\u2014was “an indefatigable farmer with a warm expression, a lush mustache and a mule named Conchita” that “became an avatar for the farmers who harvested Colombia\u2019s coffee beans and a positive depiction of a country that was often equated with terrorism and drug trafficking.”<\/p>\n \u201cI presented the image of the Colombian coffee grower, an honest man, hard-working, traditional,\u201d Mr. S\u00e1nchez told The New York Times in 2001<\/a>. \u201cJuan Valdez would get up early, pick coffee, and what happened in time is the character became mythologized.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The character took home multiple advertising awards and was the mascot for multiple cafes in America named after him, according to the article. It was a role that S\u00e1nchez defined, and after 36 years playing him, Valdez became part of S\u00e1nchez as well. He described the idea of losing the role\u2014which became a very real possibility when coffee prices dropped in the late 90s\u2014as akin to losing a limb.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like a flag,\u201d he said at a news conference. \u201cI feel like I\u2019ve represented the country.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Carlos S\u00e1nchez is survived by his wife and two children. Though his spirit lives on through actor Carlos Casta\u00f1eda, who assumed the icon role back in 2006, there will never truly be another Juan Valdez.<\/p>\n Zac Cadwalader<\/a>\u00a0is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas.\u00a0Read more Zac Cadwalader\u00a0on Sprudge<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Top image via the New York Times<\/em><\/p>\n The post Juan Valdez Is Dead<\/a> appeared first on Sprudge<\/a>.<\/p>\n Source: Coffee News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Carlos Jos\u00e9 S\u00e1nchez Jaramillo, the actor most famously known for playing Juan Valdez, has passed away at age 83. The New York Times reports that the Colombian actor and painter…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[26],"tags":[63,27,65,33,61,32,59,31,30],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1641"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1641\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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