LAHSA Commissioners

Moctesuma Esparza

Moctesuma Esparza was appointed by Mayor Villaraigosa to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority Commission in 2009.

Moctesuma Esparza, award-winning filmmaker, producer, entertainment executive and entrepreneur is well known for his contribution to the movie industry and his commitment to providing access and opportunities for Latinos in Hollywood. A partner in the highly successful Esparza-Katz Productions, he has worked with stars such as Robert Redford, Jennifer Lopez, Jimmy Smits, Martin Sheen and Halle Berry. Most recently, he produced Walkout, an upcoming HBO film based on the true life events of the 1968 Walkouts that happened at five East Los Angeles High Schools. The films star Alexa Vega, Michael Pena and Efren Ramirez. Additional Production credits include: Selena, Introducing Dorothy Dandridge; Gettysburg; Cisco Kid; The Price of Glory; Selma, Lord Selma; The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez; and The Milagro Beanfield War. He has won over 200 awards, including an Emmy for Cinco Vidas and an Academy Award nomination for Agueda Martinez - Our People, Our Country.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, Esparza has not forgotten his humble beginnings and is dedicated to giving back to his community. Esparza's father, Francisco, came to the United States in 1918 during the Mexican Revolution from Jalisco, Mexico. He worked as a farm worker and

railroad hand from Texas to Utah to California where he settled in Los Angeles. Esparza grew up with a strong sense of social justice and remembers the education, principles and values he learned from his father, and incorporated them in his lessons for his own children and all American Latino youth.

As a UCLA student in the late 1960's Moctesuma Esparza played an active role in the student youth movement. He was a founder of MECHA, and leader in the famous Chicano Student Walkouts of 1968 for which he and 12 others were arrested. He was also present with a film crew at the August 1970 National Chicano Moratorium march against the Vietnam War. The footage he shot there eventually was incorporated into the film Requiem 29.

For more than thirty years, Esparza has maintained his commitment to the Latino Community from his first "Only Once in a Lifetime" (1979) to one of his best-known films, "Selena" (1997).

But there is another side to this remarkable Latino producer. As an entrepreneur he acquired the franchise for the first all Latino owned cable company, Buenavision Cable TV in East L.A., which he built and operated. Moctesuma learned early on the business of art, he explains, "I learned that a movie has to be made for a market, and film is truly a marriage of Art and Commerce." Today, in addition to producing films he has also established a chain of movie theatre complexes, called Maya Cinemas.

A lifelong entrepreneur and businessman, Mr. Esparza served as Chair of the Board of the New American Alliance Institute from 2000-2003, an organization of American Latino business leaders united to promote the economic advancement of the Latino Community in America from 2000. New America Alliance is organized on the principle that American Latino businesspersons have a special responsibility to lead the process of building the forms of capital most crucial to Latino progress - economic capital, political capital, human capital and the practice of philanthropy.