Biography

Rita Lucía Montero (4 May 1928 – 28 June 2013) was an Argentine theatre, cinema and television actress and singer. Montero was born into an Afro-Argentine family in the Palermo neighborhood of Buenos Aires in 1928. Her parents were Severo Miguel Montero and Zelmira Oturbé. Her paternal grandparents were Sergio Pantaleón Montero and Emilia Solari. Montero's family's oral history maintained that they were descended from enslaved Africans taken to Argentina by Guillermo Brown in the mid-19th century.While still in primary school she worked with Argentina's first children's theatre company, Teatro Infantil de Angelina Pagan, appearing in the play La Venganza de Las Mariposas (The Revenge of the Butterflies). She made her film debut aged 15 when her uncle, film actor Vicente Álvarez, who was also a booking agent for black actors and performers in Buenos Aires theatres and film industry, got her a part as an extra in the 1943 film Juvenilia.