ALMA Awards: Del Toro, ‘Orange Is the New Black’ actors honored

Director Guillermo del Toro, “Orange is the New Black” actors Selenis Leyva and Dascha Polanco, and rapper Pitbull are among the most recent roster of American Latino Media Arts winners.

They received their awards Friday at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in ceremonies hosted by Eva Longoria and Mario Lopez that were telecast live on MSNBC.

This was the 15th annual presentation of the awards honoring Latinos in the entertainment industry, which are given by the National Council of La Raza.

Del Toro, whose diverse body of work includes “Pan’s Labyrinth,” “Pacific Rim,” and “Kung Fu Panda 2,” won the Anthony Quinn Award for Industry Excellence.

Leyva and Polanco won for special achievement in television, playing female prison inmates in “Orange Is the New Black.” The Netflix series “accentuates the work of its multicultural bevy of talented Latino actresses, whose roles have broken barriers,” the ALMA sponsors said in a statement announcing this year’s winners.

Director Diego Luna’s 2014 feature film “Cesar Chavez” won for special achievement in film, portraying the struggles of the Mexican American labor and civil rights leader’s struggles to organize California farm workers.

Pitbull won for special achievement in music; the rapper from Miami is no stranger to Southern California awards ceremonies, having hosted the 2013 American Music Awards at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles.

Charo, a Las Vegas fixture as a singer-dancer-guitarist, received the Ricardo Montalban Award for lifetime achievement. The long-running Mexico City rock band Cafe Tacuba won the Tu Mundo award, another career achievement honor.

Daisy Fuentes won the ALMA Vanguard award for pioneering work in the 1990s as MTV’s first Latina veejay, and Tony Gonzalez won the Outstanding Service to Cause and Community Award; Gonzalez transitioned this year from the gridiron, where he was one of the NFL’s greatest tight ends, to the media world as a commentator on CBS’ “The NFL Today” Sunday broadcasts.

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