Mane de la Parra. (Photo by Carlos Alvarez/WireImage)
BY Alejandro Feregrino-. Mane de la Parra is known in Mexico and abroad as a talented actor and singer, but in his youth the story could have been very different if corruption had not taken hold in many areas of everyday Mexican life.
The brother of orchestra director Alondra de la Parra has had an important career as an actor in soap operas – What’s Wrong With My Family?, La reina soy yo and La malquerida – and has released several albums and is the author of Soundtracks for various productions.
Mane de la Parra at the Teatro de La Ciudad in Mexico. (Photo by Medios y Media/Getty Images)
But more than 20 years ago, Mane’s career was still far from the stage.
At the time, he was a promising young player in the minor divisions of Mexican football and was poised for his first big break as a pro in the promotion league.
“I left football because they asked me for money,” de la Parra said in an interview on Isabel Lascuráin’s YouTube channel.
After spending his entire childhood and adolescence at Pumas, a problem with a manager made him switch to Atlante, where he was quickly offered the opportunity he had hoped for as a goalkeeper in professional football.
“They tell me, ‘We want you to debut in Primera A’. They register me in Primera A, they pay me a salary, and while we’re on the subject, the technical director, who was a pro player at Pumas, told me, “Hey, but how much am I going to give you?” and I said him: “How much of what I’m going to give you?”
De la Parra assured that this conversation surprised him a lot as he played football every day from the age of 5 to 19.
“It turned out that everyone on the team had paid, and that seemed very bad to me. I went to talk to one of them, a friend from Juchitán, Oaxaca, who went on to become a great player, and told me that he had given him 70 percent of his salary. (…) The guy came to Mexico City from Juchitán five years ago to have the opportunity to raise his whole family and they charged him for that, it didn’t seem fair to me,” he said.
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Mane de la Parra. (Photo by Juan Naharro Gimenez/Getty Images)
So he went to the president to tell him that he had no problem giving the club a share, that they paid him little or not, but that he had been blackmailing the players’ families for a deal from the coach that came to him unfair before.
“There was a mess, fights, the coach wanted to hit me 400 times, obviously they kicked him out and I left that team. I couldn’t play for another team anymore because I was already registered (in Atlante).”
Eventually he decided to travel to the United States to play in the league that later became MLS. By this time, Mane had realized his dream of playing football at the highest level had been dashed and was determined to study something related to economics, but a phone call from his grandmother made him change his mind.
“My grandmother told me, ‘I want you to know, if there’s anything I can say to you and if anything can be my legacy, it’s to follow your dreams, because you never know how long it’s going to be.'”
The day after this conversation, Mane’s grandmother passed away and thanks to this call he decided to follow the path of music and acting.