Alonso R. del Portillo (born Alonso Rafael del Portillo-Leyva in June 1960 in Havana, Cuba) is a Cuban-American genealogist and former aide to Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

Mr. del Portillo left Cuba when he was 13 months old during the Operation Peter Pan transport in July 1961 and did not return to Cuba until exactly 33 years later in July 1994. Since then he has traveled to Cuba on numerous occasions and has met with dissidents and members of the Cuban regime.

In 1988, he started to work with then Florida State Senator Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and when she was elected in 1989 to fill the US congressional seat of Claude Pepper he became her Assistant District Director. Later he became her immigration and State Department specialist. From 1989-1996, he assisted more then 15,000 persons with problems with the US government among them, assisting the parents of singer Rey Ruiz immigrate from Cuba and assisted with the human interest paroles of the family members of Pedro Zamora, the AIDS activist and The Real World: San Francisco cast member who died one week after they arrived in 1994. He would later speak at his memorial service held on Miami Beach.

He is the eldest child of Alonso J. del Portillo-Tamargo and Zonia S. Leyva-Rodriguez. He attended St. Theresa School in Coral Gables, Florida and later graduated from Belen Jesuit Preparatory School in 1978. He later studied history and international relations at Florida State University. At one time he was the president of the Dade-County Young Republicans. He has been interested in genealogy since his early teens and only since 1994 has he been dedicating most of his spare time to it. He is a member of the Cuban Genealogical Society and the Cuban Genealogy Club. He was married briefly to Ana Paula Collings, a Brazilian model.

He comes from a long line of lawyers, his grandfather, Alonso del Portillo Marcano, was a prominent Attorney-Notary in Cuba, as were his great-grandfathers, Miguel Luis Tamargo-Bautista and Alonso del Portillo-del Junco. His cousin, Mauricio J. Tamargo, is lawyer and the is the 14th Chairman of the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission, as well as his youngest sister, Isabel S. del Portillo, and his uncle, Raul del Portillo-Gonzalez are also lawyers. His 11th great grandfather was Rodrigo del Junco the Spanish Governor of Florida in 1592 and he is 2nd great grand nephew of General Luis Marcano-Alvarez who fought in the Cuban War of Independence. He is also 3rd cousins to the Cuban-American politicians, Alex Diaz de la Portilla, Miguel Angel Diaz de la Portilla, and Renier Diaz de la Portilla.

References

Pedro and Me: Friendship, Loss, and What I Learned by Judd Winick (2000; Henry Holt & Co.)

Historia de Familias Cubanas (Ediciones Universal, Miami, Florida 1985 ISBN 0-89729-380-0)

Origenes - Compendio Historico Genealogico del Linea Zayas Descendencia del Infante Don Jaime de Aragon (Zayas Publishing, 2003, ISBN 0-9672876-0-X)

The International Jesuit Alumni Directory Belen (Bernard C. Harris Publishing Company Inc, 2004) MCNH-W54-4-4.OVA, page 74

The International Jesuit Alumni Directory Belen (Forum Press Inc., 1994), page 254

Belen Jesuit Prep Echoes Vol. XVI, 1978, Taylor Publishing Company, page 208

Belen Jesuit Prep Echoes Vol. XV, 1977, page 174

The Miami Herald - March 5, 1990 - LOCAL

The Miami Herald - January 7, 2000 - DIVORCES