Gregory Sierra

Gregory Sierra (January 25, 1937 – January 4, 2021) played the role of Julio Fuentes, a Puerto-Rican junk dealer from New York City who moves next door to the Sanfords, arousing the ire of Fred. Gregory was a seasoned veteran actor known for his roles as Detective Sergeant Chano Amenguale on the ABC-TV series Barney Miller and as Julio on Sanford and Son.

Acting career
Gregory also guest-starred in an episode of All in the Family as Paul Benjamin, a Jewish radical vigilante activist and reactionary and member of the Hebrew Defense Association in an unusually dramatic episode of AITF titled "Archie is Branded". Benjamin had been working with the Hebrew Defense Association, an organization whose goal it was to stop anti-Semitism in the neighborhood. In the plot, he volunteers in helping to chase away neo-Nazi thugs presiding in the neighborhood who spray-painted a swastika on the Bunkers' front door. He is later killed by a car bomb planted by the neo-Nazis. After that he spent two years as part of the ensemble cast of the ABC-TV sitcom series Barney Miller, as Detective Sergeant Chano Amengual. He later went on to star as Dr. Tony Menzies on the unsuccessful sitcom TV series A.E.S. Hudson Street.

In 1980 Sierra was cast as South American anti-Communist revolutionary "El Puerco" — whose friends simply call him "El" — on the ABC-TV serial spoof comedy series SOAP, figuring prominently in the series' unresolved final episode in 1981. In 1984, he briefly became a main cast member of the then-new TV drama Miami Vice where he played Lieutenant Lou Rodriguez; he asked to be written out of the series after just four episodes. More recently he had regular roles on the TV shows Zorro and Son, Something is Out There, and the 1996 CBS-TV legal/drama series Common Law.

In 1992, Gregory played pernicious drug dealer Felix Barbossa in the Bill Duke-directed Deep Cover, which also starred Laurence Fishburne] and Jeff Goldblum. He also played a man named Villanazul in the low-budget 1998 movie The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit. He also appeared as Corbin Entek in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Second Skin".

Sierra was of Puerto Rican descent. He has performed with the National Shakespeare Conservatory in the New York Shakespeare Festival. He lived in Laguna Woods, California. Sierra died on January 4, 2021, after a long battle with cancer.