Late Fil-Am leader in New Mexico hailed for legacy of service

Adelamar “Dely” N. Alcantara led the successful effort to establish the Institute of Geospatial and Population Studies at the University of New Mexico. and founded a number of community organizations in New Mexico. UNM.EDU

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico – Asian and Filipino communities in New Mexico are mourning the unexpected death of Adelamar “Dely” N. Alcantara, a civic leader, an academician and outstanding role model.

Alcantara, 71, led the successful effort to set up the Institute of Geospatial and Population Studies at the University of New Mexico.

She died unexpectedly of cardiac arrest last November 3 while transiting at the international airport in Tokyo, according to her husband, Ted Jojola, a professor at the University of New Mexico.

She was returning from the Philippines, after participating in the school year opening of a Montessori school she helped to establish.

The school is named after their late son, Manoa Alcántara Jojola, an Albuquerque Academy senior who was killed in a 2000 car crash, according to an Albuquerque Journal report.

Alcantara founded the New Mexico Asian Family Center and was president of the Filipino American Foundation of New Mexico as well as the Filipino American Community Council.

She co-founded the Rio Grande chapter of the Filipino American National Historical Society, and was instrumental in getting the state Legislature to declare an official Asian-American Day.

As president of the Bataan-Corregidor Memorial Foundation of New Mexico, she helped win support for the construction and 2002 dedication of a stone memorial in Albuquerque’s Bataan Memorial Park. Her father was a Bataan Death March survivor.

Jojola told the Albuquerque Journal that his wife was “a relentless advocate for social justice and equity” committed to bringing visibility to the Asian-American community in New Mexico.

In 2018, Alcántara received the Sí Se Puede Award from United Farm Workers icon Dolores Huerta at the National Hispanic Cultural Center’s Cesar Chavez Day.

Alcantara and Jojola met in 1975 as graduate students at the East-West Center at the University of Hawaii. Jojola, who was from Isleta Pueblo, was working on his doctorate in political science, and Alcántara was working on her master’s and doctorate in sociology.

They married in 1977 and settled in New Mexico, where both eventually took positions at University of New Mexico.