
Francisco "Pancho" Pando Cazorla (born 3 May 1945) is a Chilean former professional basketball player who played for the national team and for Arabe Valparaiso, Bata, and Unión Española from 1965 to 1973. Pando emigrated to the United States in 1970, cutting short his highly successful basketball career (although he returned to much fanfare from 1971 to 1973), and he and his family ultimately settled in New Jersey in 1973.
Biography

Pando while playing for the national team
Francisco Pando Cazorla was born in Valparaiso, Chile on 3 May 1945, the son of Christian Democratic Party activists Humberto Pando Alcaino and Maria Cazorla Ortiz. His father was of Spanish (including Basque) heritage, while his mother's family originated in the Spanish region of Andalusia and was of partial Sephardic Jewish heritage; he was approximately 49% Spanish, 23% Portuguese, 12% Native American, 5% English, 3% Irish, 2% French, 2% Welsh, 1% Eastern European, and 1% Jewish. Pando was raised on Cerro Larrain along with his three siblings, and he started playing basketball at the age of 12. In 1965, he became a professional basketball player, playing for Arabe Valparaiso, Bata, and then for the national team. Along with fellow Chilean basketball legends Francisco "Kiko" Valenzuela, Mario Donoso, Juan Linchnovski, Juan Guillermo Thompson, Jose Luis "Pipa" Verdejo, Jose Pletikosic, Luis Lamig, Rene Hola, "Huaso" Arizmendi, and others, he completed in international championships such as the 1966 Campeonato Mundial Extraordinario Basketball Masculino, played in the United States in North Carolina, played against the Soviet national team, once "humiliated" (according to a Chilean newspaper) the Harlem Globetrotters in a 67-56 game in 1967, and defeated Brazil 74-68 in 1968. Pando was one of the most famous and successful Chilean basketball players of all time, but he cut his career short following the rise to power of Salvador Allende's Socialist-Communist coalition in 1970. The increasing poverty, crime, and political violence in Chile led to many families - including the Pando family - being forced to subsist on basic amenities from the black market, in which several communist distant relatives were involved.
Ultimately, Pando and his wife Marta Gomez decided to emigrate to the United States in search of a better life, initially settling in Jersey City, New Jersey. There, Pando worked as a stevedore, earning for his family with a union job. In 1971, Pando, his wife, and their first daughter briefly returned to Chile, where Pando resumed his basketball career with Unión Española, coached by the famous head coach Dan Peterson. Pando, Berkley Bute, Edgardo Arismendi, Gary Eyber, José Becerra, Roberto Barrera, José Miller, Manuel Carrasco, Miguel Ferrer, and Jaime Figueroa distinguished themselves in six games, and, following the 1973 Chilean coup d'etat and the end of Allende's regime, Pando, his wife, and their two children returned to the United States, living in Union City and Bayonne in North Jersey. There, Pando put his children through private school through his hard work, and his wife Marta also trained as a secretary, with both of them working hard and elevating their family to the middle-class. In 1984, the family moved to suburban Atlantic Highlands in Monmouth County on the Jersey Shore, and Pando worked as a truck driver for over twenty years as his three children became the first generation of their family to attend and graduate from college. While Pando's children eventually moved on to start their own lives in New York City, New York; Hoboken, New Jersey; and Richmond, Virginia; he and his wife Marta continued to live in Atlantic Highlands, and Pando continued to be featured in and interviewed by Chilean sports publications such as Lalo Sepulveda's Timeout program and honored in video tributes and Chilean journals.