Yes, his father is Puerto Rican. However, he was born in Colombia and lived there till he was three before moving to Queens.(I, myself, am also of Colombian descent (both parents) and from Queens originally.)
Although, I somewhat agree that at times he doesn't sound all that fluent in his Spanish - I think it's more so because the other actors are more experienced in acting in Spanish speaking films. He does have a fairly distinct Colombian accent in his Spanish and he grew up in a Spanish speaking household (Since both parents communicated to each other in Spanish) so he is fairly fluent in the language out of necessity. And don't forget, he spent his first three years of his life in Colombia, so it had to be the first language he learned.
The switching of English to Spanish and back is fairly common among bilinguals. For example, as a child and an adult, my sister and I have always communicated with each other in English even though we are very fluent in Spanish. Yet, growing up we'd sit at the kitchen table carry on a conversation with our mother in Spanish and then turn to each other and continue the conversation in English and vice-versa.
Why? I don't know why. I do know that both my sister and I learned English first as our mother made it a point to teach us the language first as toddlers. (Something quite unusual among Spanish speaking households.)However, I don't think that's the reason for it as I've noted the same phenomenon in other Spanish-English speaking households.)
If anyone thinks they understand why or have some sort of study about it I can reference, let me know.
As far as Leguizamo doing it in the film, I think it's a conscience effort by the director to remind the audience that this tv crew is an American crew, not a Latin Amrican one and as such, this would be a natural occurance.
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