Silverio Pérez Figueroa (born July 18, 1948 in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico) is a Puerto Rican musician, writer, comedian, entrepreneur and broadcasting media host. Early life Pérez is the oldest of the eleven children of Silverio Pérez Rosado and Victorina Figueroa Amador. The Pérez are of Sephardi Jewish Anusim origin. While Pérez was a teenager he became involved in various church singing groups and in the Puerto Rican production of Up with People. He later formed a duo, Silverio y Roxana, that specialized in Puerto Rican music, and as a result, was a guest -and later hosted- a typical Puerto Rican music television program, "Borinquen Canta", along with news broadcaster Guillermo José Torres. He later studied Chemical Engineering at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, but remained active as a part-time singer while completing his studies. He then realized that Engineering, while a lucrative career, did not fulfill his vocation as a singer. During his period as a student of the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez, Perez met and befriended such legendary figures as politician Jose Enrique Arraras, basketball star Fufi Santori and sportscaster Elliott Castro. (in Spanish) Career Pérez formally started his career with the singing group Haciendo Punto en Otro Son with four debut concerts at a night club called "La Tea" in San Juan (October 30 – November 2, 1975). This band, whose original members included Irvin García, Jossy Latorre, Nano Cabrera and Tony Croatto, toured all of Puerto Rico and some other countries, recording various albums and 8-tracks. The group faced blacklisting in some Puerto Rican towns due to the political nature of some of its songs, and experienced numerous personnel changes over time (most notably Croatto's, who as a non-native Puerto Rican felt uncomfortable by the situation). Haciendo Punto would "break up" twice during the 1980s, to be reformed in the late 1990s. After the group went into a hiatus, Pérez went into Puerto Rican television with the Los Rayos Gamma show. In Los Rayos Gamma, he teamed up with Sunshine Logroño, Jacobo Morales and Horacio Olivo to satirize Puerto Rican politics. Later on, he became the show host of the successful program, En Serio Con Silverio. In 1995, he was credited with coining the term chupacabra, referring to creatures around Puerto Rico with a habit of attacking and drinking the blood of livestock, especially goats. In 2000, he debuted in the show Anda