Manolo Betancur was a hero to many long before he was named the overall winner of Tiptree’s 2021 World Bread Awards. A longtime leader on Charlotte’s diverse east side, Betancur has made community and immigrant advocacy core to his business. He bought a half-stake in Las Delicias, the first Latino bakery in town, in 2011 and renamed it Manolo’s Bakery after buying out his business partner in 2018. His motto is “Nuestro Pan, Nuestra Gente, Nuestro Futuro”: our bread, our people, our future.

Betancur beat out bakers from across the country to snag this year’s top prize. The American Bakers Association and the International Baking Industry Exposition present the annual awards, sponsored this year by English jam-maker Tiptree. The awards typically focus on the bread — the panel of judges convenes in Manhattan to evaluate hundreds of loaves — but during the pandemic, they’ve shifted to celebrate the bakers themselves.

Betancur distinguished himself with his service and leadership, which didn’t let up when the coronavirus took hold of Charlotte — and his family. In January, he collected blankets to donate to residents of Uptown’s tent city, but he and his wife came down with Covid just before he could deliver them. The community he’d served for decades stepped up to make sure the neighbors received the donation. 

Amid economic chaos and scary uncertainty, Betancur wanted to make sure every child in his community could count on one thing: birthday cake. He donated dozens of cakes to kids in need, an extension of his persistent belief in the power of support. During an uncertain time, he said in a statement, “many think they can’t change what’s happening around them, but with the right support, we can change our future by creating opportunities that will allow us to grow and keep dreaming.”

After a prestigious education at Colombia’s naval academy, Betancur took his own future in his hands in 2001, when he moved to Miami with two changes of clothes and $900. His winding road to Charlotte included a degree in modern languages from King University in Tennessee and a stint in AmeriCorps, where he witnessed the hardships of immigrant farm work. He dedicated himself to immigrant advocacy before fighting his own deportation battle. 

Soon after moving to North Carolina in 2005, Betancur received deportation orders. He spent $20,000 and traveled to Washington, D.C., to plead his case before a federal judge. Persuaded by his contributions in the U.S., the judge dropped the charges, and Betancur pursued a path to citizenship.

He’s still sensitive to immigrant issues, though, and he considered leaving Charlotte in 2018, after persistent Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids on the east side led sales at the bakery to drop by 70 percent. It was the community that convinced him to stay. He told Queen City Nerve in 2019 that “there have been too many demonstrations of love and affection and sense of community that have made me realize that good people are more than the bad people, and the bad people is just a minority.”

Those good people are the “nuestra gente” of Betancur’s motto, inseparable from the communion of bread and the hope of the future. The Bread Hero award recognizes his adversity and honors his contributions — baked and beyond — in his adopted country.

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