His father, poet and journalist Justo Rodriguez Santos, who had affiliations with the Orígenes literary group, initially stayed behind in Cuba to support the Cuban Revolution.

[7] As a director, Leon Ichaso's first movie was the Spanish-language feature El Super (1979), based on an Off-Broadway play about an immigrant building superintendent trying to make his way in New York, which he co-directed with Orlando Jiménez Leal.

Ichaso later directed Wesley Snipes's Sugar Hill (1994), a character study wedded to a violent crime drama of a New York drug empire.

[9] Ichaso made Azúcar Amarga (Bitter Sugar), a Spanish language film about a disillusioned Cuban Communist, in the Dominican Republic and Cuba in 1996.

[13] Execution of Justice (Showtime, 1999) was also derived from a play of the same name by Emily Mann which detailed the events behind the murders of San Francisco mayor, George Moscone, and supervisor, Harvey Milk.