“I don’t like the excess of Europeanism that exists in Chile. There is a preference for white people with blue eyes”: Chespirito’s opinion on Chileans

2023 has been a year of celebration for everything surrounding the Chespirito universe. Last February 26 marked the 50th anniversary of the broadcast of the first chapter of El Chavo del 8 as an independent series, via Channel 8 of Mexico, after its separation from a more general block named precisely Chespirito.

What was this first episode that made the legend take off? The balloon burst It was called the episode where all the classic characters in the neighborhood were introduced with the gifts and characteristics with which they would mark immortality. There, for example, Don Ramón (Ramón Valdés) gives Chavo (Roberto Gómez Bolaños) his first hit on the head with the sound of a bell, after nearly breaking a light bulb he had placed minutes before. Later, Quico (Carlos Villagrán) and Doña Florinda (Florinda Meza) inflate and set up balloons right side up, but Chavo ends up breaking them all.

For the rest, Don Ramón himself confuses Señor Barriga (Edgar Vivar) with a ball, in another mythical and usual moment of the Mexican sketch. But there are also other milestones since that first face-to-face that Mexican viewers had with the program. : This is the first time Chavo’s barrel has appeared in the neighborhood, which is strictly speaking his home; and Don Ramón oddly pays Mr. Barriga’s rent on time, acknowledging that he has already found a job. It would never happen again.

The success of the series was immediate and it didn’t take long for it to spread to Latin America. Around the mid-1970s, it began to be broadcast in Chile through TVN, so that an important part of the national territory was able to learn about the cast and its plot through the small screen.

But the greatest exercise of devotion between Chile and Chespirito took place in October 1977. During this month, the actors arrived in the country to perform a tour that began in Viña del Mar and then continued in Santiago, La Serena, Arica, Antofagasta and Rancagua.

The peak of euphoria occurred at the National Stadium in the capital, where the program performed two shows on Wednesday, October 12. An appointment that is considered the first mega-event that stands in the redoubt, long before Rod Stewart in 1989 began to make the same concept fashionable to this day.

The gates to the Colosseum opened at 9:30 a.m. and the band performed in a boxing ring located in the center circle of the court, adapted for the occasion, without ropes. At the place, 35 thousand people came to see the two functions. As if it were a football team, the characters entered one by one the lawn of Ñuñoa, where they received the applause of the public.

According to the archives of the time, the most applauded was by far Don Ramón . The stadium nearly collapsed with his mere appearance. Each of the presentations lasted about two hours and showed a basic storyline where slaps, slaps, falls, stumbles, taunts and the typical word of the program abounded: it was nothing more than a chapter of El Chavo del 8 reproduced and performed in front of an audience.

Everything was a success, but time added a political aspect. The shows at the Nacional took place four years after it was occupied as a detention and torture center following the military coup that overthrew Salvador Allende in 1973. In his autobiographical book titled Wanting without wantingpublished in 2005, Gómez Bolaños tackled the subject.

He assured that none of the actors were aware of the events that took place, but if they had known, “we would have worked on it anyway”. According to his logic, if a cancellation criterion is applied, “no actor should appear in the Zócalo of Mexico, where the memory of all those who were murdered during the tragic Decena was blurred”.

This was not the only allusion made by Gómez Bolaños to Chile in his long career. Of course, he returned several times, in TV shows or this time in 2008 when he came to present his play at the Teletón theater. 11 and 12written by him and featuring his wife, Florinda Meza.

Two years later, in 2010, The third he was able to interview him at length at his residence in Colonia del Valle, Mexico City. Sitting in a room full of memorabilia, among shiny figurines of Chapulín Colorado or Chómpiras, photographic sequences that showed him in his youth, neighborhood drawings given by cartoonist Quino and giant paintings where the entire cast of the space, except for Carlos. , the actor also had a few words for the country.

“I had the chance to meet great people, like the Chilean humorist Lucho Navarro. It was extraordinary. It’s one of my great ties with Chile, because I also wrote screenplays for him in Mexico”, he began by saying about the comedian and national impersonator who became famous in Mexico thanks, between other showcases, at the cinema.

Then Chespirito continued: “I still greatly admire your country, even if sometimes I don’t like the excess of Europeanism that exists in Chile. There is no open discrimination, but there is a preference for blue-eyed whites. It doesn’t suit Mexico.”

Where had I seen such attitudes? This is how the comedian replied: “By refraining from the other, from the American origin. And I speak of America not as the gringos apply it, but as the most real concept. It also happens in Argentina, I don’t want it to sound like a single review from Chile.

But that wasn’t the only thing he was referring to at the time. For example, he also revealed the mistakes he had made in his career: “I once made a joke in a not very drastic way about homosexuals. But then I was like, ‘what the hell? what do you do, Roberto? They have rights like everyone else”. Also for a while there was a sketch in which Ramon Valdés played a drunk and I was dying of laughter. It was to say: that drunks are nice. But it is not true: they are odious. And it is harmful.”

Gómez Bolaños finally died on November 28, 2014, at the age of 85. The tributes and applause were amplified throughout Latin America.

In this same interview with The third , already gave clues about his relationship to death. “Death doesn’t worry me: it makes me curious. It must reach us all. I think of her every day. And not now, forever. Because it’s the super unknown: what’s going to happen. It bothers me, but not too much. I don’t think anything terrible is happening,” he said.

Then he continues: “I even have a poem about her (she sits down, breathes and recites): ‘I who was going so quietly / approaching the end of my earthly life / suddenly I doubt and hesitate / is it true that there is no asylum for the soul? / that to die is to cease ‘attend? / that fleeting existence only have the transcendence they let me guess? / No, please don’t do that / Me with my free will / I dare not say my God, that there must be a mistake!/ And forgive me Lord if with this/ I bother you/ However, somehow I have to tell you:/ don’t go out with me saying that everything ends here‘”.

“I want to be remembered as a good guy. A good man. Remember me however you want because I don’t want tributes or monuments or Chavo marathons to television, or a speech from the president or anything like that,” he said.