The real story behind the 'Charm' fantasy

Alejandra Espinosa, cultural advisor for the Disney movie 'Encanto', this Thursday in Barichara, Colombia. Camilo Rozo

The first time Alejandra Espinosa read the script, her hands shook when she saw her name written in a watermark.

The libretto narrated the life of a Colombian girl and her grandfather.

"No," he said as he read it, "this story should be about women."

Espinosa was at the Disney studios in Los Angeles, opposite Jared Bush, director of

or

.

, the company's latest film set in Colombia, was taking its first steps. Alejandra's no erased that awkward grandfather and gave life to Mirabel's grandmother, a cornerstone character in the production. Many more disagreements followed, but let's go back to the beginning. The story had started long before. In a town in Colombia where its inhabitants are known as yellowlegs because of how the earth stains the soles of their feet. This story was born in Barichara.

Espinosa was tired of Bogotá. It was 2016, he had graduated in Literature and wanted to write and paint watercolors far from the urban monster in which he had grown up and in which big cities become. A visit to this Santanderian town, seven hours by road from the capital, had crossed him years ago. “I can paint and you can set up a hostel”, she and her partner thought at the time. A year later, Espinosa, born in 1992, had turned all the houses in Barichara into watercolor, every corner of this earth-colored town with cobbled streets that has escaped the neon lights, cement and noise that flood most places in Colombia. Weekend tourists, attracted by the title of "most beautiful town" in the country, could take one of their postcards for a few pesos.

For Alejandra, history came from the factory. Daughter of the historian Diana Uribe, she decided to immerse herself in the tradition of Barichara and Santander, which was giving her so much. "I was kind of shy, like with a disability for social skills, and here I felt very safe, I flourished when I arrived." She soon became the most valued tour guide in the place. That was when a call in 2017 changed his life.

Several Disney workers wanted to make a four-day visit to Barichara and were looking for a guide who knew about history and culture. Espinosa signed a confidentiality agreement that said something like that everything he heard should be forgotten instantly. She didn't even google their names to control her nerves and not appear "groggy." But when they arrived, the "undressed" were them. There were five of them, including Bush himself and director Byron Howard. They asked a thousand questions and connected immediately. She, who transmits an overflowing passion, brought them to the kitchen of the houses, the work of the stonemasons who draw the streets and that of the women of Vélez who for six months weave those colorful skirts whose replicas

they are now sold in every toy store in the world under the Disney label.

It was a crush.

- I told them: 'Don't ruin it.'

They have to treat this with a lot of respect, it's very important because Colombia has a huge stigma, of little worth, like Mirabel [the film's protagonist].

We don't know who we are, always looking for foreign cultural models to define us.

At the center of the debate I always put identity.

He also told them "quiet" when they spoke of magical realism and asked them, instead, to refer to the wonderful real, by Alejo Carpentier. "Magical realism is not taking gratuitous magic and putting it in a jungle setting," he warned them. Gabriel García Márquez already said it: 'I'm not making anything up, I've seen everything or they've told me.' It is about understanding the worldview of the Afro and indigenous world. He told them about the sacred water for the indigenous people. He asked them that the miracle of the film be born from the river.

He led them to a small forest that surrounds some houses, to see the bougainvilleas on the balconies and to photograph the best view.

When they left, Espinosa was exhausted.

They promised him that they would talk again soon.

She thought it was a nice way to say goodbye.

She returned to her happy village life, proud of having put a grain of sand in what was to come out of the animation giant that has marked so many generations with blonde princesses.

Alejandra Espinosa, in front of the door that inspired the entrance to the family home in the movie 'Encanto'. Camilo Rozo

Disney contract

's cultural adviser

.

Alejandra's “no's” became her own brand.

- Sometimes I got nervous hanging up the calls and I thought: 'They don't call me anymore'. I think that was my value. I had no qualms about telling them: I don't like this, it doesn't work, we have to change it. It was important what message the film is going to bring to Colombians, which is to recognize yourself as you are. Mirabel's search is our own search for self-worth and self-acceptance.

Espinosa was not alone. A team of about ten people, plus a group called

that included all of Disney's Latino workers, helped make

. A very open, collective process, with “very receptive” directors. The original idea already sought that the leading role be for a large family, a metaphor for the Colombian family that would create a story of diversity. Represent Afro-Colombianity, in the characters of Antonio, Dolores and Félix, and the indigenous, in Bruno. “The indigenous people are there, they are invisible and nobody talks about them, but they are the sacred part of Colombia. It became essential to understand that, which is very well represented by Bruno”, he points out.

In the middle of the four years of work with Disney, of which Alejandra does not reveal her salary (“I did not become a millionaire”), the young woman opened the first Barichara bookstore in 2019, named

. She thus became the village bookseller. His secret was still hidden.

As I received new books I kept shaping the plot. The film does not have a specific date, but it takes place more or less at the beginning of the 20th century and starts with a displacement that affects the grandmother and the grandfather, who dies in their flight. From there, and from the river, of course, the miracle that gives life to history is born. “Grandma's journey is one of acknowledging her own trauma and letting it go. We are a traumatized society that moves on. Sometimes you have to stop, think and recognize the trauma to let it go”, explains Alejandra. His imprint on the film encompasses almost everything. He asked to erase that idea of ​​the Disney castle, which appears in other movies, away from the common people. In

, the castle is a living “little house” that is part of the community, with its doors always open.

The pandemic cut through work and prevented Disney animators from traveling to Colombia. Then Espinosa became

. Recording himself with his phone, he would visit a kitchen or a traditional house and show all its corners speaking English to send his videos to Los Angeles. Those who saw her around town thought she was crazy. He also looked at the camera very closely to show the movement of every muscle in his face or the gestures of his hands. "I told them that the characters had to be expressive, not wooden-faced." She even sent Disney a skirt from Vélez so that they could see the textures, the weight and the movement. And he even asked them to change a sequence already done in which a wedding was celebrated in "the little house". "No," he said again, "people here got married in churches."

When she had already seen more than a thousand images of Mirabel, her boyfriend (not the same one with whom she arrived in Barichara, but that's another story) told her: "They turned you into a doll." She didn't see him, but the resemblance is uncanny. “I identify with Mirabel not because of her hair and glasses, but because of her attitude, frank, honest, determined, but at the same time excited. Mirabel has a little piece of my spirit”, he assures. She asks several times not to say that she is the character, although the directors themselves confirmed in a meeting with

that she had been part of the inspiration.

- I felt that this association with her was something intimate, internal, but everyone was deprived of that and calls me Mirabel.

People come to take pictures with me.

I am proud of my cultural contribution, it does not seem valuable to me that they tell me that I am Mirabel.

When she finally saw the entire film, alone in her house in Barichara, she couldn't stop crying.

She applauded when she saw Mirabel gesticulate with her hands in a conversation with Bruno, when children run around and fill a party with noise or when the protagonist points to a gift with a movement of her lips.

"I made it!"

Alejandra went to the presentation of the film with a skirt made by the Vélez weavers, like the one Mirabel wears.

“I had that dream of going to Hollywood like that, turning a peasant skirt into a princess dress.”

Still from 'Enchantment'. DISNEY

Life goes on in Barichara

At 10 in the morning of any day of the week, Alejandra opens the doors of Aljibe.

People immediately fill up to sit at their tables, surrounded by coffee and books.

She goes to the door and asks for an arepa with cheese and avocado at the little store across the street.

She proudly steps on every stone in the streets of what is already more than her people.

A pride that now also fills the baricharas, who see their houses, their doors and their flowers reflected in the film of the giant gringo.

But not only them, the production also reflects many other areas of Colombia.

Many will still appear at the Aljibe bookstore looking for this Mirabel who is not, but a little yes.

She will always respond, even if she doesn't like it too much, with that huge smile that four years ago made the popes of Disney fall in love.

The other day a family came here.

"Look, it's her," they said, pointing at her.

The girl went to greet her.

“Do you see how princesses exist?” the mother whispered.

- I've never been especially pretty.

I am literate.

That I have a bookstore.

That this is material for a princess, that did move me.

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