“Iván Duque has the soul of a YouTuber”

Daniel Samper Ospina portrayed in his studio.

Bogotá, February 8, 2022. Camilo Rozo

Serafin opens the door rudely and it soon becomes clear that he doesn't like strangers at all.

He barks and shows his teeth from the doorway.

From the back of the house, Daniel Samper Ospina (Bogotá, 1974) warns before the matter escalates: "Be careful, bite."

Serafín, a dog that suffers from alopecia, became known after breaking the record for participation in adoption fairs without anyone wanting to take him home.

Claudia García, his wife, gave it to Samper Ospina for his birthday.

The truth is that he was right, he hits a lot as a company for a journalist, writer and youtuber with a mocking character concerned about social inequalities.

Every Saturday he stars in Bogotá in the play with P de Polombia, a fierce critic of the Colombian political class.

Ask.

How many times a day are you confused with his father (also a journalist and writer Samper Ospina Pizano)?

Answer.

8,000 (this was the name given to the judicial process against his uncle, former president Ernesto Samper, for the money from drug trafficking that his campaign received).

Seriously, he increasingly fulfills the tragedy that one looks like his dad.

I have had some coincidences with him for which I decided not to get bitter.

I ended up doing the same thing he does, which is dedicating myself to journalism, I ended up sharing his own first name, his own last name, the same hair condition as his, the same soccer team...

Q.

You did not grow up with him.

R.

_

My dad separated from my mom when I was a baby.

He has always been a good father, but for as long as I can remember they have been separated parents and he has been living for short periods in Spain since he went into exile to live in Madrid.

P.

The drug trafficker persecuted him for his journalistic investigations.

R.

Pablo Escobar.

P.

I have heard that it was the Mexican, Escobar's partner.

R.

I prefer Escobar's version, it gives more status.

P.

I have heard you say that the only way to digest politics in Colombia is through humor.

R.

It is a very tragic reality, but it always has an unintentionally comic side.

Politicians in Colombia have always had it and if you don't get attached to it, you don't understand that this is the only buffer you have.

Without humor, the journey in this country would be very hard, very difficult.

This is a very harsh country, very sullen, very unfair.

P.

President Iván Duque is the favorite target of your jokes.

R.

I want to recognize what he has done for comedians.

It is one of the first sectors that has reactivated after the pandemic.

P.

The president had a television program, in his play you see videos of him singing, dancing, playing guitar.

Does he also have the soul of a youtuber?

A.

Totally.

In the campaign, he was seen a lot going around the world looking for

and

.

In power she has tried to temper herself more, but I think she has always shown the seams.

He is a great maker of bombastic phrases to refer to himself.

For example, on that occasion when he said that the diplomatic siege was the most important weapon that he had invented in humanity and that with that they were going to overthrow Maduro.

Q.

It didn't work.

R.

It was not only a vain act, it was naive.

He premiered his Government saying that and it was an omen of what awaited us.

He did not understand that it was more practical to have a relationship with Venezuela, that this did not mean endorsing Maduro.

Q.

Is that what the previous president, Juan Manuel Santos, did?

R.

Totally, with a lot of cynicism.

Santos was a master of cynicism for good and for bad.

There is nothing more dangerous than being friends with Santos.

P.

And you are a friend of Santos?

R.

_

Yes, but with distance.

When Santos allied himself with Álvaro Uribe, it was foreseeable what could happen.

When he declared that Hugo Chávez was his best friend, it was a way of putting his tombstone on him.

I saw the end of the Santos government with sympathy, I supported his peace process, which is a legacy that we should take care of.

P.

He did one of his first interviews for YouTube.

R.

I tried to go to the Palace to become a youtuber so that he would not end up serving as a former president.

Q.

You didn't get it.

A.

No, lol.

P.

You became a youtuber in your forties.

A.

For me, coming from classical journalism, it was a strange thing and a rare challenge.

Now I sell more books.

P.

In one of your first videos you visit the urologist.

R.

I had to make content of people over 40.

P.

Sometimes you have vindicated Jaime Garzón, a comedian who was murdered.

Has he ever feared for his life?

R.

In Colombia it is very normal for comedians to have escorts.

I was the victim of threats with the false accusation that Uribe made of being a child molester (later he had to retract it in court).

That got me into a lot of security problems, including Popeye, Escobar's chief hit man.

They came furious against me.

Without any proof.

Q.

You were director for 13 years of Soho magazine.

R.

It was a narrative journalism platform behind a very careful facade of nude celebrity photos, which became a weapon to provoke that Colombian double standard that is scandalized by nudity, but not by massacres.

Great pens wrote there.

It was a very happy time.

Q.

You published some very controversial covers.

R.

In Soho they accused us of being sexist.

My thesis is that it was not sexist, but simply a men's magazine, and that women's magazines that made content for women as if they had no erotic pulse were more sexist.

To respond to these criticisms we made an edition a year passes women.

P.

With the footballer Faustino Asprilla on the cover.

R.

We reveal his myth of a portentous man.

The nudes were always interactive, they came with a fig leaf that the reader could remove with a kind of sticker.

The magazine gave it to you dressed, you decided.

Q.

The choleric Fernando Vallejo became a columnist there.

R.

It was of a journalistic voltage that not any medium could stand it.

Q.

You jumped ship in time, before magazine sales sank.

R.

It was being on the Titanic, you saw the iceberg.

In 2015 I resigned and set up a digital content production company for the magazine Semana without really knowing what I wanted to say.

I tried there until I left Semana.

Q.

He left abruptly.

R.

I lived through the beginning of the economic difficulties and later I was in solidarity with Daniel Coronell when he was fired (for criticizing the media after not publishing an investigation).

Then I got on that raft that is Los Danieles (a web portal).

Q.

That name is an act of extreme narcissism.

R.

Here was a very good series in the eighties called

.

It was the story of three boys named Victorino, each from a different social class.

Everyone called him the Victorines.

Coronell said that no matter what we called him, in the end they were going to call him the Daniels.

Let's put it on, then.

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