In one of his most popular shows, titled
Viaje a España
, the comedian Polo Polo narrates the day he decided to fulfill a dream: take a vacation trip.
“The other day I lame, I get up very early, customs that one has and that my old lady loves, of course, in the morning, while they take a mouthful of Cepacol so that the ocean does not stink, because then goatherds wake up well” (laughs) and after meditating for a while, he recognized that since he had worked a lot and made a lot of money, it was time to take the vacation that he so deserved.
The “fucking problem” began with the question “where the hell” should I go.
Italy?
"Fucking mother, to egg!
Imagine me in the Trevi Fountain increasing the water” (hand imitating urination, laughter from the audience).
Not France, "because it's full of AIDS" (laughs).
Best Spain, “when there were still male singers in Spain,
because it seems that they are crushing their balls" (laughs)... His monologue runs through a string of phrases with sexual references, homophobic comments, misogyny, mockery of lower-class Mexicans and a lot of gamble, that play on words, double phrases meaning, with which Mexicans tease each other.
In short, a load of scoundrel jokes that elicited laughter from an audience that idolized the comedian and adored his presentations, but which raise more than one eyebrow today.
It is not easy to make others laugh and Polo Polo, who died on Monday, was a magician of laughter for his Mexican peers.
Born Leopoldo Roberto García Peláez Benítez in León, Guanajuato, on March 9, 1944, his jokes captivated millions of people and his compilation records sold for tens of thousands.
Perhaps for a foreigner his comedy was very local, although he also resorted to the old formulas: sex, racial prejudice and scatological scenes.
Although he did not get involved in political affairs in a country that suffered from the iron control of the "perfect dictatorship" of the PRI, on many occasions he suffered censorship because one or another vigilante of morality found it in bad taste for the man to walk around the scenarios talking about the "chichis" of a lady who embittered awaited the return home of her drunken husband,
of nurses who had to shave his testicles when he underwent an operation for a hernia in his genitals (these are always present in his shows, of course) or his always active and proud sexual life.
But the censorship was defeated and the comedian continued for decades making many cry from laughing so much.
Although a good laugh is a delight that we should all enjoy, Polo Polo's jokes raise the question of how far it is valid to laugh today.
Of the woman as a sexual object or the old witch who won't leave her husband alone who gets drunk rightly?
Of the homosexual (joto, fagot) who is always tempting the macho-macho man?
From Galician?
Of the black?
Of the poor?
From the town?
Many accuse that we are in a time of political correctness that sounds like censorship, but these are also different times, when the LGBTQ movement has achieved recognition of rights, same-sex couples marry and adopt;
women advance without brake in their fight for equality, denounce abuses by powerful men;
a black has been president of the world's leading power and young people are more devoted to an inclusive language,
neutral, egalitarian
Yes, some will say that they have dropped the joke, but they are different contexts, with different ways of seeing the world.
Polo Polo will continue with the thousands of his followers who yearn for him.
There are others who will change the channel because they can't find the joke.
subscribe here
to the EL PAÍS México
newsletter
and receive all the key information on current affairs in this country
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
Keep reading
I'm already a subscriber