Daniela Romo: "Cancer has been the brightest experience I've ever had"

Daniela Romo (Mexico City, 63 years old) is sent videos by her friends at three in the morning to tell her that they are dancing to her songs at the disco.

That music has turned 40 years old, they are already classics by the singer who moved that meter and a half long hair like a bullfighting cape.

Now she has the shortest hair and a decade ago she lost it completely due to cancer from which she recovered to be more alive than ever: she premieres a film in March, she has just performed at the Auditorio de México and her songs are heard in series fashionable on both sides of the Atlantic.

Who doesn't want to be that madness that vibrates deep inside... Na ha ha?

the

who asked her boss to take notice of her is today a free woman, comfortable with her body and mind.

Happy and talkative, she imitates the same Andalusian accent that she combs her hair before taking the photos in the middle of the room.

Ask.

You are fantastic.

Answer.

Amen.

Q.

They say that women of a certain age are no longer seen, that nobody counts on them.

R.

It's what happened, do you understand me?

Age does not mean anything, what matters is to continue creating, experimenting.

Age is not enough, in any case, to know everything one would like to know or learn, to read everything one would like to read.

I am very happy to be living my age transitions.

Q.

In Gino Tassara's film,

, you play Delfilia, a mother who allows her daughter to be abused for money, for drugs.

R.

It opens in March in Peru, on Women's Day.

The circumstances that surround us women are incomprehensible, violence is unleashed, they kill them, they beat them.

It is creepy.

And no one pays attention.

Q.

Some progress has been made.

R.

I am optimistic, what is happening has simply entered my consciousness, they tell me that if I am a feminist, I say that I am a woman, I lived in a matriarchy, I love and respect women and I have many sisters, friends, women.

I appreciate having male friends who are feminists.

Q.

When did feminism enter your consciousness?

R.

When I had my cancer, 10 years ago.

Not that I hadn't thought about it before, I brought it with me, but the pain of the disease and the experience that you live makes you rethink things.

You are making that chain of sorority with the others who are sick.

I already knew Luz Casal [who also suffered from cancer], but we met at a Grammys and ran to hug each other, that is never forgotten.

Q.

You say you had a providing mother.

His father is nowhere to be found.

R.

It is that my mother was a single mother, so tell me if I am not a feminist, right?

And then she got married when I was about four years old with my father Alberto, who gave me the last name and a wonderful sister whom I love.

But I grew up with my mother, with my grandmother and with my lifelong father, who was the one who took the money from under her mattress so that I could enroll in theater school.

So…

Q.

Actress or singer?

R.

I cannot separate it, I love being an actress immensely, it is what has allowed me to investigate many things, understand other minds and thoughts, give your body and your space to a thought that is not yours, to circumstances that are not yours.

It's more enriching, but who do I want to be?

Well, I want to be like Concha Velasco, do you understand me?, or here in Mexico like Silvia Pinal.

I want to be them, they sang, they danced.

I admire Concha Velasco very much.

Q.

How do you see the music of now?

R.

I don't understand it, I accept it because everyone has their concerns and their way of creating, but when I was in Miami in 2000 I heard the perreo for the first time and said, sir, where have we come to, is this what do they sing and dance now?

And what words, this devaluation of language is not possible.

In my time in Spain, it was enough to listen to what [José Luis] Perales was doing, not to mention my Serrat, right? That's another story.

But those lyrics by Perales or what Dyango or Miguel Bosé sang… Lyrics.

Or the things that Luz sings, sorry, but...

The Mexican singer on January 27. Aggi Garduño

Q.

And they are not going to tell you that you are a spring onion grandmother for thinking like that?

R.

It doesn't matter to me, I paint my gray hair, I'm 63 years old and I'm happy, I accept myself as I am, happy to be alive.

P.

When did you see yourself wiser and did you care three cucumbers about the rest?

R.

It hit me at the end of my 40s. And then after what I had to go through, it reaffirmed much more.

Cancer was detected in 2011: bald head, eyebrows, eyelashes, everything.

I went back to work and said to myself, well now is when, green chile, you have to flavor the broth.

P.

Daniela Romo without hair.

R.

Even my oncologist cried the day I told him: I can't take it anymore, I'm going to take it off, it falls horrible.

And he tells me: 'But you're Daniela Romo.'

Yeah, but I'm not a head of hair.

It's a very special experience to see yourself in the mirror like a baby, because of course you don't have hair or eyebrows or eyelashes, nothing: naked in the mirror, with half a chichi [tit], well, well, you say to yourself: 'look , I'm a baby, I'm giving birth again, but now, I'm giving birth myself'.

Q.

Cancer gave you a lot to think about and well.

R.

It is what it touches.

Cancer has been the brightest experience I've ever had.

I said: I am not going to fight against it, but I am going to embrace it and I am going to live it.

I know that there are those who will listen to me and will not like it, they will think that I speak like that because I survived, of course, you are like the one who survived the plane crash, she is strong.

What enlightened me the most was the pain.

Q.

Your private life is pure secrecy.

R.

When I lived in Spain and I saw all those magazines and I said, hell, what a scandal.

And now they ask me if I'm from Shakira's team or the other one.

Damn her mother, but what do I care!

Q.

Today everyone airs their lives on social networks.

A.

It's called morbid.

So much so that now someone dies and they lament that they have not said what they died of.

And what do you care, did you like him? Well, he lights a candle.

But we have reached that extreme, what a pain in the ass, really.

Q.

You are a great reader.

R.

Wait, I'm thirsty, do you want some wine?

That it's Friday and the body knows it.

Yes, I am an avid reader, my favorite is Spanish literature, they are the authors I read the most.

I miss Javier Marías, reading about him in the newspaper, I don't miss Rosa Montero, my favourite, I've read everything about her.

Manuel Vicent fascinates me.

Irene Vallejo's irruption seemed fantastic to me.

Q.

Since when have you been a reader?

R.

Since I was little, I went to a French school, they gave us books for good grades.

I always dreamed of studying Philosophy and Letters at the Sorbonne, but then I decided to want to be an actress.

Life is not enough for so many things that one wants.

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