Los Chuperamigos

 (Note – the following article is a largely impressionistic account from an amused and enthusiastic viewer. I have no affiliation or connection with the program, its producers or the network on which it appears.)


LOS CHUPERAMIGOS


My hope here is to write well and persuasively about something that, by rights, I should not even presume to present for your attention. The subject to hand is a Spanish-language television program called Los Chuperamigos, and it doesn’t matter how hip you think you are, you probably haven’t caught this because you and I both know your Spanish is no better than mine.

If by chance it is, then you have no excuse, and must immediately track down on and/or petition your cable tv provider to acquire and provide this program on a regular basis —at least until you understand that you obviously need to record every available episode and never mind the squares who don’t get it.

This is funny stuff, gate, and who cares about the language barrier. I can vow to you that you don’t need great fluency in español to get what’s basically going on, and I’d suggest that you might well be better off only half-grasping what the various jokes are ostensibly ‘about’. I have troubled to pursue reliable translations for some of the bits I’ve seen, and as would be the case for much scripted tv comedy anywhere, a lot of it is the same, cornball yock-mongering we’ve all seen our share of in prime-time U.S. network programming.

Much of the real humor is purely visual in the way that Chaplin’s was, or Buster Keaton’s, but I’m not talking about physical slap-stick, per se. There is a little of that, and a fair amount of gestural exaggeration and good old mugging, but the core of the comedy here is essentially attitudinal and –to my eye, at least— is the work of serious people who are serious about what they’re doing.

The problem, if it is one, is that you will never really get the actual meaning of many of the jokes, even if you are reasonably good with your basic Spanish. I am assured, by those who know, that even beyond the rapid-fire street-slang dialogue that prevails, much of the verbal humor is of a double- and triple-entendre variety that is all but purely inaccessible to all but native-born, urban-hip Mexican cognoscenti. It tends to fall flat under analytic scrutiny and literal translation, and is, in many instances, both howling-funny dirty and of highly questionable taste.
As my right-thinking, clean-living and Christian-minded friend and co-worker Carlos puts it, “These jokes are heavy, man..”


It certainly will help if you are charmed by most things Latin, and things Mexican especially, as I will freely admit to being, but I nonetheless maintain that this stuff is fundamentally universal, and thoroughly human. That it comes dressed with a degree of inescapable foreign-ness only adds to its surface appeal and insures that you must take it obliquely, from some necessary angle.

The show is infused with an authenticity that you, as a clueless gringo, should quickly apprehend and which you may take pretty much for the real deal. This I have on the authority of the people I work with, who are definitely of the culture and who have the requisite native fluency; and besides, you can just tell. These actors have so well studied the characters they play, and carry such clear affection for them, that they put them before us with few if any false notes. All of this then means, I think, that they play true and real for any audience, and never mind ‘the words’ or the ‘language’ they happen to be speaking.

Breaking it down as best I can, Los Chuperamigos [from chupar – to suck down the booze, liberally; and amigos – hence, chuperamigos – drinking buddies] is standard sketch comedy with an ensemble cast headed by Liliana Arriaga as La Chupitos, a take-no-prisoners char-woman/street person/sometime household maid and cantina regular with blacked-out front teeth and an authentically disheveled homeless costume. Trust me, you have never seen anyone play a character like this, this well, on American tv.

The show is loosely structured around a core group of ‘chuperamigos’ who are essentially skid-row types —mostly unemployed, apparently homeless, and happily drinking whenever they can manage it. Every presentation ends with two or more of them in the cantina ‘El Tarron de la Justicia’ [—the Tankard of Justice...] and, as often as not, portrayed as downright sloppy drunk. This is not “Friends”, friends, and you will not see anything like this on our regular domestic outlets.

Arriaga is fairly much the centerpin/spark plug of the proceedings, and the credits list her and Pepe Suárez as co-originators of the show and its concept. Suárez (who I’m told is the son of cast member Alejandro Suárez) is listed as the general production director and I think it’s fair to say there is real creative chemistry between them. Beyond the basic material on offer, the show is marked overall by qualities of pacing and timing, and coordination and coherence, that are way ahead of anything else I’ve seen on Mexican tv, and much of what’s on American television.

Saturday Night Live, for example, hasn’t been this good for decades, and I have to think back to the first couple seasons of Laugh-In to recall a comparable level of pure comic energy in a roughly similar format. This is all the more remarkable when you consider that fully three of the principal actors are long-established Mexican entertainers old enough to be the parents of the others in the cast.
Alejandro Suárez, as noted, is the parent of director Pepe, and with fellow veterans Luis de Alba and Martha Ofelia Galindo, more than holds his own with the younger players. These include others variously familiar to the Mexican audience, but I’d guess entirely unknown to most of us Anglos in the U.S.

With the sole exception of Arriaga as Chupitos, the individual cast members all play a variety of roles and move between them with notable facility. I will attempt a brief general overview, but again, this production and the characters comprising it must be seen to be appreciated. In the order they are introduced in the opening sequence of each show, we have, after La Chupitos:

Alejandro Suárez, as a burn-up aging hippie called Pitoloco; as a mind-blasted ex-con/escaped con (I can’t tell) in a striped prison suit; and as a top-hatted and caped ‘poet’ of Spanish doggerel, among others—

Luis de Alba, as himself, presumably; as Maclovio the campesino; as an old biddy in a recurring bit with Suárez the younger (you’ll know...); as the expounder of ‘pirrurration’; as a priest, etc.—

Carlos Bonavides, whom my Mexican informants seem to identify with his principal character, the nouveau riche philandering husband, Huicho Dominguez; he also plays the nut-case doctor, Don Herculano the store-keeper, and ‘Sheriff Rodriguez’, among others—

Maribel Fernández, La Pelangocha, which is translated for me as “...a woman who talks shit, one who will say anything...” for what that’s worth; but who is consistently hilarious in a whole range of other roles, from crazed punker to fat patrona to precocious brat (think ‘Edith-Ann’...) and more—

Martha Ofelia Galindo, who is one of the real treasures of this show, playing variously; a mother (-in-law ?) to Huicho; a tippling nun; an imperious business-woman; a repulsively funny lesbian police-woman; and a splendidly picky old barfly in lace gloves and tennis shoes—

Pepe Suárez himself, in drag as the other old biddy (words fail...); and as the profoundly politically incorrect bandito, Pepe Charrascas—

Then lastly and not even least among the regulars is the rather fabulous Elena Rojas, “y sus 2 melones”, which you may translate exactly like it looks. She is the all-purpose bimbo of the group, and plays it perfectly.


There is more, and others yet, but that’s a general introduction. What is most interesting here --and while I think it fairly obvious, I will state it plainly now-- is that the chuperamigos themselves, these very socially marginal characters, are presented as real, sincere and genuine people, as against the more ‘respectable’ but plainly phony and patently stereotypical cop, doctor, and that arriviste bourgeois, Huicho Dominguez (all three played by the same actor, perhaps not coincidentally...).

Furthermore, these people are not sentimentalized Little Tramps or bums with hearts of gold —they are street people, and borrachos verdades in the bargain. Putting it as simply as possible, society’s most basic distinction --that of the Haves and the Have-Nots-- is here shown to us with the reprobate Have-Nots holding, if not the moral high ground, at least all the truly human territory.

This is in my view both remarkable and unprecedented, at least in the realm of television comedy and low pop culture. There seems to be in this material a deep strain of irreverence toward the implacable establishment that is mainstream society, which is at least consoling to the kindred soul, even if it is unlikely to prove any more positively subversive than that. One feels somehow a small part less isolated, despite the foreign language and the occasionally incomprehensible action on view —but then those are not such unfamiliar experiences for some of us, every day, anyway.

I may not have have a clue what’s being said, or exactly what I’m laughing at, but I’m pretty sure I know what’s going on, and I’ll gladly raise my glass with this crew.

Tengo mi chuperamigos.. ¡Huéh!

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Recording this stuff now, while it’s current, is something I recommend based on long experience as both an observer of cultural ephemeralities, and as a record collector/archivist of the popular moment. Liliana Arriaga has stated publicly that she hopes to become identified with her Chupitos character in the popular tradition of Mexican comic actors like La India Maria and Cantinflas.

This tells me that she, never mind the Los Chuperamigos concept, will inevitably at some point jump the shark, as we say, and will, as for instance did Lucille Ball, turn into someone old, boring and predictable, who is merely phoning it it. Before that happens, record this stuff.

Los Chuperamigos is only carried by Estrella TV, as far as I know, which is a new Spanish-language network launched back at the beginning of this year by Liberman Broadcasting, whoever they are. I have no idea whether it’s being ‘webcast’ or any of that kind of thing, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find. I only know about it because it was included in the bare-bones, bottom-of-the-barrel, ultra-cheapo $11 cable package I had to sign up for following the recent government-imposed ‘digital wonderland’ tv changeover. As it has turned out, I couldn’t be more delighted.