San Nicolás del Peladero U.S.A.
By Varela
San Nicolás del Peladero was a Cuban television program which captivated me during my infancy. It simplified the republican era from the standpoint of a small fictitious town.
But it wasn’t until I came to live in South Florida that this histrionic world full of human misery and social hypocrisy was revealed in all of its dimensions before my eyes. And it might have been the most influential element to understanding the local lowlifes in my work as editorial cartoonist during 15 years in Miami.
Its characters were slowly revealed one by one during the course of time and in the most unexpected moments. I simply changed the names from the TV program to real life.
The demagogue politician in power and his/her eternal nemesis oppositionist who never wins and criticizes his/her own defects which he/she sees in his/her opponent. The boastful lackey, an artist of fraud and influence. The neighborhood bully with a knife on his belt who boasts of what he’s never done and in an argument tells whoever is beside him: “Don’t hold me!” (although no one is holding him). The petty thief who lives by saying what others want to hear. The small Chinese restaurant where the beans are watered down and everything happens, everything is spoken about, and everything is heard. The starlet who blackmails her admirers for her show’s benefit. The rural guardian who intimidates brutally. The extortionist cop who abuses. The flattering newspaper editor who sells out to the powers that be. The opportunist musician who plays for the mayor and from there goes to play for the opposing candidate. The dignified butler that when his boss becomes sick says: “WE feel very bad” (placing himself in the suffering shoes of his boss). The illiterate who fancies herself an aristocrat — with felt boa around her neck — ridiculously dressed like a Mexican piñata, who scales up the social strata that doesn’t accept her, trumpeting her trip to Paris, but stupid enough to confess that the only thing she dislikes of that city is that it has an oil gusher in the middle (the Eiffel Tower).
Oh it’s nothing; it’s just that life has allowed me to prove the brilliant librettist of that popular TV program, Carballido Rey, right. While already here, I witnessed the election where even the dead voted in Xavier Suarez’ run for mayor. His opponent at the moment later blamed his loss on the fact that his cemetery was smaller than his rival’s.
In my mind I photographed the boastful terror-lobbyist Jorge Mas Canosa who in 1990 said that he had three petroleum tankers ready for the moment Fidel was toppled. The delinquent bully Nazario Sargen who used to invent sabotages in Cuba by photographing a scale model set on fire by a toy tractor and then claiming it was his attack on a farming cooperative. Of the cheat Perez Roura who has lived off the story that the next Christmas eve, the pig will be roasted in Ceiba Mocha. The Versailles Restaurant where everything happens, everything is spoken, and everything is heard (and too much water is added to the beans). Maria Elvira Salazar, who twists the truth for sake of her spectacle. Of Roberto Martin Perez, our tough intimidator, who maintains the boundaries. Of Carlos Alvarez, the policeman who used to beat us with a billy-club and who now sticks his hands in our pockets. Of Humberto Castello, the herald who sold out to the establishment. Of Arturo Sandoval, the trumpet player who blew over there and now has come to blow here. Of Saavedra, the Diaz-Balart street servant, who is not accepted in their social circles but who is used by them for demonstration. And of Zoe Valdes as the aspiring aristocrat mumbling in French in whatever program invites her in the ghetto.
San Nicolás del Peladero can still be seen. You simply have to turn on the right channel.
