Shakira isn’t the first Latino diva to compare herself to a luxury product — “You traded a Ferrari for a Twingo,” she says in her new song. María Félix, the great star of Mexican cinema, did it long before the Colombian singer. “Don’t feel bad if someone rejects you. People usually turn down what’s expensive because they can’t afford it,” La Doña once snapped. “Money doesn’t buy happiness, but it’s always better to cry in a Ferrari,” he admitted on another occasion. There are countless quotes from Felix that relate to heartbreak and malice. The protagonist of films like Doña Bárbara or The Soulless Woman knew what she was talking about. She’s had four husbands — including bolero singer Agustín Lara and artist Jorge Negrete — and affairs with figures like Spanish bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguín, who, according to the Mexican press, went so far as to explain: “You and I relived the romance.” by Hernán Cortés and La Malinche”.
During an intervention on La Tocada, the late-night show that Verónica Castro presented at El Canal de las Estrellas in 1996, María Félix said she had been a woman abused by men “but only in the cinema”. In real life, she rejected the artist Diego Rivera, the right-hander Manolete and other suitors because, as she herself said, they did not suit her: “Some because they were ugly, others because they were very poor and I didn’t like them ask for stockings”.
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The only man who broke her heart was her own brother, José Pablo Félix Güereña. At least that’s what some of his biographers say. “I knew nothing about taboos or prohibitions and being close to him seemed like the most natural thing in the world,” the Mexican diva said of this dangerous teenage fantasy. They were so close that their parents separated and sent them away. La Doña spoke of “physical and mental attraction”, of “platonic love” and of “white incest” and, as she told her biographer, the writer Enrique Krauze, “the perfume of incest has no other love”. In 1937 Pablo died under tragic circumstances. A few years later she divorced her first husband and became a world star. She always played clueless about this episode in her life, and it helped reinforce her aura as a mysterious and dangerous star, but also to send a message to women: “You have to cry for a man for three days… And on.” Fourth, you get heels and new clothes.
Mexican actress María Félix in France in a 1990 file photo. Alain BENAINOUS (Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
Film and television actresses, singers, presenters… Many Latin American divas have preceded Shakira in the cathartic art of turning malice into a source of artistic inspiration, show fodder, script material or song lyrics. Paquita la del Barrio, who broke up her 25-year marriage after discovering her husband had a lover, elevated her song Rata de dos patas (2004) to a hymn of heartbreak. In her Ranchera Romeo y su nieta (2013), the artist laughs at men who leave their wives for younger ones. “The diaper still smells of powder. Now you’ve really gone too far. The truth shines like your stick,” he sings.
“But the strongest for me is the Mexican singer Irma Serrano, known as La Tigresa. She had a relationship with a married politician and turned the romance into one of the most famous and funniest rancheras: Yo trata un casado,” writer and screenwriter Valeria Vegas tells EL PAÍS. “Gloria Trevi is another good example. She had a relationship with her manager Sergio Andrade, a story that would later land her in prison. When he was released from prison, he released several confident and confident songs in which he made references to him,” explains Vegas.
Veronica Castro at the presentation of the film Tell Me When You at the Hotel Stara in Mexico City on December 14, 2020. Media & Media (Getty Images)
Verónica Castro, the empress of Mexican soap operas, suffered more in real life than in fiction. Many of the tears she shed on the small screen were inspired by memories of their relationships. At the age of 22, she became pregnant by actor and comedian Manuel El Loco Valdés, who was two decades her senior. When she found out he was married, she decided to end the relationship and become a single mother. “I found out about his real life. I had a partner and I had about eight other partners and my son Cristian was going to be like number 13,” the actress admitted years later.
Then she fell in love with the winemaker Enrique Niembro. “I thought I was right this time and got pregnant again, but it didn’t turn out the way I expected.” The day she tried on her wedding dress, Niembro called her and ended the link. “He said to me, ‘My mother doesn’t want me to get married.’ I replied, “I’m not interested in marriage, I can take care of myself. I don’t need a man to feed me or pay my expenses.” Some time later, Verónica Castro began an engagement to actor Omar Fierro, who also became unfaithful to her. “He started his acting career and I helped him, so I didn’t choose him because he was rich or successful. One day I caught him cheating on me and I sent him to hell.” The actress plunged into her career, starring in some of the highest-grossing soap operas of all time: The Rich Cry Too; The right to be born; Forbidden love; Wild Rose; O small town, big hell. She always played the heroine who emerged victorious from all sorts of adventures.
Paquita la del Barrio during a concert in Los Angeles, California on October 20, 2018. JC Olivera (Getty Images)
Susana Giménez, Castro’s friend and one of the most famous presenters in Latin America, also knew how to channel her disappointments in love on the sets. The communicator starred in her own telenovela in the summer of 1998, when Argentine television reported live on her split from her second husband, Huberto Roviralta, a polo player and grandson of Spanish aristocrat Antonio Maura. “Thief! Motherfucker! When are you leaving here? Go away,” she was heard shouting at the diva from the street. The cameras are broadcasting the scenes live.
A few minutes later, Roviralta left the Giménez mansion with a bloody face. She remained silent until the next day, when she gave a massive press conference. “I tried for a long time to save the couple through lived humiliation. And yes, it could be infidelity,” he conceded. Regarding the broken nose, he said: “Huberto pushed me, tried to attack me and I fought back. I threw an ashtray at him.” It was the first time an Argentinian star of that size had spoken so openly not only about heartbreak but also about abuse and sexist violence.
Susana Giménez attends the Netflix Red Carpet event at the Hotel Four Seasons on March 17, 2016 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Lalo Yasky (Getty Images)
“The ashtray on this useless and unfaithful husband’s forehead and the more than $10 million that Susana had to give him to finalize the divorce led to a national debate about whether it was right that she was the one when the wife pay for a broken couple’s broken ashtrays,” Mercedes Funes, a gender journalist, wrote in Argentina’s Infobae newspaper this Friday. “The ashtray has since become a universal symbol of defiance, almost as iconic as Lady Diana’s revenge gown but with a much happier ending. There has also been a certainty that given sufficient independence, men could be expendable, even if it would be expensive to get rid of,” Funes added in his analysis of Shakira’s new song.
Moria Casán, another of Argentina’s great divas, also made history in the 1990s: the actress, presenter and ex-Vedete brought together two of the men of her life on her TV show La Noche de Moria: Mario Castiglione, her second husband and father of hers daughter, and Luis Vadalá, her partner at the time. Casán used his own talk show to say goodbye to Castiglione, who had little time to live and with whom he had a complicated marriage, and to try to salvage his relationship with Vadalá, with whom he would later break up. The show was watched by millions of people in Argentina. “I’ve never gone to a psychologist thinking that the public is the one that needs to know my life. An artist does not exist without his audience,” he said a few years ago. There is no room for deception between a diva and her followers.