Chabelo has passed away and millions of families are mourning the figure who has accompanied them for decades. The 88-year-old comedian has reportedly died of abdominal medical complications; he had recently overcome cancer with a poor prognosis, as he himself confirmed last year. Actor, host of one of the longest-running TV shows, Xavier López spent more than 40 years visiting Mexican homes with the En familia con Chabelo room every Sunday. And he spent even more time impersonating the famous character that gave him his name.
López was originally from Guanajuato although he was born in the United States. He studied medicine and still had a few years to pursue this profession, but his destiny was on the silver screen, which brought him fame. There were few characters as well known in Mexico as he was. The cancer surprised him months ago, but last year he thought it was over and the “friend of all children”, as he was also called, jokingly announced: “Cancer? Yes, overcome, thank God and the doctors, out of danger. Hopeless? NO! Crazy? Yes, a little since I was little. Senile? After 15 years…”.
He made the jokes and was the subject of them. Dozens of memes used Chabelo’s character to make jokes. He was compared to the Queen of England and other world famous people to make people laugh because he knew everyone in Mexico would get the joke.
Chabelo will live on in Mexico’s memory for generations to come. On the day he said goodbye, Televisa gave him his word of honor and the comedian himself, in his peculiar fake voice, read on screen a letter that the then President Enrique Peña Nieto wrote to him, thanking him for his work on TV and decades of promoting and committing to “family values.” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador also expressed his heartfelt condolences to the family in a tweet this morning: “I hug family and friends on the passing of Xavier López, ‘Chabelo’. How can I forget that my eldest son woke up early to see him more than 40 years ago?
Chabelo didn’t always wear his special outfit of shorts and sports shirt. He became famous in the 1950s, before man walked on the moon, according to some journalistic chronicles, with the show Musical Carousel and appeared in dozens of films. His first film was Viaje a la luna, along with Mario Moreno Cantinflas, which greatly promoted his career, although they never had a cast together again. Already on this tape he wore his childlike clothes, the comical look that would mark him forever. It was at the age of 87, already retired, that he starred in an interview where he didn’t do very well in front of his audience. The encounters with the journalists who asked him questions, where he showed his less friendly face, catapulted him mercilessly into the social networks, which never let him go. There have been many memes in which the character has been mocked and the subject of jokes.
Chabelo has died at the age of 88, losing one of the country’s most recognizable faces.
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