In one of his most popular shows, titled Viaje a España, comedian Polo Polo recounts the day he decided to fulfill a dream: going on a vacation trip. “Recently I’m lame, I get up very early, customs that one has and that my old lady loves, of course, in the morning while they take a sip of cepacol so the sea doesn’t stink because then the goatherds wake up good” (laughs) and after After meditating for a while, he realized it was time to take the vacation he so deserved, having worked hard and made a lot of money. The “fucking problem” started with the question “where the hell should I go”. Italy? “Damn mother, to the egg! Imagine me increasing the water in the Trevi Fountain” (hand imitates urination, audience laughter). Not France, “because it’s full of AIDS” (laughs). Better Spain, “when there were still macho singers in Spain because they seem to be crushing their balls” (laughs) … His monologue runs through a series of phrases with sexual innuendos, homophobic comments, misogyny, mockery of the underclass Mexicans and mucho albur are puns, ambiguous phrases that Mexicans use to tease one another. In short, a slew of villain jokes that made an audience who idolized the comedian and adored his presentations laugh but raise more than an eyebrow today.
It’s not easy to make others laugh, and Polo Polo, who died Monday, was a magician of laughter for his Mexican peers. Born Leopoldo Roberto García Peláez Benítez on March 9, 1944 in León, Guanajuato, his jokes captivated millions and his compilation records sold in the tens of thousands. Perhaps his comedy was very local to a foreigner, although it also reverted to the old formulas: sex, racial prejudice, and scatological scenes. Despite not interfering in political affairs in a country suffering under the ironclad control of the PRI’s “perfect dictatorship,” he suffered from censorship on many occasions because one or the other law enforcement officer found it distasteful for the man to go through the scenarios and talk about the “chichis” of a lady who was bitterly waiting for her drunk husband to return home, about nurses who had to shave his testicles when he was being operated on for a hernia in his genitals (these are always present into his shows of course) or his always active and proud sex life. But the censorship was defeated and the comedian carried on for decades, making many cry with laughter.
While a good laugh is a treat we should all enjoy, Polo Polo’s jokes raise the question of the validity of laughing today. Of the woman as a sexual object or the old witch who won’t leave her husband alone and rightly gets drunk? Of the homosexuals (joto, fagot) who always tempt the macho macho man? From Galician? From the black? From the poor? Out of town? Many charge that we are in an era of political correctness that sounds like censorship, but these are also other times when the LGBTQ movement has achieved recognition of rights, same-sex couples are marrying and adopting; Women fight unchecked for equal rights, denounce abuses by powerful men; a black man was president of the world’s leading power and young people tend to engage in an inclusive, neutral, egalitarian language. Yes, some will say they dropped the joke, but they are different contexts, with different ways of looking at the world. Polo Polo will continue with its thousands of followers who long for it. There are others who change channels because they can’t find the joke.
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