Estefanía León, a young Venezuelan comedian, once wondered how she could keep making jokes amid so much tragedy.
It was 2017, and she was living in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, at the worst point in her country’s economic crisis. Protests convulsed the nation, while food shortages left millions hungry and hyperinflation erased savings overnight.
Her father, at the time very ill, would rise at three in the morning to line up to buy food before supplies ran out. Ms. Léon was working seven days a week but could not afford his medication.
Her job as a writer at El Chigüire Bipolar, a wildly popular website for political satire, required her to churn out jokes on a daily basis. But she was dodging tear gas on the way to the office.
Then the government, controlled by an increasingly authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro, passed legislation outlawing many kinds of speech. She wondered if her jokes would land her in prison.
Comedy, she said, had been her trench, the place from which she lobbed political and social critique. “Now, there was nothing to laugh at,” she said. “There’s no food, there’s no money, there’s a dictatorship, and I’m scared.”
She fled to Mexico City in 2018. At first she focused on surviving. But eventually, she returned to humor.
And today Ms. León plays a principal role in a larger Venezuelan comedy boom, whose protagonists work and live mostly outside their country, now free, for the most part, to say what they want.
Some nations elevate their novelists or poets to positions of cultural eminence; Venezuela has long viewed its comedians as among its most important societal expositors.
Now, with nearly eight million Venezuelans having fled their homes since 2015, that talent is moving abroad.
These comedians include George Harris in the United States, José Rafael Guzmán in Mexico and Víctor Medina in Argentina. Mr. Medina, known by his childhood nickname Nanutria, performed last year with others at Luna Park, a stadium in Buenos Aires that normally hosts Argentine rock gods like Charly Garcia and international superstars like Shakira.
Ms. León, 33, is one of three producers of El Cuartico, a weekly video sketch and podcast project streaming across social media and audio platforms. On TikTok they have more than 600,000 followers, representing just a slice of their fan base.
When El Cuartico began in 2020, the group started by addressing universal topics — “The Secrets of OnlyFans,” and “Contraceptives for Men, please!” were the titles of two early podcasts — attempting to attract a diverse, Spanish-speaking audience.
But they found themselves drawn to themes closer to the Venezuelan experience, like migration and authoritarianism, that they thought few Spanish-language humorists were touching in a sophisticated way.
Soon, their voices and videos were reaching hundreds of thousands of people in their search for a Venezuelan identity abroad. Today, all three members of El Cuartico make a living from comedy.
Recent video sketches feature Ms. León in a fictional U.S. migration line, trying to charm a border agent named Larry into believing that she’s just coming for a short visit.
He eyes her belongings, which include four suitcases, an air fryer and an arepa griddle called a budare, which she hugs to her chest like a life preserver.
Finally, under Agent Larry’s imposing glare — experienced by pretty much every Venezuelan who has crossed a border in the last 10 years — she explodes.
“Yes! I’m here to stay!” she admits. “I want you to know it and for everyone to know it, the whole world!”
Other sketches feature a belligerent autocrat who won’t leave a long-finished dinner party, mocking Mr. Maduro’s refusal to give up power, and a government spy too clumsy to conceal his identity, a jab at the government’s bald efforts to surveil its populace.
Not every episode is so political. Last month the group examined a national obsession with skinny jeans, including a sketch featuring a man who is unable to remove his too-tight pants.
Chucho Roldán, 36, Ms. León’s colleague at El Cuartico, attributed their popularity to the collapse of the Venezuelan entertainment industry amid the political crisis and a near absence of Venezuelan characters in mainstream international entertainment.
“There is nothing for us,” said Mr. Roldán, “and we want to see ourselves.”
Leonardo Martínez, 38, who left Venezuela for Puerto Rico in 2014, said that the group had helped him reconnect with his Venezuelan identity, which had been “tucked away amid all the anger, frustration and national heartbreak.”
“I barely see Venezuelans here,” he said of his new home, “so things like El Cuartico, you cling to them.”
Just before a recent crackdown on dissidents in the country — roughly 2,000 people have been detained since a disputed election in late July — the trio embarked on a risky five-city tour inside Venezuela. There, they were received like celebrities and filled theaters, including an iconic amphitheater in the capital of Caracas.
Outside their country, the three continue using a distinctly Venezuelan cadence (very fast) and vocabulary (a girl is not a “chica” but a “chama,” a friend is not an “amigo” but a “pana”) and have kept Venezuelan references. (In the migration sketch, Ms. León attempts to bring her air fryer to the United States so she can make tequeños, beloved cheese sticks whose consumption is practically a patriotic duty.)
Yet an important slice of their audience hails from outside their home country.
“A sketch about corruption works in all of Latin America,” said Daniel Enrique Pérez, 34, the third member of El Cuartico. “A sketch about dictatorship works in all of Latin America.”
A number of Venezuelan comedians began their careers in Venezuela and then built new ones abroad.
But Angelo Colina, 30, from the city of Maracaibo, began his stand-up career only after moving to the United States, landing in Salt Lake City in 2018.
Now based in New York, since January he has performed in 31 states and Puerto Rico, often at sold out shows, including one at the Gramercy Theater in Manhattan.
Unlike the trio from El Cuartico, much of his comedy focuses on the Latino experience in the United States, not on the country he came from.
“Obviously I miss my country, my people, my family, a lot. But at the same time, the most beautiful moments I have had as an adult and in my career have been outside” of Venezuela, he said. “I don’t know if I would be doing comedy, much less at this level, if I had stayed.”
In recent months the political situation in Venezuela has gone from difficult to dire. Following the July election that Mr. Maduro is widely viewed to have stolen, his security forces have detained hundreds of people, many of them everyday citizens.
Despite a crackdown, a small comedy world still exists inside Venezuela, largely centered around a Caracas comedy club called Pizpa.
Alejandra Otero, 41, is a frequent performer at Pizpa who has remained in the country. While most of her humor is not political, she has spent years honing an impression of Maria Corina Machado, the conservative opposition leader who has emerged as a foil to Mr. Maduro’s leftist government.
In a popular sketch, Ms. Otero as Ms. Machado is seated in a car, following written directions, which instruct her to go to the left. But she refuses to do so. “Venezuela!” she announces. “Never to the left!” In the end, she turns right so many times she never arrives at her destination. “Another day,” she declares.
Ms. Otero has long had to be careful about what she says and does, and even more so in the post-electoral environment. In preparation for a recent show at Pizpa, Ms. Otero cut several political references, she said.
Every passing day, she added, there is less space for comedy in Venezuela.
“Humor is obviously something that makes the regime uncomfortable,” she said, “because humor was born for that, to make people uncomfortable and to criticize.”
Yet she has no plans to stop performing, or to flee. Because now more than ever, she said, “we need to laugh.”
The post What’s So Funny About a Dictator? Venezuela’s Comedians-in-Exile Have Ideas appeared first on New York Times.
