Although he began to die on December 20, 2015, the date on which he stopped broadcasting, after almost 48 consecutive years, his program “En Familia” definitely ceased to exist last Saturday at the age of 88 Xavier López Rodríguez, al that all of Mexico knew with the artistic nickname of “Chabelo”, the friend of all children, a title that he held from the song that he himself composed as the theme of his presentations.
Inhabitant of the Mexican collective unconscious, his passage to the other life has caused a sad lament in the entire country; His figure will be remembered as the great popular artist who entertained several generations of Mexicans.
For those of us who had the distinction of knowing him and dealing with him on a personal level, a good friend, supportive colleague, and tireless worker came before us. In my private life I will remember him with gratitude and affection.
At the risk of falling into the commonplace, I cannot ignore how the one who, over the years, became an icon of the show and a pillar of television, emerged. They were the first years of television and Xavier, who finished high school in San Ildefonso, began working in Televicentro –Mexican Telesystem– where his neighbor, the publicist and producer of the Palmex Agency, Andrés de la Garza, took him. With what he earned at work, he planned to support his medical studies, a faculty in which he was admitted. In the mornings he went to class, in the afternoon and at night he worked at whatever it was on television and at dawn he studied. He slept little.
Working as a floor manager in a program hosted by Ramiro Gamboa -many years later the “Uncle Gamboin” –, Xavier, off camera, made comments with the voice of a child that was one of the many voices he invented, to relax, in high school. The viewers began to be interested in the voice that turned the driver on, they immediately wanted to know who it belonged to. Was it a boy? What was his appearance? There came a time when the calls asking for the one with the child’s voice were so excessive that the director of the program Carlos Salinas Saucedo ordered: “cut the pants of the floor manager for him to come out, as a child, in the box with Gamboa”. The result was surprising. No one imagined that this voice belonged to a 19-year-old young man, 1 meter 85 centimeters tall and with the body of an athlete since he was practicing olympic wrestling
Once known by the viewer, they asked themselves, what are we going to do? Don Ramiro had a book of father-son jokes. In the first one they chose to represent him, the son was called ChabeloThey did so and from then on the former floor manager, already in a stylized sailor suit, formed the couple with Ramiro, son and father, Chabelo and Gamboa. As such, Pepsi Cola hired them for a successful tour of personal appearances throughout the republic. The success was so great that the tour extended through Central and South America. In the Artistic Refreshment Caravan, the Chilean singer Lucho Gatica went, who became a great friend of Xavier.
A necessary note, while Xavier’s acting activity was reduced to Mexico City, he continued his medical studies until one day in an oral exam his memory went blank. He suffered a partial amnesia that lasted several hours under the help of the doctor-professor himself. When the student-actor returned to normal, the teacher let him know: You can’t live like this, you either study or work. Faced with the dilemma, of course Xavier chose to be ChabeloThe problem arose when he had to tell Papa López that he had so many illusions of seeing his only son in a doctor’s coat curing people and not wearing shorts making faces on TV.
Said by the protagonist of my story, telling his father about his decision was one of the most difficult moments of his, then, short life. He plucked up his courage and confronted Don José Luis –his father- who took great courage when he learned that his son preferred frivolous show business instead of following in the footsteps of Hippocrates and Galen. Later he changed his mind when he realized that his son was not changed by success or the environment.
I continue with the narration, the intercontinental tour of Pepsi Cola, culminated in Cuba where Chabelo, now without Gamboa, had a resounding success. They called him the “Niño Bobo” in memory of a character from a comic strip of great notoriety in that country in the forties, whose drawing had a remarkable resemblance to Xavier. Here I note that bobo in Cuban semantics does not have the pejorative charge that he has in our country.
CMQ, the best television station in Latin America at the time, offered him an exclusive contract for two years. About to sign the Revolution arrived, the television station was nationalized, Xavier returned to Mexico, but not before meeting Fidel in passing.
In Mexico, Chabelo it smelled like Pepsi Cola, which is why contracts were in short supply. In view of his success with the Cuban public, they offered him a short contract to perform in New York alternating, among others, with the singer Rolando Laserie, with whom he became very close. Once again, success smiled at him and after a few weeks the contract was extended to four years. He toured, several times and with different artists, the Spanish-speaking places in the United States.
Four years were enough for the Mexican public and the sponsors to separate the name of Chabelo from the soft drink of yore. go back home Mexican Telesystem and they give him a daily program on Channel 5: La Media Hora de Chabelo. No one who was a child in the mid-sixties does not remember the sections: ‘My Conscience and I’ and ‘What should be done and what should not be done’, unforgettable fragments with which Xavier Lopez Chabeloreturned to occupy a prominent place in the fickle medium of the show.
without the character of ChabeloXavier López entered the vaudeville theater through the front door with the greats: Óscar Pinedo, Óscar Ortiz de Pinedo and Emilio Brillas, where he showed that it was not for nothing that he took acting classes with Seki Sano, a Japanese acting teacher who did not receive to anyone in his academy.
The calls, as a guest, to the luxury television programs did not take long; nor his personal presentations in theater and private parties. One of his best friends, the also deceased, the great Héctor Lechuga, said that Chabelo He sold mole on Sundays.
In successive collaborations -Tuesdays and Thursdays- I will try to narrate the television successes in which I participated with Xavier, as a writer and a couple of anecdotes that I would not like to leave unanswered. In the meantime, I want to highlight the great respect that Xavier had with the public that made him their own. Traveling or being with him in public places was for his companions something similar to torture because he never denied an autograph or a photograph, even if he had to interrupt a chat or delay a transfer.
I want to end this profile that I write with more affection than good syntax with something that Xavier –not Chabelo- but Xavier, the man, the adult, had as a product of his sensitive soul: he cried a lot and often. He cried moved when an audience received him with more affection than he, perhaps, had calculated; he always cried when he received a well-deserved award; he cried with sadness and joy; I even saw him cry on more than one occasion because they didn’t deliver a scene from his program on time or because a device broke down during a rehearsal.
I never asked him what caused his easy tears, perhaps if I had asked him: Xavier, why are you crying? He would have answered me like García Lorca: “I want to cry, because I feel like it.” Perhaps he thought like the Uruguayan poet Mario Benedetti that “crying is good, because it eliminates toxins.” Or like the Spanish playwright Alejandro Casona: That “crying is as healthy as sweat, and more poetic.” Or like the Valencian novelist, Elísabet Benavent: “Crying is a constitutional right and if not it should be.”
Last Saturday was one of the saddest days of my life. A friend left who offered me his strong hand at a difficult time in my existence. Returning from the wake it began to rain. I thought, heaven is crying for the one who cried when he wanted to.
