I have never seen Juana Bacallao as I think the average Cuban sees it. I feel that he is often received as the supreme source from which the enjoyment of others emanates or should emanate, a kind of soulless contraption, emitter of a consumable called hilarity, in fact, someone who is expected to provoke more laughter. and fewer smiles with his mere presence. Someone who must be thought of only in these terms. I feel that she is seen – like many actors on stage and screen – as predestined to incite laughter that will knock us out, like a female version of Dwayne Johnson, but in a different way: The Rock is always the fun of the visual sense, but Juana is – and we demand that she be – the festival of all the senses. This is how we have assumed it, as a cliche product, ready for our playful impulses, available to laugh at. I feel that it has been the way we have faced Bacallao in recent decades, in that difficult spectator-artist relationship.
We have rarely stopped to think about when he won and how much he left along the way to get here. If she really liked what she ended up being, that character designed by her, chiseled by those who came and went to the circus of the senses and sacralized by those who, at all costs, probably prevented Juana from being much more herself, but also another.
I have asked myself what would have become of Neris Amelia Martínez Salazar if circumstances had not inclined her towards what she was, almost without option, if Obdulio Morales had not baptized her forever with the name of the guaracha that he composed for her and that became her passport to the eternity: Juana Bacallao. Because having seen what I have seen, I have no doubt that she could have had, for non-humorous dramatic art, equal gifts, understandable aptitudes, which could never be put to the test. I am convinced that when she left her domestic work behind and, thanks to Morales, made her debut at the Teatro Martí, Neris Amelia knew more about herself, her abilities and her possibilities, much more than we imagine, but there are paths that Then – and today too – they were longer or impossible for a black woman, poor and devoid of any other influence and support.
She knew it, always knew it, probably. And she let herself be carried away by intuition and also by verification. She firmly established herself in a niche that ended up being hers alone, where she has reigned and will reign per secula seculorum, because no one will ever be able to repeat the feat of stopping being who she was to become herself, creative, sagacious, but uncontrollable and unpredictable.
Those were her sure cards in a medium where female humor had absolutely legendary figures on radio, theater and television such as Alicia Rico, Mim Cal, Elosa Álvarez Guedes, and even the very versatile Rita Montaner herself, who left a profound mark on the popular imagination of the Cuban. Juana’s creative freedom, rooted in the personal experience of the most popular and street, in the speed of her reactions and in that something with which one comes into the world as a genetic mark to “be liked”, was a challenge for any director or producer in a program or show where she was.
This is how he walked through life, on stages and in radio and television studios, spreading joy, overflowing with sandunga and Cubana. There are ages where all this is perfectly synergistic and its uniqueness is surely a factor of triumph, but there are others in which you have to have a safe harbor to arrive at in search of peace and respect, already stripped of the endless characters piled up on your skin. and willing to shelter ourselves in what we build for old age. But Juana did not know what things she had to leave behind, nor that there was another life she had and should live to be moderately earthly and corporeal. And approaching the end of the dream, Juana Bacallao could not get rid of Juana Bacallao, nor did she know how to do anything other than continue being the party of all other people’s senses.
Guillermo Álvarez Guedes should have revealed the keys to surviving with nobility, but he didn’t: act, yes; make people laugh, a lot, but also create a company, work for its success and make profitable the effort that will ensure the warm and firm port to reach decades later, when laughter tends to turn into a painful grimace.
Apparently, without a family of her own, Juana never found, nor had, that safe harbor. Perhaps for that reason, she was forever immersed in the laughter of those who, without thinking that they still owe her a life, look for her just for that: to laugh. Perhaps that is why, long ago, Juana decided to live not her life, but that of the character who has made her immortal. Juana, like her countryman Chocolat, the Cuban slave who literally found salvation in a French clown suit, is a survivor saved by the merciless laughter of others, which, paradoxically, are the only sounds with which, without a doubt, she feels sheltered. and dear.
Madrid, January 13, 2023.
