Amy’s Blast From the Past: ‘Ta que Llega la Chola Chabuca
For many many many years, I had spent some hours doing the google magic trying to find random clips of La Chola Chabuca’s HBO Latin America (nee: HBO Ole) as a 50-min segment of Séptimo Sentido, which ran between 1998 and 1999. There were many many years of failure, and I even tried contacting HBO Latin American to get information on the show to no avail.
Lo and behold, doing a random search for this year’s LGBT Blogathon, and running into not only a clip, but the whole show — even if it’s on really deteriorated VHS tape quality. At least the video is now available.
La Chola Chabuca (real name: Ernesto Pimentel) is a Peruvian personality who shot to fame during the early 90s, dressed in divalicious folk drag and sporting a heavy Andean accent. He was famous, mainly, for his midday program, which later transformed into talk show interviews, and after hitting it big and establishing himself and the Chola Chabuca brand as a pop culture staple (with this show), Pimentel and the Chola Chabuca brand moved onto more activities relating to family entertainment with the Chola Chabuca circus and whatnot.
In this show, La Chola Chabuca tackles problems that were afflicting Peruvian (and Latin America) society during the transition to the new millennium, with smart sass and humor, some really ingenious political commentary, but most of all- identity commentary and what’s really inside the Latin American heart.
Though the show isn’t really LGBT related (for the blogathon), what’s more LGBT-oriented than a sassy smart gay man dressed in drag that does his Mama Ocllo [1] version (the clip comes with Spanish caption for better understanding) of Madonna’s Vogue [MV], as well as some Chicha Loca version of Ricky Martin’s Livin’ la Vida Loca [MV].
You can try checking out the whole show (sorry, no subtitles available) here:
