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SPEAKER_04: Hello from Wonder Media Network. I'm Jenny Kaplan, and this is Womanica. This month, we're talking about comedians, women throughout history who've made us laugh. They transgress societal norms through comedy and often spoke out against injustice using their sharp wit.
Today, we're talking about a woman who made a name for herself in Mexican cinema by reprising the same wildly successful role in more than a dozen films.
Let's talk about Maria Elena Velasco.
Maria Elena Velasco was born on December 17th, 1940, into a family of six.
Maria's mother was white and her father was indigenous. She grew up working class and soon after finishing secondary school began working in the theater. She danced and sang in musicals, performed in vaudeville shows at nightclubs and worked with male comedians as a supporting actress.
Around the same time Maria was gaining her footing as an actor, many indigenous Mazahua women were migrating from rural Mexico to Mexico City. They often worked as street vendors selling fruit, candy, and trinkets.
Every day, Maria walked past these women in the streets.
And one day she had an idea. What if she impersonated them?
So Maria created the character La India Maria, a caricature of an indigenous Mazahua woman.
Maria started out performing as La India Maria on vaudeville stages and her character quickly became a crowd favorite. Soon enough, Maria had booked her first television appearance on the variety show, Siempre en Domingo.
In the episode, while Maria is selling fruit in front of the television studio, she falls in love with the show's host and then follows him into the studio.
In a series of misadventures, she makes her way past security and onto the main stage, where she proceeds to monopolize the show.
This variety show was already one of Mexico's most watched programs.
But the episode Maria appeared in was one of their highest-rated episodes. More than four million people tuned in.
Soon after appearing on TV, Maria's character got her own movie, called Tonta Tonta Pero No Tonto. The movie premiered in 1972. In the opening of the film, La India Maria is dressed in a long skirt, a bright satin blouse, and a thick knitted belt. All clothes meant to indicate that she was an indigenous woman.
She's about to board a train to Mexico City with her donkey. Her parents, while telling her goodbye, also tell her it's no use writing letters home. They can't read and she can't write.
When La India Maria makes it to the big city, she immediately bumbles her way into the middle of a jewel robbery and a murder.
But armed with optimism and impeccable slapstick timing, La India Maria ends up solving both cases. She even has the time to make friends with a famous TV host.
Maria's film debut is a success. Over the next few decades, Maria acted in dozens of films, and in all of them, she played the same character, La India Maria.
The storylines in these films were varied. Sometimes she's working as a maid for an upper-class family. In one movie, she's accidentally elected to political office. But in every movie, the character of La India Maria remains the same.
She's traditional and modest, uneducated, lower-class, and baffled by modern Western society. She speaks mostly in broken Spanish. She's always hilarious.
In 1974, when an interviewer asked Maria if her character would ever grow or change, Maria said, Never. I am La India Maria and I could never leave my donkey, Philamon, or stop being La India Maria.
While La India Maria remained a static character, Maria kept growing in her own career.
After the success of her early films, she started her own production company and wrote and produced for TV and film.
Maria appeared as La India Maria for the last time in 2014, in a movie directed by her son. She died a year later at the age of 74.
All month, we're talking about comedienne's. For more information, find us on Facebook and Instagram at Womanica Podcast. Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co-creator. Talk to you tomorrow.
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