Estefania Leon, a young Venezuelan comedian, once wondered how she could keep telling jokes in the face of so much tragedy.
It was 2017, and she was living in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, during the worst of the country’s economic crisis. Protests have shaken the country, while food shortages have left millions going hungry and hyperinflation wiped out savings overnight.
Her father, who was seriously ill at the time, would wake up at 3 a.m. to wait in line to buy food before it ran out. Although Leon worked seven days a week, he could not afford medicine.
My job as a writer for El Chigüire Bipolar, a hugely popular political satire website, required me to make a barrage of jokes every day. However, she dodged tear gas on her way to the office.
The government, then ruled by increasingly authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro, passed laws banning various types of speech. She thought she might go to jail for her joke.
Comedy, she says, was her trench, a place from which she could make political and social critiques. “There was nothing to laugh about anymore,” she said. “There’s no food, there’s no money, there’s a dictatorship, and it’s scary.”
She took refuge in Mexico City in 2018. At first I was focused on survival. But eventually she returned to the world of humor.
And today, Ms. León plays a major role in Venezuela’s larger comedy boom, whose protagonists, who primarily work and live outside the country, are now, for the most part, free to say what they want. can.
Some countries have elevated novelists and poets to positions of cultural prominence. Venezuela has long regarded its comedians as some of its most important social commentators.
With nearly 8 million Venezuelans leaving their homeland since 2015, that talent is now moving abroad.
These comedians include George Harris from the United States, Jose Rafael Guzmán from Mexico, and Victor Medina from Argentina. Mr. Medina, known by his childhood nickname “Nanutria,” last year joined others at Luna Park, a stadium in Buenos Aires that usually attracts Argentine rock gods such as Charlie Garcia and global superstars such as Shakira. I performed with people.
Leon, 33, is one of three producers of El Cuartico, a weekly video sketch and podcast project streamed on social media and audio platforms. He has more than 600,000 followers on TikTok, but that’s only a fraction of his fan base.
But they found themselves drawn to themes close to the Venezuelan experience, such as immigration and authoritarianism, which they believed few Spanish-language humorists touched on in a sophisticated way.
Soon, their voices and videos reached hundreds of thousands of people searching for their Venezuelan identity abroad. All three members of El Quartico now make a living from comedy.
A recent video sketch features Mr. Leon standing in a fictitious U.S. immigrant line, trying to charm a border official named Larry into believing he’s only there for a short visit.
He looked at her things. Inside were four suitcases, an air fryer, and an arepa grill called a budare, which I was clutching to my chest like a life preserver.
Finally, under the imposing gaze of Agent Larry, which has been the experience of nearly every Venezuelan who has crossed the border in the past decade, she explodes.
“Yes! I’m here to stay!” she admits. “I want you and the rest of the world to know about it!”
Other sketches feature a belligerent dictator refusing to return from a long dinner party and mocking Mr. Maduro’s refusal to relinquish power, and a government spy too clumsy to hide his true identity. is depicted, criticizing the government’s bald efforts to monitor its citizens. .
Not all episodes are that political. Last month, the group investigated the nation’s obsession with skinny jeans, including a sketch depicting a man unable to remove his pants, which are too tight.
Chucho Roldan, 36, a colleague of León’s at El Quartico, attributes their popularity to the collapse of Venezuela’s entertainment industry amid a political crisis, and the large presence of Venezuelan characters in mainstream international entertainment. I mentioned things I no longer do.
“We have nothing. We want to look at ourselves,” Roldan said.
Leonardo Martinez, 38, who left Venezuela for Puerto Rico in 2014, said the group helped him reconnect with his Venezuelan identity, which was “hidden under all the anger, frustration and national grief.” He said he was able to recognize it.
“I hardly see any Venezuelans here,” he said of his new home. “That’s why places like El Quartico cling to Venezuelans.”
On the eve of the country’s recent crackdown on dissent (about 2,000 people have been detained since a disputed election at the end of July), the trio embarked on a dangerous tour of five cities in Venezuela. There they were welcomed like celebrities, filling theaters including the capital Caracas’s iconic amphitheatre.
Even outside the country, the three continue to use Venezuelan rhythms (very fast) and vocabulary (“chama” instead of “chica” for girls, “pana” instead of “amigo” for friends) and references to Venezuela. (In the immigration sketch, Leon is trying to bring an air fryer to the United States to make tequeños, cheese sticks consumed as a patriotic duty.)
However, a significant portion of the audience is from outside the home country.
“The Corruption Sketches are working all over Latin America,” said Daniel Enrique Pérez, 34, a third member of El Quartico. “A sketch of the dictatorships at work throughout Latin America.”
Many Venezuelan comedians started their careers in Venezuela and then went on to build new careers abroad.
But Angelo Collina, 30, from Maracaibo City, began his stand-up career after immigrating to the United States, landing in Salt Lake City in 2018.
Currently based in New York, he has performed in 31 states and Puerto Rico since January, often playing sold-out shows, including at Manhattan’s Gramercy Theatre.
Unlike the El Quartico trio, much of his comedy focuses on his experience as a Latino in the United States rather than his country of origin.
“Of course I miss my country, my people, my family very much. But at the same time, the most beautiful moments I spent as an adult and in my career were those spent outside Venezuela,” he said. . “If I had stayed, I don’t know if I would have done comedy, much less at this level.”
In recent months, the political situation in Venezuela has gone from difficult to dire. After the July election, which was widely seen as stolen by Mr. Maduro, Mr. Maduro’s security forces detained hundreds of people, many of them civilians.
Despite the crackdown, a small comedy community still exists within Venezuela, centered around a comedy club in Caracas called Pizpa.
Alejandra Otero, 41, is a regular at Pizpa and remains in the country. Most of her humor is not political, but she has spent years developing an impression of María Colina 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, sits in a car and follows written instructions to go to the left. However, she refuses to do so. “Venezuela!” she declares. “Never turn to the left!” In the end, she ends up turning right again and again, never reaching her destination. “Another day,” she declares.
Mr. Otero has long had to be careful about his words and actions, and even more so in the post-election environment. In preparation for a recent show at Pizpa, Ms. Otero cut out some political references, she said.
She added that there is less room for comedy in Venezuela every day.
“Humor is clearly something that makes the regime uncomfortable, because it was created to make people uncomfortable and criticize,” she said.
But she has no plans to quit performing or run away. Because, now more than ever, “we need to laugh,” she said.
Isayen Herrera contributed reporting.
