Jorge Fernández Era – Translating Cuba

Moses and the Newspaper

A National Humor Award that everyone applauds and no one discusses

Moisés Rodríguez, National Humor Prize 2025. / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Jorge Fernández Era, Havana, 6 April 2025 — For those of us who, in one way or another, participated in the young humor movement that emerged in Cuba in the 1980s, the Matanzas group La Seña del Humor represented that high point we always strived to reach, no matter if we actually got there or at least were close. Those older people we saw in the members of La Seña were our paradigm, proof that, among us, cultured figures could be popular without the need for banal mockery or the costumbrismo — the traditional heritage — that looked to the past and shunned the present.

Few forget that festival they organized in Matanzas, which, based on camping, helped steer our work with the vitality provided by confronting multiple forms of humor, almost all of them questioning a reality that seemed unquestionable. From that event at the Teatro Sauto, I remember seeing Pepe Pelayo and his group live, at their peak, and forever recording two unique moments: the monologue of the guy cutting his nails, delivered by Pelayo himself and Aramís Quintero, and the epic son performance of the aptly named cultured music performed by these cultured Matanzas natives.

He played a unique character: that of a musician who barely participated in the presentation, and who therefore spent his time reading a newspaper.

Moisés Rodríguez, one of the few remaining members of the legendary group in Cuba, played a unique character: a musician who barely participated in the performance, spending his time reading a newspaper. I mentioned this to the editor of La Seña a few days ago, and here is his reply:

“The act that closed our shows was Roberto Roberto and his group Bakán. That’s where Moisés el Roberto came from when he worked with his friend Lázaro Hernández, since they were both named Roberto. It was a typical orchestra with two guitars, bass, keyboard, violin, drums-timpani, conga drum, harpsichord and güiro, and minor percussion. We all worked together because Aramís interviewed Roberto Roberto (that was me), but Moisés was left out, as he was incapable of playing a musical instrument. So I had the continue reading

idea for him to sit to the side of the group playing a huge band bass drum. Since he only did this once or twice in each act—when a gag was over or there was a change of rhythm—Moisés had nothing to do. He himself had the idea of opening a newspaper and starting to read. He would take out a banana and eat it, or start brushing his teeth with a toothbrush, or put on deodorant… The group played classic songs, for example, Fur Elise by Beethoven, and it changed to Cuban son, or Ravel’s Bolero, which changed to a typical bolero, or a Brahms-merengue… and so on.”

I had written to the director of La Seña upon learning that Moisés Rodríguez had been awarded the 2025 National Humor Award for compelling reasons given by the jury: “For the significance of his work as part of the iconic group La Seña del Humor de Matanzas, for many the genesis of an entire movement in the 1980s later called ’new type of humor,’ and considering that La Seña marks a before and after in group work on the Cuban humor scene, defined by many as tropical Les Luthiers for the quality and versatility of their work, being a national reference for an entire generation of stage comedians in the 1980s and early 1990s, based on his work as a soloist, his presence on radio and television as an art curator, writer, and pedagogue.”

“For many, he is also the literature professor who brought his wisdom mixed with humor to the classroom, with his unforgettable lectures, which were short humorous scenes.”

Ulises Rodríguez Febles, a playwright and researcher from Matanzas, spoke in the White Room of Matanzas about Moisés and what he represented and represents for the national comedy scene, about “his body and gesture work, the work of his voice: playing with the phrase to support the joke, and sharply bringing his stories to laughter, from the deepest part of their essence: irony, absurdity, Creole cheekiness, playfulness, unexpected twists, the relationship between the body—the hands, the fingers, the hair…—and the delivery of the text. A sure shot to the spectator, to unleash laughter.”

He also said: “For many, he is also the literature professor who brought his wisdom mixed with humor to the classroom, with his unforgettable classes, which were short humorous sketches. He is the art critic, the curator, and the painter of abstract works, with whom he seems to be another Moses without ceasing to be one; the heir to a Martí and Christian tradition that is in his family roots, of which he is proud and which continues to beat within him. When we pay tribute to Moisés Rodríguez Cabrera, we are paying tribute to La Seña del Humor de Matanzas, the group that transformed Cuban stage humor and offered it a contemporary perspective, the group that became a symbol of the city and offered Cuban humor a different aesthetic connotation, a fusion of Creole and universal legitimacy, which served and serves as a reference in the history of contemporary humor, embracing tradition and modernity, the Cuban humorous heritage, and the confluences of our identity in music, literature, the visual, and the stage. And in that synthesis of intellect and grace, there is Moses.”

Pelayo, from Chile, congratulated him with a video. “We have been friends, partners, accomplices, henchmen, allies, colleagues, teammates, brothers for almost sixty years. I am one of the people alive, outside of your immediate family, who knows and loves you the most, and also, like you, I dedicated my life to humor. Therefore, I dare to affirm, with great certainty, that you were born a comedian, grew up a comedian, developed as a comedian, and reached the pinnacle of acting. You are the man with the greatest comedic talent I have ever known, and I have known too much. This award was a debt that Cuba owed you, that Cuban culture owed you, and not to mention Matanzas. In addition to being an excellent comedian, you are one of the most noble, sincere, humble, and helpful people in the entire universe.”

To me, who did not want to miss that moment, and was able to embrace him like no one else, among so many colleagues from the eighties who accompanied him in the evening, it occurs to me to think that Moisés, in that anthological issue with the newspaper, was simply reading that one day a tribute would be paid to his modesty and to the wisdom of those who accompanied him in that Matanzas monument that was and is La Seña.

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Otto Ortiz, ‘ESEN’ That is There

Ortiz was one of the founders of the group Los Hepáticos in 1987. / Jorge Fernández Era/14ymedio

14ymedio, Jorge Fernández Era, Havana, 25 January 2025 — If any beginning of a comedy show can be considered a classic of stage humor, it is what happened more than thirty years ago when Otto Ortiz and Omar Franco walked through the audience at the Carlos Marx in what seems to be a violent argument between the two characters.

Both have become legends, in Otto’s case for more than one reason. That the National State-owned Insurance Company (ESEN in Spanish) owes a car is not news, but that the affected person roasting them about it on social media, is. And that Otto Lugar (Otto’s Place) is not the name of one of his shows, but the name of a pizza place, is also news. So, I go in, sit down and ask the waitress to call the manager immediately.

14ymedio/Jorge Fernández Era. In 1987 you were the founder of the group Los Hepáticos. (The Livers). Thirty-eight years later, how’s that bile?

Otto Ortiz. That bile, as you say, is at its best, more critical and elaborated. I started in the group Los Hepáticos doing very basic humor. With time, with knowledge, with the internet and access to humorists from different countries, we humorists have been looking for our own space, our own way of saying and doing things.

In the beginning, we worked together with Nos y Otros (Us and Others). We didn’t understand their humor much, but today we have followed their line

In the beginning, we worked together with Nos y Otros (Us and Others). We didn’t understand their humor, but today, I guess because of our maturity, we have followed their line.

I don’t just use stage humor. Three decades ago we were terrified of cabarets and nightclubs. Not now, and we have even ventured into social media, with a distant but active audience.

Cuban humor has always enjoyed good health. What is lacking, if anything, is humorists, we have been losing them. continue reading

14ymedio/Jorge Fernández Era. Let’s say ESEN gives you a tourism cab, broken-down and worn-out like you. Would you leave the pizzeria and become a cab driver?

Otto Ortiz. The National State-owned Insurance Company has been a part of my life for five years. I have five children: four real ones, and ESEN, which should be my mother, my father, but it is like a child to whom I allow everything until one day it does something good. I don’t know if he will give me an old and bad car like me, but as long as it fulfills its social role I will be happy. After that, I don’t know what I will do with the car.

I don’t think I’d leave the pizzeria. People know me for three things. The third one is as a humorist. The second one is for ESEN. The first one is for my pizzas. Those are three things that mark who I am. The public Otto is a mix of a pizzeria, state-owned insurance and humor. When ESEN gives me the car, I’ll put in a good word for them. People will say, “Look at this scoundrel.” But I’ve grown fond of them.

14ymedio/Jorge Fernández Era. It seems that your obsession with ESEN is a way to erase the bad memory of the baseball fuel shortage you had in the nineties to defeat Nos y Otros.

Otto Ortiz. Between 1988 and 1990, with Los Hepáticos, I did several seasons at the Carlos Marx, directed by Virulo. Nos y Otros were there too. We organized a four-team tournament. They say they won, we say the opposite, the dispute is still going on. Six top intellectuals like Nos y Otros can’t beat four or five pure “costumbristas” who were Los Hepáticos. I don’t believe that arts can prevail over people from Marianao, Mantilla, La Palma… Edit it however you want to, the paper can stand it.

14ymedio/Jorge Fernández Era. Tell me about Malas Compañías (Bad Company), the ones on the web and the ones you’ve had in your life.

Otto Ortiz. Malas Compañías is a YouTube series that I have the honor of sharing with the people of Punto y Coma (Semicolon), Visti Cárdenas and Iván Salgado. It has to do with relationships between individuals with different sexual orientations: acceptance, acknowledgement, and respect. El Nene (The Baby) who is me, is an old macho and homophobic man who for some reason lives with a gay man. We are already sixteen episodes in, we have addressed different topics, always from a humorous point of view. Behind an apparently simple script, there are messages, especially stories that you laugh about and enjoy. At this point it is very difficult for things not to have a meaning, to “say something.” We try to make people think, to make them grow.

Personally, bad company is left behind. I don’t have many friends and I don’t bother the ones I have. When I love someone I don’t bother him, neither does he, but we are there for each other. We don’t have to say what we are or draw attention to ourselves. The key is to be there at the right time.

I must also talk about good company. I have very few, but the good ones fill the gap in my chest. You and I, for example, have had a working relationship for years, and I have been there for you too, in a relationship of great respect, of love. The simple fact of supporting you (a comment, a timely visit…) speaks of our friendship.

The bad company I discard, the good company I take care of.

14ymedio/Jorge Fernández Era. It is remarkable your insistence on keeping a deep, analytical and critical humor. Aren’t you afraid that the censorship will try to “fry” you in a different kettle of fish… at Otto’s Place?

Otto Ortiz. My humor is more analytical than critical, more analytical than deep. When you go too deep, you can go too far. The subject of ESEN has helped me to criticize from a joking point of view, but without reaching the point of excessive mockery. It’s a good way to joke, but always rubbing salt in the wound with. As Martí puts it: bells on the end, but with a whip.

I have not had the pressure of censorship. I’m not from the media, which is where there can be more fear

I have not had the pressure of censorship. I am not from the media, which is where there can be more fear, because people are officially working and with many criteria. On social media, I do more critical humor, with a certain dose of sarcasm, and people like it. I’ve been lucky with that, without a Torquemada or censor. That’s good, isn’t it?

I joke a lot with the current situation, I try not to miss anything. We live in a society that changes daily, you can’t wait until tomorrow for a joke, because it’s gone. I try to give it a humorous twist while still criticizing, but at the same time I try not to stop suggesting, sometimes just for fun, but it’s there.

I just made a joke about how they were giving candies instead of coins for change (in the store) on the corner of 3rd and 70th. Those kinds of clips don’t last a minute, people consume them well. I also do a repertoire that goes beyond criticism, with the theme of Cubanism, father-son, husband-wife relationships. But criticism must always be present in humor. If we criticized more, it would be better for us, for the country, for society. That’s why I’ll be there, even if I am “fried” in a different kettle of fish… or “baked” at Otto’s Place.

Translated by LAR

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Enrisco, Between Freedom and Power

From New Jersey, the Cuban writer, professor and humorist speaks to us of the divine aspect of making humanity laugh about the inhuman.

Today, Enrique del Risco is the writer who most profoundly and ironically analyses the intricacies of local politics in the last seven decades. / Eric del Risco

14ymedio, Jorge Fernandez Era, Havana, 12 January 2025 — Pérdida y recuperación de la inocencia (Loss and Recovery of Innocence) is one of those books that change the perception of literature, humor, and the border that is often built between the two. It was published in 1994 by someone who was part of the humor movement that emerged in the eighties in Cuban universities. Today, Enrique del Risco is the writer who most deeply and ironically analyzes the intricacies of local politics in the last seven decades. This is supported by, among others, his book of articles El Comandante Ya Tiene Quien le Escriba (El Comandante Already Has Someone to Write to Him) (2003), the memoir Nuestra hambre en La Habana (Our Hunger in Havana ), the book of essays Historia y masoquismo (History and Masochism) (2023), as well as the anthologies El compañero que me atendi (El Compañero Who Looked After Me) (2017) and another on the way, where several intellectuals delve into the influences of perestroika and glasnost on Cuban thought at the end of the 20th century.

It was about time we called him up and sat down for a serious talk.

Jorge Fernandez Era/14ymedio: How does the weird balance between being funny and being boring work?

Enrique del Risco: It is a balance, and balances are always complicated. There is no unique or permanent recipe. In order not to fall into boredom, you have to avoid excesses and clichés, and surprise the spectator, which forces you to seek originality, even in the most hackneyed subjects. Above all, respect the public, think that they are as or more intelligent than you are, treat them accordingly, know how to use complicity without abusing it. There will always be audiences that are dumber than you, but for them, comedians are not needed: they laugh at anything.

“If Fidel’s plane collides with Raúl’s plane, who will be saved? Answer: the people.” That’s pretty free, isn’t it?

Jorge Fernandez Era/14ymedio: After “Humor between Freedom and Power,” your iconic text from more than thirty years ago, which of the three of them has changed? Have you?

Enrique del Risco: Iconic, I don’t know for whom, but freedom and humor have changed somewhat, even if power remains in the same place. In that article I said that it was part of the logic of humor to confront power and snatch away spaces of freedom, without which humor cannot exist. I had in mind, on the one hand, a totalitarian power like the Cuban one and, on the other, the humor that is exercised in the public space.

In private, humor never ceased to be free. I remember the first political joke I heard: “If Fidel’s plane collides with Raúl’s plane, who will be saved? The answer: The people.” That’s free enough, isn’t it? Even if the Fidelista child I was at the time didn’t immediately get the joke.

Since 1994, when the article was published, Cuban humor has conquered wide spaces of freedom. It achieved this within the country, where those in continue reading

power have had to resign themselves to seeing Mentepollo or Pánfilo appear on television with their Vivir del Cuento. Possibly the sweetest moment of humor in its relationship with those in power was when Obama, the first American president to visit Cuba in almost a century, preferred to go to the set of Vivir del Cuento rather than pay homage to Fidel Castro in Punto Cero.

That power has also had to resign itself to the fact that you continue writing even though you suffer firsthand from power’s poor sense of humor.

That power has also had to resign itself to the fact that you continue writing even though you suffer firsthand from power’s poor sense of humor. Others – I suppose with less of a hero’s vocation – have preferred to seek freedom outside the Island. I think of the legion that has been making humor for decades, such as Ramón Fernández Larrea, Pepe Pelayo, Alexis Valdés, El Pible, Garrincha or Lauzán, and the others that have joined in recent years. The best thing we have done is not use freedom as an excuse to fall into weightiness, which is ultimately as dangerous as power or more so for a comedian.

It helps a lot that digital technology has largely freed us from the condemnation that separates Cuban comedians into “inside” and “outside.” I remember, a couple of decades ago, seeing Jorge Bacallao reading his text about Havana. I thought about how good it would have been to keep a record of the shows at the Carlos Marx and the Mella in the late eighties and early nineties. Or of the readings by Eduardo del Llano, Pedro Lorenzo and myself at the Esperando por Gutenberg group in La Madriguera.

Today we can access what is happening inside: the La Risa por Delante space, the magnificent shows of the new version of La Leña del Humor… And from there you can also keep up to date with what we do here.

Jorge Fernandez Era/14ymedio: “El comandante has no one to write for him” and yet you do.

Enrique del Risco: I had not written humor for years when I took up my nom de guerre, Enrisco, again in 2000 to publish weekly columns in Cubaencuentro. Making humor out of Cuban politics was not well received, partly because in exile a solemn tone had been imposed when speaking of “poor Cuba, martyr of Castro-communism” and similar niceties, and partly because the humorists who came out of Cuba since the beginning of the Revolution imposed a “combative humor” that is a contradiction in itself. You can make fun of a dictatorship, make people lose the fear or respect it inspires, but from there to believing that you are a “soldier of laughter” or any other war metaphor is a very dangerous leap. The world of war and the allegories it engenders is full of rigidity, and this can only serve a humorist to make fun of it.

If by “Cuba” you don’t just mean the largest archipelago of the Antilles, but the regime that prevails there, that’s a bad joke.

The greatest merit of those columns of mine in Cubaencuentro – part of which ended up in the book Comandante Ya Tiene Quien le Escriba (El Comandante Already Has Someone Who Writes to Him) – together with the letters of Ramón Fernández Larrea and the apotheotic irruption of Lauzán with his Guamá, was to change the perception that political humor in exile should be as stiff as that in Cuba, only with Uncle Sam replaced by Fidel. If there was one thing that Castroism and anti-Castroism agreed on, it was that politics was a serious matter. As Woody Allen says, “comedy is tragedy plus time,” and we had lived in Cuba too long to realize that no matter how macabre the system was, at its core it was a farce.

Those of us who started making political humor wanted to be free not only as people, but also as comedians. That creative freedom we sought was reflected in what we did. In my case, it helped that I didn’t wait to leave Cuba to make political humor. At least as far as humor is concerned, when I left the Island I was already free.

Jorge Fernandez Era/14ymedio: It is an axiom that a joke cannot and should not be explained. Can Cuba be explained?

Enrique del Risco: From a geographical point of view, it is very easy. But if by “Cuba” you do not only mean the largest archipelago of the Antilles, but also the ruling regime – remember that in 1959 Fidel Castro had the idea of offering “freedom with bread” – that is a bad joke, a bad joke that only succeeds in being taken seriously because of local vileness and foreign stupidity. Or vice versa.

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One Hundred Thousand Crazy People and a Neighborhood, a Conversation With Comedian Ulises Toirac

“The Communication Law and other demons that complement it practically prohibit the exercise of humor in Cuba”

Ulises Toirac and Jorge Fernández Era in Havana / Facebook/Ulises Toirac

14ymedio, Jorge Fernández Era, Havana, 14 December 2024 – Not everyone can have a hundred thousand followers on Facebook. Ulises Toirac reached this number a few days ago, not only for the prestige of an artistic career of more than four decades, but also for the seriousness with which he assumes humor and faces a heterogeneous audience that applauds as much as it denigrates.

Part of those experiences are reflected in his most recent publication, the book Locos de barrio [Neighborhood Crazies], available on Amazon and other platforms. The central subject of our meeting in Santos Suárez, our neighborhood, was that.

Jorge Fernández Era: Do you consider yourself a humorist who makes you think or a thinking being who makes you laugh?

Ulises Toirac: A little of both. Humor, even if it’s a job, is fun. The best proposals are born by vibrating your spiritual need with your communicational need. I consider myself a guy who is always looking for a way to complicate things by over analyzing, and in that way I surprise myself and try to surprise others. When I succeed, I feel self-realized.

Censorship is instituted by levels: from whether you make fun of a street sweeper to whether you do it of a director of Communal Services or the President of the Republic

Jorge Fernández Era: The line between what is allowed and what is prohibited has been crossed in recent years. For good or for bad?

Ulises Toirac: In Cuba there has always been a manifest censorship. I remember it in our beginnings in the Aquelarre festivals or in the shows that were usually held in the theaters. Unfortunately, that was small stuff compared to what we have now. The Communication Law and other demons that complement it practically prohibit the exercise of humor. Censorship is instituted by levels: from whether you make fun of a sweeper to whether you do it of a director of Communal Services or the President of the Republic. The sanction goes up to the extent that your jokes are directed towards those positions and the inability to develop them.

Before, the danger was not so visceral. At this moment anything can take you to trial if so decided. In addition, the general public does not show intellectual interest in humor. When there is censorship, we look for mechanisms with which to communicate with people. At other times, those who attended the theater identified with intelligent humor. Today, either you do junk humor or you dedicate yourself to something else.

One of the illustrations by Ulises Toirac included in ’Locos de barrio’/ Ulises Toirac/Courtesy

Jorge Fernández Era: When did you realize that you could also write jokes and memories?

Ulises Toirac: It’s a process. I write since I have use of intellectual reason. From a very young age I always liked to do it, not literature itself, but television scripts, librettos for theater… I used near or distant memories to capture them. For a while I have had a purely literary interest, but due to time, interests or work load I didn’t try to gather a series of stories in a book. From the isolation of Covid, and even before, I began to write what we could call stories.

In art, if you don’t find a personal, unique way to express yourself, you can starve to death. I realized that by transferring my personal way of speaking to paper, I achieved that. I was publishing little by little on social networks and before in a newsletter that developed a lot of subscribers. In the last three years it was already a more methodical process. But it wasn’t overnight.

Jorge Fernández Era: With Locos de barrio, does one door close or another one open?

Ulises Toirac: Both. Locos de barrio is the end of literary innocence, that stage in which one is in love with a woman and proposes marriage. With the last stories I wrote I already had the firm purpose of creating the book.

‘Locos de barrio’ is the end of literary innocence, that stage in which one is in love with a woman and proposes marriage / Ulises Toirac

Literature is the greatest incentive of the imagination. You have no limits or brakes; you can scrutinize the universe and do what you want: you close one paragraph, open another, and you move, in no time, from China to the South American cone. It will continue to be the best way to get informed, to acquire culture, to grow.

Nothing is absolute; life is dialectical, and things are intertwined on top of each other. It is clear to me that I want to continue writing and publishing. Another book is going around in my head; it will be called Epistolary without a gun. It is my desire, through letters, to talk about the topics that interest me. The letters will be addressed to a historical character, to my first preschool girlfriend, to my teenage bicycle, to my terror of heights, to the President of the Republic… Or – if the Law applies to me for the latter – to you, so that you can finish this interview.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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