THE EFFECT OF GAMMA RAYS
Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
“A great humorist has
died”, I told everyone at the 2011 Thanksgiving party in San Ramón.
They all thought at first that I was talking about Horacio Olivo,
another great Puerto Rican humorist who was at that time hospitalized
and in critical condition. But to this day Olivo is alive and
kicking, hanging on to dear life and recovering. The humorista
who passed away that day was precisely a collaborator of Olivo, and
both together were among the most important forefathers of Puerto
Rican political satire as we know it today.
I am referring to my good
friend, learned and erudite man, and merciless scourge and bane of
right-wing pitiyanquis, who wrote under the pseudonym
“Fernando Clemente”. For some twenty years he was the author of
“Entrando por la Salida” (In Through the Out Door), the humor
column of the pro-independence weekly newspaper Claridad.
After his sad- and for me unexpected- departure I am now free to
disclose his true identity. “Clemente” was none other than
attorney Roberto Fernández-Coll, a prosecutor at the Puerto Rico
Justice Department.
“Entrando por la Salida”
had hordes of sincere lovers and admirers. And they were hordes! Not
only did they enjoy Clemente's brand of humor but apparently all of
them also shared his love for Medalla beer and deep fried beef (carne
frita). The acerbic, sharp and witty column
was not to everyone's liking. He had his detractors, who found his
writing vulgar and in poor taste, who would look on with baffled
disbelief at the joy of Clemente's fans when gobbling up his weekly
rants, forever unable to understand the blockbuster popularity of the
Clemente phenomenon.
In the 1980's when I was
studying at the University of Puerto Rico, my friends and I enjoyed,
celebrated and venerated those anonymous columns while we sat between
classes in the Humanities faculty's big windy hallway. We wondered
and speculated who could the author be. Who was this literary
outlaw?, this Clark Kent of humor, whose identity was as secret as
Machetero leader Filiberto Ojeda's whereabouts?
And finally in the
following decade I learned the answer when I began working at
Claridad. We were introduced by our mutual friend Carlos
Gallisá, one of the top leaders of the Socialist Party during the
1970's and 80's, now a lawyer in private practice, enjoying celebrity
status in the radio talk show circuit, and helping run the newspaper.
I was assigned an article about governor Pedro Rosselló's plans to
reshape the Puerto Rico judiciary for the advantage of the far-right
New Progressive Party (PNP). Gallisá and I were eating at El
Hamburger, that magnificent diet killer of an eatery in Puerta de
Tierra that faces the Atlantic Ocean. He said he would introduce me
to this confidential source for the inside scoop, and who, by the
way, also happened to be “Fernando Clemente”. I felt like Bob
Woodward breaking the Watergate story, or perhaps like Robert Redford
playing Woodward in All the President's Men.
Investigative journalism, sticking it to the governor, and the
prospect of secret meetings with secret informers whose identities I
would have to keep a secret to the grave- I was in the big leagues
now!
My
first meeting with my secret source “Clemente”, which took place
a couple of days later, was not in a secluded location in the dead of
night. He simply entered the Claridad building
through the front door and came straight to my desk. Fernández-Coll
“Clemente” was a short bald man who was bursting with raw energy
and righteous indignation. Simply put, he was in a bad mood, an evil
mood. He told me the inside story of Rosselló's impending coup
against the judiciary as he angrily gestured with his arms, and
cursed and raged against the mediocrity, ineptitude and outright
stupidity of prosecutors and judges. Our friendship began later, in
the following weeks during our casual conversations whenever he came
over to deliver his handwritten column (no internet for him, no fax
machines either, even typewriters were too high tech for him). Not
only did he and I have the same politics, but he was most pleased to
discover my warped sense of humor and to learn that I shared his love
for cold Medallas and carne frita.
“Clemente”
was not always an independentista.
He came from a right-wing pro-statehood family, and during his years
as a UPR student in the 1960's he was a member of the US Reserve
Officers Training Corps (ROTC) and the Pro-Statehood University
Association (AUPE), both of them incubators for right-wing
terrorists.
In
those days the movements for free speech on campus, and against the
military draft, against the ROTC presence on campus, and against the
Vietnam war were in full swing. Members of ROTC and AUPE would rove
around UPR, looking for violence, looking to prey on any
independentista in their
path, or anyone who looked
like a hippie. And the university's lefties, independentistas
and hippies were not of the gentle, non-violent kind, they did fight
back whenever attacked. There was political strife both in and
oustide the classroom. Back then Fernández-Coll was a hoodlum, a
troublemaker, a rock thrower, always ready to attack any peace
demonstration or student protest, or anything that had to do with the
left or the independence movement.
And
yet he changed his ideological stripes, he came to his senses, and
turned his back on a promising career as a right-wing bomb-thrower.
What happened? “With the passing of time, by way of reflections,
readings, honesty and personal decency, he transformed himself into a
respectable patriot, defender of all things national and Puerto
Rican”, said our mutual friend José Enrique “Quique” Ayoroa, a
respected independentista attorney
and statesman from the city
of Ponce.
He
did a master's degree in education with a history major, studied law
and became a lawyer for the people. Fernández-Coll “was always a
lawyer at the service of the poor, in institutions such as Legal
Services of Puerto Rico Inc. and the Society for Legal Assistance,
and as solicitor at the Juvenile Court”, said Ayoroa. “That I
know of, he never did a private law practice. On ocassions he was
also a university professor.”
I
interviewed “Clemente” in 2003 for a special Claridad
issue devoted to comedy, and during
the interview he referred over and over again to the late great
humorista Manuel
Eduardo “Eddie” López-Rolón. “Eddie López is my biggest
inspiration”, “Clemente” told me.
The
awesome legacy of Eddie López, outstanding humorist and incredibly
prolific writer and journalist for the English-language daily San
Juan Star, looms over all
political satire in Puerto Rico even today, forty years after his
death. Back in the 1960's no one dared make fun of politicans in
Puerto Rico- even though our national literature has been graced by
masters of parody and irreverence, like 19th century playwright
Alejandro Tapia and early 20th century essayist Nemesio Canales. In
the mid-twentieth century the political fauna of Puerto Rico was too
hazardous and easily provoked into anger. If local politicos are fair
game nowadays, we can thank Eddie.
Interestingly
enough, the bulk of his journalistic and humoristic work was written
in English. After a brief stint in El
Mundo, López
joined the staff of the San Juan Star
in 1961, where
over the years he rose through the ranks: assistant city editor, city
editor and then full-time columnist. In the late 1960's he began
writing his now famous humor columns for the Star.
In
1969 began the violent and repressive reign of governor Luis A.
Ferré, founder of the PNP- even laughing out loud was a bit
dangerous in those years. Decades later, while watching a cartoon
show about the bizarre foibles of witless yellow characters, one
could not be blamed for speculating that perhaps governor Ferré was
the inspiration for the character Montgomery Burns.
Apart
from his work at the Star, López
was a screenwriter for Esto No Tiene Nombre,
a comedy show on local station WAPA TV, modeled after the American
television program “Rowan and Martin's Laugh In”. The producer
was the much loved and esteemed Tommy Muñiz, perhaps the single most
influential person in the development of locally produced television
in Puerto Rico.
Esto No Tiene Nombre
was my first
contact with comedy, where I first saw Jacobo Morales, Shortie
Castro, Dagmar Rivera, the aforementioned Horacio Olivo,
Velda González- who
went on to become senator for over twenty years- and many other great
comedians who are dear to me. Watching that succession of brief skits
on Friday night was a fitting end to the schoolweek. It was wholesome
entertainment, with no vulgarity. It was the heyday not only of Don
Tommy, as we all called him, but of Puerto Rican television in
general. Starting in the 1980's, local TV production went into a
steep decline and- with some glorious exceptions- turned into
unwatchable, insufferable, low-grade crap. Tommy, we miss you!
López
was once a guest in Don Tommy's talk show, and that's when
Fernández-Coll first saw him. “It was a riotously funny
interview”, he reminisced. "It was one of the finest televised
interviews that I ever saw”.
Eddie
López first became notorious in 1971 when he made in Esto
No Tiene Nombre a fake broadcast
about an uprising in the outlying islands of Culebra, Mona and Monito
(the latter two are uninhabited), led by a mock veterinarian which he
himself played, all in the spirit of Orson Welles' 1938 “War of the
Worlds” radio broadcast. As was the case with Welles' fictional
broadcast, López's parody worked too well. Station manager Norman
Louveau was awakened late that night by law enforcement and by the
folks at the US Navy base Roosevelt Roads demanding to know what the
hell was going on.
Louveau
and the rest of WAPA management were apparently not amused. They
began to censor any politically sensitive gags in his scripts. But
López would not quit. Later that year he got together with fellow
Esto No Tiene Nombre collaborators
Jacobo Morales and Horacio Olivo to put together an uncensored
political satire live show to be presented in La Tea, a hideout for
beatniks, poets and bohemians in Old San Juan's Sol street.
At
about this time López was diagnosed with cancer and started
undergoing gamma ray radiation treatment. And he would make fun of
that too, his illness would be part of the comedy act. The show was
called “The Effect of Gamma Rays on Eddie López” (El Efecto
de los Rayos Gamma sobre Eddie López). The name, allegedly
suggested by Bob McCoy of the San Juan Star, was not only a
reference to his radiation therapy but was also a take-off on the
name of a popular Paul Zindel play, “The Effect of Gamma Rays on
the Man-in-the-Moon Marigold”, which would later be made into a
movie directed by Paul Newman.
The
“gamma rays” had an additional accomplice, the young guitarist
Silverio Pérez, who accompanied Olivo in a few musical numbers in
the show. He already knew the gang, he had frequently played guitar
in Olivo's spoofy songs in Esto No Tiene Nombre. Also,
Silverio used to host back then a weekly television show dedicated to
local music, also produced by Don Tommy, called Borinquen Canta,
for which Jacobo wrote and recited a poem every single week. Silverio
had very recently met López, whom he described to me as “one of
the most intelligent, generous and honest beings I ever met.”
The
“Gamma Rays” show was a smashing success. It was supposed to be a
one-night stand, but they had to do it over and over again. Word got
around, and as the days and weeks passed, more and more people of the
most diverse political creeds beat a path to La Tea to see these
intrepid comedians who were not afraid to poke fun at political
power.
Lopez's
health deteriorated, but the show went on. By November he was in a
wheelchair and breathing from an oxygen tank, but the gags and
laughter went on all the way to the end. He did his last “gamma”
show three days before his death; he passed away on November 26 1971.
He was buried in the Old San Juan cemetery, which also houses the
remains of patriots José De Diego and Pedro Albizu-Campos.
The
following year Ediciones Puerto published an anthology of his
funniest San Juan Star columns, The Best of Eddie López,
with an introduction by celebrity political commentator Juan Manuel
García-Passalacqua.
The
“gammas” went their own separate ways after that. Jacobo went on
to publish poems, act in theater, television and film (he appeared
alongside Woody Allen in Bananas), and to become an acclaimed
film director (nominated for an Oscar in 1990). Silverio has become
most successful in hosting TV and radio shows, doing comedy in
various forms (including a humor column in the short-lived El
Reportero newspaper), advertising, and even motivational
speaking. But most of all, he has become famous as a founding member
of the trail-blazing nueva trova music group Haciendo Punto En Otro
Son, whose first performances were in La Tea in 1975.
In
1980 the “gammas” got back together by Silverio's initiative, and
continued Eddie López's legacy under the name “Los Rayos Gamma”.
To fill López's shoes they brought in the young up-and-coming
comedian Emmanuel “Sunshine” Logroño, who years later would
reach super-stardom with his own television comedy show Sunshine's
Café. The Rayos Gamma not only did countless live performances
but also had a successful weekly television show which lasted well
into the decade.
And
that's when Fernández-Coll oficially entered the world of political
humor and satire. In that Claridad interview, he proudly
recalled his work during the 1980's as behind-the-scenes script
writer for Los Rayos Gamma, continuing the work of Eddie López and
introducing a new generation of young television viewers, too young
to remember those crazy evenings in La Tea and perhaps just barely
old enough to remember Esto No Tiene Nombre and Don Tommy's
glory days, to intelligent politically charged comedy.
Many
members of my generation, the high schoolers and college students of
the 1980's, remember Los Rayos Gamma and Sunshine's Café
as the only locally made television that was worth watching. Both
shows were pulled from the air allegedly due to poor ratings, but
most viewers- myself included- were convinced that the real reason
for the cancellations was the programs' feisty political content and
social critique. After that, most of us generation Xers stopped
watching local TV for a long time. I, for one, never watched it
again.
In the
early 1980's Fernández-Coll developed his “Fernando Clemente”
persona. It all started with a conversation he had with Gallisá. “He
said Claridad needed a humor column. I told him yes, so that
it stops looking like Pravda and Granma”. He would
write his ranting column in La Borincana, a restaurant in Fernández
Juncos avenue in Santurce, on the corner with Hipódromo street,
while sipping a Medalla. And then he would walk over to Claridad's
offices, which were back then in Santurce, on Ponce De León avenue's
bus stop #26, and anonymously slide the manuscript under the entrance
door. It was years before Gallisá introduced his secret friend to
the staff at Claridad, which kept quiet about his true
identity to the end of his days.
The
last time I saw “Clemente” was around 2009 at a concert
performance of his son Roberto in the Taller de Cantautores, a
now-defunct musicians' co-op in Robles street in Río Piedras' urban
center. Following his father's footsteps, Roberto is a part-time
comedian with an alter ego: Robi Gris. A sort of post-modern
singer-songwriter, Gris aims to do for nueva trova music what Spinal
Tap has done for rock and roll. Although humorous, his lyrics betray
his generation's bitterness in the face of an ever worsening social,
economic and political outlook. It's sarcasm with a generous helping
of barbed wire. If you are dating someone for the first time, you
probably don't want to take that special person to a Robi Gris
concert.
Mr.
Gris is the subject of a confusing and amusing incident in which he
got kicked out of a classy lounge bar in Río Piedras' Churchill
avenue where Silverio performs often. I will not name the
establishment here. I'll just call it The Pedantic Apostrophe (hint,
hint!). Apparently, the owner or person in charge that evening did
not appreciate Gris' fine sense of sarcasm. He found the lyrics
somewhat offensive and kicked him out in the middle of his
performance. There is more than one version of what happened. One of
the versions places merengue star Melina León in the very middle of
the controversy. The incident might become the subject of
documentaries and sonnets in the future.
That
evening in the Taller de Cantautores, Fernández-Coll “Clemente”
was the person that enjoyed the show the most. It was not clear if he
was already familiar with Gris' material, but he laughingly hung on
every rhyme, gag and verse. I had no idea that it was the last time I
would ever see him.
He
passed away on Thanksgiving, November 24 2011, the day after his
sixty-sixth birthday. He had been battling cancer for months. The
last hospital he visited was Ashford Medical Center, where
Albizu-Campos had also spent some of his last worldly days.
Within
hours, the news of his passing spread like wildfire by word of mouth,
iPhone, Facebook and Twitter. I was informed by phone by my friend
José Emilio Román, frontman of the techno-postpunk band Descojón
Urbano, which played often in La Tea in the early 1990's. The news
caught me right in the middle of the traditional Thanksgiving party
in the house of Alicia, my former neighbor and piano teacher, in the
Río Piedras neighborhood of San Ramón where I grew up. After
announcing the news to all those present, I realized that “Clemente”
was not all that famous outside the independence movement, although
everyone nodded in recognition when I said that he had had something
to do with Los Rayos Gamma. Wine glass in hand, I walked to the dark
backyard and silently toasted to the man.
His
funeral in the Ehret funeral parlor was attended by patriots and good
friends. National hero Rafael Cancel-Miranda was there, and so was
the king of troubadours Antonio Cabán-Vale “El Topo” and his son
Adeán, also a fine musician and singer himself who proved his worth
in the Taller de Cantautores. Another musician present was Américo
Boscetti, close friend of “Clemente” and veteran of unforgettable
musical nights in La Tea. I was surprised to see Carmencita Lidin,
daughter of the late peace activist, San Juan Star journalist
and good friend Harold “The Great” Lidin. She told me she had
once been a student of Fernández-Coll. Quique Ayoroa read a
heartfelt message to the mourners. His children were there, two of
whom I'm privileged to count as my friends, Roberto Jr. and Laura,
whom I first met in El Boricua (What is it about El Boricua?).
In a
Noticel piece by Melissa Solorzano, for which Roberto Jr. and I were
interviewed, Ayoroa compared “Clemente” to “Oscar Wilde, George
Bernard Shaw, Mark Twain and Puerto Rico's Nemesio Canales, all of
them great philosophical humorists of humanity”. But he also
described him as a very sad, melancholic and depressive person, much
agrieved by the wrongs of the world.
After
his body's cremation a group of us went, as was his wish, to have
fun, Medallas and some fine food in the Placita de Santurce, a
charming little square in the middle of the urban jungle, ringed by
bars and restaurants, to celebrate his life and his work in promoting
laughter and good humor. The restaurant we picked did not have carne
frita, so I went for seafood. Laura, sitting next to me, pointed
out that this day was the fortieth anniversary of the passing of
Eddie López.
- December 27 2011
--
KOYAANISQATSI
ko.yaa.nis.qatsi (from the Hopi Language) n. 1. crazy life. 2. life in turmoil. 3. life out of balance. 4. life disintegrating. 5. a state of life that calls for another way of living.
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