SUMMARY

Rodolfo Peñareal is obsessed with having a male child. After many abortions, his wife Blanca is pregnant again. One night, a girl is born, but they believe that she was born dead. In another house in the same town, in a humble house, a boy is born, but his mother dies during labor. The midwife and the nanny of Blanca, with their best intention and with the aim to calm down Rodolfo, decide to exchange the children. Blanca puts a pair of emerald earrings on her supposedly dead baby so that she is buried with them. Once the exchange is done, the midwife, Dominga, discovers that the girl is not dead, but now it is too late to right the wrong. In this way, the boy that was born in a miserable hut sees his first light in the opulence of the big house, while the sweet little girl who was entitled to a golden crib, gives her first steps among ramshackle walls and misery.

Esmeralda, the Peñareal’s baby girl, was born blind, but the kindness of her heart provides her the light to be happy and the illusion to believe that someday she will meet love. Her eyes are the ‘eyes of love’.

Time passes and the destiny of both of the children, Esmeralda and José Armando, come across and they instantly fall in love.

However, the obsession, the wish, the family interests, the false love of a woman and the Peñareal’s pride to make their lineage prevail, destroy any noble feeling. Esmeralda and José Armando are the victims in this sea of resentment that, little by little, submerges them into the darkness of indifference.

Summary partially taken from Televisa’s website.

OUR COMMENT

“Esmeralda” is the Mexican version of “Topacio”, a Venezuelan telenovela interpreted by Grecia Colmenares and Victor Cámara in 1986 (the change in the title was because, while Grecia Colmenares has brown eyes – like topazes – Leticia Calderón, the protagonists of this version, has green eyes – like emeralds). Unaccountably, it was very successful, since the plot is one of those that barely stands the passing of time. If in 1986 the male protagonist’s behavior was unforgivable chauvinistic, in 1997 it was unaccountable and baffling.

Like most Televisa telenovelas, all in all, it is well done, but everything is very corny and affected.

The conflict arises because, some time after José Armando and Esmeralda’s wedding, Lucio Malaver, obsessively infatuated with her, kidnaps her, and as she loses consciousness and doesn’t remember what happened, and whether she had been raped or not, when she gets pregnant she doesn’t know whether the child is José Armando’s or Malaver’s. José Armando, incapable of living with the doubt of the paternity of the child and with the idea that his sweet Esmeralda was touched by another man, he abandons her, just like that, as if in the case of having been raped she hadn’t been a victim.

Esmeralda feels obliged to abandon the town and moves to the city. Esmeralda meets Alvaro, an ophthalmologist that makes her a surgery to recover her sight. She gives birth to her child and starts studying nursing to get ahead. At the Hospital where she works, Esmeralda finds José Armando working as a doctor there, so you can imagine the rest. Enough if we tell you that José Armando decides not to love Esmeralda until it’s clear that she is and was pure.

Of course, it’s not only José Armando the anachronistic and chauvinist one. Rodolfo Peñareal is terrible, and even so his wife Blanca is always submissive and obedient.

Lucio Malaver is just as the others; he has protected and educated Esmeralda, in the “Pygmalion” fashion – a woman made to measure, to keep her for himself, like a doll; so he’s unwilling to accept that the lady has a will and an opinion of her own. But Malaver is at least, definitely, one of the baddies in the telenovela, while Rodolfo and José Armando are like heroes. What a hero!

On the other hand, Leticia Calderón, a very gorgeous actress, although she’s not in her best moment here because she had her hair dyed dark and got a super corny hairstyle that doesn’t flatter her at all (Has anyone seen the interviews from the telenovelas channel, Digital +? She’s beautiful now. She has more character than the silly Esmeralda). As we said in a previous occasion, the poor Leticia, as she has blond hair and green eyes, gets those roles of silly and angelical blond that don’t go with her much, mainly because she has a quite deep and husky voice, fitting more Chavela Vargas before getting drunk than a cherub.

Colunga, so underemployed, as always, in his ‘pre-Carla Estrada’ stage, plays a very unpleasant and chauvinist character, but weak at the same time. It would have been better for Esmeralda if she had stayed with Alvaro instead of returning with José Armando.

Juan Pablo Gamboa, as Alvaro, plays a very convincing hero who deserved to stay with the girl.

THE BEST

The telenovela was a success, so the general opinion must not coincide with ours.

There’s a secondary plot in which the cousin of José Armando, Graciela, interpreted by Nora Salinas, with whom he seems destined to marry, falls in love with a temp farm worker, an impossible love story that ends in tragedy. Although the Graciela and Adrián conflicts are very repetitive, the story is relatively well carried out.

THE WORST

The plot, which is a burden difficult to beat. They should have done a historic telenovela, and maybe in that way José Armando’s behavior and doubts could have been partly acceptable. Nowadays, his way of thinking is intolerable.

The Esmeralda of the first part is totally stupid, and her friend Florecita makes you feel pity (of course, with that name, how can you expect that poor girl to be?).