Emiliano Sánchez Gallardo has it all, until he is betrayed by his friends, who used his company for money laundering without him knowing about it. Therefore, he was obliged to run away from Mexico, his home country, and to say goodbye to everything that had been his world up to that moment.

Owing to a series of unfortunate events, he ends up in Bogotá, where his misfortunes have not ended yet, since he is robbed and beaten there. The thieves stole his papers and money, so he is trapped in Colombia and being hunted by the INTERPOL for a crime he did not commit, without friends or acquaintances and without a means to make ends meet. But by chance, in a mariachis’ bar in Bogotá’s downtown, the Plaza Garibaldi bar, he meets Rosario Guerrero, a rancheras singer, daughter of a quarrelsome and drinker Mariachi, who becomes his guardian angel.

The friendship that grows between them will completely change their lives. He skeptically receives Rosario’s disinterested charity, a slim feeling in the rich’s world in which he had lived. Thanks to her, he manages to make a living as a singer in the Plaza Garibaldi, as he evades the zealous persecution of the INTERPOL and of the police in Colombia and Mexico. But above all, he discovers the extended influence of the Mexican culture in Colombia and finds in Rosario the love of his life.

She also finds love thanks to Emiliano. With him, the scattered pieces of what has been her life start to make sense. The happiest moments, as well as the most painful ones of Rosario’s life, are related to the memory of her father. A ranchera singer, bohemian and passionate, he was a pleasant man who risked his life and filled his family’s with sorrow, since the working nights, booze and women did away with him. In a desperate effort to erase the memories of a turbulent childhood, Rosario struggles to become a business administrator.

In spite of the sorrow, the image of her father is also linked to joy and passion - that’s why she keeps as a relic his mariachi outfit. An outfit without an owner which carries with it a painful memory that only vanishes when Rosario, without intending it, falls in love with Emiliano and lends him the outfit so that he can sing at the Plaza Garibaldi.

Emiliano Sánchez Gallardo, member of one of the most powerful families in Mexico, never imagined that he would end up becoming a Mexican music singer in a bar, though second rate, in the Colombian capital. He thought his legal situation in Mexico would be cleared up in a few weeks - that’s why he never told Rosario the truth.

Apart from the uncertainty of trying to be someone else and the sorrow for the collapse of his family and life, he has to deal with the weak control he has over his own feelings, the fierce opposition of his rivals and the traps some women set for him to win his love and separate him from Rosario.

The permanent struggle of this couple will demonstrate that all obstacles can be overcome when one’s will is strong.

(Summary partially taken from the telenovela’s official website).

OUR COMMENTS

An intelligent and original script, with brilliant dialogs, an unbeatable use of the ranchera music, likable and believable characters, actors chosen for their capacity to act and transmit and not for other considerations; a perfect combination of comedy and drama. If anybody wonders what we are referring to in these pages when we say the ‘renovation’ of the telenovela genre without betraying its essence, don’t miss “La Hija Del Mariachi”.

Most telenovelas nowadays, in which actors from here and there are mixed, are a botch job without personality or grace. Unlike most telenovelas, “La Hija Del Mariachi” knew how to benefit from the diversity and to concentrate on the exact opposite: Instead of blurring the cultural differences it accentuates the localisms, without falling into clichés or stereotypes.

Emiliano is Mexican, but he is not fond of rancheras as a consequence. In fact, Emiliano is a sophisticated man of world, to who the mariachis’ world is such an alien as would be a life of flamenco tablao to any Spanish. The contrast becomes even more curious because of the fact that Emiliano is not even in Mexico but in Colombia; hence the cultural shock could be compared to the shock a Spanish would feel while working in a flamenco tablao in Luxemburg. Or maybe it is even more shocking for Emiliano, since he is rich - and not only rich but he also belongs to a renowned family - what goes hand in hand with the fact that, whether in Mexico or any other place, he is class-conscious.

The ‘fall to hell’ in Colombia is accepted by Emiliano, almost without making a fuss about it, mainly because he thinks that it is something purely temporary. There he shows us the first features of his character – generous, strong and hard enough despite he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

A very interesting aspect of the story, mainly in the first third of the telenovela, is the bases of the police plot as the constant comparison between Mexican police lucubration and Emiliano’s successive conspiracy hypotheses, along with what is really happening to him – he couldn’t be in a worse situation. This humorous-tragic touch is constant throughout the telenovela, since in general, the sense of humor is a distinctive mark of the Colombian telenovelas. The Colombians, or at least the Colombian television scriptwriters, have an extraordinary capacity to laugh at themselves, even in a telenovela like this one, in which they contrast characters from two different nationalities. Laughing at yourself at home is more common, but doing it while comparing yourself with people from other country is quite odd, brave and original.

One of the many virtues of this telenovela is that the secondary plots revolve around the main plot; this seems to be a truism but the fact is that in the last batches of telenovelas there are thousands of plots without any connection at all between them or without a connection based at least in such a weak thing as the fact of sharing the same physical space in a given moment. This might not be universally considered a defect, but it is for these commentators, for whom those unconnected plots are nothing but a nuisance, which don’t add anything to the action and only serve as a distraction and excuse not to develop properly any of them.

In “La Hija Del Mariachi”, as we said, the plots are subsidiaries of the main plot, though this doesn’t mean that the secondary characters are dummies, props or objects for the protagonists to have the chance of making their speeches, as it happens in other telenovelas like “Luna La Heredera”. In “La Hija del Mariachi” the secondary characters have an identity, a personality and a private life, which contributes to give the telenovela a certain warmth and deepness that makes it more interesting.

Without being a comic telenovela, “La Hija del Mariachi” has a lot of funny scenes, but its comedy is based on the dialogs’ intelligence, rhythm, brilliance and grace; on the actors’ excellence and not in those grotesque situations, full of absurd characters whose only funny side is that they never stop talking, not even to breathe in, even when what they say is not funny at all. In “La Hija del Mariachi” the only really flamboyant character is Mrs. Eulalia (Luces Velázquez, our ‘Berta’ in “Betty, La Fea”, as efficient as always), is as funny as her instructive snobbism and her use of a pretentiously educated but badly pronounced and utilized language.

Rosario is a singer for tradition, but above all for necessity - she attends University and cares about her studies. Her mother was a middle-class woman (or maybe high-middle-class, it’s not very clear in fact) who lost all she had for love, though the life they lead in their home is that of a middle-class family, though without means of support.

This story is not about the rich prince who unbelievably falls in love with a poor, ignorant and illiterate street vendor or cardboard collector but about two people with completely different lifestyles, though not that different in the end; two people who weren’t destined to meet but whom destiny unexpectedly joins. In their future life, it’s very likely that the studious, hard-working and responsible Rosario will think that the frivolous and snobbish friends of Emiliano are some sort of aliens than the contrary and that his friends consider her a fly in the ointment.

Emiliano also worries about Rosario’s studies and professional future, which demonstrates that he’s not one of those idle riches who thinks that his future wife is a bimbo whose only function will be to accompany him. There are many scenes in which Emiliano helps Rosario, and Lucia, to study and do the assignments and worries for her grades.

An absolute innovation is the use of music as a dramatic element in the musicals’ style, but with the difference that in “La Hija Del Mariachi” the characters don’t start singing for no reason in the middle of a phrase, and with the extra grace of using music which already existed and which wasn’t composed for this play in particular.

In the telenovela, songs that underline or accentuate the action moments are chosen, without taking into account that the actors do excellent lip-synching, so that the situations never look forced. Besides (the same thing that happens with the Spanish popular folk music), though one might not like the genre, it has to be recognized that the rancheras and boleros have a very poetic language, very adequate as background music in a love and lack of love story. Throughout the action, from the very rich songbook the telenovela has, the songs with the most appropriate and pertinent lyrics for what is going on are chosen - the music and the lyrics allow the characters to show their feelings with a deepness and a dramatical level that could never be achieved in a conversation, as the spoken language is necessarily more colloquial and shame prevents us from saying certain things.

As a few good telenovelas, like “Mirada De Mujer”, “La Hija del Mariachi” has other interpretations apart from the obvious one: boy meets girl and love-suffering-love and more love. After observing this parallelism, a friend of this webpage made us see that the script of “Mirada De Mujer” is a work of Bernardo Romero Peiró, teacher and mentor of Monica Agudelo Tenorio, the author of “La Hija del Mariachi”, and even this author participated in the script of the first.

One of those other interpretations, one of the ‘stories inside the story’, is that in “La Hija Del Mariachi” a paradoxical situation is presented in a world in which the inhabitants of the rich countries hide or entrench themselves behind their frontiers, as if they were forts in which they have to resist the invaders assault, i.e. ‘the poor’. “La “Hija Del Mariachi” puts the rich on the bad side of the equation – is the rich who finds himself without papers or the possibility of finding a job that would match his outstanding qualifications, since nobody gives him the chance without a paper to prove it, so he sees himself forced to do a job which, though decent, is not adequate for him, nor allows him to make a bare living. What’s more, we’re used to seeing in fiction the Mexican immigrants running away from hunger and crossing in whichever possible way the closed border of the USA which separates them from the chance of working, reaching prosperity and their right to a decent life. But this situation which seems so humanly unfair to us, although legal and organizationally sensible, repeats itself in Colombia but the other way round. While the Mexicans can get in or out as they wish, the Colombians cannot enter Mexico, a more prosperous country than theirs, without a visa. Two different viewpoints, like chalk and cheese.

As it is when we talk about Colombian telenovelas, the actors deserve a comment, though in this occasion half of them are Mexican: from Luis Eduardo Arango, as Sigfredo, to the girl who plays Lucía, from the grotesque and ridiculous of El Coloso to El Mañanitas and Esteban, Javier Macías’ friend, the already mentioned Luces Velázquez, Nicolás Montero, the efficient Alejandra Borrero – they are all exceptional and real.

Mark Tacher, the actor who interpreted Emiliano, is a very expressive and natural actor, that’s why he makes very a credible Emiliano with internal coherence despite experiencing unbelievable situations. The character of Emiliano has an extraordinary sense of humor and is a joker, characteristics we suppose aren’t attributable to Mark, but which are absolutely his own merits - the inflections and the rhythm, the punctuality of his entrances and his extraordinary body language which contributes a lot to realism; and his timely, feeling and funny phrases. This is our modest opinion; for his versatility and good work, Mark Tacher is currently the best Mexican hero, though he doesn’t count with the same stance of other better-known and renowned heroes. Mind you, we’re not saying that Mark Tacher is ugly, on the contrary, it’s only that cultivating his body doesn’t seem to be one of Mark’s main activities in his life; just the necessary, which in our opinion makes him, as an actor and as a man, more interesting.

As a counterpart of Emiliano, we find Fernando Molina, El Milamores, interpreted by Mario Duarte, another natural prodigy. They both make a close pair of friends, and Fernando is in charge of deactivating Emiliano’s excessive sentimental tendency and introduces the joking point when Emiliano falls into those corny excesses in which people who are in love often fall and whom the scriptwriters reflect so well (with all the intention of making them so corny as in real life, we insist). In one of the first scenes Emiliano warmly makes fun of his friend Felipe because it is suspected that he likes his own assistant.

The feminine protagonist role falls on the actress Carolina Ramirez, a beautiful girl whose great talent overshadows her lack of affectation and silicone. With this we mean to say that Carolina is really ‘normally beautiful’, without being remolded or stuffed with anything. Her interpretation of the good, decent and responsible Rosario is also very worthy of praise, and she cries so well that we want to give her the scepter that Adela Noriega had up to now – Carolina cries much better. Although Rosario is the character with less shades, she also has original elements, like her natural ability to express love. Rosario is a romantic heroine, though a modern heroine, who expresses herself like any normal girl, without prudishness or false decency, without avoiding being innocent and good. Rosario, as well as her mother, are a bit foolish and naïve - Rosario doesn’t even suspect about Macías’ true intentions, which cannot be more obvious, nor about El Coloso’s intentions. And there’s the same question with her mother because, the fact that she believes that Macías just wants her daughter’s friendship, a sex bomb, is to believe that Mrs. Raquel has a disability not only with her hands but also with her sight.

The script allows us to see how the relationship between Emiliano/Francisco and Rosario develops. Despite both suddenly fall in love, time is given later for them to consolidate and strengthen their relationship. I mean, it’s not pure love from the beginning, though it starts like that, but the two characters have the opportunity to know and treat each other, which on the one hand is very real and on the other they give us, the audience, the chance to see the protagonists together many times.

Owing to circumstances in the channels’ programming, two different endings had to be shot, with some months’ difference, one for its broadcasting in the USA and the other for Colombia. We just want to say that the USA ending is hasty and is a bomb (except for the wedding scene, with Emiliano as annoying as always, which is very funny) – it lacks the sharpness and subtlety of the rest of the production. In the USA’s broadcasting, a victim of the conservative fanaticism, not only words that can be considered swearwords in less permissive countries than ours have passed through the scissors (like ‘shit’, ‘asshole’ or ‘damn’), but also words which only the most lustful minds can consider indecent (like ‘be stark naked’, ‘nude’, ‘groper’, ‘dumb’, ‘whore’ and they even cut the word ‘tits’ in the breast-feeding context). And that’s what generally happens with the censors - they have such a dirty mind that instead of moving sin away from us they make our attention go precisely towards the missing words which probably, if we had heard them, would have passed unnoticed.

THE BEST

The originality of the idea, the casting, the protagonist couple, the dialogs - the whole work. The telenovela is so good that the Colombian version, much longer than the American and therefore susceptible to suffer, in the words of Hernán Casciari, author of the blog “Espoiler”, ‘the chewing-gum stretching or the succession of filler-scenes and events, which are only meant to increase the number of episodes, is much more interesting than the short version, because it is in those scenes that the bond of friendship and trust is forged between Emiliano and the herd.’

Particularly, we love the attention paid to apparently insignificant details: from the heart Rosario draws in the place of the dot in the letter ‘i’ in ‘Francisco’ (which reminds us that Rosario is a young girl who grew-up in a hostile environment, overwhelmed by responsibilities which don’t concern her, but who is a young lady after all – a fact which also explains why her mother is still so after her), to Emiliano’s conversations with Lucia, to the homework sessions, the jokes and the witty phrases (so fast that they’re hard to follow, but which outline every characters’ personality), Sigi’s quarrels with her poor son-in-law, the changes of Manuel El Coloso when he becomes serious and the ending, which is absolutely exciting.

THE WORST

Although it doesn’t almost affect the telenovela’s quality, the legal plot, as almost always, is weak. We can’t really understand which are those ‘convincing’ proves (the proves in the telenovelas are always very convincing; do you remember about “Te Voy A Enseñar A Querer”?) which incriminate Emiliano, but it would be enough to reverse it if he’d show up to deny it all. It’s not clear also why Emiliano’s family, who has ALL the resources in their hands, passively waits to see what happens? Because one thing is that Mr. Roberto is very decent and doesn’t use his political influences but, hiring a group of lawyers, is that using one’s influences indecently?

Another quite false thing is the fact that society turns its back on the Sanchez-Gallardo. That doesn’t happen even in Spain, where very influential people prosecuted for huge frauds are still being accompanied and received by the highest society and even by the king! And this doesn’t happen in Mexico either, and I don’t mean to point it out, but its society is a bit more corrupt than ours. Even so, this detail, though hollow, can be forbidden, since it adds drama to the story and contributes to the monumental anger Mr. Roberto feels for Emiliano.

In the USA version, the policemen, quite foolish men (even if they try to hide it), don’t realize about the truth of the facts until one of the ‘bad ones’ confesses, which is the last straw. Of course, in the Colombian version, the good one, in which the untangling of the plot is delayed a bit more than a snap of the fingers, almost the same happens, which is worse – when the police finally stops to look, simply to look, they find clues that incriminate the real guilty ones.

Although the atmosphere and the wardrobe are very good, as they serve to underline the different characteristics, atmospheres and personalities, there’s a quite disconcerting element - and that is Mark Tacher’s hair in the first part of the telenovela. In each of the takes Mark has a different hairstyle with a different length. In the firsts scenes, his hair is combed with gel. As soon as he arrives in Colombia his hair doesn’t have gel but has a horrible bowl cut; then his hair is still without gel but shorter (much more handsome) but in some of the takes he’s again shown with the bowl cut and then he has it short and with and without gel again – his hair grows and retreats like the hair of those dolls which you just need to pull from their head to make them grow a long mane. From that last change on, he wears it in a coherent way, luckily. In that scene in the first part, in which Emiliano and Rosario are in a bus and she loses her balance, that scene which is repeated over and over in the breaks, watch carefully because Emiliano’s hair is something to see – his ears show like Mighty Mouse’s. As handsome as he is, how could they make him that outrageous haircut!

Focusing now on other more important things, we think the love between Rosario and Emiliano is, we already said this, too sudden, and if it weren’t for the fact that we see them as they want to be seen, the first thing we’d think is that Emiliano wants Rosario because he needs her. Then it isn’t like that, because the scriptwriters doesn’t want it to be like that, but it’s logic to think about it. Emiliano goes from thinking that she’s a kind angel to falling completely in love. What’s also very sudden is Emiliano’s change – from a rich and sophisticated guy who, according to his brother-in-law Martin, doesn’t like fights, to the difficult and impulsive Francisco, who has such a short fuse that he comes to blows for the smallest and most childish provocation. At some point it is said that Francisco’s violence is skin-deep as a result of everything that’s going on, but the truth is that Emiliano always becomes violent except when Rosario sings, so that it’s not really clear what it is that suddenly turns him so primitive, without trying to be a bit rational. And let’s not take into account how much he drinks – a fact that we feel annoyed with (we believe not to be the only ones), even if the example Emiliano gives to the audience doesn’t worry us, since the telenovelas aren’t precisely didactic programs. We don’t like the protagonists fixing it all by drinking to forget and period. It seems that, after some audience defense association’s complaints the scriptwriters explained that they were trying to create a downwards spiral until Emiliano would hit rock bottom so that he could reborn from his ashes like the Phoenix…. Just for you to know it.