Colombia Mourns End of 'Betty the Ugly' Soap Hit
Photos
Reuters Photo
By Ibon Villelabeitia
BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - For nearly two years, Colombians have tuned in every night to watch the mustachioed lady with braces as they seek an escape from a daily reality of massacres, kidnappings and leftist guerrilla sieges.
Now the end is near for ``I Am Betty the Ugly,'' the most popular television show in Colombian history. Next week, the last episodes will air, and many Colombians are already mourning a character they came to see as a national symbol.
The low-budget soap opera, chronicling the anguished love life and workplace dramas of a frumpy but honest secretary, struck a nerve in war-torn Colombia. Betty has dared to be ugly in a country obsessed with beauty pageants and honest in a society tired of corruption, political cynicism and scandals.
The soap became an instant success with its debut in October 1999 on local television station RCN. It has been sold in 22 countries in Latin America and Europe and is aired in the United States on Spanish-language Telemundo.
Betty has crossed gender and class boundaries in a Colombia where, as in most of Latin America, social structures are rigid and profound. The show is enjoyed by plumbers, housemaids, coffee farmers, doctors and cabinet ministers alike.
``Betty is different from the rest of soaps. It's like living in a different world for half an hour. My husband and I never miss it,'' said Maria Gomez, a 36-year-old biologist.
Many attribute Betty's success to Colombians' longing for a break from the daily diet of massacres and kidnappings. The South American country is sunk in a 37-year-old civil war that has killed nearly 40,000 civilians in the last decade alone.
There is no violence in the show. Neither the war nor the drug trade are mentioned.
'Betty Is The Colombia We Lost'
``Betty is the Colombia we lost,'' said Fernando Gaitan, the show's screenwriter. ``I wanted to show a world where Colombians go to work, struggle to make ends meet, listen to music, fall in and out of love and have children.''
The show is also a source of pride for a large expatriate community who lament the fact that the coffee-rich country with stunning Andean mountains -- the birthplace of artists such as Nobel laureate writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez and painter Fernando Botero -- is known to many only as the world's No. 1 cocaine producer.
``We Colombians are the 'Betty the Ugly' of the world. When we go abroad they look down on us and accuse us of being drug traffickers or guerrillas,'' said Jorge Enrique Abello, who plays Armando, the leading male character. ``When I go abroad, Colombians hug me and say: 'Thank you for showing the other Colombia.'''
Over more than 300 episodes, viewers have watched Betty, a working-class woman with a mouthful of braces, an odd greasy hairdo and a generous dusting of facial hair, as she toiled away at a chic Bogota fashion house populated by treacherous bosses and phony, simple-minded fashion models.
Photos
Reuters Photo
The plot followed Betty as she was seduced by her boss, the dashing, upper-class Armando Mendoza, whose secret motive was to cajole her into committing fraud to save his business. Learning his true purpose, the naive Betty is brokenhearted.
After the sad affair, Betty, played by Ana Maria Orozco, got a makeover -- dumping her clunky red glasses, degreasing her long dark hair, plucking her single eyebrow into two, and waxing off her mustache -- and emerged as a stunning swan.
This televised transformation was made easier by the fact that in reality Orozco is, without her ugly Betty makeup, a very beautiful woman.
Healthy Doses Of Social Commentary
The fashion house, in disarray due to Armando's excesses, makes Betty president to save the company from bankruptcy, and she introduces a line of clothing for average women.
Viewers are holding their breath to see if she will forgive the fallen Armando, who has groveled after her in episode after episode professing his true love, or if she will run off with the handsome Frenchman she has been dating lately.
The show provides healthy doses of ironic social commentary. The rich and beautiful are superficial and flawed, while Betty and her faithful ugly secretary friends -- known as the ``The Ugly Circle'' -- are sympathetic and down to Earth.
Betty's ups and downs have been the subject of countless editorials and her picture has appeared on magazine covers as routinely as those of guerrilla or death squad chieftains.
The show's crew say they get tons of mail from admirers around the world, asking for advice and confiding adulterous relationships or marital crises.
Director Mario Ribero said the producers also know that rebel commanders and outlawed far-right paramilitary leaders follow the show from their mountain hideouts.
When the show revealed that Betty was not a virgin, leading daily El Tiempo exclaimed in a Page One box: ``Betty the Ugly is not a Virgin!'' Pundits hailed her as a heroine when she turned down a bribe -- touching off a national debate on corruption.
President Andres Pastrana has scheduled televised speeches about the status of peace talks with Marxist rebels during the show's intermission to attract the largest possible audience.
``We are going to miss Betty,'' said Laura, a housemaid dressed in a blue-and-white uniform and carrying a loaf of bread. ``But in a way it's like she'll never be gone.''
