When Delia Fiallo died in her Florida home on Tuesday, she was 96 years old and surrounded by her family. Despite all the sadness, it was probably a nice ending, a happy ending, as is so often the case with Fiallo.
The native Cuban was also called the “mother of the telenovela”. She wrote several dozen of the television monzettes over the decades, many of them extremely popular in Latin America, but also elsewhere. Among the best known Kassandra, Cristal and Maria del Mar. Alone Kassandra, one of Fiallo’s greatest successes, ran in more than 100 countries, translated into Japanese.
The series tells the story of a young woman who was actually born into the bosom of a wealthy family, but who is adopted by a circus clan without their knowledge through the intrigues of a (naturally) evil stepmother. Years later, luck would have it – or rather: Delia Fiallo – that she fell in love with the offspring of that rich family that she had once secretly rejected. Intrigue, murder, oaths of love, betrayal and confusion follow. But in the end there is a happy ending, just as there always has to be a happy ending for one telenovela.
If a particularly popular program comes to an end, the authorities fear power outages
For decades, the series has held millions of people in front of the screens, in Africa, Asia, Europe and the USA. In Germany, Gute Zeiten, Schlechte Zeiten is still the most watched today. But especially in Latin America, where the telenovela TV romances are more than entertainment: the latest series are subjects of conversation, sometimes even material for the front pages of newspapers and, above all, an integral part of everyday life. When a particularly popular program comes to an end, authorities can fear power outages in the face of millions of screens flickering at the same time.
From Tierra del Fuego to the deserts of northern Mexico, entire families often watch day after day how a mostly female main character masters the challenges that life and the scriptwriters pose to her. They are stories that often tell of advancement, of the long way from the country to the city or from poverty to the upper class, things that many viewers have experienced themselves – or at least dream of.
Telenovelas deal with lost but found love, but also with relatives believed to have disappeared. Because that is also part of real life in the immigrant and emigrant societies of Latin America. The telenovela reflects society here too, just with a soft focus.
Delia Fiallo dreamed that her fabrics would also come to the cinema.
(Photo: LEILA MACOR / AFP)
In contrast to the North American soap opera, which spins out the various narrative threads over the years, sometimes decades, the telenovela primarily follows one main character on her way to happiness, sometimes it takes a few months, sometimes a whole year, but in the end the farmer’s daughter marries the son of the large landowner and the poor from the slums learn of their true identity and an incredibly large legacy. Even if the modeling career doesn’t work out, great love awaits in the end – and what, the shows suggest, could there be more important?
The stories convey feelings we all have, said Delia Fiallo in a 2018 interview with CNN. “The telenovela allows housewives to dream at home by the stove. “
Fiallo, born in Havana in 1924, began to write radio plays for the radio after studying literature in the 1950s, initially only completed stories. Soon, however, she also experimented with the format that spilled over from the USA to the island: radio series aimed specifically at housewives, interrupted only by advertising blocks from sponsors, who were often soap manufacturers, which is where the format’s name came from: soap opera.
Fiallo began to write the first sequel stories, but with a predetermined ending. Too important, she knew, was a happy ending for the listeners and especially the listeners in Cuba. Fiallo was successful and with the rise of television, her scripts landed on the screen in the late 1950s.
In her Miami studio, posters of Delia Fiallo’s work hang on the wall.
(Photo: LEILA MACOR / AFP)
Soon a market for them arose in Latin America telenovelas, Programs from Mexico also ran in Chile, while Cuban productions were broadcast in Ecuador or Argentina. And soon the series were also a success in the USA, where the large Latino communities are just as enthusiastic telenovelas saw their relatives back home. This created a common cultural network, spun over thousands of kilometers. And Fiallo’s life as a screenwriter was closely tied to the rise of the telenovela to a popular culture mass phenomenon.
Delia Fiallo had emigrated to the USA as early as 1966 after the victory of the Cuban Revolution, from where she worked obsessively. Sometimes she finished one series and started another the next day, Fiallo once said at an awards ceremony and that sometimes she got so lost in her world that her husband even had to buy a sweater that said “I need attention” .
It was a great privilege to be able to reach so many people in so many countries, said Fiallo once and that she had therefore always tried to use this tool for more than audience ratings and advertising income. It was long telenovela decried as shallow and sappy, but thanks to authors like Fiallo, social problems, fringe groups and conflicts also cropped up again and again under the thick pink layer of romance.
Fiallo’s last telenovela ran in 1985 Cristal, she dreamed in vain of bringing her fabrics to the cinema – and was annoyed that the new ones telenovelas relying more and more on violence and action instead of feelings. How much she shaped the genre became apparent after her death: Actors, directors and colleagues from all over the world expressed their grief on the Internet. “Endless applause for you,” wrote Coraima Torres, the leading actress of Kassandra on Instagram.