Creator of Popular Mexican YouTube News Parody Show Says He's Not Beholden to Elites Agencia EFE
go to original March 13, 2017

Meet Chumel Torres, Mexico's Jon Stewart (BBC Trending)

La historia de la República/ The History of the Republic (Spanish Edition) by Chumel Torres Check it out on Amazon.com

The creator of a satirical YouTube Mexican news program that has gained thousands of followers attributes his success to his not being beholden to his country’s elites and to viewers’ frustration with traditional media.

Chumel Torres – whose “El pulso de la Republica” is the Mexican answer to American cable channel Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” which was long hosted by Jon Stewart until his departure in 2015 – will release his first book, “Historia de la Republica” (History of the Republic), in the coming days.

The book appears to be partly inspired by Stewart’s best-selling “America (The Book): A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction,” published in 2004.

A mechanical engineer by training, Torres said in an interview with EFE that people were drawn to his program partly because they sense that he is not controlled by powerful economic interests.

He noted by way of example that mainstream newspapers came under fire for portraying now-President Enrique Peña Nieto’s campaign stop at Mexico City’s Ibero-American University in 2012 as a success even though he was booed and mocked by students during the visit.

In his new book, Torres said his aim was to bring humor to an often painful history – from the Aztecs to the arrival of the Spanish to the 19th-century Reform War that pitted liberals against conservatives to the 20th-century Mexican Revolution, among other episodes that left deep scars.

His book does not cover Peña Nieto’s presidency nor the current difficulties in Mexico’s relations with the United States.

Read the rest at Latin American Herald Tribune

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