Chumel Torres Brings the Intersection of Comedy and Journalism to Latin America Teresa Mioli - Knight Center
go to original March 18, 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

Chumel Torres is not a journalist. Nevertheless, his comedy, which is based on commentary of news, culture and politics, is consumed by hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans.

His YouTube channel El Pulso de La República (The Pulse of the Republic) has 1.84 million subscribers and publishes videos that regularly rack up hundreds of thousands of views. “Chumel con Chumel Torres,” the HBO Latino show that grew out of that YouTube channel, recently began its second season. (YouTube videos from that show pull in similar numbers). The comedian also recently released a book, “The History of the Republic,” about the history and politics of Mexico.

Torres’ shows and humor are in the same vein of The Daily Show or Last Week Tonight, John Oliver’s program that’s also on HBO in the U.S.

Yet, as a Fusion journalist explained: “his style is not just an homage to Comedy Central’s successful formula. Torres has also incorporated his own brand of nerdiness and irreverence, with an undeniable dose of Mexicanness.”

The Knight Center caught up with Torres on March 12 at the SXSW interactive media festival in Austin where he was speaking about new online media in Mexico. Torres explained his rise to fame, the motivations behind his comedy and why he is not a journalist.

Torres, a former mechanical engineer from Chihuahua, wrote a Tweet in 2012 that would change his life. That tweet, a sexually explicit joke about a proposal from a Mexican presidential candidate, went viral thanks to a re-Tweet from another politician who would subsequently throw his hat in the ring for the presidency. That Tweet led to a regular column for Expansión editorial group.

Eventually, Torres launched El Pulso de la República on YouTube after he pitched it to other media, but was denied. The show is still going, with new episodes posted every Monday and Thursday.

But, Torres said he hasn’t always had an interest in politics. He doesn’t align with a particular party, either. For him, the commentary comes from common sense.

“So I started writing about politics from a non-expert point of view and that became huge because I was writing about how I felt about it,” Torres explained, adding that people started to read because he was talking to them directly.

He agreed that some of the popularity could be traced back to people being frustrated with politicians and the political system. However, “At the same time, you need somebody to look at things from a distance. But at the same time, that has responsibility and that not only says how he feels, but you have to say what you feel with numbers and statistics and real news,” Torres told the Knight Center.

Read the rest at Knight Center | Lea en Español

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