Juan Pablo Raba, is a 45-year-old Colombian actor with more than 20 years of experienceamong which his work in Mexico has been identified by the soap operas on television in his country that have reached many audiences with great success (Long live Pepa, My Fat Beauty, The Frog Cartel, The Queen of the Southamong others.), in addition to venturing into the world of digital platforms (Narcos, Six, S.H.I.E.L.D.) and the cinema.
“My wife, Mónica Fonseca, and I arrived in Miami 20 years ago, when my son Joaquín was born, we weren’t running away from soap operas and that type of work, we were looking for another way of doing projects,” recalls Juan Pablo Raba.
The Latin American telenovela gives you the answer immediately, you feel the affection of the people and you know when they like something or not.
“The telenovela requires a lot of time, they are very long, it is as if you were on a train that goes underground for a year and when you leave you seek to resume your life. Although in Miami we continue with telenovelas, little by little it settled in and I was able to migrate to projects like narcs, Six and the movie 33“, Raba remembers his transition from the melodrama format to more robust productions.
“Although they are different things, the Latin American telenovela gives you the answer immediately, you feel the affection of the people and you know when they like something or not,” he added.
Gabo’s shadow, a fortune or a challenge?
Despite García Márquez’s reputation, having a suitable adaptation may be a requirement that is not suitable for all producers, reflects Juan Pablo Raba. “There are books that have fabulous stories, but they don’t transfer in the best way to the audiovisual medium,” he commented. “In this sense, the vision of the director, Rodrigo García (son of García Márquez), in which it involved doing it as a miniseries, doing it for a platform and doing it from the point of view of the victims“, he pointed.
“We could do it by reading the book with Escobar’s vision and that could be more comfortable, but eliminating the drug trafficker from this story was a great success,” says the actor.
The actor has already accumulated three works that relate him to the work of “Gabo”. At the theater in Bogotá he presented A Chronicle of a Death Foretoldcollaborated on the audiobook of One hundred years of solitude and now News of a kidnapping.
“During his life, Gabo himself said that if there was a book that could be taken to the screen, it was News of a kidnapping“, he commented. “For me it is not a guarantee of success or reason to feel fear, on the contrary, it is a pride to be part of this interpretation of the stories of my favorite author,” said Raba, who acknowledges that his favorite book is One hundred years of solitude.
Latin American stories that are still relevant
The book News of a kidnapping Since its origin, it is based on a real event that García Márquez documented with the events that occurred in Colombia in the 1990s. It tells of the kidnappings of several journalists and relatives of important politicians in the country at the end of 1990, a time when the war between Pablo Escobar (and his group Los Extraditables) against the Colombian state was at a critical point. A theme from 30 years ago that in Mexico does not seem very far away.
“The moment we see in this story, unfortunately, can be transferred to our times. At that time, a criminal group declared war on the State,” reflects Juan Pablo.
Villamizar does what we Latin Americans have to do: get ahead. We have faith, hope, joy and despite what is happening we continue to be brave peoples, “berracos” and thrown forward
“There are factors that we see there that are still very present in our societies; kidnapping, drama and tragedy have changed protagonistsbut they are there for whatever reasons they want, evil, corruption and greed,” he adds.
Alberto Villamizar is the character played by Juan Pablo Raba. A politician who is in a position of power, he is also vulnerable in a Colombia that feels kidnapped by the times he faced during that decade.
“Villamizar does what we Latin Americans have to do: get ahead. We have faith, hope, joy, and despite what is happening, we continue to be hardened peoples, “berracos” and thrown forward. Where the State does not solve anything, we have to do it us and the rules are constantly changing. It is part of our reality to live in chaos, it is complex, poetic and this story shares many elements in its timelessness.Raba described.
It is living with a feeling that we are all kidnapped
The actor remembers this period in Colombia as a phase that came to hurt his family. It was on Monday, November 27, 1989, a few minutes after taking off from El Dorado airport in Bogotá to Cali, the plane fell after an artifact exploded, killing 110 people in total.
“My uncle Oscar Francisco Rivera died on that Avianca plane, in an attack orchestrated by Pablo Escobar. The fear that you can’t go to school because there’s a bomb threat. So that stays with you, when you’re eight or nine years old, you don’t know what’s going to happen the next day,” recalls the actor. “It’s living with a feeling that we’re all kidnapped,” he added.
The adaptation of time in the series embraces all the aesthetic and environmental elements that were lived in that Colombia of the 90s.