Comediennes: Maria Elena Velasco

Maria Elena Velasco (1940-2015) was a Mexican film and television actress who developed the popular character La India Marí, a slapstick comedy character based on a stereotypical Mexican indigenous woman. 

For Further Reading:

• La India María: Mexploitation and the Films of María Elena Velasco
• Indios y burros: Rethinking “la India María” as Ethnographic Cinema
• El miedo no anda en burro - película completa de la India María 

This month, we’re talking about comediennes — women throughout history who have made us laugh. They transgressed societal norms through comedy and often spoke out against injustice using their sharp wit.

History classes can get a bad rap, and sometimes for good reason. When we were students, we couldn’t help wondering... where were all the ladies at? Why were so many incredible stories missing from the typical curriculum? Enter, Womanica. On this Wonder Media Network podcast we explore the lives of inspiring women in history you may not know about, but definitely should.

Every weekday, listeners explore the trials, tragedies, and triumphs of groundbreaking women throughout history who have dramatically shaped the world around us. In each 5 minute episode, we’ll dive into the story behind one woman listeners may or may not know–but definitely should. These diverse women from across space and time are grouped into easily accessible and engaging monthly themes like Educators, Villains, Indigenous Storytellers, Activists, and many more.  Womanica is hosted by WMN co-founder and award-winning journalist Jenny Kaplan. The bite-sized episodes pack painstakingly researched content into fun, entertaining, and addictive daily adventures. 

Womanica was created by Liz Kaplan and Jenny Kaplan, executive produced by Jenny Kaplan, and produced by Grace Lynch, Maddy Foley, Brittany Martinez, Edie Allard, Lindsey Kratochwill, Adesuwa Agbonile, Carmen Borca-Carrillo, Taylor Williamson, Sara Schleede, Paloma Moreno Jimenez, and Abbey Delk. Special thanks to Shira Atkins. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello for Wonder Media Network. I'm Jenny Kaplan and this
is Willmanica. This month, we're talking about comedians women throughout
history who've made us laugh. They transgressed societal norms through comedy,
and often spoke out against injustice using their sharp wit. Today,
we're talking about a woman who made a name for
herself in Mexican cinema by reprising the same wildly successful

(00:26):
role in more than a dozen films. Let's talk about
Maria Elena Velasko. Maria Elena Velasko was born on December seventeenth,
nineteen forty, into a family of six. Maria's mother was
white and her father was Indigenous. She grew up working class,
and soon after finishing secondary school, began working in the theater.

(00:48):
She danced and sang in musicals, performed in vaudeville shows
at nightclubs, and worked with male comedians as a supporting actress.
Around the same time Maria was gaining her footing as
an actor, many in Digital and Mazahua women were migrating
from rural Mexico to Mexico City. They often worked as
street vendors, selling fruit, candy and trinkets. Every day. Maria

(01:10):
walked past these women in the streets, and one day
she had an idea, what if she impersonated them? So
Maria created the character La India Maria, a caricature of
an indigenous Mazahua woman. Maria started out performing as La
India Maria on vaudeville stages, and her character quickly became

(01:31):
a crowd favorite. Soon enough, Maria had booked her first
television appearance on the variety show Cianfrean Domingo. In the episode,
while Maria is selling fruit in front of the television studio,
she falls in love with the show's host and then
follows him into the studio. In a series of misadventures,
she makes her way past security and onto the main stage,

(01:52):
where she proceeds to monopolize the show. This variety show
was already one of Mexico's most watched programs, but the
episode Maria appeared in was one of their highest rated episodes,
more than four million people tuned in. Soon after appearing
on TV, Maria's character got her own movie called Tanta
Tanta pero Tanto. The movie premiered in nineteen seventy two,

(02:17):
and the opening of the film, La India Maria is
dressed in a long skirt, a bright satin blouse, and
a thick knitted belt, all clothes meant to indicate that
she was an indigenous woman. She's about to board a
train to Mexico City with her donkey. Her parents, while
telling her goodbye, also tell her it's no use writing
letters home. They can't read and she can't write. When

(02:38):
La India Maria makes it to the big city, she
immediately bumbles her way into the middle of a jewel
robbery and a murder. But armed with optimism and impeccable
slapstick timing, La India Maria ends ubsolving both cases. She
even has the time to make friends with a famous
TV host. Maria's film debut was a success. Over the

(02:59):
next few decades, Maria acted in dozens of films, and
in all of them she played the same character, La
India Maria. The storylines in these films were varied. Sometimes
she's working as a maid for an upper class family.
In one movie, she's accidentally elected to political office. But
in every movie, the character of La India Maria remains
the same. She's traditional and modest, uneducated, lower class, and

(03:22):
baffled by modern Western society. She speaks mostly in broken Spanish.
She's always hilarious. In nineteen seventy four, when an interviewer
asked Maria if her character would ever grow or change,
Maria said never. I am La India Maria and I
could never leave my donkey Philimmon or stop being La
India Maria. While La India Maria remained a static character,

(03:48):
Maria kept growing in her own career. After the success
of her early films, she started her own production company
and wrote and produced for TV and film. Maria appeared
as La India Maria for the last time I'm in
twenty fourteen, in a movie directed by her son. She
died a year later at the age of seventy four.

(04:08):
All month We're talking about Comedians. For more information, find
us on Facebook and Instagram at Willmanica Podcast special thanks
to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co creator. Talk
to you tomorrow.