Havana Cuba. — This November 21 marks the 89th anniversary of the birth in Havana, in 1933, of the actor Carlos Moctezuma, who popularized the humorous character Ñico Rutina on Cuban television.
Carlos Moctezuma was his stage name, although his real name was Carlos Gargallo Arcanté. Perhaps many will be surprised to learn that Moctezuma, in addition to being an actor, was an informant for G-2.
Linked from a very young age to the clandestine fight against the regime of Fulgencio Batista, after the triumph of the revolution Moctezuma was an agent of State Security. Infiltrating the clandestine opposition groups, he betrayed one of his members, Felipe Hernández Payarés, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
The anti-Castroists identified him in his role as a spy and sentenced him to be executed, but, at the last moment, whoever was supposed to kill the actor-informer repented.
The personification of Ñico Rutina, which Moctezuma began interpreting in 1955, agrees very well with the Cuban rogue. Through witty phrases and double meanings, it symbolized the way he spoke and behaved. Among the phrases that he popularized are “ash, senator” and “you have to get around the system.”
The presence of Moctezuma in the popular television program was highlighted for many years Saint Nicholas del Peladeroalong with Enrique Santiesteban (the mayor), María de los Ángeles Santana (the mayoress), Germán Pinelli (the journalist Euphrates del Valle), Agustín Campos (Montelongo Cañongo), among others.
Carlos Moctezuma also played Ñico Rutina for years in after-dinner joysthe stellar humorous program of Radio Progress.
As a dramatic actor, he participated in the television series In silence it has had to bewhere he played a character named Gabriel, a Latin American revolutionary.
In the cinema he played supporting roles. Under the direction of Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, she participated in The death of a bureaucrat, from 1966; in 1978 he was in The survivors –which was shot on the estate and mansion of Flor Loynaz—and in red powderor, of Jesus Diaz. He was also part of the cast of The strange case of Rachel K. (1973), directed by Oscar Valdés, and by patakinby Manuel Octavio Gómez (1982).
He worked in Tropicana cabaret shows, as The Romans were likeí, where he incarnated Nero.
One of his last live performances was in the humorous show Lola to the ball, at the Karl Marx Theater in Miramar.
Carlos Moctezuma died at the age of 49, in 1983. Today he is hardly remembered either as an actor or as an informant for State Security.
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