Whats So Funny About a Dictator? Venezuelas Comedians-in-Exile Have Ideas

Estefanía León, a young Venezuelan comedian, once wondered how she could keep making jokes amid so much tragedy.It was 2017, and she was living in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, at the worst point in her country’s economic crisis.Protests convulsed the nation, while food shortages left millions hungry and hyperinflation erased savings overnight.Her father, at the time very ill, would rise at three in the morning to line up to buy food before supplies ran out.

Ms.Léon was working seven days a week but could not afford his medication.Her job as a writer at El Chigüire Bipolar, a wildly popular website for political satire, required her to churn out jokes on a daily basis.

But she was dodging tear gas on the way to the office.Then the government, controlled by an increasingly authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro, passed legislation outlawing many kinds of speech.She wondered if her jokes would land her in prison.Comedy, she said, had been her trench, the place from which she lobbed political and social critique.

“Now, there was nothing to laugh at,” she said.“There’s no food, there’s no money, there’s a dictatorship, and I’m scared.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

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