Florinda Meza and Roberto Gómez Bolaños during one of their skits in the 1990s.
The legacy of one of Latin America’s most popular television comedians, Roberto Gómez Bolaños – better known by his stage name Chespirito – has always been tainted by controversy. But since his death on November 28, 2014 at the age of 85, the bitter fights between fellow cast members on his television shows – including recent statements made by his widow and co-star, Florinda Meza – have kept his name fresh in the minds of his fans.
Gómez wrote the scripts and starred in the leading roles in memorable Mexican comedy shows such as Chespirito, El Chavo del Ocho (The kid from the eighth house) and El Chapulín Colorado(The red grasshopper), in which he played a bumbling superhero.
Over the past 10 years, the broadcast rights to all of Chespirito’s shows have raked in $1.7 billion
All his series were seen regularly across Latin America and Spain – as well as on Spanish-language TV stations in the United States – from the late 1960s up to the 1990s. Reruns of the programs are still broadcast in many countries.
While Gómez’s six children from his first marriage have kept a low profile since their father’s death, Florinda Meza, who also appeared on Chespirito’s shows, has been giving a string of interviews with different Latin American publications to speak about her life with the comedian.
“I am learning to live life differently,” she said recently on a Mexican interview program. “I am surviving.”
Meza revealed that Gómez suffered from Parkinson’s disease toward the end of his life, which “quickly” made him weak.
She also spoke about her affairs with other cast members, including Carlos Villagrán, who played Kikoon El Chavo del Ocho, and the show’s first producer, Enrique Segoviano. When she started her relationship with Gómez, Meza said she knew that he was already married and had six kids.
“I began the relationship with many difficulties – it was risky with a wife and six children. I never asked him to divorce his wife. It wasn’t easy watching him suffer because of his children.”
According to some reports, Meza and Gómez’s six children are quietly battling for the comedian’s fortune but the dispute hasn’t yet got out of hand.
Over the past 10 years, the broadcast rights to all his series have raked in $1.7 billion. The broadcast rights to just one episode of El Chavo del Ocho, his most popular show, cost $1.5 million.
Gómez’s only son, Roberto Gómez Fernández, had ruled out any legal action and claims he wants to maintain a good relationship with his father’s widow.
“We try to keep all the memories alive with the same love and affection he generated, and that helps a lot,” he said in an interview back in May. His five sisters have not spoken publicly about the battle for their father’s money.
For her part, Meza is continuing on her media tour as a grieving widow.
Mi Rober: soy tu "bonita", hoy leí el poema que me hiciste para después de tu partida. ¿Ves? ni la muerte nos separa.
To my Rober: this is your “beautiful” today I read the poem you wrote me for after your departure. You see? Not even death can seperate us.
Via her Twitter account, she has made it very clear how empty her life is without Chespirito.
“#ImissChespirito because he was good, because he was wise, because he was calm, and didn’t believe in offending people.”
In another message she posted: “Friends, hate grows, I know, but always remember what my Robert use to say. ‘Vengeance is never good because it kills the soul and poisons you’.”
Today’s Doodle celebrates the 91st birthday of the iconic Mexican comedian, entertainer, writer, composer, television director, and producer Chespirito, best known for creating and starring in some of the most beloved television series in Mexican history.
Robert Gomez Bolaños was born on this day in 1929 in Mexico City. After studying engineering, he quickly shifted focus to one of his many other passions—writing—and found early success contributing to some of Mexico’s highest-rated television and radio programs.
As a testament to his growing reputation and prolific output, he earned the endearing nickname “Chespirito,” or “Little Shakespeare,” which he embraced for the rest of his life.
One of Chespirito’s first big breaks came in 1970 when he launched his own self-titled, hour-long comedy sketch show. Stepping in front of the camera, Chespirito brought to life two of his most timeless characters: El Chapulín Colorado ("The Crimson Grasshopper"), a satirical superhero, and El Chavo del Ocho ("The Boy From No. Eight."), a quirky 8-year old orphan, both of which went on to earn their own shows.
For more than 40 years, Chespirito masterminded the creation of hundreds of episodes of television, in addition to movies and plays, capturing the hearts of millions with his signature style of clean and hopeful humor. His legacy lives on in the series’ reruns, which have been translated into over 50 languages and continue to run on television networks globally to this day.
Gracias for all the laughs, Chespirito—your infectious smile brings joy to families around the world!
The rise of the intellectual influencer: Why the fashion industry is turning to writers and artists
Luxury brands and social media algorithms, working hand in hand, are elevating intellectuals, creating book clubs and sponsoring literary and artistic prizes. Welcome to the internet’s most cerebral season yet
KARELIA VÁZQUEZ
OCT 09, 2026 - 11:47 COT
White Nights, a short novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky first published in 1848, is the latest literary discovery of Generation Z. TikTok users seem to be talking about little else.
The lament of the novel’s narrator, a young man in St. Petersburg, appears in post after post: “My God, how could I have thought it? How could I have been so blind, when everything had been taken by another already, when nothing was mine.”
Readers, sincere and performative alike, use it to recount their first encounter with the Russian writer, who — at least this much is clear — is not a creation of artificial intelligence.
With the unlikely popularity of reels quoting the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, an entire generation has learned to distinguish between economic, social and cultural capital, and is now finding ways to bring the theory into all kinds of conversations.
Over the past two years, social media platforms have acquired new layers of conceptual complexity. Skincare routines coexist with structuralist quotations, and Zara hauls with stacks of books displayed spine-out to the camera, to be revealed one by one by a new authority figure making the rounds online: the intellectual influencer.
The new authority figure does not sell supplements, workout plans or, really, any product at all. If anything, they share recommendations and ideas without a hint of condescension. The only thing they inspire people to want is knowledge.
Everyone wants to think online these days. The appeal of this figure does not lie in aspiration or in a desire to shock. Their influence comes from distinctive, well-grounded ideas on difficult subjects: from philosophy and quantum physics to geopolitics and literary theory.
Instead of offering a product to consume, they offer followers a framework for thinking. And when they recommend a book, its longer shelf life sparks new conversations. Their content does not disappear once consumed; it accumulates. Followers, often left with the feeling that they know more than they did before, respond with heartfelt compliments: “Today, you unlocked something in my brain...”
Under the broad umbrella of intellectual content, social media platforms now host everything from academics with niche but loyal audiences on YouTube to writers with a newsletter more powerful than any book publisher’s marketing campaign.
Actress Emma Corrin taking part in Miu Miu’s book club in Milan.CEDIDA POR MIU MIU
Influencers who explain things may be the best way to sum up the state of the internet in 2026. Dazed magazine described the trend as an “epidemic of explainers,” also known as thinkfluencers.
“These days, there’s an explainer video for every topic you can imagine, and swarms of thinkfluencers — often armed with tiny mics — popping up left, right and center,” writes Laura Pitcher. “Much of it is highly researched, and much of it is not — such is the nature of algorithmic culture, which rewards volume. Almost all of it, however, follows a similar format and at least has the appearance of being informative. At the very least, its popularity suggests that many young people want their scrolling to feel educational.”
Victoria Ballester, 19, explains her generation’s sudden interest in highbrow topics as a response to “a certain unease about not doing anything with their lives or wasting time on the internet with insipid videos.” “In the end, people feel better if a post recommends eight books; they save the list and feel they have fulfilled an intellectual activity, whether they read them or not. Even if they’ve never read a philosopher, they can cite one to look good, or if someone throws out quotes in a reel from, I don’t know, The Bell Jar, they gain prestige, even if the content is easy and there was no work behind it.”
Those who study the trend argue that the followers flocking to these creators are largely the same people who once gravitated toward traditional influencers, but are more discerning and increasingly weary of content centered on aspiration and consumption. Rather than a rejection of the algorithm, they see it as evidence of an audience that is maturing. And it is no niche audience. According to BookTok data, 59% of users between 16 and 25 say an intellectual influencer helped spark their interest in reading. In 2025 alone, the hashtag #intellectualinfluencer generated more than 370 billion views across 52 million videos.
Violeta Dávila, founder of the cultural consultancy Be Cooltural, believes that an excess of superficiality has pushed people toward content that offers a “refuge” from the noise. “It’s an interest we see not only among users but also among brands, which now prefer to associate themselves with a different kind of profile,” she says.
This type of content talks about literature, art and philosophy, and creates safe, welcoming spaces that rarely descend into polarization or online spats.
The fashion company Bottega Veneta sensed the shift in 2025 when it hired Zadie Smith for its Craft Is Our Language campaign. Smith, who publishes a novel roughly once a decade and is famously wary of social media, embodied the “expensive” aura and distance from the internet the brand was looking for: “the desire for a simple, intellectual and thoughtful life.”
That same year, Prada enlisted novelist Ottessa Moshfegh (author of My Year of Rest and Relaxation) to write an original work of fiction for its spring-summer campaign, issuing it as a limited-edition volume with a luxury binding that was sold in the brand’s stores.
Miu Miu launched an exclusive feminist book club that drew large crowds during Milan Design Week, while Chanel hosted a writers’ retreat at La Pausa, Gabrielle Chanel’s home in Provence.
Valentino sponsored the Booker Prize in 2024, and Saint Laurent opened a bookstore on Paris’s Left Bank.
Actress Isabella Rossellini with a Bulgari jewelry bag that holds a miniature book she wrote.CEDIDA POR BULGARI
Dávila notes that books have become fashionable at an aesthetic level, too. “Zara sells T-shirts with the message ‘Read More;’ Dua Lipa, Reese Witherspoon and Charlotte Casiraghi turn every book they touch in their book clubs into best sellers. There’s been an aesthetic shift; the ‘nerd’ and ‘bookworm’ archetypes are now seen as attractive,” she observes.
Ballester is reading The Brothers Karamazov. In her class, it has become fashionable to carry a copy of Dostoevsky’s novel, or Tolstoy’s War and Peace, in a transparent tote bag that leaves no doubt about the kind of literature one is reading.
In an age of endless scrolling and fragmented attention, a book, especially a physical one, says a great deal about the person carrying it. It has become a marker of distinction and good taste.
Reading, meanwhile, has come to be seen as a privilege. The latest PISA results show that many people struggle to understand a text of just 400 words. To read requires skills that are becoming increasingly scarce: sustained attention, depth, effort and time. It was perhaps inevitable that books, like anything that becomes difficult, would turn into objects of desire.
“Reading is a virtuous activity; those who practice it are presumed to have personality, and that is very attractive because nobody has it these days,” says Ballester.
If there were a way to tell the classic influencer apart from its intellectual counterpart at a glance, it would start with aesthetics. Their posts are filled with bookshelves, handwritten notes on loose sheets of paper and carefully highlighted passages from novels. There is usually a minimalist desk suggesting order and focus, and the scene is invariably bathed in warm light or illuminated by a candle.
The uniform tends to include a dark turtleneck sweater and perhaps a pair of oversized but tastefully designed reading glasses. Everything is meant to project elegance and intellectual authority. And despite all the visual clichés of that carefully curated stage set, audiences expect more substance than performance, assuming the algorithm, the ultimate gatekeeper, allows it.
de Emma Reyes (Autor), Daniel Alarcón (Traductor, Introducción)
“Startling and astringently poetic.” —The New York Times
A literary discovery: an extraordinary account, in the tradition of The House on Mango Street and Angela’s Ashes, of a Colombian woman’s harrowing childhood
Emma Reyes (1919–2003) was a Colombian painter and writer whose work vividly captures themes of displacement, memory, and resilience. Unrecognized for much of her life, her fame surged posthumously with her haunting memoir, “The Book of Emma Reyes (Memoria por correspondencia)”. Her literary prose and visual art intimately expose the harsh realities of a poverty-stricken childhood in Bogotá, offering a powerful narrative of survival, identity, and artistic self-realization.
By Efi Michalarou Photo: White Cube Gallery Archive
Eiko Yamazawa(山沢 栄子, Yamazawa Eiko, February 19, 1899 – July 16, 1995) was a renowned Japanese photographer. She is considered one of Japan’s earliest women photographers and is among the few women photographers in Japan who were active both before and after World War II. First trained in Nihonga, she later studied photography in the U.S. under the mentorship of Consuelo Kanaga, and also exposed to the work of Kanaga’s contemporaries such as Paul Strand and Edward Weston.
Reviving the forgotten influence of a pioneering female photographer
Ahead of the opening of Eiko Yamazawa’s first posthumous retrospective in Tokyo, curator Tsukasa Ikegami discusses the importance of the Japanese photographer’s abstract work, and why her legacy has largely been forgotten
PREVIEW: Japanese Women Photographers-From 1950s to Now
Rewriting the story of Japanese photography through the eyes of women and showcasing the work of 27 groundbreaking artists from the 1950s to today, the exhibition “Japanese Women Photographers: From 1950s to Now” highlights the perspectives that have shaped how Japan sees itself – and how it is seen by the world.
By Dimitris Lempesis Photo: The Photographers’ Gallery Archive
The American photographer Deborah Turbeville (1932–2013) challenged and reshaped both fashion photography and the ways of working with the photographic image in an artistic context. She belonged to no particular school or movement, yet from the 1970s onwards developed a deeply personal visual language – characterised by a distinctive aesthetic in which timelessness, melancholy, and a sense of patina permeate her photographs.By Dimitris Lempesis
Fascinated by the fundamental and inextricable triangle of sex, life, and death (it is to him we owe the words “I was no sooner out of my mother’s womb than I turned around and photographed her vagina”), Nobuyoshi Araki is tireless as a photographer, obsessed by women, often bound, and flowers, captured in the all the intimacy of their colored folds.
By Dimitris Lempesis Photo: Hamiltons Gallery Archive
Nobuyoshi Araki -Impossible Love / Vintage Photographs
Nobuyoshi Araki worked in advertising after completing his studies in photography and film at Chiba University in Tokyo, devoting himself exclusively to photography as of the mid-1960s. His oeuvre spans erotic portraits of women, artificial still-lifes, photographs of plants, documentary-style depictions of everyday life, and architectural photography but also very personal, diaristic photographs of himself and his deceased wife Yoko.
