Xavier López Rodríguez ‘Chabelo’, who died this Saturday at the age of 88, not only brought joy to millions of Mexican children and adults through film, music and the emblematic Sunday program ‘En Domingo con Chabelo’; millions of men who went on the Internet when he was alive, but many do not know that, although he spent his entire life in Mexico, he was actually born in the United States of America.
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“Chabelo” could have made his life in the United States, but his family decided to return to Mexico and begin his career as a villain in Mexican cinema. This is the reason why Xavier López was born in the United States of America.
His parents, José Luis López Barba and Eulalia Rodríguez, were from the city of Leon (Guanajuato), but they moved to the city of Chicago (Illinois) at the beginning of 1930. In 1936, his parents decided to return to Leon’s country, where they returned to work in the fields.
At the time, it was not only one of the most important cities in the United States of America, but it was a sign of the country’s resurrection after the Great Depression of 1929. Thousands of migrants from all over the world arrived in that city. in the factories and railways, which arose from the economic resurgence, they also begin the first great migration of Latinos.
Could Chabelo have gone to war?
“Chabelo” had dual nationality by law, but he spent almost his entire life in Mexico. However, as a US citizen he was almost forced into the Korean War when he was 18 years old. At that time, the United States of America sent millions of people to fight on the peninsula, where the conflict with the Soviet Union was then raging and which would later be divided into two countries.
At the same time, ‘Chabelo’ was already studying medicine in Mexico City. Xavier López was drafted by the United States Army around May 1953, where he worked for three months at a military base in San Diego (California) and was almost sent to fight on the Korean peninsula. But the conflict ended on the 27th of July of the same year and he returned to Mexico in aid.
When he returned and did an internship in a private job, he also dropped classes and attended the new facilities of the television center – at the current headquarters of Chapultepec- televisa, where he met emblematic producer Luis de Llano Palmer, where he convinced him to drop out. Medicine, salad…and the rest is history.
DM
