“Was the clarification necessary? It is obvious that no one in the world ever thought that this was real.” And like Matthius, the actress who embodied “la Chimoltrufia” did not think she should go out to clarify something eitherbut the insistence of several journalists forced her to respond to a #fakenews: Florinda Meza will NOT sue Shakira.
The controversy over the alleged lawsuit of the Mexican actress against the Colombian singer began by a video posted on the social network TikTok last May which ensured that Shakira would face legal action for allegedly copying the steps of “Chavo del 8” in her video “I congratulate you”. Almost three months later, several Latin American media outlets took up that supposed note and, for the most part, took it for granted that this would happen or that it was already happening.
Shakira released the song ‘Te congratulations’ on April 21, a song in which the urban musician Rauw Alejandro also collaborates, who tells how one of the members of a couple feels after an infidelity. The stanza “I congratulate you, how well you act, I have no doubt about that, with your role continues, that show looks good on you”, quickly became a trend on TikTok (almost 885 thousand videos have used it), which combines funk with reggaeton in a catchy and danceable proposal.
In addition to the song, the composer also premiered the video directed by Jaume de Laiguana, her main photographer, and shot in Barcelona, Spain. In this, the interpreter is on a futuristic stage, dancing between flames and neon lights. She is in charge of using technology to create an ideal man, Rauw Alejandro, and next to her she dances a choreography full of robotic movements.
If the subject by itself was already catchy – it came out weeks before they met the separation of her with the Catalan soccer player Piqué-, the author of which we all believe that our hips do not lie when dancing, took out a challenge with that choreography. Same as after a tiktok Bolivian would use to create the false news that surrounds Chespirito’s widow.
A little after the month of the release of ‘Te congratulations’, the user identified as DJMikeas posted a video that reads “Florinda Meza will sue Shakira for plagiarism in the footsteps of Chavo.” The video, barely 43 seconds long, shows the Mexican actress in front of the microphones of reporters from windowingImage Entertainment, Televisa, Multimedios Television, with images of the program Tell me what you know from Telemundo..
From the beginning, Florinda is heard responding to a topic that she says she knows nothing about; At another time, the actress answers about the events that her husband Roberto Gómez Bolaños attended. Between this transition, Shakira appears doing part of her choreography and “El Chavo del 8” when she got stuck, the well-known garrotera, which affected him when he felt very afraid, paralyzed him and did not return to normal until someone doused him with cold water. According to DJMikeas, who introduces himself as the creator of “fun content”, the singer would have copied the same steps of the fictional character.
Although it is clear that Meza talks about events involving her late husband –interview excerpts are from February 2020 when the possible realization of a bioseries of Gómez Bolaños and if he would have acted for the drug trafficker Pablo Escobar became known-, among the more than 3 thousand comments that have been accumulating since last May, several defend the interpreter of ‘Blackmail’, some they assure that the movements are not the same, while others revile the comedian for “dare” to add one more problem to the singer accused of tax fraud in Spain.
But although the video is clearly false, it did not stop being shared until it went viral: it has more than 4 million views, more than 74 thousand “likes” and has been shared almost 2 thousand times. Enough to “make it note” and that some distracted take it as true.
In the middle of August, headlines were read in several South American media such as “This is the step by which Florinda Meza would sue Shakira”, “Shakira, Florinda Meza and a possible legal fight for ‘the garrotera’ of Chavo del 8”, “Well, but don’t get mad: Doña Florinda will sue Shakira for copying Chavo”, and much more like that. Soon after, the whole region started talking about it. Several, if not all, were referring to the video of the tiktok Boliviano while other cautious people pointed to “users say…”. But when the entertainment magazine The morning angels of Argentina dedicated minutes to the rumorthe issue got out of control: the cast claimed that Shakira “had plagiarized” and had to pay.
“The least expected judgment: that judgment that Doña Florinda makes to Shakira because in Shakira’s new video, she plays the garrotera (…) It’s a copy; Florinda, you reached the end, get all the points; she copies the garrotera, this is for trial, to justice!”, Says one of the drivers. For him, it was no longer a question of an assumption or a possibility, but that they were already in court.
Four months after the release of “I congratulate you” and perhaps with a weekend of harassment by some media, Florinda Meza came out to say that there was neither trial nor lawsuit. “The news that I am going to sue Shakira is FALSE,” she wrote on her Twitter account.
“Sometimes, to sell or gain likes, the media and social networks make up stories. There is no basis in this news. I have never said anything about it. It’s a lie,” she added with a photo of Shakira in one of her robotic movements, as an acknowledgment of her choreographic success.
And of course, Florinda herself knows that she shouldn’t bother responding to a topic that she hasn’t started, but as she wrote to one of her followers, “believe it or not, several journalists called me to find out if it was true. And many fans seriously asked me. And if I clarify it now, it’s because they started telling me please, don’t sue her, as if that were real.”
As another admirer replied (and it can be read singing): “La fe li ci to, do ña Flor rin da!”
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