Cuban writer Delia Fiallo dies, "the mother of the Latin American telenovela"

July 1, 2021

The Cuban writer Delia Fiallo passed away in the early morning hours of Tuesday, June 29 at the age of 96 at her residence in Coral Gables, a city adjacent to Miami-Dade, United States. Without mentioning the exact cause of her death, one of the artist's daughters informed Televisa that "she died peacefully and surrounded by her loved ones".

Considered "the mother of the Latin American telenovela", Fiallo wrote more than 40 works for television and radio. Her first literary stories were produced in her native Cuba and in Venezuela by Venevisión, but it was not until Televisa purchased her creations to transform them into telenovelas that she achieved great international success.

Author of stories such as El privilegio de amar, La que no podía amar, Mar de amor and Esmeralda, Fiallo gave melodrama a romantic and sentimental character. In 2018, in one of her last interviews, she recounted that the genre was experiencing a decline derived from narco-series and stories laden with "morbidness", violence and action "forgetting about feelings".

Delia also distinguished herself by the consistent practice of naming her telenovelas with a feminine name: Lucecita, Leonela, Cristal, Kassandra, Peregrina, to mention some projects. Emilio Azcárraga's company produced versions of some of her melodramas that became successful export products: Mariana de la noche, Un refugio para el amor, Topacio, among many others.

Born in La Habana, Fiallo studied Philosophy and Letters on the Caribbean island, and began writing radionovelas in the Cuban capital in 1949, but it was not until 1957 when she wrote her first television story in her country: "It is the first continuity story in all of Latin America, I was the first, it was called Hasta que la muerte nos separe and we saw that indeed from Wednesday to Wednesday with an ending of interest, of impact, of suspense, we managed to capture the audience", she narrated in 2018 to the AFP agency.

"The telenovela triumphed with all the force that popular genres have, the novel jumped barriers of languages, customs, culture, my novels were sold in two hundred and some countries, they were translated into so many languages", she added then.

The beloved storyteller also recounted what she believed were the reasons for her success: "My themes were strong, social, problems that went directly to the family, youth, sending positive messages, so it was a very powerful medium".

She left Cuba with her family to go into exile in Miami in 1966 and from there began writing for Venezuelan channels, but her international success came through Televisa productions, in Mexico, which catapulted her stories —written from her base of operations, Miami— to countries such as Argentina, Puerto Rico, Colombia and the United States.

"We left Cuba on December 23, 1966. Imagine, the boys crying over their little pillow, their dog, all the things we were giving up forever. And we decided to stay here in Miami", Fiallo recounted in 2018 to the Chicago Tribune newspaper.

"When television arrived, I wrote for television. But in Cuba, they didn't write continuity telenovelas. They were episodic", Fiallo recounted on that occasion about her beginnings in television. "I wrote a program called 'Miércoles de amor Palmolive'. One day my producer tells me 'what do you think if you write a continuity novel, like the American soap operas'. And then I wrote the first continuity story in all of Latin America, which was called 'Hasta que la muerte nos separe'".

Thanks to her outstanding literary works, Fiallo was considered "the mother of the contemporary romance novel", and her legacy will be remembered by multiple members of the profession, such as actor Osvaldo Ríos, who was one of the first to lament her passing.