Enrique Pinti, Argentina's 'complainer-in-chief', dies at 82

Enrique Pinti, the Argentine humorist renowned in his homeland for his fast-paced stand-up comedy tirades against the many foibles he saw in his fellow Argentines, has died. He was 82.

Pinti had been battling diabetes, circulatory problems, and depression.

Born in Buenos Aires to a middle-class family in 1939, Pinti would credit the bullying he suffered as an overweight child for his early interest in comedy.

“I couldn't fight 30 classmates - or turn a deaf ear,” he explained in a 2016 interview. “So laughing at myself, I was able to get over the situation.”

Pinti joined the theater out of high school, and in 1967 achieved his first success with his children's musical My Beautiful Dragon.

He joined Buenos Aires' famed café-concert scene in 1973 with what later became his signature act: monologues.

With the return of democracy following a seven-year fascist dictatorship, Pinti returned to the genre in 1984 with his long-running stage show, Salsa Criolla ('Argentine sauce').

Salsa Criolla's fast-paced, sarcastic, and expletive-laden review of Argentine history endeared Pinti to millions of fans, running over 10 seasons and nearly 3,000 shows.

Besides numerous television specials and other shows, he followed with Pinti's Hell and Memories from the Future in the 1990s, and National Candombé and Argentine Prick in the 2000s - in which he directed his barbs at what he saw as the country's modern-day decadence, lampooning everything from politics to jaywalkers.

His last stage show, To the Bottom, and to the Right (2019-20) - a play on the word fondo, which means both 'bottom' and 'fund' (as in IMF) - slammed then-President Mauricio Macri for bankrupting an already brittle Argentina, and relying on the IMF to bail him out ahead of his failed re-election campaign.

“They labeled me a 'K' (a Kirchnerist, Macri's chief opposition), but I've always been impartial - I'm an anarchist!” he said in a 2020 interview. “None of the political parties convinced me.”

He had often described all politicians as “broken records.”

His longtime producer Carlos Rottemberg said today that Pinti “asked that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Casa del Teatro” - a Buenos Aires home for retired actors. “Until the end, he was thinking about the artistic community to which he belonged.”

At: https://www-telam-com-ar.translate.goog/notas/202203/587622-muerte-enrique-pinti.html?_x_tr_sl=fr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

Argentine satirist Enrique Pinti, 1939-2022.

Pinti became Argentine theater's chief chronicler of the country's often troubled post-dictatorship era.

“We're lucky in a way, because God only punishes what He can understand - and with us, He's long since given up!”