The Tragic Tale of the Monkey-Lion

PHOTOS BY MIGUEL DIMAYUGA AND ABELARDO MARTIN


Changoleón, in the flesh.

In a megalopolis teeming with bums, freeloaders, crazies, mooches, and free spirits, the man known as Changoleón may be Mexico City’s most notable vagabond. The strange thing is that many of his fans think he’s dead. Then there are those who know the facts, most of whom would rather Changoleón stay a famous corpse than deal with the messier realities of his life. This confusion is a result of a sad and bizarre series of events that were set into motion by what is perhaps truth’s greatest enemy: reality television.

Ten years ago, Changoleón (“Monkey-lion”) was just another aging, homeless alcoholic, aimlessly wandering the streets of Mexico City’s Coyoacán neighborhood. Earlier in his life, when he was known as Samuel Gonzalez Quiroz, things seemed to be going well for the young man. He attended the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the country’s largest, and had his sights set on a career in psychology and starting a family. Then something (no one knows for sure because Changoleón’s backstory changes depending on who’s telling it) went terribly wrong, and he spent the next few decades drinking and living hard.

In 2002, Changoleón’s life changed forever. An up-and-coming comedian and television host named Facundo Gómez Brueda discovered him on the street and realized the unfortunate homeless man’s raw, drunken comic potential. The next thing Changoleón knew, he was featured on Facundo’s new late-night sketch comedy show, Toma Libre (Film Whatever, which aired on Televisa until 2004). “My name is Samuel Gonzalez Quiroz, alias the Monkey-lion!” Changoleón blubbered as he introduced himself during his first TV appearance. Soon he was a Mexican media sensation. His fame expanded when, a few years later, Facundo moved to a more mainstream prime-time comedy show called Incógnito and brought his dopey foil along for the ride. Changoleón was a TV executive’s dream: Kids loved him, the coveted 18-to-35-year-old demographic idolized him, and older folks found him scandalously amusing.

The beloved Changoleón reached the height of his popularity in the first months of 2006. Every Mexican with a TV recognized the shriveled-looking man with stringy gray hair, floppy clothes, and an enormous gap in his front teeth. He was over 60, but his perpetual drunkenness gave him a childlike energy. With the cameras rolling and “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” playing in the background, he would drink, sing, flirt with attractive girls, and practice lopsided martial-arts moves, all while muttering unscripted non sequiturs with a lisp.

At the time, this brand of spontaneous, on-the-street comedy was already tame by American standards, but Mexicans were just beginning to get acquainted with reality TV. In an entertainment landscape dominated by telenovelas, soccer, and corny slapstick comedy, the idea of a TV show that mimicked real life was shocking. When the Mexican edition of Big Brother first aired in 2002, viewers were scandalized by the idea of the cast being filmed 24 hours a day. Facundo was the first person to bring “reality” comedy to Mexico. His skits included convincing girls to take their clothes off in public parks, sending kids to ask strangers on the street why they were fat, and crashing debauched spring-break parties. Facundo became the Mexican equivalent of Tom Green, Johnny Knoxville, and Howard Stern, all rolled into one. But Changoleón’s segments were the only truly unscripted parts of Incógnito, and many people considered him the real star of the show. Facundo had effectively transformed a forgotten and left-for-dead vagrant into the country’s first reality TV star.

Changoleón had accomplished something many people desired but few managed: He got famous. And he did it with no planning or ambition. Then suddenly, in March 2006, he stopped appearing on Incógnito without explanation. Two months later, on May 1, Carlos Loret de Mola, one of Mexico’s most respected news anchors, announced to Primero Noticias’s national audience that Changoleón had died of a heart attack. Facundo later confirmed the news, adding, “He died last Sunday from a cardiac arrest; he had diabetes, hypertension, and was old.”

Over the next few days, the story took off, and Mexico’s major newspapers ran obituaries for Samuel Gonzalez Quiroz. One memorialized him as “the classic character who came out of one of the most popular neighborhoods of any city in the world; the other side of the coin from what we’re accustomed to seeing on TV. He was the indigent who lost work, family, and dignity because of drink.” Laments and good-byes popped up on blogs across Mexico. On May 3, during an episode of Incógnito, Facundo clarified Changoleón’s mysterious disappearance from the show a month and a half earlier by explaining that he had enrolled in a treatment program at an alcoholism-rehab center, but that he had left the clinic just before his death.

Then things took an absurd twist. The day after Facundo confirmed Changoleón’s death on Incógnito, Mexico City’s Forensic Medical Service announced that they had not received any cadavers matching Changoleón’s description. Even more troubling, the city’s attorney general stated that no corpses had even been recovered from the neighborhood in question on the day of his supposed death.

The following night on Incógnito, Facundo reversed his story. He said that, in fact, Changoleón had not died and that he would reappear on the show at a later date. He promised to reveal the details but only spent a few seconds explaining the convoluted situation, adding that Televisa, Mexico’s television behemoth, had been paying for Changoleón’s treatment at an alcoholism rehab center. Facundo said that when he and his Televisa colleagues had gone to retrieve their star, they were denied access to the center. He concluded by claiming that Changoleón had escaped rehab and returned to the streets to die in a more familiar setting.

In the days following this announcement, some newspapers reported that Changoleón was still alive but no one had enough facts to completely explain the confusion. Without more clarification from Televisa, the story didn’t stick, and most Mexicans were left thinking they had lost their most cherished bum.

As an American who had recently arrived in Mexico City, I first heard of Changoleón last Halloween. Some friends and I went to the main plaza of Coyoacán. Walking through the costumed crowds, my friends suddenly shouted, “Take a picture! Take a picture! It’s Changoleón! I can’t believe it!” All I saw was a little man with an unkempt gray beard and a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt marked with a huge wet spot. I couldn’t tell whether the excited knot of people surrounding him were laughing or trying to help as he staggered and grimaced. “I thought he was dead,” someone said. I took a picture and we kept moving.

I didn’t think much of it at the time, but the more I learned about Changoleón the more I wanted to find him again to ask what had happened. Did he take his money and just walk away? Did he become too much to handle for Televisa? Was it a “fuck you” to the TV big shots, or did they use him and then throw him back into the alley? Nobody seemed to know, and so I set out to find the Monkey-lion myself.

It took almost a month for me and a few Mexican friends I had enlisted to track down Changoleón. Online searches were no help. Most people said he had kicked the bucket, while others reported random sightings: “I ran into him at the Hidalgo metro station with a dude carrying a guitar,” “I saw him at the Taxqueña bus depot,” “He was at a bar in Acapulco, and my friend took a picture,” etc. Useless.

All we really knew was that he supposedly still lived in Coyoacán and he was alive, or at least he was last Halloween. All the crafts sellers, car washers, and busboys on the plaza knew him, but no one had seen him recently. Some people said he hung out and drank in front of a gym. Others told us he could be found in a nearby park. Someone else directed us to the food market. But wherever we went, the shopkeepers would tell us that he hadn’t been there for a week, two weeks, a month. Finally a man who sold handmade jewelry and tie-dyed t-shirts in the crafts market said he knew where Changoleón lived. He said that he was a friend of Changoleón’s, and I believed him: He had the same monkeyish stature, stringy gray hair, and looked to be about 60 years old. After a lot of cajoling and offers to buy him beer, he told us that Changoleón was at home and that he would take us there later that afternoon.