Live by the sword, die by the sword. In this case, the mortal blow was delivered by the Puerto Rican social media and felled the puppeteer Kobo Santarrosa and his creation, La Comay.
It is the triumph of the Boricua Winter.
WAPA TV announced Tuesday night the cancellation of SuperXclusivo, the highly popular gossip and news show on which La Comay lived.
According to reports in two of Puerto Rico’s largest newspapers, Santarrosa tendered his resignation because he felt he was being censored.
La Comay, voiced by Santarrosa, started a social media storm in early December when he implied that publicist Jose Enriquez Gomez Saladin, who was savagely murdered, was soliciting the services of a male or female prostitute hours before he was killed, and therefore was the victim of his own undoing.
Santarrosa’s comments were the catalyst that set the island’s social media on fire. This was not the first time that, hiding behind a puppet, he indulged in homophobic, racist and sexist hate speech, with an impunity fueled by high ratings.
But this time it would prove deadly. It ignited “Boicot A La Comay,” a social media movement that took to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to call for a boycott of the program by viewers and sponsors and demanded the cancelation of the program. More than 76,000 people later, Santarrosa proved to be the master of his own downfall.
In less than five weeks, El Nuevo Dia and Primera Hora reported that, according to sources close to the program, the boycott had managed to do what seemed impossible – dethrone La Comay. This was cemented when WAPA TV confirmed Santarrosa’s resignation and the cancellation of a once unbeatable program.
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