“I still have mobility problems, but I don’t depend on anyone, nobody supports me materially,” he says. Cesar Bono a THE UNIVERSAL.
He is heard calmly, although his body has resisted everything: Bono managed to overcome nine strokes that brought him to the brink of death in 2018, despite this he resumed the monologue season “Defending the caveman” at the beginning of 2020; Later, he was hospitalized for gastrointestinal problems, in March he declared that he suffered from a hiatal hernia.
“I still have mobility problems, but I’m not stupid, I don’t depend on anyone, nobody supports me materially, nobody takes me to the bathroom, nobody bathes me, I can get dressed, I mean, it takes me three times longer than any man, but yes I do it, yes I can do it and I like that more than being a millionaire ”, he details in a positive and smiling way.
Despite these health problems, the actor, who now leans on a cane and has limited movement on the left side of his body, continues to go on stage in a monologue that has become his own brand, since he has left his mark on the theater of Mexico.
But this desire to continue working and continue acting at 71 years of age has been interrupted again: he tested positive for Covid-19, which is why he is also at home recovering, because he wants to stand again before his audience that has supported him for more than 50 years of experience.
Strong, like her mother
The actor reflects and shares with us how his life was and what his roots were, which made him the person he is today and that everyone knows. Explain that her story begins with her mother’s past Maria Rosa Bono, his example to follow, for having overcome many adversities.
Doña María Rosa fled the Spanish war and arrived in Mexico by boat at the age of 18, a strength that she always tried to pass on to her son.
“She was orphaned in that war and went to France on foot, from Barcelona she had to cross the Pyrenees and lived for about a year in France, then she took a ship where she came with Manuel Rodríguez Ajenjo, the writer of ‘Crazy salad ‘, and many more ”, César Bono details.
“They arrived as Spaniards to Mexico with a lot of culture like Luis Buñuel, many very capable people and they came to give their knowledge to the country. There were people from all over, artists, scientists, teachers and everyone, and thanks to the best president that Mexico has ever had, Mr. Lázaro Cárdenas, he was the one who let them in… ”, he recalls.
Maria Rosa Bono. Photo: César Bono
Her mother was 18 years old when she had to face a new life where she was alone, in an unknown country; later he met his father, César Queijeiro Estrada, also the son of a Spanish refugee who arrived in Mexico at the age of 14.
“My grandfather arrived in Veracruz on his birthday. I have four children and I remember when I saw that my children turned 14 years old, I thought: ‘In the mother, how did they send him at that age?’ A 14-year-old boy is a boy, it doesn’t matter if he’s a man or a woman, and I was very impressed by how they sent my grandfather at that age, because they sent you with some underwear, some socks and ‘Hey, you bastard, let’s see what you do’ , because he had no profession, no savings, or anything, and it was a person who did it. My grandfather lived in Mexico for many years, he had many good businesses ”, he details.
From lack, to applause
Poverty, loneliness and very difficult moments were a hard lesson that his family transmitted to him not to surrender to anything and with a firm footing to continue fighting in life. The actor comments that his mother, who brought a reading education, introduced him to his passion, the theater.
“This woman approached the theater. She liked to read, she would read at home and say to me: ‘Look, come César, look how this author says in these five lines’, and she would give me to read just that, and then she would give me to read something that was key to the story and then she kept reading and I waited patiently for her to put the book down, and once she put it down, I read it, she never told me that she wanted me to read it or that she would give me three days to do it or ‘you have to read, don’t be a donkey ‘none of that, just aroused my curiosity (by showing me those lines) and I started reading and what I read was the theater, ”he says.
That love and dream of doing theater would soon be frustrated by his own father who did not want him to dedicate himself to that and wanted him to be a textile engineer to inherit his factories.
“My father didn’t like me to be an actor, because he was an industrialist, when I was born I worked in textiles and when I grew up, he worked in furniture, had factories, was the owner, he wanted me to study in Barcelona, which is where my mother was born, in one of those great textile schools.
“He told me, ‘I’m sending you to Barcelona, I buy you a condominium, so you can study textile engineering and buy you a car,’ and I said ‘no, because I don’t want to be a textile engineer, I want to be an actor’ and he said, ‘Well So stay in Mexico and I won’t buy you a car, or an apartment, or anything and see how you do it ‘… ”.
Bono family. Photo: César Bono
But thanks to his mother’s words, he decided not to go for a dream life all paid for and decided to stay in Mexico and fight until he fulfilled his dream of being an actor.
“If my mother had not liked my decision, if she had not supported me with what my father said about ‘I give you absolutely nothing’, she would have told me, ‘Don’t be an animal, go to Barcelona, I grew up there and Bring your engineering degree and stay with your father’s factory ‘and it would have been something else, but he told me’ I tell you that I love you and I will love you with what you do, with what you study ”, and for her I became actor, “he says.
Years passed and Bono made his dream come true, which he was able to share with his mother for some time before her death in 1986.
“I was born on her birthday and she had tickets to go to see the theater, because my father, rest assured, he didn’t like the theater and she was fascinated by it, so since it was her birthday she told her ‘now you can get furnished and as it is my birthday, after eating you take me to the theater ‘, and then he finished eating and said:’ wow! I’m not going to be able to go to the theater because this one is going to be born ‘and my father still told her:’ oh yes, on your birthday ‘and she answered yes, and that’s how it was when I was born.
“And then she said to me: ‘I couldn’t go to the theater that day’ and I said good mother, but I invited you many times, because I took her to the premieres, to the 100 performances and I told her that that day I did not It was, but he had already worn it many times. I have spent half my life living with her and half without her and I miss her deeply, ”he says.
Bono’s loves
At 23, the comedian married his first wife and mother of his two older daughters, Mary of the Sun Y Mary Rose; approximately 13 years later the actor decided to divorce.
Over the years he met Patricia castro, with whom she married and had two children, Leonardo Patricio and César Patricio, and from whom she recently separated.
The teachings and pillars that his parents and grandparents left him, that his family always came first, now he transmits them to his children and, although he says that he does not leave them great riches, he did manage to leave them a roof where they can live. in peace.
“I have my inheritance, I feel that I protected my family, not what I would have liked, of course I would have liked to leave all the gold of Trump or Bill Gates, I left them more than a roof to each one, and I think it was fine, I brought four human beings to this planet and I leave them with a roof and with all my love and the desire that they be happier than I am.
“My dad told me ‘let’s see how you do it’, and we did, I mean, I’m not the eighth wonder, far from it, but I’ve been working for 55 years, I’ve never stopped doing it, I’m not the best in Mexico, but if I have worked with the best both seriously and in comedy, with Mr. López Tarso, José Gálvez, Héctor Bonilla, with many, in comedy with ‘El Loco’ Valdés, with Alejandro and Héctor Suarez, with Chabelo and Resortes, since I was 16 years old, I am now 71 ”.
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