NEW YORK -- When actor Edgar Ramirez had a break from shooting The Bourne Ultimatum in London last spring, he didn't hit the English nightclubs or take a long weekend to unwind in the Cotswolds. Instead, he hopped over to Paris to observe the first round of the French national elections.
"I still have credentials to observe elections," Ramirez recounted recently over a slab of steak at an Argentine restaurant in New York. "I went to the banlieue, the very faraway voting centers, and it was really amazing the amount of people who were intending to vote."
Like many Venezuelan nationals, Ramirez knows the fruits and perils of participatory democracy firsthand: He was in his native Caracas in 2002 and 2003, during the infamous period when President Hugo Chavez was briefly ousted in a military coup, then reinstated, then was subject to a protracted and polarizing national recall referendum.
"It was one of the most terrifying and otherworldly experiences ever, to see my country falling apart, on the verge of a civil war," said Ramirez, 30, who has a degree in mass communications and got his voting-observer credentials through Dale al Voto, a Latin American Rock the Vote initiative. "And that's what happened in 2002: My country was divided in two, and one half was trying to take the other out."
And what was Ramirez, a diplomat's son who once dreamed of being the U.N. secretary-general, doing at this time of crisis? Making out with twins on national TV. In the wildly popular telenovela Cosita Rica, Ramirez had rocketed to fame as a poor street vendor in love with two women he didn't know were twins, both played by Marisa Roman.
According to Carolina Acosta-Alzuru, an associate professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Georgia, who was also in Venezuela during the recall referendum period, the on-screen romance of Ramirez and Roman made them as iconic as U.S. soaperstars Luke and Laura in their early-'80s General Hospital heyday.
But it was the show's universal appeal, across all classes and political persuasions, that gave it more cultural, even political significance than your run-of-the-mill soapy potboiler.
"Cosita Rica was on during those 11 months just before and during the referendum, and it was probably the only media product consumed by both sides," said Acosta-Alzuru. "Telenovelas are part of our daily intake in Venezuela: You eat three meals each day and watch at least one telenovela. So no matter if they were pro- or anti-Chavez, people continued watching. It was like national therapy or catharsis."
