Cristela Alonzo grew up fearing that her mother was deported. She is not afraid to joke on the ice on stage.

Cristela Alonzo does not waste time immersing himself in current events in his new Netflix comedy special, High class.

The native of southern Texas takes the stage in the Majestic Theater de Dallas, sorbe his water and points out that it is “ambient temperature, because I hate ice ” referring to the application of immigration and customs of the United States.

“I wanted to talk about the ice elephant in the room from the beginning,” Alonzo tells Yahoo. “I filmed it on June 14, which was the day” No Kings. “

Elegant superior It premiered on September 23 and is the latest installment of a stend-up special trio that has made with Netflix, after 2017 Of low class and 2022 Elegant medium. In it, the Mexican-American comedian, 46, reflects on his success as a juxtaposed with a past childhood in deep poverty, raised by a single mother who was undocumented for a period.

Alonzo spent the first seven years of his life in Cuclillas in an abandoned restaurant in a border city of Texas-Mexico with his working mother and his three older brothers. For electricity, they ran an extension cable to the house next door. The border patrol agents were everywhere, the immigration raids were routine and she lived fear that her mother was carried.

“One of the struggles I always had was to grow in abject poverty and the people who didn’t believe me because I spoke very well,” she says. Even she did not completely understand the scope of her family’s situation until she was 21 years old.

“As children, we believe that our life is how everyone looks,” says Alonzo. “I really didn’t realize until I left Texas and moved to Los Angeles, I was in a restaurant with friends, telling them a story about how I grew up, and one of them looked at me and said: ‘Wow, you were poor. Girl, you lived in A diner. ‘And let me tell you: I hadn’t thought about it. For me, that diner was my home. “

Her mother and her brothers did “a fantastic job when protecting me from how poor we were,” she says. “I just remember having a happy childhood. Even in a terrible narrow, I didn’t notice it. My family was so happy. And it is strange because if you grew up in poverty, people have the perception that you are always sad. You are like: ‘What is food?’ But joy always exists, even in the worst circumstances. “

Undermining his life to laugh

In Elegant superiorAlonzo keeps laughter with acute observations and personal stories. She refers to “Karens” questioning if he belongs to his neighborhood, the discomfort of nudity in a spa, finally has “therapy money” for his Catholic guilt and proudly without having children, after helping his sister collect three.

But she is deeper. A topic is the American dream and how people teach to work hard, but not necessarily how to enjoy life. Alonzo links this with his family: his mother worked tirelessly and died in 2002 without even watching a movie.

Now that he has money, Alonzo takes his bothers on vacation, just to discover that none of them knows how to relax. And, for her, success is not about striking purchases. It’s about being able to put your bills in Autopay.

“When you grow in survival mode and then you are no longer fighting, it gives you so much freedom that it is actually overwhelming,” she says. “Because you live trying to get to the end of the month. That is your identity. When you don’t have to worry about that, you have all this free time, now what?”

You are still adapting to having money, even something as basic as fixing your car. When I was a child, a broken down car could mean weeks without transport, while the family scraped enough for repairs. When he goes on a red carpet, he makes sure to combine something “cheap” with fantasy. His education, he says, has helped “maintain a very simple lifestyle.”

Now that he is not constantly hurrying to get to the end of the month, Alonzo is taking the childhood he missed.

“I never learned to swim, so I’m taking swimming classes,” she says. “I never learned to ride a bicycle, so I bought one. I don’t even know what to buy. I had that Google ‘Bike Essentials’, well, I guess I need a helmet and lights. The same with swimming. I’m like: What the hell is a swimming cap?”

She adds: “I am taking the time to enjoy, which is something that many of us do not allow ourselves to do.”

Representation and reality

Growing up, Alonzo Vio Stand-Up on television with his family, but never realized that it could be a profession.

“I didn’t even think about that as a job,” he laughs. “I thought that everyone who was watching on television was just hanging out because they were having a lot of fun.”

He is aware that there are still not many people in entertainment that look like it. When asked about the representation, she does not sweeten it.

“Ten years ago, I was the first Latin to create, star and write its own situation comedy, which is great,” he says about his situation comedy Cristelawhich operated from 2014 to 2015 in ABC. “The problem of being the first is that people do not know what to do with you. There is this learning curve for which you are the Indian bunny.”

The experience, in which he poured everything, left her discouraged.

“When the program was canceled, people asked:” When will you return to television? “She says. “Honestly, I wanted to wait a while, because I wanted the industry to get more updated in the place where we are, because the truth is that we need much more representation. And I do not even necessarily mean Latin. I was reading an article about the decrease in female characters over 40 years on television, and that is wild for me.”

It is part of a bigger problem for her: “It’s about youth. Is becoming an adult sexy, but being an adult for decades? That is considered boring. But it is important to tell those stories.”

It also criticizes industry risk aversion, emphasizing the importance of having the freedom to creatively experimenting without constantly defending one’s work.

So would you make another show? “Oh, yes, I would do it. Only now, a decade later, could I say honestly that I would do it? It took me 10 years to want to do it again,” he says.

Alonzo acknowledges that being a comedian at a time when talking freely can feel more loaded puts it on the line of fire, especially after the return of Jimmy Kimmel in the air after his suspension. However, he also gives him the opportunity to add his necessary perspective to the conversation.

“I’ve never been afraid to say anything because I think you’re honest who you really are, you have nothing to worry about,” she says.

However, in its more than 20 years in Stand-Up, it has noticed a change, some comedians who find conventional success by relying on rhetoric instead of comedy. That is a path that she will not follow.

“I refuse to sell who I am to try to get clicks, like and money,” she says. “What I want is to be exactly who I am. And if (someone does not) like it, then I am not for you.”

For Alonzo, comedy has always been more than just laughing. It is about holding a mirror for society.

“If you are not willing to defend who you are, what is the point of doing all this?” She says. “If you are doing a painting by numbers (version of this), then we are all doing it for nothing.”

That is exactly why Elegant superior Open with its ice joke. It is a statement about your identity.

“I wanted everyone to know: this is what I am,” she says. “If you don’t like it, go see something else.”