<\/p>\nAdd Preferred Source<\/p>\n
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But then her voice drops as she discusses the current fear many Spanish-speaking immigrants are living in due to ongoing U.S. Immigrant Customs Enforcement raids ordered by the Trump administration.<\/p>\n
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Charo attends a Mercy for Animals event in 2024. The entertainer comes to the Bay Area June 20 for concert at the Orinda Theatre.<\/p>\n
Paul Archuleta\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cI cannot even tell you the suffering and the scaredness of these beautiful people that come here with just a dream,\u201d says Charo. \u201c\u2018I just really pray that something happens so they don\u2019t suffer no more. When you come to America, everybody come with a dream, \u2018I\u2019m going to do it, I\u2019m going to make it.\u2019<\/p>\n
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\u201cIn my case, I was so lucky, la ni\u00f1a mimada\u00a0\u2014 that means \u2018lucky little bitch.\u2019 \u2026 Mi abuela said, \u2018That girl was born with a star glued to her ass.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
A call with Charo is like a one woman variety show, with lots of enthusiastic exclamations. It\u2019s no wonder she\u2019s considered a gay icon, as evidenced by her cameo appearance in the RuPaul drag comedy \u201cStop! That! Train!,\u201d now in theaters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cRuPaul is my buddy,\u201d Charo says of the drag megastar. \u201cHe\u2019s one of the greatest entertainers ever, and he opened a lot of doors in a way like I did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking of legendary entertainers, for anyone who hasn\u2019t seen Charo perform live, allow me to borrow this Charoism: She\u2019ll put bumps on your goose.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Her energy when dancing and singing seem boundless, boosted by the workouts and healthy diet she shows off on her prolific Instagram account. Charo\u2019s hands move as rapidly as her accent in the flamenco guitar portion of the night. But she\u2019s equally willing to poke fun of herself, often making her larger-than-life persona the punchline to any joke.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Charo performs at the International Dance Music Awards in Miami Beach in 2009.<\/p>\n
Logan Fazio\/WireImage via Getty<\/p>\n
After my interview with Charo in 2019, I told her concert presenter that I had received numerous emails doubting the age for the star that was published. For years, Charo deliberately added years to her age in her early interviews to make the age gap between herself and the 66-year-old Cugat seem smaller. (She was a teenager at the time they started their relationship.)<\/p>\n
That same year, the night of her performance, Charo acknowledged the mystery about her age from the stage, saying that word had gotten back to her doubting the 1951 birth year now legally recognized.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey say, \u2018That\u2019s not how old Charo is, I saw her perform in World War II,\u2019\u201d she joked between songs, before adding, \u201cI don\u2019t even know how the hell old I am.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the record, she\u2019s now 75. But at any age, retirement isn\u2019t a consideration for the performer. Touring, she says, was her way back to the world after the suicide of her husband, Kjell Rasten, on Feb. 18, 2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Rasten had been suffering from months of misdiagnosis before being treated for bullous pemphigoid, a skin disease that causes painful blisters. After 10 months on a high dose of the steroid prednisone, Charo has recounted, he was taken off the drug and silently spiraled into depression, leading to his death.<\/p>\n
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Charo attends Project Angel Food\u2019s Lead with Love event in 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Michael Tullberg\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
In the seven years since, Charo has used her Instagram account and her performances as a way of helping others dealing with issues around suicide or bullous pemphigoid. Through comedy and music, she wants to remind people that life is worth living.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For Charo, it\u2019s also a source of strength.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI love the people. They are oxygen for me,\u201d she says. \u201cI love live performance because this, to me, is a party. I don\u2019t take it for granted.\u201d<\/p>\n
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It also thrills her that her audiences range in age from Gen Z fans who discovered her on social media to people who have followed her for decades.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are interested in the past, they\u2019re interested in how we survived before artificial intelligence,\u201d said Charo of a group of Pepperdine University students she recently performed for in Malibu.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I\u2019m alone, I feel like a cucaracha with diarrhea,\u201d she continues. \u201cInstead of being scared of the audience when I\u2019m performing, I get the energy from the audience.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey took me around the world, and \u2018Cuchi Cuchi\u2019 has been my passport.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charo performs onstage during the New York Pops\u2019\u00a040th birthday gala at Carnegie Hall in 2023. Santiago Felipe\/Getty Images…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":["post-358492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}