El Chavo - Reception and Legacy

Reception and Legacy

The show is the most translated Latin-American show in history, after being shown in several countries. It is the most popular sitcom in the history of Mexican television and lasted for 298 episodes and 316 sketches in the Chespirito show in the 1980s (The 1,300 episode count is extremely wrong that counts all the episodes of El Chavo, El Chapulín, Los Caquitos, Los Chifladitos and other series of Chespirito). It has been rerun on several TV stations since the 1970s. El Chavo del Ocho is also highly popular in Brazil, where it has been dubbed into Portuguese with the name of Chaves, broadcast by SBT; and since the beginning of the 1980s it was the biggest audience at many different times according to IBOPE. This popularity may be explained because Mexico and Brazil have social and cultural similarities, Spanish and Portuguese are similar languages. In the United States, the show is still shown on TeleFutura and Galavisión as of 2012. The show in the United States is consistently the No. 1-rated Spanish-language cable program.

The show was so popular in other parts of Latin America and among the Spanish speaking community of the United States that in Peru and Uruguay, other shows involving the main actors of El Chavo del Ocho began to be televised, in Argentina. Rubén Aguirre has been able to enjoy some success playing his character at a circus, and in Puerto Rico, Colombia, and Uruguay many of the phrases El Chavo and his friends used have become normal part of everyday dialogue. Chespirito has established legal battles with former El Chavo del Ocho actors out of a desire to prevent them from using the show's characters in Mexico without his permission. Villagrán moved to Argentina in order to use his character's name on his shows (Chespirito is not copyrighted in Argentina). María Antonieta de las Nieves, however, won a court battle against Bolaños for the right to appear in Mexico as la Chilindrina, but in 2012, after years of legal battles with Bolaños, she announced her retirement, complaining that her victories against Bolaños all but ended her career, and that nobody would hire her. Currently, the only cast member not to have been threatened with legal action is Edgar Vivar, who also retired his character following gastric bypass surgery.

There is also a Brazilian fan-made game named "Street Chaves - O Lutador da Vila" (in English: "Street Chavo - The Vecindad Fighter", in Spanish: "Street Chavo - El Luchador De La Vecindad"), which parodies various famous fighting games (most notably Capcom and SNK Playmore franchises such as Street Fighter, Art of Fighting and The King of Fighters) using characters from the show (examples: El Chavo parodies Terry Bogard, Don Ramón imitates Robert Garcia, Señor Barriga incarnates Chang Koehan, Professor Jirafales impersonates Sagat, Quico "is" Andy Bogard and so). The game was translated (badly) in Spanish by Carlos Varela. There's also a currently in-building 3D update named "Chaves Arena".

The only Spanish-speaking country where El Chavo has never been formally transmitted is Cuba.