Pedro Gonzalez had the crowd cackling at New York Comedy Club Stamford earlier this month as he brought levity to the immigrant experience of living in the United States.
A lot of Gonzalez’s jokes are centered around his life as a Colombian immigrant living in New York, everything from dating to working to raising children. In a time of political polarization around immigrants, Gonzalez said humor can help build bridges between people.
“The way that I see life is like, ‘Hey, we're not all that different. I'm not better than you. You're not better than me. Life is real hard,'” Gonzalez said. “'Why don't we laugh instead of being divided?'”
Gonzalez said he doesn’t think comedy is the platform to make points.
“But I think it's a platform to speak about your own frustrations and feelings,” he said.
Being an immigrant at a U.S. airport, for example. During his performance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” the first Colombian immigrant to do so, Gonzalez shared his experience hearing someone tell him to “go back to your country,” a common phrase used in discussions about immigration—this as he was trying to catch his flight to South America.
He reflected on that joke in his interview with Connecticut Public. “It’s funny to point out how dumb people can be,” he said.
Airing frustrations in a comedic way can start conversations that wouldn’t be had otherwise because the topic is too tense or taboo, Gonzalez said.
“I choose to be open with everything,” Gonzalez said. “If I go out with friends, and my friend who's driving [who] I know is undocumented, and we're about to enter a restaurant, and we see a police car, and we feel something inside. Then, that's something that I need to speak about.”
Finding ‘a piece of gold’
Gonzalez, 43, is originally from Bogotá, Colombia. His family immigrated to the U.S. after his father experienced financial hardship and local political strife.
“[My dad] was a community leader in the region where we lived,” Gonzalez said. “When the rebel forces found out they couldn't extort money from him, they tried to use him as an envoy to have other people pay extortion. He was like, 'I can't do this.'”
Coming to the U.S. brought Gonzalez closer to what appealed to him as a comedian. Gonzalez said he didn’t find much inspiration in Colombian low-brow comedy.
“My attraction to stand-up is more from the point of view of the American type of stand -up, which is very well-written jokes,” Gonzalez said. “I fell in love by watching [Jerry] Seinfeld [and] Chris Rock.”
It got to the point where Gonzalez said he had friends at work tell him to go try stand-up. That’s because he spent most of his time on the clock watching Comedy Central.
When he finally did stand-up and landed a joke for the first time, Gonzalez said it was like he “found a piece of gold.”
Still, he never left his Latino roots behind.
“I perform in Spanish, and I love performing in Spanish,” Gonzalez said. “Once you find what's funny about you, you could say jokes in any language, and people will connect to you because you're being funny and truthful about you.”
Cracking jokes with Colombians
At New York Comedy Club Stamford, Gonzalez brought many snippets of Colombian culture into his stand-up, like going to a cockfight with his dad, placing baby Jesus into the nativity scene at midnight on Christmas, and fearing La Patasola, or the One-Legged Woman, a part of Colombian folklore.
For non-Colombians in the audience, the comedy set was a look into what Colombian life is like. For Colombians like Julieth Jaramillo, it was a reminder of home.
Gonzalez called Jaramillo out for her melodic Paisa accent during the show. She threw her head back laughing when he did.
“He is a Latino comedian, a Colombian, and I wanted to show my support,” Jaramillo said about attending. “I love his personality. … He can take things that might initially seem negative and turn them into something incredibly positive, specifically bringing joy to people and making them laugh.”
Jaramillo is a Greenwich resident originally from Medellín, Colombia’s City of Eternal Spring. She said seeing an immigrant like Gonzalez succeed brings her great pride.
“Here’s a man where everything is foreign and everything's a challenge. Coming here when you're older, still making a name for yourself … is something definitely to be proud of,” Jaramillo said. “As a Paisa, as the Colombian that I am, I really admire him.”
Gonzalez connected with Jaramillo and other Colombians during the later half of the show, when he offered relationship advice to intercultural couples.
“I want the places where there is a strong Colombian community to be the places that I want to keep coming back to,” Gonzalez said.
Colombians make up the third largest group of Latinos in Stamford, and the sixth largest group statewide.
Gonzalez told the crowd he plans to come back to Connecticut at least once a year. He said it was one of the top 10 shows he’d ever done.
“It just feels great to know that somebody else's Sunday, they got to share a beautiful night with their wife or their kids or their mom,” Gonzalez said, “and they're going home in a better mood because they trusted me with their time and their money to give them a good time, a good show.”
“That sounds like I'm an escort,” Gonzalez joked. “Both strippers and myself are providing a good time.”
