Delia Fiallo, the Cuban-born television writer known throughout Latin America as the “mother of the telenovela,” the addictively melodramatic Spanish-language cousin to the American soap opera, died on Tuesday at her home in Coral Gables, Fla. She was 96. Her daughter Delia Betancourt confirmed the death but did not specify a cause. The telenovela works itself out in under a year, with a finite cast of characters. “The essential theme of a novela is the story of a love that is obstructed,” Ms. Fiallo told Variety in 1996. “A couple meet, fall in love, suffer obstacles in being able to fulfill that love and at the end reach happiness.” She added, “If you don’t make the public cry, you won’t achieve anything.”

Source: International New York Times July 04, 2021 19:18 UTC