Ernesto Albán
Ernesto Albán Mosquera was an Ecuadorian actor, musician and comedian, one of the most representative figures of twentieth-century popular theatre in Ecuador. He was born in Ambato on 5 June 1912, to Luis Alfonso Albán Egüez and Dolores Mosquera Veloz, but spent most of his artistic life in Quito, where he lived for more than five decades and won national fame. He began as a tango singer and, in the early 1930s, joined Quito theatre companies such as Vásconez-Merizalde and Moncayo-Barahona, at first in small parts, just as the talkies were starting to draw audiences away from traditional theatre. He staged plays such as Alberto Novión's En un burro tres baturros, Felipe Sassone's A campo traviesa and Argentino en Madrid, along with French vaudevilles and Spanish comedies by Carlos Arniches, Linares Rivas, Joaquín Dicenta and Jacinto Benavente, and toured the whole of Ecuador with great success. The turning point of his career came when he blended the influence of Charlie Chaplin with the work of the Ecuadorian writer Alfonso García Muñoz, whose Estampas de mi ciudad caricatured the customs and daily life of Quito. From it he created Don Evaristo Corral y Chancleta, the character who stayed with him for the rest of his career, and with it he established the Estampas Quiteñas, humorous and satirical sketches of the country's social and political life. On stage Don Evaristo was joined by Jesusa (Lastenia Rivadeneira), Marlene (Chavica Gómez) and Sarzosa (Carlos Vásconez, later Oscar Guerra). The Estampas toured the country, celebrating the virtues of ordinary Ecuadorians while mocking the mistakes of the governments of the day with irony. Albán was also part of the Gómez-Albán company with the actress Olimpia Gómez and his wife, Chavica Gómez, performing comedies, vaudevilles and musicals. In the 1960s and 1970s he co-produced and acted in Mexican films, including Contra viento y marea (1962), División narcóticos (1963), Los fenómenos del fútbol, La sonrisa de los pobres, En la mitad del mundo and Las chivas rayadas (1964), Fiebre de juventud (1966), Bromas S.A. (1967) and Santo contra los secuestradores (1973), and he played Alejandro in the Ecuadorian film Dos para el camino (1981). Ernesto Albán died in Quito on 22 July 1984, aged 72. Thousands of people came to pay tribute as his body lay in state at the Teatro Sucre, and he is buried at the Parque de los Recuerdos in Quito.
