He returned to music and remembers the success of the late 80s, also the discrimination and labor exploitation he suffered. “They negotiated with my music. They locked me up, I went hungry.”
Paul Ruiz he prefers not to be called ‘Pablito’, a diminutive with which he acknowledges that a generation identifies him. He has just ventured into the cinema in a comedy in which it is said that he died in Peru. “It is not easy to do comedy, but I think that is what is needed in the world today, to laugh at oneself and laugh out loud”, points out about the premiere of ‘I am innocent’. For him it means closing a cycle. “Beyond the fact that they can say ‘oh, how did he accept that proposal where they kill him’, he has a subliminal message there like saying ‘from there, another Pablo comes’, because that’s how I feel.”
The Argentine answers us via Zoom and remembers what happened when he left the stage at the end of the 80s. He says that, since he was a teenager, he suffered bullying and homophobia. “One is always hiding things under the rug. Everything came out in the pandemic and I started that stronger spiritual chapter. I’m healing.”
Ruiz recalls the success of “The malagueña” and the reason you left your country. “I really believe in the law of cause and effect; So, it was not for nothing that I had that task of breaking with prejudices, right? He dressed differently, he danced a lot, he had gestures and that came with my spirit of being an artist. I never stopped myself because of public opinion, but I was very criticized, very persecuted by the press. They were aware of my sex life, even though I was a child. I was 11 or 12 when I started and everyone wanted to know if he already had girlfriends or if I liked men. What was being said hurt me because he was a baby and it hurt my mother too. I didn’t even know at the time if he was gay. I went to live at Mexico because of the siege.”
Already in the Aztec country, he signed a contract and was conditioned to look “more masculine.” He then he left his career. “I was left without a record company and there came a few years in which they had me boxed in, without being able to work. They did deals with my music and I received nothing, they kept everything and they kept me locked up in a little room. They gave me, I don’t know, 100 dollars a week. I thank God I’m alive to tell about it. I went hungry… Maybe I wasn’t involved in drugs per se, but there were drugs involved”.
Convinced, Pablo Ruiz affirms that his life could become a documentary. He states that his family saved him. “My mom was the first one that she knew through a letter that she was gay. And she always loved me.” When he sees stories like the Menudo film, he “feels the same thing” that happened to him. “There’s a lot he could tell.” It’s been over a decade since he went public with his sexual orientation. He has now resumed music with the album ‘Nueva era’ and does theater in Buenos Aires. “You can get ahead no matter how much we cry, no matter how much they hit us, abuse us, but the light comes forward. That message is also for women who suffer from machismo. You have to say ‘no, up to here, you can’t hurt me’. Life goes around, life gives you revenge”.
