For many, ‘the teacher Jimena’ She was the most beloved teacher to whom for nothing in the world we denied entry to our house in the followingnoons. Her sweetness, her infinite kindness and patience, her “carousel of love” with which she treated her students made us want to be one of them at the famous World School.
more than 30 years ago Gaby Rivero He made that character endearing, but the story would have been very different if he had let himself be carried away by two of the most powerful men in Televisa.
Before acting, Gaby Rivero began her career as a model and dancer, she participated in the program dos fever, where he obtained a second place in his first participation and a first place in his second appearance. Her dancing skills caught the attention of Emilio Azcárraga, the Tiger, and he thought of her to make her the image of Televisa in the commercials of channel 2 following seeing his plans to send her as a Mexican representative to a contest at Studio 54 frustrated.
Being the face of Canal de Las Estrellas was rewarded: she became the host of the program, XETU, alongside René Casados, and following the hour of winningin addition to dabbling in acting in the series Woman, real life casesthe soap opera the secret path and the theater The Wizard of Oz.
But true success awaited him in 1989 with Carouselchildren’s soap opera Produced by Valentín Pimstein, an adaptation of the Argentine miss teachercreated by Abel Santa Cruz.
The day of castingRivero was inspired by Lady Di and her bib collars to give that touch of innocence to the character, something that the producers liked, in addition to the fact that the children’s cast voted for her (above Lucero) to team up. “They told me that I was the one left, but Mr. Azcárraga did not want me to do it, ‘it is not convenient for you because working with children, they take away the screen, children and animals are always very attractive, and it will not be convenient for you’“.
How far from the truth was the Tiger.
The soap opera in which the prankster, the mischievous, the romantic, the violated child were represented, with themes such as racism, classism, family relations, among others, soon became a success that was magnified with its distribution in America Latina, mainly, and for which everyone shone separately. “Arriving in Brazil, there were six thousand children at the airport, well, who are you waiting for, who was on the plane with me? I never imagined it was because of me, I swear! I was going to do commercials, so I dressed up to go shopping and they recognized you,” Gaby told Mimi with you.
After almost 400 chapters in two years, ‘the teacher Jimena’ returned for a new school cycle in 1992 with international students, Carousel of the Americas, as part of the Chain of the Americas project in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the meeting between Europe and America. “I didn’t want to do it, but it was my turn because it was convenient for Televisa because they had a satellite stopped and they had to start it up because it was very difficult for them, but the spearhead was ‘the teacher’, a carousel with children from all countries” .
However, it was not enough to Pimstein, who in his eagerness to continue exploiting the recognition, or closing the circle as he proposed to Rivero, put on a play, magic carouselwith the children’s cast from the first season.
By then, the actress who had already understood the importance of her role and that she would not be financially rewarded as she deserved, for which It occurred to her to be in charge of the official merchandise, in a kind of “I win, you win”, giving Televisa 10% for the rights. “Suddenly I was earning more than the box office. It was my mom’s business, he put me two wooden carousels in the lobbywe sold everything, until they took it away from me, because Pimstein didn’t like that I earned more And like the war started and he took it from me.”
Although this may have affected their relationship, Gaby continued for a couple more years as the figure for the children’s market: she took advantage of her popularity to form a group under the name of El Club de Gaby with which she recorded the children’s album Imagination, to later become a homonymous program. She would return to the recording studio for a second job, Gabi’s club. To the rescue.
However, his childhood stage ended shortly following 1994 with the film A teacher with an angel Along with Gonzalo Vega, where she also plays a kind teacher, a kind of Julie Andrews who teaches piano to the children of an ecologist and who end up in love.
But coming out on top once morest Azcárraga Milmo and Pimstein did not prepare her for the comments she has received since leaving the World School classroom questioning why she no longer looks like the 24-year-old teacher. “They see me and say ‘oh, but you’ve put on a little weight, right? You’re already a little wrinkled’. They want to see you the same, now they call me ‘the teacher Jamona’, I’m already 57!, what want?”.
That has not taken away his interest in maintaining a link with the children’s audience and their parents.
Since 2022 shares with his daughter Maya Rivero the interactive concept Infinito infantilin which they tell stories with children’s songs and storiesand through dances they try to convey a message with family values and issues that are currently lived as the bullyingself-esteem, fear and confidence, etc.
“I want to encourage the little ones to love nature, to get to know it and respect it, also love for the family, but above all to give them tools and thus, if they bullthey turn the tortilla around and make fun of them, that they do not get hooked ”, Rivero said in his presentation to the newspaper The universal.
In the end, like ‘Jimena’ or Gaby, the teacher is still there.
