If there is a year that comedian Darinka González will probably remember for the rest of her life, it is 2023. During this period, the actress dedicated her career to stand-up.
She performed as the opening act for Edo Caroe in “Lo que Salga”, the shows that the comedian performed with great success at the Movistar Arena in Santiago, whose tickets sold out in minutes.
Furthermore, he began his journey with “Bigheaded”his first solo show that he described as “the best work of his life” and that he still presents in different cities in the country.
But 2023 is also special for Darinka Gonzalez, because that year He found out that he had a brother, one that not even his mother, María Angélica, or Kekita, as he affectionately calls her, knew about.
The comedian spoke with BioBioChile about her story, one that went around the world, but that few knew also had her as the protagonist.
Darinka Gonzalez: “From one day to the next, we found out.”
When you work in comedy, any everyday situation can be used to turn it around and add it to the routine of the next show.
What Darinka never imagined was what was going to happen to her, from one moment to the next she found out that she had a brother, but it was not only that, he is a brother who was stolen from her mother in the middle of the dictatorship, who already had 42 years old and in another month I was going to meet him.
“I’m sorry I haven’t fully said it yet, even though months have passed, I don’t know, it’s very, very crazy.”he points out when we ask him what his feeling was when he heard this news.
“From one day to the next, finding out about this, there are many mixed feelings, like joy, anger, sadness, many emotions, so I feel that it is something, that I am still processing”he adds.
His brother is Jimmy Thyden, an American lawyer who was adopted by a couple from that country who came to Chile to look for a baby.
They took him to the United States after his mother, María Angélica González, gave birth to him in a hospital in Santiago, where she was told that her premature son had been stillborn.
When María Angélica asked for her body, they told her that it had been thrown away, however, the truth is that it was snatched from the bowels of the Kekita, as Darinka tells her, and they took it to this couple who, deceived, paid for the papers. of adoption.
The first call
What Darinka did not know until that moment is that her brother had tried to contact her with messages and calls via Facebook, but as she says “Who watches Facebook in my generation today?”
Jimmy, who now also bears the last name González, had managed, shortly before, to find the whereabouts of his mother, María Angélica González, through “Nos Buscamos”, the NGO that investigates the trafficking of children born in Chile and placed in irregular adoption in the world.
And when he managed to talk to her, he found out that she had five brothers whom he tried to contact without success. María Angélica still did not tell her children what was happening.
Darinka tells what happened next. “Kekita spoke to me and told me everything that had happened and what she had been experiencing this last month and there she told me, ‘he really wants to talk to you, he wants to meet you’ and there I said well, now tell him that if he calls me, I will tell him I’m going to answer”.
Certainly, the calls and messages he received via Facebook were not a scam, as he first imagined, but it was Jimmy, his brother.
After that conversation with Kekita, Jimmy wrote to her. Tell the moment indicating “I found out and after 20 minutes we were talking on a video call, cachai”.
The reunion of Darinka González and her brother
Living in Santiago, Darinka Gonzalez had the privilege of being the first to meet her brother, Jimmy.
“My brother, Ale, the eldest and I were here in Santiago and he arrived in Santiago to a hotel and there we went to meet him again”Then, Jimmy made the trip to Valdivia to meet his mother.
From that first meeting, he relates “We meet him, the very nervous one, and I see him and he is just like my older brother Alexis, cool, they are both the same, so there you say, this jerk is my brother”.
“Then talking to him and understanding the language and gestures, which despite having never met before, is something that is in the genes, I believe, because if not, how can you laugh in the same way or move your hands in the same way?” in this very familiar way, cachai… So for us it was not even necessary to do a DNA test, it is just that he is the same as the eldest, that is, they are identical, so something very familiar”he added.
Once he met them, Jimmy took the flight to Valdivia, the lands of the Kekita, who were waiting for him with the rest of his family. That first hug went around the world.
“Hello Mom, I love you”was the first thing Jimmy said to his biological mother to the excitement of his wife and two daughters who accompanied him to the south of Chile on his way to discover his roots.
The tight hug that was missing
When Jimmy arrived in Chile to meet his family, he felt that everything fell into place, but he mourned the loss of 42 years with his family, his brothers and his sister, Darinka, he told USA Today.
A statement that is very much in line with what the comedian says, when she says “He felt very loved too. Like, people always, well, the fachos always say, “Oh, but there she had a better life and, maybe yes, maybe she had a, better life, in quotes in terms of education in terms of type.” of the house he has now, what do I know, but he, he told me that he felt very alone all his life.”
It goes on to indicate, “He always knew that he was adopted and Latino, so he felt very discriminated against all his life, cachai, he felt that he didn’t belong in that place, so nothing compensates for that”.
“He is happy to have met us, he would like us all to go live there or come, I kind of feel like he found his family and love, that he needed so much time, because we are Chileans, because then like Hello how are you?! and a tight hug with love.”Darinka said.
Although there is something that stands out and that is that he needed that affection, because even though his parents love him, they still have the North American culture that is more distant, versus the Chilean one, where they immediately welcomed him as what he is, one more of the family.
One of the 50 thousand irregular adoptions in Chile
Now, Jimmy Lippert Thyden Gonzáleza surname he adopted as soon as he set foot in Chile, has seven siblings, the five Chileans he met in 2013 and his two brothers from his North American adoptive family.
Regarding them, Darinka commented on how Jimmy’s parents experienced this process of knowing that their son had been stolen to be given up for adoption to them.
“Obviously, they felt extremely bad about it, very guilty, but also understanding that many irregularities were happening in this country and that ultimately it is not their fault.”he related.
Jimmy is one of the 25 thousand children who were given up for adoption irregularly and who left Chile during the military dictatorship, although in reality there are close to 50 thousand who are estimated to have been forcibly separated from their mothers between the 1950s. and 90 in Chile.
The data is provided by the NGO Nos Buscamos and It was compiled thanks to an estimate provided by the Investigative Police (PDI)., who used international departure and entry records. 50 thousand were those who left and never returned to our country.
The same NGO states that 70% of mothers who look for their children declare that they were stolen and in the case of newborns, like Jimmy, they were given up for dead by midwives or doctors in charge of deliveries.
All in family
Like a good Chilean family, Jimmy immediately joined the family WhatsApp group. Through this means they communicate constantly, sending photos and messages that keep them in touch every day.
Even, Kekita went to the United States and he spent two months with his son in Viriginia, trying to make up for lost time.
Jimmy will come to Chile next month to see his family, but also to continue working so that others, like him, can find their biological family.
Because there is something that Darinka Gonzalez highlights, “my brother, because he has the resources, was able to travel with his entire family to Chile, but it is not that Chile said, ‘oh here a son was found with a mother, let’s reunite them’, how do we pay?” “We cover the expenses for them to find each other, nothing.”
Add, “So I think there is a flaw there, which is super important with these people, because not all mothers and children have the resources to travel and get to know each other”.
The NGO Nos Buscamos has achieved 500 reunions, but there is still much more to do. Its founder, Constanza del Río, recently declared to Revista Ya that they are at a crossroads fighting to stay afloat to help more families.
For her part, Darinka González continues telling her story, one that, like every comedian, she turned around and incorporated into her routines, to see if she can soon tell it at a festival like Olmué or the Viña del Mar Festival. where Jimmy will surely try to be to see and laugh with his famous Chilean sister again.
