“Spanish Man” uses language barrier to become a Tik Tok star

Nov 27, 2023 News

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By Shervin Belgrave

Kaieteur News – One of the main challenges that Spanish speaking migrants face in Guyana is the language barrier but there is one Venezuelan man who has used it to his advantage and today, he has become a Tik Tok star, popularly known by many Guyanese as “Spanish Man.”

Funny Tik Tok videos of his struggles as a Spanish-speaking man working with a Guyanese boss in the construction sector have gone viral. The videos attracted so much attention that even major Guyanese businesses decided to sponsor him and use his platform for their ads.

Who is Spanish man?

“Spanish Man’s” real name is Emmanuel Rafael Gozalez Sucre, a 23-year-old man who grew-up in Ines Romero, San Félix, a fairly large town in Ciudad Guayana, Venezuela.

In Venezuela, he was involved in sports – mainly baseball and football – but he was forced to give up his childhood dream after Venezuela was plunged into an economic crisis.

He started working to help out his parents while studying to become a mechanical engineer at a university in his country.  Sucre assisted his mother in selling lunch, cigarettes, coffee and ice-cream in the mining towns of Venezuela but then the economic situation got worse. Sucre was forced to drop out of university and migrate.

“Ya después con el pasar de los años la situción del país estaba muy critica y mi madré y yo decidimos salir del país a trabajar (As the years the situation in the country (Venezuela) became very bad and my mother and I, decided to leave the country to work,” he told Kaieteur News in a recent interview.

At only 20-years-old, he left his country and moved to Guyana with his mother.

Life in an English–speaking country

On the May 26, 2020 the young man and his mother arrived at Kumaka Landing, Mabaruma, Region One, looking for work but it was no easy task because he did not understand or speak English.

“Todo se nos hizo muy complicado al principio por no saber el Idioma del país y no encontrar trabajo (Everything was very difficult for us in the beginning because we didn’t know the language of the country and we could not find work,” he said as he recounted having to leave his mother alone in Mabaruma and travel to Georgetown in hope of finding a job there.

He was lucky enough to find work with a construction company in Guyana’s capital city although he was unable to speak the language and he also did not know much about construction work.

Sucre said that he believed that he got the job because the “boss spirit tek” him.

“…Me permitio trabajar y se encargo de q aprendiera mi trabajo (He permitted me to work and also made it his duty ensure that I learn the work),” he said.

Despite the challenge of the language barrier between him and his bosses, he persevered, and was able to raise some cash so that his mother could join him in Georgetown. His mother found work too and together they were able to build a small wooden house at Kuru Kuru on the Soesdyke/Linden Highway.

As he continued to work, Sucre crossed paths with his countrymen who faced similar struggles.

One of them, whom he identified as ‘Yomix’, introduced him to a local music producer in Guyana commonly known as ‘Richie Rich.’

Richie Rich is a Guyanese who spent some years living in Venezuela and knows the Spanish language very well.   The music producer is closely associated with a construction company in Guyana and as such, the company employed Sucre.

Richie Rich soon realized that the young man possesses some musical talent and the music producer wasted no time in making him part of The Bad Family Music – a local music company spearheaded by Richie Rich.

Spanish Man’s rise to Tik Tok fame

“Spanish Man’s” rise to Tik Tok fame, however, came after an incident which still brings laughter to him. His new boss, Richie Rich, instructed him in English to “tie-up” some steel for foundation works at a site.  The young man did not understand the instruction clearly and when his boss man returned, he was tying up the steel with pieces of Polythene instead of using metal wires.

Richie Rich decided to post a video of the incident on Tik Tok and it went viral.

“At the JG Construction where we working and I came up to do a funny video of Spanish Man tying off steel with polythene and the public was laughing,” Richie Rich said.

It was the beginning of a series of funny videos depicting a Spanish-speaking migrant, working, living and adapting to culture of Guyana, an English-speaking South American country with a Caribbean culture.

It did not take long for Sucre to become a household name not only in Guyana but Trinidad and Tobago where there is also a large population of Spanish-speaking migrants.

The attention he got on Tik Tok led to him releasing his first musical production with The Bad Family Music group, called “Spanish Man nah Push Barrow, a remix of Jamaican artist Teejay viral hit ‘Drift.’

Kaieteur News reached out to some followers to find why they are fans of the young man and they said that is because they were able to connect with his videos.

According to them, the videos depict the reality of migrants working in a foreign country that speaks a different language and even the frustration of employers who employ them.

Asked how he was able to take advantage of the language barrier and become a local Tik Tok star, the young man gave gratitude to The Bad Family Music group, especially Richie Rich the music producer, and music company’s managers, Tracy Lee and Marlon Newton for making him go viral.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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• Spanish man, Spanish speaking migrants, The Bad Family Music, Tik Tok

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