The day Diego Starópoli engraved his skin for the first time – the smallest reason he found because he could not afford to be exquisite – he discovered a passion and was certain that the only thing he wanted in life was to tattoo. He didn’t even know how to draw. He learned the trade by paying the kids with a pizza and a beer to let him practice on their bodies.
Now, about to turn 50, he has the largest store in the country, in his neighborhood of Villa Lugano, and another in San Telmo. They just gave him the second Martin Fierro for his cable program and endured the suffocating drought of six months without income due to the pandemic, which forced him to take out a loan after eating even what his youngest son had collected in communion. Years ago he set up a foundation, he prints breast areolas to women who suffered from breast cancer and makes his “healing tattoos”, thus registered the brand, in those who are covered by scars. On December 5 he will present the photographic exhibition “The Phoenix of Mandinga”, With 15 of those life stories, and then plans to take her to different cities around the world on a motorhome trip with her family, from Lugano to Ushuaia and from there to Alaska. “In addition, in each of the countries, I already have people waiting for me to get tattooed breast areolas or burns. Seeing his before and after is incredible, I can’t ask for more ”. Now, with all that, he repeats that his life seems unreal to him and that this was not his destiny.
News: What is the work you do with the Mandinga foundation?
Diego Starópoli: Today the foundation plays an important role in the prevention of breast cancer because we provide free medical care to many women, to get a check-up that, not having a social work, they are waiting for months and this is a disease that does not wait for you. Me too I took 1730 women to whom I reconstructed the mammary areola for free. There are also healing tattoos for people who had large scars. I tattoo what nobody is encouraged to tattoo. Like a girl who is burned from her toenails to her neck. The room in the boarding house her family rented when she was little caught fire and she walked out on fire. It has even part of the bones burned. forty-something operations, never in his life went to a pool or the sea, today you have to see it!
News: In return, Mandinga tattoos big celebrities. What does each of those extremes give you?
Starópoli: It’s real, it’s like a yin and a yang. 50% of the biggest bands in the country get tattoos here. Artists, journalists, drivers, politicians come, with some we have a friendly relationship. The fact that Axel comes makes his fans come to Mandinga, the same with La Renga, or with the River players, and so on. I have not lived it from the cholulaje.
News: Can you imagine doing something else?
Starópoli: I imagine myself tattooing at 70, I enjoy it and it has been a long time since I tattooed for money.
News: If you look back, what made you become a character?
Starópoli: I was always afraid of eating a character. I try to live life with a lot of humility because it makes me ashamed, because I’m still in my neighborhood, I still have the same old friends, I’m not a guy who likes to ride on expensive cars or with extravagant things, I try to exercise humility and I talk about it with my children because they were lucky enough to go to Disney twice or before the pandemic I was able to go on vacation to Playa del Carmen, but the first time I left the country was at 40 years old because there were always priorities. So I forbid my children to take a photo at Disney and upload it to networks, out of respect. I sponsor more than 500 boys from rural schools who are waiting for us to get off a truck with food so they can morph or clothes to get dressed, I bring those boys to see Buenos Aires and when they come, I take them home and put the pool on them. .
News: Being successful, does it generate some guilt?
Starópoli: I have the peace of mind of feeling like a good guy. What is clear is that my destiny was not this, because of the neighborhood in which I grew up, because of the surroundings, because of the zero education that I have. I suffered many, many things that they also taught me. My school really was the street and I came out unscathed from many things that people around me could not. Today at 50 years old, sometimes I don’t know if a word goes with Z or with S, but just as I am ashamed of some things that I could not, it also makes me proud to have reached other places. The other day at the Martín Fierros, I see a white limousine, Lourdes, who is the host of the program, gets out, all the people taking photos, and I went back to the entrance of a building, put my chinstrap on, put on my glasses and I was waiting because they came to see me with her and I am not that … clearly she is, Lourdes is a rockstar, she likes it, but not me.
News: He is not a rockstar.
Starópoli: No, not even fart.
News: In your field there is a lot of rockstar.
Starópoli: Sure, there are many and I’ve had people who work with me who were rock stars. I do not. The other day we did the second walk for cancer awareness, more than 6 thousand people came and I could not walk, I stayed to one side crying. And then they hugged me and took pictures of themselves and said: “You tattooed me, I’m number 750, thank you.” I felt like El Gauchito Gil. So I can’t eat that rockstar movie, if I don’t handle that ego issue, all that I generated will go to shit. I’m a 50-year-old guy who makes little drawings on the skin but who had the vision and the warmth to reach people on the other hand.
