Fernando Marín says that he is a person who invents a dream every morning. That he usually cheats, because he thinks and lives the dream he wants. He also says that he is not passionate about the past. “If I want to see yesterday, I look at the files or the photos. But I always think about today, fundamentally, and tomorrow. For me, life is the future.” That’s what this 84-year-old man says, and judging by his achievements throughout his professional decades, he could multiply that number several times. It’s as if yours were a mamushka of lives. There is an artistic one, a media one, a sports one, a personal one.
Marín has been the maker of cultural products that marked generations: from bringing Chavo del Ocho to Argentina or creating Cantaniño, to Mesa de Noticias or Calabromas. From organizing many of Carlos Monzón’s fights and producing Davis Cup matches to presiding over Racing and making it champion in 2001 after 35 years or getting involved in Fútbol para Todos during the presidency of his friend Mauricio Macri. From the technological revolution that he implied Video Show, with the eternal Cacho Fontana, to the imprint of FM Horizonte. A few weeks ago, thanks to Marín’s work with Jorge Fontevecchia, along with the creativity of Eddie Sierra, Sergio “Chicho” Soldati and Martín Wullich, Horizonte is back on the air, inhabiting 101.9 on the dial, and Marín feels it like a Renaissance.
News: Have you always moved forward like a bulldozer?
Fernando Marín: I don’t know if it’s like a bulldozer, but I always had the goal of moving forward. And you slip, you have trips and maybe some stones. But before I stood still, timid, I always moved forward. I’m a fan of weird cocktails; Somehow, I invented nouvelle cuisine by mixing Minguito with Grondona. In Supershow Infantil I put Berugo (Carambula), Gachi (Ferrari), Mónica Jouvet and Alberto Muney, but the most interesting thing is that I hired the cute Margarita. That monkey fell in love with Berugo and when we went to do theater in Mar del Plata, she escaped from me on the day of the debut, she went to the marquee; Until Berugo came out, she didn’t come down (laughs). And with La Vida en Calabromas, I called Juan Carlos who was second or third in I don’t know what program and I told him that he had to be number one. The same as Juana Molina, who was second in Gasalla. and he made Juana and her sisters. I always took risks when I saw talent. I had intuition.
News: What of everything you generated remains in a special place in your memory?
Marín: Video Show, because we undoubtedly incorporated something technical that changed the history of Argentine television. We called it “the watching machine”, we stopped recording on the channel with those huge cameras and it became a backpack with a small camera, which allowed you to ask for a signal and be outdoors, at a premiere or around the world recording. Another thing that I remember as a before and after was Cantaniño. At one point we won 5 gold records and 3 platinum records, we sold more than Julio Iglesias. With “I have a little brother,” we broke all the clocks. Another was the launch of FM Horizonte, the first mass FM, marking a before and after in Argentine radio. We did it with a friend I want to remember, Teddy García Mansilla, he was a very close friend of mine, but he worked in a bank and we thought about FM with him. He told me that in Chile they were much more advanced than us and I brought the best disc jockey in Chile, I put my daughter María José next to me and (Mario) Mazzone, (Quique) Matavos and that resounding signature of Martín Wullich grew up there who told an anecdote and said: “From now on, a new hour begins.” Today we are lucky to have it on the air again.
News: How does it feel to have it back on the dial?
Marín: It’s as if you told me: “Fernando, you jumped again,” because I jumped horses and won a national championship in ’62. Having heard Horizonte on air again is like having jumped a five-foot fence again, It is reborn.
News: What is the common denominator in such different things that you have done, what is your brand?
Marín: First, not be jealous and surround myself with the best. I had a lot of confidence in myself but I shared, I was generous and I looked for the best. And then I became passionate about outdoor sports production. I’m an athlete in my head: every morning, I go to bed at whatever time I go to bed, I jump out of bed and I’m active. Even today at 84, I practice golf, gymnastics, tennis, and swimming. I am so obsessive that when I grew up I went to learn swimming, because we all swim but rather we jump into the pool and float. So at age 70, I went to take swimming lessons.
News: There is a personal brand there, right?
Marín: Well, because I am a perfectionist, I went to learn to swim with technique. I swim 20 or 25 minutes straight, which is a bocce. So what do I do while I swim, I’m thinking about what to do next.
He remembers his father as a very severe, upright, honest guy, absorbed by work and obligations, and who, being a very good athlete, began to smoke and overflow ashtrays. “From a very young age, I said: “I’m not going to do what dad does.” Because mom told him: “Did you see all the things you have in the ashtray, Fernando.” And he: “Leave me alone, China.” And he continued working. Then I said: “He is like a prisoner,” and I was a lover of freedom. From dad I took strictness, compliance, work. I think I took joy and love from my mother.”
Once a month he visits his dead in the cemetery but he prays to them every morning. On his nightstand is a photo of his mother. In reality, it is an image mounted on another: still in the days of film cameras, a shot in which he was seen on one of his horses was crowned by another of his mother’s face, right at the same height. from the sky. At that moment, he knew that this photographic “error” was a gift, which would accompany him forever. Marín also has a photo of Pope John Paul II holding his head. He became his devotee when, in June 1982, in St. Peter’s Square, hours before the Supreme Pontiff traveled to the country in the midst of the Malvinas War, he approached him in the crowd and, identifying himself as Argentine, I told him: “Only words of love.”
News: How do you see the situation that the country is going through?
Marín: I don’t dare say what will happen tomorrow. I apply that dream of optimism, but there is a lot of rot. And what I really want is good to prevail. The backbone of life are institutions, leaderships and different ways of acting. So, since politicians have a legitimate vocation for power and have a vocation for service, I want them to put on the hat sometime and really work not only for themselves, but for the country. And I think there is now a pivotal moment, I’m sorry, it’s pure intuition. I feel like we are scratching the bottom and beings appear that are like from another planet, without naming names, that instead of speaking to humans, they speak to birds. You say: “This one is wrong.” And when you look the other way, you say: “But we were with them for 50 years.” And in the middle I am seeing a hinge, and with some of them I have a very close loving friendship, so, as Palito would say, I have faith, not that everything will change, that something will change. And if something changes, it will be for the better, this is my sensitivity today regarding Argentina’s tomorrow.
News: What happens to the great doer that you are when the pace slows down? Is it easy for you or do you suffer from it?
Marín: Now the group Crónica is making a documentary about my life, it’s a first. And it’s like a compliment, like a legacy, because many of my grandchildren don’t know so many things about what I did and it gives me warmth sometimes at a table with my friends to say I did this or that. You sound like an idiot saying me, me and me, so I keep quiet and I suffer for that. We all have a share of vanity, a share of misery, a share of selfishness, a share of greatness, a share of generosity, man is made of shares. And sometimes when I speak to my friends, I feel the grimace, as if saying “this one again with ‘I did’”, so I started to shut up. But not because of their lack of recognition, but because of the fact that I feel jealousy on the surface. Because out of nothing I made this small fortune that is my life, because it is a great small fortune.
News: Feeling that it is better to remain silent perhaps leaves you without freedom.
Marín: Sometimes in solitude I find my greatest freedom. In solitude I feel good. There are two things that are my recreation: daily physical activity and solitude, because I think and create tomorrow.
