Los Caquitos

Los Caquitos
Created by	Roberto Gómez Bolaños
Written by	Roberto Gómez Bolaños
Starring	Roberto Gómez Bolaños Édgar Vivar Florinda Meza
Country of origin	Mexico
Original language(s)	Spanish
Release
Original network	Televisa
External links
Chespirito.com

Los Caquitos (English: "The Little Thieves") is a sketch comedy of the Chespirito television comedy program that ran from 1980 to 1995. It was created by Roberto Gómez Bolaños, who also played one of the title characters, "El Chómpiras".

Originally, Chómpiras was a pickpocket and cat burglar who worked with an associate named Peterete (Ramón Valdés). Their skills in thievery were marginal, but Peterete was ostensibly the more intelligent and skilled of the pair. Together, they were known as Los Caquitos (which is roughly translated as "The Little Thieves", "caquito" being a diminutive of "caco" which is Spanish for "thief" or "hoodlum") and appeared on Chespirito's comedy programs in the 1970s, usually preceding an episode of El Chavo del Ocho or El Chapulín Colorado that did not last the full half-hour. By 1973, El Chavo episodes were all a half-hour long and did not need the filler sketches, and shorter Chapulín episodes ceased to use Caquitos sketches, so the characters virtually disappeared.

In 1980, a new show premiered called Chespirito, which was an-hour-long and employed all of Chespirito's characters in sketches of varying lengths. On Chespirito, El Chómpiras and Los Caquitos were revived. However, Ramón Valdés had left Chespirito's troupe in 1979, so Peterete was forgotten and replaced with Botija (Édgar Vivar). Since most of the Caquitos sketches performed on the new show were simply remakes of the ones that had appeared years before on the older ones, Botija's character was extremely similar to Peterete's, except physically, since Botija was extremely fat, and Peterete was extremely thin.

The characters weren't very fleshed out originally, but as Chespirito began writing new sketches for the hour-long show, some of which lasted the entire hour, their backstories became more expanded. Botija was single at first, but got married very quickly to a woman called Chimoltrufia (Florinda Meza) who had moplike hair, a chipped tooth and constantly chewed a piece of gum. She was soon established as the conscience of the sketches; often she would earn money doing a respectable job, usually cleaning or babysitting. Many episodes didn't have to do with Chómpiras's and Botija's incompetent burgling, but instead focused on life in Chimoltrufia and Botija's tiny apartment. A neighbor named Doña Nachita (Angelines Fernández) started appearing frequently and eventually became a regular. Policemen were a regular feature in Caquitos sketches, but by the mid 1980s, Rubén Aguirre became the sketch's definitive policeman, the dimwitted Sgt. Refugio. Around this time, there were many sketches that took place at the police station as the characters tried to argue their innocence after being arrested; presiding over these cases was a judge played by Raúl Padilla, who was eventually named Licenciado Morales.

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