'The luck of the ugly'

I have a new translation posted at WatchingAmerica.com of a column in El Tiempo, a Colombian newspaper. The U.S. show "Ugly Betty," originally a Colombian telenovela, just won several Golden Globe awards, but some Colombians aren't too happy about it. In the American version, Betty is the daughter of a Mexican immigrant.

The newspaper El Espectador mentions that this new version of "Betty la Fea" will go a long way toward transcending United States immigration policies: to portray the conditions of immigrants in a soap opera followed by tens of millions of U.S. citizens would assure a change in mentality and relax the legal difficulties and daily treatment of "ugly Betties" that hold secondary positions in the great corporations in New York, Miami and San Francisco.

What emerges in this soap opera is, however, the irreconcilable differences between the Mexican immigrants and American tycoons. It's impossible that such mockery could lead to understanding.

And yet... the show is phenomenally popular worldwide. According to Wikipedia, the series has been adapted from Israel to India.