(Don) Eleuterio Quiñones, voiced by Sunshine Logroño, is a recurring fictional character in Puerto Rican radio and television.
However, Eleuterio is still prone to fits of anger, and throws things quite loudly whenever he loses an argument and proof is shown to him, or when something personal happens to him that goes against his political philosophy (such as his son Elpidio joining a PDP campaign rally for a joyride, for example).
His experience with true American culture is limited to the time he was stationed at a local United States Army camp near his home during the war.
As a consequence of this, he considers the proverbial destination of most recent Puerto Rican émigrés, Orlando, Florida, to be the statehooders' equivalent of Mecca, with the giant Mickey Mouse-eared water tank near the entrance of Walt Disney World as the Kaabah.
Since the coquí has traditionally (and erroneously) been viewed as so local to Puerto Rico as to die if taken out of his habitat (proven wrong by its recent acclimatization to Hawaii), the name "Eleuterio" evokes a similar connotation.
Don Eleuterio is in record as being homophobic, a misogynist, a hater of reggaetón, and intolerant of Puerto Rican cuisine, and particularly "gandinga" (tripe) as the worst offender.
He commonly insults callers to his radio program as being "huelepega" (glue sniffers), and wonders when the offender is going to inject his dose of marijuana (sic) next.
[2] In practice, Logroño dressed once as Eleuterio Quiñones (namely, as a Puerto Rican peasant) for a televised episode of Los Rayos Gamma where Silverio Pérez's birthday was being held.
Therefore, Eleuterio would speak fondly of Puerto Rican food and music (namely, that of Rafael Hernández Marín) as a complement to American cultural icons such as Tommy Dorsey.
At times, Don Eleuterio has been accused of mistreating his son, particularly because he never changes the family diet; since the only decent cooking recipe Eleuterio knows was the one he learned as attendant of a mess hall while in the Army (and since cooking anything more extravagant would be, in his view, effeminate), he feeds his son steamed white rice, mashed potatoes and canned corn every single day (and sometimes for both lunch and dinner).
On these programs, recurring character "Doña Soto" (played by Suzette Bacó) claims, after seeing Elpidio naked accidentally a few times, that "Él no es ningún nene ná" ("He's no little kid, awright!")
When Miriam Ramirez de Ferrer became a widow, a chance visit to Don Eleuterio's program raised audiences expectations about a possible "romance" between the two.
The character of Eleuterio Quiñones dates from the mid-1980s, when it was part of the lineup for "Rompiendo el día" a morning radio show Logroño used to host with fellow actor and member of the Puerto Rican political satire collective Los Rayos Gamma, Silverio Pérez.
As means to promote the television program, Logroño staged short on-air telephone calls to Salsoul, a Puerto Rican radio station.
The early evening disc-jockey, Fernando Arévalo, would talk to some of the characters of the show, namely a cat puppet of Logroño's called Polito Garrapatoso, as well as to Don Eleuterio, for no longer than five minutes.
The program's name, "Agitando", means "Shaking (people up)", as to depict the expected uproar from segments of the audience whenever Don Eleuterio went on the air.
Logroño counters by stating that he doesn't have to write a script for his character since, as his occasional mentor José Miguel Agrelot said constantly, "the world is the best scriptwriter", and merely observing older statehood supporters in Puerto Rico provides him of enough original material.
For example, after the PDPs victory over the PNP in the 2000 general elections, Eleuterio spent three days off the air, while convalescing from an extreme case of diarrhea, induced by his ingestion of whiskey.
Whenever someone's views within a group of people in Puerto Rico depict them as an extremist within the country's pro-statehood movement, or leaning too much to the conservative side of the political spectrum, the subject may find themself described as a "Don Eleuterio" by their peers.
In fact, a later meeting involving Henna, McKinley, Eugenio María de Hostos, Manuel Zeno Gandía and other Puerto Rican leaders did take place in the White House in Washington, D.C. (on January 19, 1899[5]), in which they asked for a level of self-government similar or better to the one that had been granted to Puerto Rico just months before the invasion (to which McKinley reportedly refused later).
Burgos' article came about in a period when there was considerable debate in Puerto Rico on whether the public school system was being used by then pro-statehood governor Pedro Rosselló as a political indoctrination tool or not.
"), he was soon reprimanded by pro-independence citizens of town and Spanish language purists in Puerto Rico for his use of English but was publicly praised by Don Eleuterio, who is also a native.
However, the publicity gave general acceptability to the use of the phrase "Guaynabo City" to describe the municipality, fueled in part by Don Eleuterio's approving rants.
Don Eleuterio's radio program, "Agitando - El Show", was the first (and, for a while, the only) publicity resource PPD legislative candidate Ferdinand Pérez had to promote himself prior to his 2000 election as member of the Puerto Rico House of Representatives.
Don Eleuterio then joins in through the telephone (Logroño claims that the limited bandwidth of the phone call is actually preferred by the audience, rather than impersonating the character in the studio from behind a microphone).
If a news item proves to be controversial, Eleuterio breaks into an impromptu "Encuesta Relámpago" ("Flash Poll"), where people vote on two sides of an issue.
In the beginning, Eleuterio used to host "La Tribuna" ("The Podium"), a discussion panel that involves three youth leaders, one from each major political party in Puerto Rico.
Occasionally, Don Eleuterio receives emails and letters from people who praise a particular situation that they have experienced while visiting or living in the United States.
Eleuterio stages comments to these letters within a section called "El Otro Mundo" ("The Other World"), implying that the positive characteristic praised in it belongs somewhere too far removed from Puerto Rico from ever happening in the country.
The remaining half hour is usually reserved for Logroño's other comedic characters, Vitín Alicea (a clever closet homosexual who is a fan of wrestling), Chemba Osorio (a feminist who, at age 40, is unmarried by choice), or El Barbarazo del Amor (a sexual pervert turned into a media sexologist).