"My life is much easier because we live in a democracy"

The comedian was speaking in an interview with the Lusa news agency on the sidelines of the 13th Meeting of Writers of the Portuguese Language, which runs until Saturday in the Cape Verdean capital, in which he is participating.

"I think my life is made much easier by the fact that we live in a democracy. I'm not at risk. The limits of what I can say are very flexible," he observes.

Ricardo Araújo Pereira understands that in some Portuguese-speaking African countries (PALOP) it is "much more difficult to make a joke about political power".

"It's healthy for a society to be able to laugh at its leaders, and it's obvious that those who wield power are attractive to comedians, for several reasons," he says.

And he continues: "It's funny when a clown hits the president or the prime minister with a rotten apple. I also like hitting other people in the forehead, but the more powerful the person who gets the rotten apple on their forehead, the more fun it is."

The comedian emphasizes that Portuguese democracy is now "perfectly consolidated" and that, "if comedians feel any embarrassment regarding what they can or cannot say, it is much more related to economic power than to political power."

Commenting on one of the topics of the meeting taking place in Praia -- artificial intelligence -- Ricardo Araújo Pereira appeared calm, especially because the engines he consults "are not at all funny."

"I've experimented with GPT, DeepSeek (Chinese), Gemini, and Le Chat (French). The funniest one is Chinese because it has fewer restrictions, unless you ask: Why do people say Xi Jinping [Chinese leader] looks like Winnie the Pooh?"

And the answer will be the same if we ask him what happened in Tiananmen - he closes the subject, he tells.

On June 4, 1989, the Chinese army advanced with tanks to disperse peaceful protests led by students in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, who were calling for democratic reforms for the country, causing a death toll that is still the subject of debate today.

"From a humorous point of view, they are very weak. It's difficult to have a conversation with them about the limits of humor, especially because they are always flattering to the person they are talking to," he said.

For the comedian, the tendency of these artificial intelligence tools "is toward a very puritanical vision." "I'm glad they're not funny at all. It's not usable," although they can "help with preliminary work."

"It's not a rival, so far it isn't, because [artificial intelligence] has a certain puritanism that prevents it from doing what comedy allows, which is saying unacceptable things. People laugh because what we're saying is unacceptable, we're saying things about ourselves or others that aren't polite to say in public, in a living room, and it's very obsessed with not transgressing," he explained.

And if artificial intelligence doesn't make writers fear losing their jobs, Portuguese current affairs also don't seem to be at risk of ceasing to provide raw material for moments of humor.

"If suddenly things start to go really well in the country and pregnant women stop giving birth on the highway, if everyone has a house to live in..."

And he concludes: "In paradise there is no reason to laugh."

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