Agustina Vivero, far right, can earn $1,000 a weekend as a promoter.

“When people see me in the street sometimes they cry or they want to hug me or kiss me. Or they hate me. It is all very surprising.”


By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO

BUENOS AIRES -“Cumbio is here!”a young girl shouted, after spotting Agustina Vivero on the steps of the Abasto shopping mall here one recent Sunday. Rushing over, the girl gave Ms.Vivero a hug and then pulled out a camera, leaned in to Ms.Vivero and snapped a shot with an outstretched arm.

Within minutes dozens of teens were swarming around, clamoring for a few seconds with Ms.Vivero, an Internet and television celebrity with pinkstreaked hair and a pierced lower lip.

The past year has been a whirlwind for Ms.Vivero, known here simply as Cumbio for her love of cumbia music, a fusion of Latin pop, salsa and dance that is popular among Argentina’s lower classes. She has catapulted herself to stardom and unexpected affluence by transforming Internet fame as Argentina’s most popular “flogger” into marketing muscle, signing modeling contracts, promoting dance clubs and writing a book about her life.

And she is all of 17.

“When people see me in the street sometimes they cry or they want to hug me or kiss me,” she said.“Or they hate me. It is all very surprising.”

A filmmaker is shooting a documentary about her life. There is a Cumbio perfume and talk of a reality-based television show.

Her unlikely popularity is also redefining stereotypes of youth celebrity in Argentina. Ms.Vivero is openly gay and comfortable with not being modelthin, eschewing dieting and boasting of her love of junk food and chocolate - a different message in a country where women have high rates of eating disorders.“We are breaking a lot of barriers,” she said.

Floggers take photos of themselves and friends and post them on photo blogs.Fotolog.com claims to have more than 5.5 million users in Argentina, which is one of the two biggest markets for the site; Chile is the other. Users comment on one another’s photos. Ms.Vivero’s fotolog site is among the most viewed Internet sites in Argentina, logging 36 million visits over the past year, based on figures tallied by fotolog, she said.

Her ride to fame started early last year when she invited some friends over to her family’s house in San Cristobal, a working-class neighborhood. They hung out and took photos of themselves and their trademark big, carefully tousled hair, bright V-neck T-shirts and sneakers. They soon outgrew the house and Ms.Vivero proposed moving the gatherings to Abasto. The first week about a hundred kids showed up. By the fourth week the number had swelled to 2,000.

Mall owners began barring them from entering the complexes. Scuffles among kids outside drew the attention of the local news media.

“People don’t understand what this is all about,”she said.“People are used to fame coming from television or from sports but not from the Internet, where people are posting photos and bringing people together and having fun.”The Cumbio craze took off after Guillermo Tragent, president of Furia, a marketing company, discovered Ms.Vivero last April while scouting for faces for a Nike sportswear campaign.

“I’ll have fun with this while it lasts,”Ms.Vivero said.“When it ends, well that’s that. I’ll still have all the photos.”