History Series / MariaLaDelBarrio

* [[ActuallyIAmHim Actually, I am Her]]: María eventually reveals to Gripina that she was helping Nandito so much because she was the mad girl that gave him away while she was mentally unstable.
* AdamWesting: Itati Cantoral fully embraced her work as a telenovela villain, and worked mainly as a villain from then on. She even mad [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Oh1Bic0RQI a video guide for being the perfect villain]]

* AdultsAreUseless - After Nandito gets stabbed and Esperanza is badly beaten up, there's a group of 5-6 adults simply standing around wondering if there's anything they could do.
* TheAlcoholic - Luis Fernando, at least in the first half of the show is often seen drowning his sorrows, at first because of his breakup with Brenda.

* AdamWesting: Itati Cantoral fully embraced her work as a telenovela villain, and worked mainly as a villain from then on. She even made a video, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Oh1Bic0RQI Guide for being the perfect villain]]

Literally: "María from the Ghetto/Neighborhood" (1995-1996). A popular Mexican [[SoapOpera telenovela]] starring singer Thalia, which skyrocketed her to international fame, as well as Fernando Colunga and Itatí Cantoral to a lesser extent. It is a remake of the popular 1979 telenovela ''Los ricos también lloran'' ("The Rich Also Cry").

* DawsonCasting: At the beginning of the series Maria was 15 years old, her actress Thalia was in her 20's.

* [[ActuallyIAmHim Actually, I am Her]]: María eventually revealed Gripina that she was helping Nandito so much because she was the mad girl that gave him away while she was mentally unstable.

->''[[AppropriatedAppellation "Y a mucha honra]], [[TitleDrop María la del Barrio soy..."]]''

If you want to think about a TropeCodifier of the modern audience's view of a Spanish telenovela, look no further. The show contained several catfights, staged pregnancies, faked deaths, and heaps of drama. ''María la del Barrio'' also had a recent resurgence in popularity among Spanish speakers because of ridiculous antics of the main villain Soraya, as well as a remake for Filipino audiences in 2011.

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->''[[AppropriatedAppellation "Y a mucha honra]], [[TitleDrop María la del Barrio soy..."]]''

* BreakTheHaughty: Wondering about María's constant activities in the street and her sudden and unexplained happiness, Tita discovered the phone of "Fernando Pérez" (nandito) in her locker, and heard her talking nice with him. She was sure that María was cheating Luis Fernando with her, and became a complete jerkass. And one day, she took things too far, so that María told her the truth. The COMPLETE truth. That Luis Fernando left her during pregnancy, that his request for divoce drove her nuts, that she had her son then, that she gave him away to another woman during her madness, that she was placed into a bedlam house, that she spent more than 15 years searching for that woman, that she finally found her, and that nandito is her son. Tita started to cry, asking María to forgive her.

* ContrivedCoincidence - María kept continously running into Nandito, who was the son that she had abandoned shortly after she gave birth.

* EightiesHair - On the main cast, only Luis Fernando, but his ex-girlfriend Brenda had huge poofy 80s hair. Surprisingly not a case of TwentyYearsBehind, and actually a JustifiedTrope: his series was from the ''mid-90s'', but a FreezeFrameBonus reveals that Soraya's [[spoiler: pregnancy certificate]] was delivered the 16th of June 1980, which has to be the exact day the events of episode 9 unfold. Therefore, instead of starting at the time of filming in 1995 and ending in a putative, 90s-like 2010, the show started depicting events that would have been a flashback to the eighties and went forward from there organically or through time skips untill it reached the then-present, at the end of filming.

** Though it might make sense for Victoria, [[AntiVillain whose schemes never went too far and whose main concern was always her family]]. When Maria was proved to be neither her husband's mistress/secret-daughter nor a danger for her sons, she softened up. Beforehand, she always at least tried to be polite and quickly conceded that Maria wasn't resonsible of her bad education. As for Carlota, she never truly chose a side, eavesdroping on everyone and endangering everybody's plans, so she might simply have slowly evolved from ChaoticNeutral to ChaoticGood.

* PutOnABus - Vladimir mysteriously disappears forever after María turns him down. According to the actor, there was going to be a further plotline where he became involved with Soraya, but it never happened.

* WeddingsForEveryone: In the last episode, Maria and Luis Fernando get married again. And we also get informed of several new happy couples and marriage anouncements: [[spoiler:Veracruz and Gripina, Nando and Alicia, Tita and Aldo, Urbano and Felipa, the doctor and María's friend in the prison, Dorantes and a lawyer of his buffet, etc.]]

* SparedByAdaptation: Esther dies halfway through ''Los ricos también lloran'', while Soraya escapes several brushes with death. [[spoiler: It doesn't take.]]

!!Unmarked spoilers por the identity of the last BigBad, as it becomes crucial to the plot of almost a third part of the whole series

* AdaptationalVillainy: Esther, Soraya's counterpart in ''Los ricos también lloran'', is a much more nuanced and subtle character and is portrayed as more of a tragic AntiVillain.

* SparedByAdaptation: Esther dies halfway through ''Los ricos también lloran'', while Soraya escapes several brushes with death. [[spoiler: It doesn't take.]]

Rumor has it a Creator/{{Televisa}} remake is in the works and will be released in Mexico in late 2014-early 2015.

%%* AManIsNotAVirgin

* BondVillainStupidity: In the final episode, [[spoiler:Soraya had María at gun point. The JustBetweenYouAndMe gloat took HOURS, and allowed the police to locate her. And even yet, she could have ended things before they enter to the house, but no.]]

* ContrivedCoincidence - María kept continously running into Nandito, [[spoiler: who was the son that she had abandoned shortly after she gave birth.]]
* DealWithTheDevil - [[spoiler:Soraya]] has a scene bragging about how Satan is the one who had always been there for help when needed. Ironically, [[spoiler:she is burned to death in the finale]].

* HollywoodHealing - [[spoiler: Soraya is supposedly dead after falling out of a ''two-story building'', but is later shown undergoing intense physical rehab in Texas and she later recovers miraculously.]]

* KissingCousins - Nobody bats an eye to Luis Fernando and Soraya getting married, [[spoiler: this is because Soraya isn't actually Victoria's niece.]]

* NotMeThisTime: When the De la Vega family started to receive anonymous mails [[spoiler:from Soraya, which they thought dead since 15 years ago]], they thought that it was all a bad prank of Penélope and her husband.
* NotQuiteDead - [[spoiler: Soraya falls out of a three-story building and is believed to be dead, but we later see her in intensive recovery in Texas later on.]]

* TheCastShowoff - Thalia sang the novela's opening song, and also sang during the show.

* DawsonCasting / PlayingGertrude - María, Soraya, and Luis Fernando were played by the same actors even after 20 years had gone by on the show. Thalia first appears as María as a 15-year old when she was 24 at the time and Itatí Cantoral first plays an 18-year old Soraya at 20 years old. They don't even bother changing other characters' appearances.

* EightiesHair - On the main cast, only Luis Fernando, but his ex-girlfriend Brenda had huge poofy 80s hair. This series was from the ''mid-90s''.

** The second arc with [[spoiler:Soraya]] could have been stopped on its tracks, if they denounced her for her murder attempt at the end of the first arc. They police takes her prisoner, end of story.

* MotiveDecay: When the series began, Victoria and Carlota were evil jerks that hated María and plotted to get rid of her. Victoria warmed on María when she helped her husband Fernando with so much care when he was ill, and turned into her friend and trusted confidant. Carlota was slowly [[{{Flanderization}} flanderized]] into a mere [[GossipyHens gossip woman]], hearing from behind the doors just for the sake of it, but without revealing the secrets that would make harm (such as Tita's true origin). She even used her gossip to help María at times.