the drink tank issue 88 chris for taff This is a special issue as we’ll be talk- I am that Mexican girl who smoked I am that Mexican girl whose cousins ing about Mexicans and Mexico. Ju- shitty weed before she turned ten. never made it anywhere but jail, the dith, who hasn’t written poetry in only one who went anywhere being the years, sent me a piece she did recently I am that Mexican girl. The one you one smart enough to get the hell away based on the life of one of my cousins. see when you close your eyes and try from the rest. as a contributor with a piece that really and conjure up the image of the young moved me. So here we go, South of the Latina you want to throw down hard I am that Mexican girl who wrote sto- Border, down Mexico Way. over the edge of your bed. ries to tell her daughter from the day I turned thirteen. When I walk into stores, carrying the baby, the Korean bitch behind the I’m the Mexican girl who has read them counter looks at me and steps closer to all to her. the cash register. When I pay in cash, she always holds it up to the light. I am the Mexican girl who got a job with the County of Santa Clara on my I am that Mexican girl with the tattoo first try. that stretches across her back spelling out the name of my baby-girl. And on my first day, they all looked at me and asked how old I really was. “I’m 19.” I told them. “I knew you D-I-A-N-A weren’t 23.” my manager said. I am that Mexican girl who dropped I am the Mexican girl whose daughter out of high school when I still had a will be spoiled by Uncles and Cousins 3.5 GPA. That Mexican Girl and Mothers and anyone else who feels the need. by I am that Mexican girl whose mother Judith Morel lit up in the house before I should have I am also the mother who won’t let her known what she was doing. I am that Mexican girl who got herself daughter fuck things up like her Moth- er did. She’ll hate me but she’ll never knocked up at fourteen and decided to One night, when Diana was crying and have the baby. have to go through the shit I went I couldn’t sleep through all that little through. brat’s screaming, I thought I could feel I am that Mexican girl who fought the air being pulled out of my chest, the bitch who touched my boyfriend’s I am the Mexican girl who should be the blood out of my heart, the thougths calling herself a Mexican woman, but I crotch six nights after she had her own out of my brain. I couldn’t get out of abortion. want these last few days of my youth, bed: there was an Old Hag on top of these last hours before I pass. me. My connection with my Mexican side US, held over several days at Madison promotion has been in existence. has always been through wrestling. Square Garden). Lucha took the idea of There’s nothing that comes close to That should explain all of the art in the masked wrestler and incorporated that number (the McMahon promotion this issue. Unlike my connection with it into a long tradition dating back would go back almost 50 years). my Jewish side (which is entirely to the Aztecs. Warriors would put on At first, it was much like Ameri- through comedy), I’m only a Mexican masks and become gods. That tradition can wrestling: a sport of stereotypes. when I turn on Lucha Libre. continued on even after the Catholi- They would have wrestlers billed as be- The question What is Lucha? cization of Mexico. Still, almost every ing The Mackay Cylone (from Ireland), is the toughest to answer. You may festival included the donning of masks the American Brute, Yacui Joe. They’d as well ask me which is my favourite and the playing of roles. The over-sized all fill roles and wherever Mexico stood kidney...oh, who am I kidding? it’s papier mache heads that are often seen with a country would determine wheth- the right. Lucha is a sport. Lucha is a in festivals are the natural outgrowth er the wrestler was a good guy (Tech- spectacle. Lucha is a lifestyle. It’s all of and are recognisable around the world. nico) or a villain (Rudo). That was the those things, often at once to the same The one who started Mexican way all wrestling was even as late as people. the 1980s (or the 1990s, when an Iraqi With the possible exception of sympathizer character was given to Japanese Pro Wrestling (which is an- the formerly patriotic Sgt. Slaughter). other article waiting to happen) Lucha Some would argue it’s still the same Libre is the most exceptional type of today. wrestling in the world. There is little During the 1930s, it was typi- nuance in Lucha, it’s a brash and cal to see Americans and Spaniards brassy world that gets created from the to be in the main events, but on the moment you enter the arena/pop in wrestling was a fellow named Salva- undercards, there were more and more the tape. There are traditions both in dor Lutteroth. He was a promoter masked wrestlers. Rudy Guzman was the ring and in the audience. There are of Boxeo and he had gone to Liberty one of them. He worked under his real chants and there are signs and there Hall, Texas, and saw some wrestling in name for a while and then ended up are ways of signifying loss and victory. 1929. Texas was a hotbed of wrestling changing his gimmick to wearing a And of course, there are masks. at the time (and would be again in the silver mask (well, at first it was leather, The word Luchador in Ameri- 1960s and certainly in the 1980s) and but it became Silver soon) and then he can circles has come to mean masked Luttheroth convinced some people gained fame for his name: El Santo- El wrestler. There are more masked wres- to fund him starting a federation. He Enmascarado del Plata! tlers in Mexico than anywhere else, but called Empressa Mexicana de Lucha He was quickly a major star, they neither invented it (that would Libre, EMLL or the Empressa as all the but he was never really a great worker. be the French in the late 1800s) nor wrestlers called it. Nowadays it’s called I mean, back in those days, you had popularized it (in the US around 1910, CMLL (Consejo Mundial de Lucha Li- to have a much bigger repetoire than a masked wrestler participated in the bre) but folks still call it La Empressa. most wrestlers have today, but he was most successful tournament ever in the That’s seventy plus years that a single a slight bit lower than most. The best workers of that period were almost al- for movies that either didn’t get made San Jose when I was very young. Sev- ways foreigners or guys like Gori Guer- or were deemed unusable. In addi- eral El Santo movies were released on rero (father of Eddie Guerrero), but tion, there were a lot of El Santo comic video tape, often due to the efforts of the best Mexican worker was a fellow books, released at a rate of roughly one K. Gordon Murray and Johnny Leg- named Demon Azul - The Blue Demon. a week for nearly twenty years. end. They introduced the movies and Blue Demon was a great worker In the 1980s, Americans started even started showing them on the big and a good shooter. He was a big star getting interested in the movies of El screen. I first saw Campeones de Justi- and when he was paired up with El Santo. I saw some of the films he made cio, starring El Santo, Blue Demon and Santo, it was almost always Demon in the 1970s at the Mexico theatre in Mil Mascaras (more on him later) at a that got the win. He was always second star to Santo though. Even though screening set up by Johnny in San he got more wins over Santo, it Francisco. never really launched him over Now, television didn’t stay Santo. away forever. There was TV by the One of the reasons that San- late 1960s, but wrestling was only to was so much bigger than Blue featured on special occasions, such Demon was the fact that Santo did as the EMLL anniversary shows. movies. Starting in the late 1940s, By the 1970s, there were challeng- Santo starred in a bunch of mov- ers to the supremacy of The Em- ies, cheaply made action films pressa. UWA came around with a with Santo as the James Bond/ giant new star: El Canek. He was Sherlock Holmes/Sly Stallone/ a giant star, and while most of the Superman character. He was real- big stars of EMLL over the years ly bigger than life. He made dozens had been light heavyweights, Canek of movies and they almost all had was a heavyweight. He was also the same thing - wrestling. far from the only major star. Mil There was no wide-spread Mascaras was there along with his television in Mexico at that point.