Gay lucha
What’s Fact and What’s Fiction in Cassandro
Cassandro, the new motion picture starring Gael García Bernal as the charismatic, pioneering wrestler Saúl Armendáriz, takes us into the world of lucha libre—a sport widely beloved in Mexico and one that makes the WWE look restrained in comparison. As in WWE bouts, the outcome is scripted, with the (usually) masked luchadores expected to put on a good present full of release kicks, backflips, leaping off the ropes, and theatrical roaring. But lucha libre has its have rules and traditions, notably with regard to role: Wrestlers are divided into técnicos, the nice guys who go after the rules and must always achieve , and rudos, the bad guys who cheat and must always lose. There’s also a third category, the exóticos. These wrestlers contend glammed up in draggy sequins and makeup, and act an effeminate lgbtq+ caricature until they ultimately lose to the macho técnico, generally with a helping of homophobic insults from the crowd. But traditionally, the glitter stayed inside the ring—for decades, most exóticos maintained that they were straight in real life.
That is, until Armendáriz arrived on the scene in the delayed 1980s. An out gay man and talented
Cassandro Is a Wonderful Biopic of the Homosexual Lucha Libre Wrestler
By Gary M. Kramer–
Regardless of what one may think about the sport of wrestling, Cassandro, set in the world of lucha libre, is an exciting and moving story of lgbtq+ empowerment.
This fictional film, on hand on Amazon Prime September 22, is based on the life of the gay wrestler Saúl Armendáriz. A Mexican American in El Paso, he is first seen entering the ring as “El Topo.” A “runt” whose miniature stature makes him an easy defeat for his opponent, Gigantico (the authentic Gigantico), Saúl complains not about losing but that there is no poetry in Gigantico’s “performance.” And while Saúl admires the exótico wrestlers, they never win according to the sport’s rules.
But all that changes after Saúl connects with Sabrina (Roberta Colindrez), who trains him and supports his decision to wrestle as Cassandro, an exótico, with the expectation that he will conquer. Saúl makes Cassandro’s debut dazzling; he comes out wearing lipstick and hotpants and no mask, which defies lucha libre conventions. He even enters the ring to a Spanish-language version of Gloria Gaynor’s anthem “I Will Survive.” Before the victor
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Becoming ‘La Chiquilla de Tijuana’ and ‘Staging Contradiction’ – Ruby Gardenia’s Lucha Libre Exótica in a Mexican Border City
Tabea Huth,
Freie Universität Berlin
Abstract [1]
This paper focuses on Tijuana-based wrestler Ruby Gardenia, a luchador exótico who wrestles under the surname of “La Chiquilla de Tijuana” and not only takes part in the national as skillfully as international representation of lucha libre tijuanense, but also in the voice of the very border city of Tijuana. Origin with an introduction and theoretical framing of Gardenia’s work as an exotic wrestler, this paper retraces the transformation of Fernando Covarrubias, a gay immigrant from the southern Mexican state of Nayarit, into Tijuana’s most famous luchador exótico by paying exceptional attention to dynamics of gender and sexuality in the context of migration and immigrant life in the border city. Inspired by Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of ‘third space’, Gloria Anzaldúa’s ‘new mestiza consciousness’, and Heather Levi’s concept of lucha libre as a practice of ‘staging contradiction’ I finally discuss Ruby Gardenia’s agency being a luchador exótico in a multifaceted interstice.
¡Damas