By my avatar on the right you should have figured out I'm a big lucha libre buff. My home is dotted with máscaras and plastic luchador dolls, and my hard drives have all been named for wrestlers.
This week BBC Mundo has an illuminating interview with El Hijo del Santo, the Silver Masked One's 10th son, officially sanctioned to carry on the name and the mask.
Interesting tidbits from the interview:
* El Hijo del Santo has trademarked his father's nom de lucha. Pretty smart, when you think about it, since so many people have taken up El Santo's image. So maybe he won't become a low-rent Che.
* He has an El Santo brand of clothing (another article, in franquiciashoy.com, says that the brand is Santología, for sale at Mexican Sears this summer, and that he's got a café-boutique in chi-chi Condesa. See merchandise here. The placeholder site for the brand is here. There's also supposed to be a Cartoon Network show.)
* As a kid, he didn't know his father was the famous wrestler, until he was invited to a match. When we were in the car my dad wasn't wearing the mask, and suddenly we get someplace where there were lots of people and they were shouting, "Here comes El Santo" and I was wondering where El Santo was. I turned around and realized that El Santo was in the back seat. He didn't explain anything, it was a big surprise and I didn't know what to do.
In the past decade, there have been lots of lucha libre photo books. My faves are this one, this one and this one. Kiddies (and those who think like them) have probably caught Mucha Lucha. There is also a comic book character called Sonámbulo, a lucha-masked detective. And of course, all the luchador@s in Los Bros. Hernandez. Filmwise, going back to the source, those amazing 60s El Santo movies, is best. The less said about Nacho Libre the better.
Dominican lucha fans might want to take a look at this classic interview in Cuadra Técnica with El Hijo de Doña Tatica, Jack Veneno.
[photo of official El Santo doll via elhijodelsanto.com.mx]
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