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'Some people see it as something silly and stupid,'
Garza told me. 'I've always seen lucha libre as el teatro de
los pobres' -- the theater of the poor. 'It's a real honest-to-goodness
show and it's as real as you want it to be.'
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SWEPT INTO THE SHOW
Just by looking at the cover of his book, you can tell that
it's time to be swept away into the show. Masks of 'El Cucuy,'
'El Toro Grande' complete with his horns, and the Neanderthal
'Cavernicola' surround the blaring title and the biggest mask
of them all, 'El Hombre de la Máscara Plateada' -- 'The
Man in the Silver Mask.'
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You could be getting ready to walk down any bustling market
street with its street stalls stocked with brightly colored
wrestling masks and superhero capes. Better yet, just as the
boy does in the story, you could be going to see the show in
person. It's the combination of Garza's delight in his story
and his fascination with the images that makes the book so special.
Lee and Bobby Byrd at Cinco Puntos picked it to add to their
stock of bilingual books for children and young adults at a
time when the subject seems to have become well entrenched in
U.S. popular culture. Not only is the kids' cartoon 'Mucha Lucha!'
sure to be endlessly available in repeats and on DVD, but comic
actor Jack Black also is supposed to be starring in a movie
soon as a priest who moonlights as a masked wrestler to keep
an orphanage from closing.
The plans for the based-on-fact movie, to be directed by 'Napoleon
Dynamite's' Jared Hess, were announced in the spring of 2005.
'I can't wait to get down to Mexico,' Black was quoted as saying
in Nickelodeon Movies' April announcement about the 'Untitled
Wrestling Project.'
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SUPERHEROES COME TO
LIFE
Garza, a burly artist with a goatee, is so enthusiastic about
his subject that he hardly needs to take a breath when talking
about it. Standing in his small studio, surrounded by some of
the portraits of wrestlers that he started painting well before
taking on the book, he acts out the story. The words pour out
in the frenzied tones of an announcer at a wrestling arena,
and he slaps one hand against the other when he needs the extra
emphasis. |
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'I wanted to try to capture the whole concept of lucha libre,'
the 36-year-old artist said. 'It's a show; it's a very basic
play. In the end, good triumphs.'
Garza grew up in Rio Grande City in the Lower Rio Grande Valley,
where going across the border to Reynosa and Nuevo Progreso
in Tamaulipas was common. He remembers going to see lucha libre
as a boy up but stopped when he was in middle school. A few
years ago, he tagged along with a friend to a show and became
interested all over again.
'They're silly at times, but they're the living embodiment of
a cultural stereotype,' he said while his wife, Irma, and young
son, Vincent, waited patiently nearby. 'To a child, they're
like superheroes come to life.'
The portraits -- nearly 20 of them line the walls of his studio
-- are of Mexican wrestlers from the Golden Age of the 1940s
and 1950s, shortly after the sport or sport entertainment started.
'I wanted to do something that paid tribute to these guys,'
he said. 'I messed around originally with just a series of drawings.'
He altered his portrait style somewhat to serve the needs of
his book's illustrations and storytelling needs, but the vibrancy
remains intact. He met Bobby Byrd at the Guadalupe book festival
several years ago and kept talking to Cinco Puntos about publishing
his book ever since. 'Cinco Puntos does really great children's
books,' Garza said.
He sees himself primarily as a painter but also enjoys writing.
'Lucha Libre' is his second children's book, but the first for
which he has done his own illustrations. He teaches art in San
Antonio schools.
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GALLISTA STUDIOS
Joe
Lopez, the founder of the Gallista studios, rents space
to about 10 artists in the complex on South Flores Street. Some
of them use it for studio space, others for galleries. 'We try
to educate people in this part of town about art,' he said.
Lopez, who proudly notes that he is more 'street smart' than
educated, said he is always 'a day late and a dollar short.'
But he has been a part of the San Antonio arts scene for 40
years. 'After 40 years, things are starting to happen,' he said. |
AUTHOR
Border
Crossings is a series of features prepared by Soll Sussman
who reported on Mexico and Central America as a correspondent
and regional news editor for The
Associated Press. He left for a stint as A.P. bureau chief
in Toronto. Because his heart never really left Mexico City,
he quickly came to his senses and moved closer to the Mexican
border. He now is a freelance writer happily living in Austin,
Texas.
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