Cinco de Mayo

We are late, so instead of walking down to the waterfront, Sugata and I hop on the MAX and find ourselves in a car where more than half of the passengers are Mexican American. They must be going to the same place we are headed: Portland’s 29^th Cinco de Mayo celebration. 

The "Fifth of May" was the date in 1862 that was won against the French in the city of Puebla in Mexico. It did not end up being a very decisive battle, but was a celebration of the victory of "the little guy" over "the big guy" as the Mexicans had far fewer troops than the French. It is interesting to note that the holiday is more American than it is Mexican. if you are curious, read more about it here: http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/05/us/cinco-de-mayo-origins/index.html

The Cinco de Mayo celebration in Portland runs for three days straight. On Friday evening we absorbed the sights and sounds of Mexcio. The Mariachi bands, the Folklorico dancers who hypnotized us with their smiles and their swirling, twirling dresses. We ended that evening watching fireworks explode over the Willamette River. 

Our purpose Sunday night, however, is to see the luchadores. I remember seeing the masks for sale in the streets of Playa del Carmen, Mexico which were nightly thronged with tourists. I'd thought about buying one but had never done so. I'm eager to see what this masked wrestling will be like.

Sunday night’s crowds are thicker. When we finally squeeze our way to the ringside, I am disappointed. “Where are the masks?” I ask Sugata. In the ring there are about half a dozen heavyset maskless men who neither speak Spanish nor look Mexican. Sugata shrugs and digs into his bag for the camera. I sigh and settled in to watch. A man near me is eating a funnel cake. A gust of wind blows a puff of powdered sugar off the top. 

I remember seeing wrestling matches on T.V. from my childhood days. Mostly I’d just watched long enough to get the gist of it. These huge guys that were acting entirely too tough, impressing me not with their muscles, but with the ridiculousness of their posturing. Somehow the prospect of Mexican wrestling had seemed more interesting to me. But I do not see what I expected to see, namely masks.

Finally, much to my delight, after the ring clears, in comes a character with a mask. He is best described as “an evil clown.” He wears a colorful polka dot suit and a mask with a sharp-toothed grin. His hair is blue yarn. He pats the ref down as the reft pats him down, checking, I suppose that the padding is proper and concealing nothing dangerous. Evil clown is undoubtedly the “rudo,” or the bad guy who resorts to jokes and pranks.

Evil clown’s opponent wears a blue and white mask and a skin-tight uniform. Wing patterns stretch over his slender body. When Wings manages to throw the evil clown out of the ring, the kids scurry to see. One ten-year-old girl, wearing her own luchador mask holds her pink tablet in front of her to video the whole scene.

"Get those kids out of there," yells the fence guard, the same fence guard who earlier had shooed Sugata and I out of the path leading to the emergency exit. He has an eye for safety, that one. In a minute or two the ref has sent the kids back to their seats.

As the match continues I hear a couple of kids talking behind me. "Why didn't he just throw him?” says one in apparent disgust. "This is fake," says the other, then toward the performers, but not loud enough so they can hear, "You guys suck."

The luchadores are actually avoiding hurting each other. When they throw each other to the mat, there is a loud smack, but this is only for effect. They fall, just as I learned to do in my martial arts class, slamming my arms into the mat. When one jumps and lands upon his opponent, he does not really land on him, but strives to make it looks as if he has.

I am affected by this "fakeness" differently than I would have been when I was a kid. I think kids have to call out the fakes, whether it be Santa Claus, wrestlers on T.V. or something else.  

What I do feel is closer to laughter than it is to betrayal. I am grinning. The match is a melodrama. We cheer the “good guys” and boo the “bad guys.” We laugh at the clever plays, the acrobatics and the pranks. The talent of the luchadores is not focused on hurting their opponent but in entertaining the audience, and they are doing a marvelous job of it.

There are several more rounds with different luchadores. We stay and watch until the end when each of the luchadores comes out and the kids gather around to get pictures with their favorites. One luchador keeps hoisting children to his shoulder for his photos. He’s a superhero. It’s the mask that makes him.

With those who never don a mask before they fight, you can never be sure of who they are on and off the mat. Your impression of them from the mat follows them into the street.  But with masks, the egotistic persona can be slipped off along with the mask. The unmasked man becomes normal again. If you see him on the street, you won’t know him.