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Studies in Hispanic Cinemas Volume 6 Number 1. © Intellect Ltd 2009.

Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/shci.6.1.3/1

Mask and Masculinity: Culture,

Modernity, and Gender Identity in the
Mexican Lucha Libre films of El Santo
Evan Lieberman Cleveland State University

Abstract Keywords
Though ignored or reviled by critics of the Mexican cinema because of their folk- Santo
loric character, the films of lucha libre star El Santo are important texts for under- Lucha Libre
standing the transitions taking place in Mexican culture in the 1960s and Mexican Popular
1970s. The Santo film’s representations of technology, modernity, and most sig- Cinema
nificantly gender relations mark a decisive shift away from traditional formula- Masks
tions to point towards a contemporary engagement of these issues that, contrary Masculinity
to the claims of most scholars, acutely reflect the social dynamics of this turbu- Wrestling Films
lent period in Mexico’s development.

The mask might well be considered the defining icon of Mexican culture. 1 Though Ruth D.
Lechuga’s essay ‘Mask
Dating back to the earliest pre-Columbian civilizations, Mexico has had an Making in Guerrero’
extremely rich tradition of ceremonial masks, representing demons and (pp. 215–45) casts
deities in the form of animals such as bats, lizards, birds, and monkeys, considerable doubt on
Cordry’s acquisition
which were originally used to costume dancers performing religious and and research methods
social rites. In his foundational work on the subject, Mexican Masks, as well as his claimed
provenance for many
Cordry contends that the mask “must be understood as an agent of a pro- of his masks and his
found, mystical transformation in which their wearers become someone or explanations of their
specific uses, Cordry’s
something else . . . [which] elevated the wearer to a degree higher than work is nonetheless
the common man” (1980: 4).1 After the Spanish conquest, masks contin- important in terms of
understanding the
ued to be an important part of Mexican rituals, particularly village festi- place of the mask in
vals, Saints’ days, and The Day of the Dead, though new visages like Mexican folk culture.
Moors, La Malinche, and the Virgin of Guadalupe were added to the It should be noted
that the exhibition,
animals, demons, and skeleton heads of death which had long been impor- Behind the Mask in
tant. It is the last of these, the morbid, darkly grinning skeleton heads, Mexico, held at the
International
which are perhaps the best known of the Mexican masks, worn to both Museum of Folk Art
mock and hide from death, to celebrate life by embracing its loss, and to in Santa Fe, New
Mexico between June
greet deceased ancestors on November 2, the Day of the Dead. 1988 and September
Writing about the Day of the Dead, Octavio Paz explains that in the tra- 1990, the catalog for
which remains one of
ditional Mexican view, ‘death is a mirror which reflects the vain gesticula- the most important
tions of the living. The whole motley confusion of acts, omissions, regrets, scholarly sources on
and hopes which is the life of each one of us finds in death, not meaning or the subject, was
staged specifically to
explanation, but an end. Death defines life’ (1961: 54). This culturally

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address the Cordry defining mirror of the death head plays a prominent role in an early
controversy and to
provide corrections to
meeting of the cinema and the mask, Sergei Eisenstein and cinematogra-
his questionable pher Eduard Tisse’s might-have-been masterpiece ¡Que viva México! Shot in
assertions. 1930 and 1931, the film was never finished but has been released in five
2 For an excellent fragmentary versions, including one entitled, The Day of the Dead (1934)
discussion of ¡Que viva
México!, in terms of its which also appears as the concluding section of the 1979 reconstruction
production history, its by Grigori Aleksandrov who worked with Eisenstein and Tisse on the film
cultural context and
its profound influence
in the thirties. Culled from footage Esienstein, Tisse, and Aleksandrov shot
on Mexican cinema of Day of the Dead rituals, death head masks appear frequently as the
see Laura Podalsky’s subject of the shot, framed in Tisse’s signature low-angle, iconic style as
essay “Patterns of the
Primitive: Sergei mythical characters representing indigenous tradition that has survived
Eisenstein’s ¡Que viva colonial acculturation to retain a distinctive Mexican way of seeing the
México!”
world that does not fear death, but instead celebrates it as a part of life.2
Another intriguing cinematic appearance of the death head mask
occurs a few years later in director Arcady Boytler’s Woman of the Port
(1934). In an extremely moving scene, a funeral procession for a poor
coffin maker attended only by his dutiful daughter literally runs into a
parade of masked revelers enjoying a village festival. Initially the festive
group attempts to draw the solemn funeral into their celebration, but once
the partiers hear the name of the deceased, the laughter stops and they
remove their masks. Their true identities are revealed in dramatic close-ups
that emphasize their human expressions of grief, and they join the funeral
procession. The unmasking here may be more complex that it would ini-
tially appear, as Paz writes of the literal and metaphorical Mexican mask:
‘[A]t first the posture is only a fabric of inventions intended to baffle our
neighbors, but eventually it becomes a superior – because more artistic –
form of reality. Our lies reflect both what we lack and what we desire, both
what we are not and what we would like to be’ (1961: 40–41). Seen in this
way, the revellers’ unmasking is not as much about revealing the truth
behind a facade, as a moving from one truth, that of the festival, with its
masks and joyful celebration, to another, that of the funeral with its tears
and mourning. But it emphasizes as well the vulnerability of the human
face, the true state of tragedy, of suffering, and of inevitable death that is the
human condition and that must eventually be faced by all. The mask and
the festival can be seen as sources of power that give the individual and the
culture the strength to prevail against the inherent struggles of life. If as Paz
suggests, ‘sometimes the gesticulator . . . becomes one with his gestures
and thus makes them authentic’ (1961: 41), then the power gained by
donning the mask and participating in the festival must be seen as real,
even though it is entirely contrived, staged, with its outcome largely prede-
termined, not unlike the spectacle of lucha libre.
Paz’s contention that the man can become the mask can also be seen
in the most famous masked character in the history of the Mexican
cinema, El Santo, El Enmascarado de Plata, the great luchador, or wrestler,
who appeared in 52 films between 1961 and 1982. Born Rodolfo Guzmán
Huerta, he began wrestling under his given name in 1934 (a disputable

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date alternately given as 1935 by Doyle Greene (2005: 50) and by the 3 Heather Levi offers an
outstanding
website www.wrestlingmuseum.com) just one year after the sport was explanation of the
introduced to Mexico by a retired revolutionary army colonel, Salvador form: ‘The basic
Lutteroth, and dubbed lucha libre or free fighting.3 Though masked conventions (which
may be familiar to
wrestlers were prominent from the beginning of lucha libre, Guzman went many readers) are as
through several personae before becoming the silver masked Santo in follows: It is a contest
between two or more
1942 under the guidance of his manager, Don Jesús Lomeli, who chose wrestlers who
the name based on the Leslie Charteris literary character, The Saint. Santo compete not as
themselves but as
quickly rose to become the most popular figure in lucha libre despite a characters that they
certain disconnect between the virtuous connotations of his name and his (or their promoters)
invent. The
initial status as ring villain, or rudo. characters are
Lucha libre boomed during the late years of the presidency of Miguel morally coded, so that
Alemán, becoming Mexico’s second most popular sport by the early 1950s, normally each match
features one good guy
and Santo’s image became multi-mediated. He appeared on television (or team of good
until a ban was enacted that prohibited the broadcast of lucha libre in guys) and one bad
guy (or team of bad
1954, an unintended consequence of which was the boom in production guys). A wrestler
of feature length wrestling films. More significantly, in 1952 Santo became enacting the role of
bad guy cheats, uses
the star of El Enmascarado de Plata, a series of fotonovelas by the form’s unnecessary
Mexican pioneer José Cruz who used photographed still images and cap- roughness, and
displays cowardice
tions to tell a story much like the drawn panels in traditional comic books and trickery. There
and comic strips. The series, which ran until the late 1980s, offered the are referees but,
first construction of Santo as the hero of the Mexican people, endowed because of corruption
and/or incompetence,
with superior intelligence, morality, and almost superhuman powers. It they are unwilling or
was also phenomenally popular, selling up to one and a half million copies unable to enforce the
rules against the bad
each week during its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s. guys’. (1997: 57).
The character created by Cruz and played by Guzmán became an icon
of Mexican popular culture, and the films represent the adaptation of the
fotonovelas to the cinema. In looking at the Santo films it is important to
keep this background in perspective and consider the films as comic book
fantasies in which wrestling is essentially the day job of the superhero
whose true focus is on fighting vampires, mummies, and Martians. This
does not mean that lucha libre is less important to the films. It is the sport
that defines Santo, that gives new meaning to the mask, and that provides
the arena for playing out the Mexican struggles with modernity and, more
specifically, a renegotiation of masculinity that moves from a traditional
macho model of violence, aggression, subjugation of women, and anti-
social tendencies to a conception closer to that which is often termed
counter-macho, representing a more modern set of values.
In Mexico, lucha libre has always been informed by a series of conflicts
between the traditional and the modern, the foreign and the indigenous,
brutality and ingenuity: In this way the wrestling ring becomes a liminal
space for the contesting and expression of new ideas and identities. This
transformational potential is tied closely to the tradition of the mask. As
Esser writes: ‘mask use honors custom but also provides an avenue for
new ideas to enter a traditional society without threatening its integrity’
(1990: 3). The labeling of hero and villain as técnico (or alternately científico)

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and rudo points to several fundamental tensions that underlie the struc-
turing opposition of the mythological narrative enacted in the lucha libre
match. Rudo evokes qualities of coarseness, loutishness, gruffness, lack of
sophistication, but also potentially burliness and energy, while técnico
means technician, but also one who is interested in technology, a scientist,
as well as one who works to fix that which is broken. Heather Levi, who
has done the best work on the sport in the English language to date, points
out that, ‘the term técnico, when it’s not applied to wrestlers, is the usual
term for partisans of the technocratic wing of the ruling Partido
Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). Científico, on the other hand, convention-
ally refers to the late-nineteenth-century positivists associated with
Porfirio Diaz, the antinationalist villains (at least until recently) of stan-
dard Mexican history texts’. (1997: 63) The political charge and potential
complexity of these archetypes is plainly evident, as despite the traditional
division of the two into hero and villain, both técnico and rudo possess pos-
itive and negative connotations.
The referee is also an important player in the drama. It is the fact that he
overlooks the flagrant violations of the rudo that helps construct the meta-
narrative of virtue battling evil against the backdrop of ineffectual authority.
Though off-putting to many non-devotees, the fact that the outcomes of the
matches are predetermined matters not at all to the drama of the presenta-
tion. Levi explains that, ‘when people ask about corruption, they refer to a
widespread understanding that the fighting is staged and the outcome of
each contest is decided in advance. To say that it is corrupt, though, indicates
a fundamental misunderstanding of the genre. It is not corrupt. Instead, it is
a drama about corruption’ (1997: 57). All three characters are necessary to
tell the story of lucha libre, which is of a nation battling a tradition of corrup-
tion while making a difficult transition from a traditional agrarian culture
rooted in the mythology of the revolution to a modern, technological society
participating in global capitalism. Levi rejects a simplistic model of under-
standing wrestling as a cathartic pleasure in the triumph of good over evil: ‘In
Mexico, however, the appeal of lucha libre also comes from the symbolic play of
moral and political ambiguity’ (1997: 63). Ultimately though the battle is
between two kinds of men, two visions of masculinity, and while Santo began
his career as a rudo, as his popularity grew (In Mexico, rudos can have as
many fans as técnicos), the growing legions of fans motivated his change to a
técnico. In the films he made after this transition Santo may be seen as a
model of the new masculinity, and a figure through whom is constructed a
modern mythology of technology, intelligence, science, urban international-
ism, and equal treatment of women.
Just as he came a bit late to the mask, Santo also refused to participate in
the wrestling films that were being produced in increasing numbers in the
wake of the sport’s being banned from Mexican television in the 1950s. The
film entitled El Enmascarado de Plata (The Man in the Silver Mask, René
Cardona) co-written by José Cruz was released in 1954 and clearly intended
as a Santo project. Guzmán declined to appear in it, however, thinking that

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it would hold little interest for the public. Instead, the film starred another 4 It should be noted
that Mora is actually
luchador, El Médico Asesino (The Murderous Doctor), who was the first referring to El Cerebro
wrestling movie star of the Mexican cinema as a result of his appearance in del Mal (The Evil
the 1952 El Luchador Fenómeno (The Phenomenal Wrestler, Fernando Brain) which was the
first of the Santo films
Cortés) though he ultimately made just four films. It was only after Santo’s released in 1961 and
friend and wrestling rival Jesús Velázquez, known as El Murciélago (the Bat), a surprise hit, while
El Cerebro Diabólico,
starred in several films in the late 1950s and began a second career as a though it was
screenwriter, that Santo agreed in 1958 to appear in El Cerebro del Mal (The produced in 1961,
was not released until
Evil Brain, Joselito Rodríguez, 1961) and Santo contra Los Hombres Infernales 1963 and is a
(Santo vs. The Infernal Men, Joselito Rodríguez, 1961). In these first films he completely different
film despite the
served as co-star to fellow wrestler/screenwriter/producer Fernando Osés. similar title.
His meteoric rise to film stardom in the early 1960s made him one of the
most important figures on the Mexican screen, and yet his work has been
largely dismissed as irrelevant to the national cinema of the period, and even
more as embarrassing, for the industry.
While Santo’s films were enormously popular with Mexican audiences,
critics and scholars have rarely accorded them much respect. In fact it
might not be too far a stretch to say that they might have been among the
most widely reviled films in the history of the Mexican cinema. The con-
ventional understanding of lucha libre films is clearly expressed by Andrea
Noble in Mexican National Cinema: ‘With some 150 cine de luchador films
produced between 1952 and the demise in the genre in 1983, quantity
triumphed over quality. For all that they were formulaic and the last word
in kitsch, these films and their hero-stars proved a huge box-office success’
(2005: 93) Mora in his seminal Mexican Cinema: Reflections of a Society,
1896–1980 laments that El Cerebro Diabólico ‘spawned a never ending
series . . . [and] made 125,000 pesos at its premiere (a substantial hit) in
spite of its atrocious quality’ (1982, 102).4 Mora also cites Santo and
similar popular genre films as examples of the industrial decline of the late
1950s during which time ‘quality plummeted as production increased’
(1982: 99) while ‘producers of nonexistent social vision in combination
with nervously conservative officials were to render the film industry
almost totally unreflective of the problems and conditions of Mexican
society’ (1982: 101). This perspective is echoed again in de la Vega
Alfaro’s essay “The Decline of the Golden Age and the Making of the
Crisis” wherein he allows for the fact that the lucha libre films ‘adhered to
the tastes of a large percentage of moviegoers’ (1999: 179) but were ‘char-
acterized by low costs and simplistic themes [and] took part in the declin-
ing era of Mexican cinema’ (1999: 180).
The language of crisis regularly invoked when discussing this period in
Mexican film history dates back to the 1960s. In a 1965 essay, Michel
speaks of the ‘isolation of the Mexican cinema from authentic Mexican
culture and from the aesthetic and cultural trends of foreign cinematogra-
phy’ (1965: 47). Many critics blame the state policies for the problem. As
López observes of the 1960s: ‘Industrial production became mired within
the stultifying bureaucracy of the state: repetitive, self-indulgent, and far

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too accustomed to thinking of itself as in ‘crisis’ (1994: 11). Mora also ties
the government and industry together against a new (and implied, better)
vision of cinema: “The tensions in Mexican film circles in the late 1960s
was generated by the conflict between the entrenched bureaucratic/busi-
ness groups in the official agencies and the leftist, intellectual, restless
‘outsiders’ being shaped by universities’ (1982: 111). But the level of gov-
ernment involvement in the film industry was primarily economic during
this period and less ideological as Schnitman observes: ‘During the 1960s
and 1970s the Mexican state continued expanding its participation in all
aspects of local film production, distribution, and exhibition. Overall,
however, such state participation has not resulted in a definitive national-
ization or statization of film production, but in a support system either for
local entrepreneurs, or for film industry workers, or both’ (1984: 43).
The primary motivation among the production sector was economic as
well, and the films made by the fifteen or so major production companies in
the country had to appeal to the domestic audiences who were still going to
the theaters to see films. Describing the decline in movie attendance that
began in the 1950s and 1960s and the emergent preference for American
films among the middle classes, Maciel notes that, ‘the clases populares
(popular classes) are the only sector that has continuously attended Mexican
cinema’ (1994: 33). Carlos Monsiváis also describes this phenomenon but
from the other side of the class divide, ‘the desertion of the middle-class audi-
ence which, from the 60s onwards, for reasons both good and bad, rejected
the image of the ‘typical Mexican’, expressing its growing distance from
popular sentimentality and belligerent nationalism’ (1993:140).
So it was the changing demographic of the Mexican film audience
during this period that encouraged the production of lucha libre films, not a
structural crisis within the industry. In speaking about the close connec-
tion between the cinema and Mexican culture that is considered imperiled
by the crisis, Turrent claims that ‘when the national industry restricted
itself to the repetition of formulas, this link was lost, and cinema no longer
reflected the development of Mexican society’ (1995: 94). The link that
was lost was that between the popular cinema and the intelligentsia and
the elite classes not the Mexican people as a whole, who made these films
extremely popular by all accounts.
Monsiváis’ explanation of the derogatory term naco, used to characterize
the indigenous and mestizo common people of Mexico or to insult a member
of the more elite classes might shed some light on this class divide:

The epithet isolates and degrades – naco! – which means: without education or
manners, ugly and insolent, graceless and unattractive, irredeemable, complex-
ridden, resentful, vulgar, moustachioed and shocking, fan of the wrestler El
Santo – confirmation of the inferiority of a lesser country (1997: 53)

This antipathy of the critics towards the popular culture of the period,
rooted in a sense of its inferiority, has created a critical climate in which

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the bigger picture is missed, which is that the Mexican industry mostly
prospered during this period despite declining foreign revenue as audi-
ences widely embraced the genre films so despised by the contemporary
commentators. In turn this has led to a fundamental misunderstanding of
the Santo films as disengaged from Mexican culture when in fact they are
among the most important expressions of the struggles with the modern
that characterized the Mexico of the 1960s and 70s. Lamenting the disap-
pearance of the screen hero during the period of ‘the crisis’ even Turrent
must concede that ‘only one popular idol was successfully circulated in
this decade: El Santo and his genre (1995: 99). The Santo films, whatever
their aesthetic value, represent a kind of triumph of the popular classes,
which made the sub-genre profitable and beloved by audiences, particu-
larly young working class boys in the provinces who reportedly wrestled in
the aisles after Santo films (Carro, 1993: 47). For them Santo became a
modern folk hero who lived in the big city, wore sleekly tailored suits and
mod turtlenecks (along with his ever present mask), drove a fancy sports
car, and seemed to have multiple careers as a scientist, crime fighter, and
professional wrestler. In this way he works to collapse the distinction
between the modern and the folklórico or folkloric.
Liza Bakewell explains the concept of folklórico as referring to a work of
art that is ‘characteristically Mexican’ and connected to ‘the traditions of
the so-called popular sector’ (1995: 19). It is also seen as being in opposi-
tion to the beaux-arts, European classical painting, theater, and music.
Bakewell notes that despite much official recognition for the folklórico from
politicians and artists as well, ‘a painting described as folklórico by critics is
a painting considered bad’ (1995: 21). Similarly, films that can be thought
of as folklórico are those whose aesthetics are not determined by the standards
of European beaux-arts but by the folk traditions of the popular audience
who respond to such works with an enthusiasm that matches the scorn of
sophisticated critics. Films like those of the Santo series are considered
simply bad. But as with the folkloric arts, this evaluation is based on inap-
propriate criteria. The mask of tradition finds an updating in lucha libre
and the ritual dances are re-imagined as spectacles of the wrestling ring.
As in folklore, the villains are supernatural and the hero iconic. Morality
is drawn in extremely broad strokes and the mythological nature of the nar-
rative is never far from the surface. The folkloric character of the Santo films
is further emphasized in such foes as La Llorona (the Crying Woman) and
Aztec Mummies. Even Dracula, Dr. Frankenstein, and Martians represent
the iconography of folk culture, though of much more recent entry into
Mexican popular culture. As Syder and Tierney observe: ‘[B]y borrowing
from Hollywood horror conventions and iconography, mexploitation films
were able to carry on, in coded fashion, the social functions of lucha libre’
(2005: 44). In their direct appeals and lack of narrative sophistication, in
their incorporation of many different genres into one strange blend, in their
broad strokes and rough edges, the Santo films can be considered a form of
cinematic folk art, or in the Mexican sense, folklórico.

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Cultural historian Eric Zolov points out that what critics of the Santo
films like Mora and Vega Algaro fail to understand about this period in
Mexican cinema was ‘that the new characters and themes – such as El
Santo and the young rebel – served popular interests, especially among
the growing youth population, in ways which the older films could not’
(1995: 30–31). Monsiváis writes about the cinema of the period that
‘[Mexican] cinema offers on certainty: that to persist in traditional ways is
a form of living death’ (1995: 150). The Santo films can be seen as repre-
senting the moment at which the Mexican film industry embraced the
modern, and according to Doyle Greene, Santo functions as a kind of
‘national allegory . . . the powerful, heroic, masculine embodiment of
modernity and mexicanidad–the countermacho defending Mexico from
internal and external threats that would jeapordize national identity, sov-
ereignty, and progress’ (2005: 56–57). While Greene maintains an unfor-
tunate tendency towards treating the Santo films as kitsch, his work
should be commended for engaging these neglected films critically, and
connecting Santo to the modern experience of Mexico. The attendant
shifts in the construction of masculinity that this socio-historical transfor-
mation required are fundamental to the study of lucha libre films.
Rowe and Schelling describe the difference in the Mexican experience
of the modern, ‘A major factor in its difference – probably the major
factor—is the force of popular culture. It is a modernity which does not
necessarily entail the elimination of the pre-modern traditions and memo-
ries but has arisen through them, transforming them in the process’
(1991: 3). The Santo films, with their collapsing of the contemporary and
folkloric, are from their earliest manifestations, emblematic of a Mexican
modernism, with technology as a central signifier in this representation.
Santo is depicted as a literal técnico, with a full complement of technologi-
cal gadgetry, including an extraordinary picture-phone introduced in
Santo contra los Zombies (Santo versus the Zombies, Benito Alazraki), the
1962 film that was his first starring role, which can not only take calls but
also peer in on activities in the villain’s lair. In El Hacha Diabólica (The
Diabolical Hatchet, José Diaz Morales, 1965) a similar device allows Dr.
Zanoni to watch Santo’s travels in time back to the 1600s while another
low-budget but high-tech contraption is employed to send him there.
Santo builds his own such device in the 1969 film, Santo en el Tesoro de
Drácula (Santo in the Treasure of Dracula, René Cardona, 1969), and
though no scientist believes his machine will work, he succeeds in sending
Luisa, the daughter of Dr. Sepúlveda, Santo’s scientific mentor, back in
time. [The production design of Santo’s lab in numerous films along with
that of Dr. Zanoni’s in El Hacha Diabólica and those of villains, as well, like
Dr. Frankenstein’s in Santo y Blue Demon contra el Dr. Frankenstein (Santo
and Blue Demon versus Dr. Frankenstein, Miguel Delgado, 1974) or
Achilles’ in Santo contra Blue Demon en la Atlántida (Santo versus Blue
Demon in Atlantis, 1969) are characterized by the inexplicable devices
and banks of blinking lights that signified the high technology of the day.]

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The technological focus of the Santo films extends to his sleek physique
and the shiny silver mask which, along with his impenetrable calm and
smooth agility, make him in so many ways like a machine himself. But this
embrace of technology was not uncontested particularly in the realms of
government. Speaking of the Mexican government’s approach to the way
the increased investment in science and technology might help alleviate the
country’s economic problems, James contends that, ‘there are indications
that the connection between technology and employment are not fully
understood or appreciated’ (1980: 167) and he cites a CONAYCT (Mexico’s
National Council of Science and Technology which was created in 1971)
document from 1976 that claimed, ‘it must be realized that unemployment
in Mexico is not fundamentally a technological problem, nor will the basic
remedy be found in the use of labor- intensive technologies’ (1980: 167). In
many ways the Santo films mirror the phenomenal growth between 1968
and 1973 in government investment in research and development, reflect-
ing a heightened awareness of its importance to Mexican culture.
According to statistics from CONAYCT, in that period government spending
on technological research increased over 80% while the CONAYCT budget
grew twenty-fold between 1971 and 1978 (James, 1980: 165). It is inter-
esting to note that the villains in Santo films like Dr. Frankenstein or
Achilles are as likely to use technology as Santo is. The point is that the
world is technological, and it might be used for good or evil, but it will be
used and there is no retreat back to a pre-technological age.
The modernity of the Santo films also extends to gender attitudes and
the shifts in gender relations were the products of the fundamental
changes in Mexican society in the post-world war two period. In her essay
on patriarchy and melodrama Julianne Burton-Carvajal explains this phe-
nomenon:

Imported ideologies of developmentalism and modernization, along with a

series of political convulsions and economic boom and bust cycles that has
characterized the last half-century, producing massive internal and external
migrations and enlisting unprecedented female participation in the public
labor sector would produce many cracks in the once firmly cemented struc-
tures of patriarchal power (1997: 204)

Woman getting the right to vote in 1953 and the rise of the chica moderna,
the modern woman, were catalysts demanding a transformed version of
masculinity. No longer could the previous variety of macho masculinity,
one that emphasized violence, emotional repression, and, most significant,
subjugation of women be idealized. Sergio de la Mora coins the term ‘cin-
emachismo . . . to identify the particular self-conscious form of national
masculinity and patriarchal ideology articulated via the cinema and also
vigorously promoted by the post-revolutionary State as official ideology’
(2006: 2). Domínguez-Ruvalcaba refers to machismo as the ‘central
problem of the nation’ (2007: 98).

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In defining macho, Andrade (1992) describes four archetypes, each of

which embodies a specific aspect of machismo, the ‘Conqueror macho’ the
‘Playboy macho’ the ‘Masked macho’ and the ‘Authentic macho’. The first
category emphasizes violence, confrontation, and desire for domination,
while the second focuses on the sexual control of women and the ability to
attain multiple partners. The ‘Masked macho’ category would of course
have to include Santo and he conforms to several of Andrade’s criteria
including being a protector of the common people, a fighter for justice,
and one who uses his cleverness and intelligence to triumph over enemies.
Santo is also representative of the final category of the ‘Authentic macho’
in that he has a strong sense of loyalty, honor, modesty, and truth. So it is
not that Santo represents a wholesale rejection of machismo but rather a
refocusing of its terms so that certain aspects of the gender construct are
foregrounded while others are discarded. In his examination of Pedro
Infante’s buddy movies of the 1940s and 1950s, de la Mora suggests that
in the Mexican cinema ‘masculinity is not fixed and monolithic but open
to contestation, change and resignification’ (2006: 70).
Santo does not simply counter the image of the macho, he complicates
it in some significant ways. Domínguez-Ruvalcaba explains that:

. . . because it is centered on expressing or displaying emotions, masculinity

in Mexican cinema can be described as a subjectivity of emotional exacerba-
tion. The male character expresses his feelings through diatribes, screams,
and tears. With those manifestations he establishes his power (2007: 82).

Of course Santo’s power is neither derived nor expressed in the terms

described here. It is not only his mask that suppresses Santo’s display of
emotion but his cool rationality, his analytical approach to almost all situ-
ations with the exception of romance. The new masculinity is one of self-
control, of an emotional and psychological discipline, but also a romanticism
that, in addition to the exciting action and the sight of muscular shirtless
men in tights, might account for Levi’s report that ‘lucha libre attracted a
large female following’ (2001: 335) which is particularly striking given
the generally homo-social nature of public spaces in Mexico even during
this period.
In the date sequence that follows the opening match in Santo y Blue
Demon contra El Doctor Frankenstein the enactment of a model for a new
Mexican masculinity is depicted which retains the strength, dignity, and
honor of earlier formulations but changes the terms in many ways. Santo
is strong but also sensitive. While he has proven his fortitude in the ring,
he sympathizes with the anxieties and fears of Blue Demon’s girlfriend,
and when his own girlfriend expresses a desire to get into the ring with
him to help him fight his opponents, he doesn’t reject the offer. In fact, he
states that he could often use a hand in his fights. He puts a chivalrous
spin on the situation, though by stating that he prefers her hand in his.
Later he expresses concern for her living alone but never tries to impose

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his will on her unlike the traditional macho character. He respects her
status as a chica moderna, a modern girl.
As is immediately noticeable in any engagement of the Santo films, the
character never takes off his mask to reveal his face to the audience. In El
Hacha Diabólica, Santo does remove his mask briefly to show his true face
to Alicia, the woman he loves. This is the ultimate act of vulnerability that
demonstrates his commitment as he tells her that she will be ‘the first and
the last’ to see him unmasked. This willingness to be exposed to a woman
in order to be worthy of her love is perhaps the most dramatic departure
from machismo seen in any Santo film, but it reveals the gender dynamics
that are at work in the films.
Considering Paz’s analysis of the mask in Mexican culture though, the
mask can be seen as a device that helps Santo maintain his masculine
power. Paz connects the mask to Mexican masculinity, contending that the
Mexican man ‘seems to be a person who shuts himself away to protect
himself: his face is a mask and so is his smile’ (1961: 29), adding that ‘the
ideal of manliness is never to crack, never to back down. Those who open
themselves up are cowards’ (1961: 29–30). According to Paz then the
macho must not show pain, a restriction that presents something of a
problem for lucha libre, as Roland Barthes, French semiologist and found-
ing father of wrestling studies writes in his essay in Mythologies:
‘[W]restling presents man’s suffering with all the amplification of tragic
masks. The wrestler who suffers in a hold which is reportedly cruel . . .
offers an excessive portrayal of suffering; like a primitive pietà, he exhibits
for all to see his face, exaggeratedly contorted by an intolerable affliction’
(1972: 19). For Santo, however, the mask means that the audience never
fully witnesses his suffering. He remains stoic, impervious, a fine example
of Paz’s description of Mexican masculinity that aligns him more closely
with the traditional conception than with the idea of the countermacho.
So while his behavior towards women, his thoughtful intellectualism, and
his embrace of science and technology reveal him to be a modern, pro-
gressive man, he is able to retain the traditional macho imperative to
never reveal his pain. Paz sketches the dimension of this traditional
Mexican macho: ‘[T]he Mexican macho, the male, is a hermetic being,
closed up in himself, capable of guarding both himself and whatever has
been confided in him. Manliness is judged according to one’s invulnerabil-
ity to enemy arms or the impact of the outside world’ (1961: 31). Santo
serves as an excellent example of this description of masculinity while at
the same time complicating the equation with his more modern ideals.
Levi dismisses the importance of the actual lucha libre matches within
the films that feature them. She writes that in these films the narrative
emphasis was on horror or crime fighting elements with “the plot inter-
rupted by gratuitous lucha libre matches tucked into the narrative like
awkward dance numbers.” (2001: 337) I would argue that on the con-
trary, the matches are vital to the narratives of the films, semiotically
enacting the power struggles that are thematically central to the works.

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Barthes discusses this dimension of wrestling when he writes that

‘wrestling demands an immediate reading of the juxtaposed meanings, so
that there is no need to connect them’ (1972: 33) and he describes it as
being ‘like diacritic writing’ with the body and the action functioning as a
dualistic sign system in which each has a distinct yet interdependent
meaning.
The application of Barthes’ semiotics of the wrestling ring may be
applied to the Santo films as a brief analysis of a match between Santo and
Blue Demon and a pair of rudos demonstrates. What is being signified in
the fight is first of all Santo’s fairness – he has several opportunities to take
unfair advantage of his opponents but he never does and even when
things are going well for him in the ring, he tags in Blue Demon so as not
to selfishly dominate the match. We also see Santo’s intelligence and
resourcefulness as he employs some fancy modified judo moves (one of his
trademarks) to always turn his opponent’s force against him. Certain
moves speak of his resilience, the fact that no matter the odds, he always
comes back and, like Paz’s macho, he refuses to ever retreat or back down.
When he is the victim of a particularly rough hold, his mask hides his suf-
fering, allowing the audience to take pleasure in his disavowal of pain. He
remains calm and methodical, moving with grace and precision, and end-
lessly inventive in the devising of new, unpredictable flips and holds.
Referencing Barthes’ analysis, Levi points out: ‘In wrestling, each moment
is intelligible, and this intelligibility is predicated on the excessive clarity of
every gesture. The roles of the wrestlers are written in their physique;
holds and pins are used not to elicit conventional signs of defeat but to dra-
matize the suffering and abasement of the vanquished’ (1997: 58).
It must be noted that the foes Santo and Blue Demon battle here not
only look like traditional macho characters, but are referred to as Indio,
further amplifying Santo’s status as the warrior of Mexican modernity and
demonstrating the superiority of his contemporary construction of mas-
culinity. The fact that many of Santo’s opponents are rooted in the past,
(The Black Mask in El Hacha Diabólica comes from the 1600s and is tied to
the Spanish Inquisition, La Llorona from the deepest recesses of folk history,
and Dracula from a 200 year slumber,) emphasizes this conventional trope
of the films – that the enemies are rooted in the past, not in tradition, but
in an inability to move into the future.
In 1980 Cordry wrote:

[T]he heyday of the mask is over. Fewer masks are being made, and these are
often of far less impressive quality than formerly. Many masks are now made
not for the Indian’s use but to sell commercially. As Mexico becomes more
modernized and its people more culturally homogenized, the deep signifi-
cance that the mask formerly had will recede” (1980: xxii).

Cordry in this regard is not correct. Mask culture has not disappeared as
any Day of the Dead celebration will reveal and a modern version simply

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changed the site of the ritual to the wrestling ring and to the movie theater.
The deep significance of the mask had not receded at all, only now it is
shining silver (or any of a wild array of metallic colors and patterns evident
through the briefest glance at a shop or website selling such masks which
continue to be extremely popular) and its meanings have changed though
not entirely. The mask as an implement of enhanced power has remained a
constant, but the embodiment of a new masculinity and an accompanying
embrace of modern technology is the significant contribution of one
mythological character, El Santo, El Enmascarado de Plata. This comic book
and wrestling ring spawned “hero of the multitudes” was so capably played
by Rudolfo Guzmán Huerta that he became El Santo. This conflation of
man and mask can be seen in the fact that for the entirety of his life
Guzman was never seen publicly without it until 1984 when he appeared
on the January 26th episode of the television show Contrapunto and exposed
his face to the Mexican people for the first time since he’d donned the mask
almost 40 years earlier. One week later on February 5th Santo died of a
heart attack and was buried wearing his mask.
Monsiváis notes that ‘from the beginning the film industry set out to
mirror popular culture, to reflect its achievements, its myths, its preju-
dices, its tastes, its attitudes to fiestas, to the search for Mexican national
identity . . . thus Mexican popular culture, both rural and urban, was drasti-
cally shaped through the cinema’ (1993: 143–44). And so the legacy of
Santo lives on in a modernized Mexico, most powerfully among the
popular classes. Levi sees the legacy of El Santo in the “social wrestling” of
Superbarrio, a masked figure who campaigns for social justice in contem-
porary Mexico and in sub-commander Marcos, the masked leader of the
Zapatista rebels based in the state of Chiapas who, like Superbarrio, are dedi-
cated to combating the effects of neoliberalism (2001: 372). Both of these
comparisons are apt but in reality all are participants in the culture of the
mask, and Stavans is correct in connecting ‘pop heroes like El Zorro, El Santo
the wrestler, and Super Barrio, all defenders of los miserables, masked champi-
ons whose silent faces embody the faces of millions’ (1996: 52–54). Santo,
though battered by powerful luchadores, chased by vampires, mummies, and
monsters of all kinds, and most cruelly, dismissed by critics, remains one of
the most important cultural figures in modern Mexican history.

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Suggested citation
Lieberman, E. (2009), ‘Mask and Masculinity: Culture, Modernity, and Gender
Identity in the Mexican Lucha Libre films of El Santo’, Studies in Hispanic Cinemas
6: 1, pp. 3–17, doi: 10.1386/shci.6.1.3/1

Contributor Details:
Evan Lieberman is an Associate Professor of Film at Cleveland State University.
Recent publications include work on film and tele-presence, on cinematographers
Gregg Toland and Gabriel Figueroa, narratology and the American situation
comedy. Evan Lieberman is co-author with David Cook of The Moving Image, forth-
coming from Oxford University Press.
Address: Dr. Evan Lieberman, School of Communication, Cleveland State
University, 2121 Euclid Avenue, MU225, Cleveland, OH, USA 44115.
Email: e.a.lieberman@csuohio.edu.

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