In that place at that time, I assumed I was there to see something subtle, unexpected. I stood on the edge of Balderas, a four lane avenida that runs south from the Alameda Central, a huge park next to Belles Artes. The light turned green up the street and the rise of the traffic roar made me think of a drag race. Taxis whipped by first, then the stream of five lanes of traffic in four lanes. Collectivos, taxis, jettas, scooters, all roaring, then came a break. A little boy was wailing for his mother, standing alone, lost in his own sorrow. He would cock his finger and shoot me as we walked by several minutes hence. But my back was tired from standing on the edge of the road and I squatted down to stretch. Another rush of traffic flashed past. Something fluttering beneath the green canopy that hung over the road caught my eye. An almost painful yellow swallowtail bounced along above the road. The road remained quiet.
Mexico is an array of this duality. While you have the madness and the roar of the road you have the quiet flutter of the butterfly. With the wildly rich, you have the absurdly poor. The indigenous woman in her eighties sitting on the steps coming out of the Metro station, wrapped in a fraying shawl against the rain, getting stepped over by the young man in the crisp suit carrying a leather briefcase on his way somewhere else. The shopping mall in Coyoacan looks out past its massive windows and pure white marble floors onto the dingy city across Avenida Universidad. These contrasts are nothing new, Octavio Paz wrote the book on duality with Conjunctions and Disjunctions. Writers of all stripes in Mexico and from abroad have considered the question. The Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes writes about the dilemma in his novel The Death of Artemio Cruz, "We have allowed ourselves to be divided and controlled by the ruthless, the ambitious, and the mediocre. Those who wanted a true revolution, radical and uncompromising, are unfortunately ignorant and bloody men. And the literate element want only a half-revolution, compatible with what interests them, their only interest, getting on in the world, living well, replacing Don Porfirio's elite. There you have Mexico's drama." So it plays out.
That night we take a cab to Arena Mexico, in the Roma district, for a Lucha Libre match. Think WWF with masks. We step out of the cab into a dizzying spin of lights and stands of Luchador paraphernalia, replete with plastic square foot rings and action figures. A woman stops me immediately, "Bolletos, Senor?" No, I don't need tickets, I reply. We find our friends and step through the madness to the Ticketmaster sponsored window, a narrow one-way mirror rectangle with a two inch slit at the bottom. Tickets in hand we start in to the match with the famous Misterio but are directed to the other side of the arena. The long walk through the endless Luchador bazaar, the masks, hats, jackets, shirts, action figures, taco stands, helados, junk food, and finally we reach the gate. After being frisked, we show our tickets to one guy in a suit who scans the ticket, who directs you to the next guy who takes the actual stub. The accelerating music of a rock-star entrance is coming from the arena as we enter up the dingy stairwell, up and up.
The world of the Luchador is the world of fantasy. A slap across the chest resounds up to our seats in the second balcony, the other fighter wildly jerks his head in apparent struggle against the blow. Another, another. Taking his head, he leads him toward the center where he is swung toward the springy ropes, one ducks the other thrusts, they bounce off opposite ropes in a coregraphed ballet of giants. Finally the blow is landed and one of them flips over and slams down on the ground. The crowd is lethargic in their applause. Several moves later, including a leaping, spinning wrap of legs around one guys neck off the top rope, the Luchador is out of ring and struggling to stay upright. The other fighter rears back for a dash, the crowd rises in anticipation and there is a massive body soaring out of the ring. The crowd erupts as the one man in flight clobbers the other in the first real smash of bodies. Both men lie struggling on the ground for several seconds as the others fight on. There always is another fight in the Lucha Libre.
Like so many other aspects of life in Mexico, the classes are divided. Not so different than anywhere else in the world where expensive tickets get the better seats, but here in the Arena Mexico the divisions are enforced by fences. Throughout the arena it is easy to see where each new ticket price begins and ends, marked by chain-link. So we watch the Luchador's battle it out from inside a cage of our own. The crowd erupts as another muscle-bound guy flys through the air. The battle royale ensues, the bad guys have all entered the ring and are ganging up on a poor jerk who is about the lose his mask. It is the mask that seems so challenging, what face will we see? Will it be the face of the poor or the rich? Will it matter? The crowd roars its approval as the mask is flung into the air. The Blue Panther is unmasked, but he clutches at his face to remain anonymous. The next day we are in a bar and see the match on television. Even the camera shied away from revealing the identity of the Blue Panther so that the fantasy could remain.
Fantasy is not an option for most of the population, the vast majority struggles to make 60 pesos, or about 6 bucks a day. But fantasy persists in the advertising and the mirage of the global market-come, become part of the world by drinking this Coke, or using that makeup. Fantasy persists in the excitement of the Lucha Libre and the screaming woman who gets in the face of one of the Luchador's. The camera cues in on her, her anger is real, the visceral hatred for the Luchador who now yells right back. How is it that the anger of being left out, of being ruled by the mediocre and the cunning has not led us all to fighting back, instead of fighting amongst ourselves for the crumbs? They are both restrained and the match resumes. The lights flutter and the scantily clad women come out to announce the final match of the night.
The pleasure of the Luchador is in the realization of the fantasy. Of letting go into the slap on the chest as though it were a righteous slug to the jaw, of the flip and the crash of a huge wrestler onto another outside the ring. As though this were all real. What of life here is real? Not the well-dressed women who parade through the expensive parts of town, who emerge from BMWs and go into the expensive laser hair removal salons. The crushing poverty is real, like the little baby lying under the stairs in the shade beside the six lane road while his mother and four siblings sell popsicles among the stopped traffic. The man in the dirty shirt who rushes into traffic to wash a window, for pesos, centavos, anything. The victorious Luchadors raise their arms, the crowd roars and the night is over.
I do not have the capacity to understand or decipher the duality of the Mexican character. But the duality of daily life here, of the collectivos packed full of people stopped in traffic beside the Range Rover with chrome rims and a single driver, that I can see and understand. The wealth and the poverty at one and the same time, both Mexico and Mexican. In those short hours in the Arena Mexico, I saw that the line between the duality is at times transparent. We could still see out of our cage and into the arena that erupted in cheers. The crowd cheering together, we recognized in some small measure the tenuousness of reality. There on the side of Balderas was the same tenuousness, the delicate beauty of the swallowtail amid the roar of the traffic. Alive for less than a month and wandering the concrete canyons searching out flowers and nectar. Fuentes was right in that we are all looking for how to get on in the world.
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