Lucha y Lucha: Change, Costume, and Character in El Paso's Lucha Libre Landscape from 1987-2021 by rca-issuu

Lucha y Lucha C H AN GE , C O S TUME, AND C H AR AC T E R I N EL PASO’S LUC H A L I BR E L ANDSC APE

FRO M 19 87 - 20 21

B ERN ADET T E VI CTO R IA S ILVA

ROYAL C OLLEG E OF AR T | V&A/RC A H IS TORY OF DESIG N MA DIS S E R TATION 8 N OVE MBER 2021 WORD C OUNT : 21,193

Lucha y Lucha C H AN GE , C O S TUME, AND C H AR AC T E R I N EL PASO’S LUC H A L I BR E L ANDSC APE

FRO M 19 87 - 20 21

B ERN ADET T E VI CTO R IA S ILVA

ROYAL C OLLEG E OF AR T | V&A/RC A H IS TORY OF DESIG N MA DIS S E R TATION 8 N OVE MBER 2021 WORD C OUNT : 21,193

A B S T R ACT

The objective of this dissertation is to use a material-focused approach to lucha libre, or Mexican freestyle wrestling, in El Paso, Texas, to determine the extent to which performers exert agency through persona design. The project breaks down character design from two luchadores by materials relating to body, hair, and face to contextualize costume within their performance lineages and contemporary obstacles. The first case study centers on Cassandro, an exótico or drag wrestler, who debuted in 1987 and, with a generation of fellow exóticos, utilized costume and makeup to signal a change in their performance style. Close object analysis and application of costume theory reveal details that acknowledge labor behind performance and a context that reconsiders the materiality of hair, makeup, and their function for a performer who wrestlers unmasked. The second chapter follows Dulce Tormenta/Sweet Storm through the process of preparing to debut an original character in 2021 and the challenge of working as a live performer through COVID-19, unable to access international resources but finding alternative sources of costume through performance areas with shared historical contexts. The case study also examines vertical integration in a performance context and the extent to which a performer-manager has agency in the design and production process within the constraints of performance tradition. As a whole, the study also identifies the objects that enable the transformational process between the self and the character, becoming the physical remains of performance and collected as sites of representation that capture historical meaning.

1 A b s t r ac t

TA BLE OF CONTENTS List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements 4 Introduction 5 Literature Review

Methodology 15 1. Constructing Cassandro

Body 25 Hair 40 Face

2. Dulce Tormenta/Sweet Storm

Body 58 Face 65 Hair 74 Conclusion 88 Bibliography 91

2 Ta b l e o f C o n t e n t s

L I S T OF ILLU S TRAT I ONS Fig. 1: Christ Chavez, Inside Arturo García’s Five Star Mexican Bakery in El Paso, 2021. El Paso, Texas, Texas Highways.  5 Fig. 2: Roger Ross Williams, Cassandro, 2016. The New Yorker.  20 Fig. 3: Unknown, Gardenia Davis, ca. 1940s.  22 Fig. 4: Omar Morales, Red Gown Sequin Detail, 2021. El Paso, Texas, El Paso Museum of History.  30 Fig. 5: Omar Morales, Red Gown Train Detail, 2021. El Paso, Texas, El Paso Museum of History.  30 Fig. 6: Omar Morales, Red Gown with Train, 2021. El Paso, Texas, El Paso Museum of History.  31 Fig. 7: Omar Morales, Red Gown with Train, 2021. El Paso, Texas, El Paso Museum of History.  32 Fig. 8: Katie Orlinsky, Cassandro in the Ring, 2016. The New Yorker.  37 Fig. 9: Rowdy Lee Dugan, Cassandro with Butterfly Boots, 2019. Marfa, Texas.  39 Fig. 10: Hijo del Santo, Experiencias, 2011.  42 Fig. 11: Marie Losier, Cassandro Styles Hair with Completed Makeup, 2018. Cassandro, the Exotico!  49 Fig. 12: Marie Losier, Cassandro, The Exotico!, 2018.  53 Fig. 13: Jesus 'CIMI' Alvarado and Fabian Chairez, Mural for Cassandro Biopic, 2021. El Paso, Texas, Author’s Own Photograph.  54 Fig. 14: Unknown, Dulce Tormenta/Sweet Storm Initial Costume Promotional Photo, 2021.  59 Fig. 15: Dulce Tormenta First Mask, 2021. El Paso, Texas, El Paso Museum of History.  70 Fig. 16: Dulce Tormenta First Mask Side View, 2021. El Paso, Texas, El Paso Museum of History.  71 Fig. 17: First Delilah Mask, 2015. El Paso, Texas, El Paso Museum of History.  71 Fig. 18: Alex Briseño, Dulce Tormenta/Sweet Storm, 2021. El Paso, Texas.  72 Fig. 19: Agustín Víctor Casasola, Las Soldaderas, 1910s. Archivo Casasola  75 Fig. 20: Dulce Tormenta Illustrated T-Shirt, 2021. El Paso, Texas, Plain Salty  86 Fig. 21: Dulce Tormenta Lotería T-Shirt, 2021. El Paso, Texas, Plain Salty  86 Fig. 22: Dulce Tormenta Photorealistic T-Shirt, 2021. El Paso, Texas, Plain Salty  86

3 L i s t o f I l lu s t r at i o n s

AC K N OWLE D GE M ENT S I would like to express my gratitude to Simon Sladen, my dissertation supervisor. Without your support, guidance, and insights I would still be wading through newspaper archives and match footage.

I would also like to thank the V&A/RCA History of Design tutors and staff for building a warm and engaging environment through the constraints of physical distance, as well as my cohort for their invaluable feedback through every part of this process.

Finally, thank you to my family for supporting me throughout this course and letting me run through every detail of this project aloud without complaining. Newman, you keep me humble.

4 Ac k n o w l e d g e m e n t s

I NT RO D U CTIO N

Fig. 1: Christ Chavez, Inside Arturo García’s Five Star Mexican Bakery in El Paso, 2021. El Paso, Texas, Texas Highways.

In March 2021, Roberto José Andrade Franco published an article for Texas Highways magazine entitled, ‘How Lucha Libre’s Mexican Style of Wrestling Unites Two Countries’.1 The piece opens with an image of Arturo García (1944-), also known as Flama Roja, the legendary lucha libre rudo, or Mexican professional freestyle wrestling villain (Fig. 1). García wrestled from 1966 until 1994, traveling to arenas throughout Mexico, but now owns the Five Star Mexican Bakery in El Paso, Texas, decorating the walls of his business with the relics of his career. García faces the camera, standing in front of lighted bread cases, racks with trays of Mexican pan dulce, and a wall of photos in the frame with a prized collection of masks belonging Roberto José Andrade Franco, ‘How Lucha Libre’s Mexican Style of Wrestling Unites Two Countries’, Texas Highways, March 2021 <https://texashighways.com/culture/how-luchalibre-mexican-style-wrestling-unites-two-countries/> [accessed 5 August 2021]. 1

INTRODUCTION

to his vanquished opponents. Roja’s interview also draws attention to the physical reminders of his effectiveness as a villain. He explains, ‘If you’re representing a rudo, you must be bad. Not just against the wrestler but also against the people. So that the people feel it. Why do you think I got stabbed?’2 García’s memory of his career remains sharp. Wrestling and theater historian Eero Laine describes injuries as part of an identity and brand in professional wrestling, ‘a means of marketing and permanent marks on the body’.3 Driving Laine’s point, Flama Roja is a marketing tool for the bakery decades after his wrestling retirement. The bakery holds, not only a collection of relics, but the wrestler himself as a draw. When luchadores carry the physical reminders of their careers, their bodies become archives, with many able to pair the injury with the opponent and specific match long after the event. Seeing the image of García in front of his collection, in the past immensely adept in his gold mask and red bodysuit at playing a villain but now living a relatively quiet life, sparked the question of what other physical remains, aside from masks, might exist from lucha libre kept in private collections and what might they say about the people who keep them. Lucha Libre, which translates to ‘free fight’, is one of Mexico’s most popular domestic entertainments and cultural exports. Traditional lucha libre pits técnicos, or clean fighters, against rudos, or heels, in matches that feature fast-paced acrobatics and bright, colorful costumes. The full-coverage masks luchadores use in the ring have become icons for lucha libre as a whole and even Mexican identity in global contexts, from food items to video game characters.4 In 2018, the Mexican federal

Roberto José Andrade Franco.

Eero Laine, Professional Wrestling and the Commercial Stage (Milton, UNITED KINGDOM: Taylor & Francis Group, 2019), p. 80 <http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rcauk/detail. action?docID=5981742> [accessed 13 May 2021]. 3

‘About Gran Luchito - Our Story - Authentic Mexican Made By You’, Gran Luchito <https:// gran.luchito.com/our-story/> [accessed 10 August 2021]; ‘Masked Republic Reveals the “Project: Mask” Video Game at Comic-Con@Home’, Lucha Central, 2021 <https:// luchacentral.com/masked-republic-reveals-the-project-mask-video-game-at-comicconhome/> [accessed 10 August 2021]. 4

INTRODUCTION

government named lucha libre an official intangible cultural heritage of Mexico City.5 Nevertheless, though Mexico City has become lucha libre’s chief capital, one of its foundational sites lies at the crossing between El Paso, Texas in the United States and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua in Mexico. Lucha libre’s history, from the professional wrestling networks that first inspired its expansion across borders to the presentday wrestlers navigating their careers, is a narrative that engages with cultural and socio-economic politics, access on the U.S.-Mexico border, the labor behind performance, and cultural ties that defy international boundaries within materiality. On the 27th of August 2021, the El Paso Museum of History opened Lucha Libre: Stories from the Ring, an exhibition detailing lucha libre’s local connections on both sides of the border. The exhibition featured several different types of objects from a plethora of local talent, including long-trained capes from drag wrestler Cassandro, masks, boots, and costumes from female wrestler Dulce Tormenta/Sweet Storm and her luchador brothers, promotional posters featuring local figures who went on to become stars in Mexico, and work from the longtime photographer for K.O. Magazine, Ignacio Morales ‘Moralitos’ Gutierrez, among other items.6 I noticed that many of the objects included in the exhibition were on loan from either the performers’ or their families’ collections, displaying artifacts and objects from retired and practicing wrestlers, or in some cases, objects connected to retired personae from wrestlers who have moved on to new characters. At this point in the research, I had already outlined my subjects for the case study, unaware that their costumes would be available for close viewing. As this resource became available, it added a new perspective. Engaging with performance through exhibitions, given its ephemerality, presents a challenge that offers several approaches. As described by Susan Bennett, Secretaría de Cultura de la Ciudad de México, ‘Declaran a la Lucha Libre Mexicana Patrimonio Cultural Intangible de la Ciudad de México’, Secretaría de Cultura de la Ciudad de México <https://www.cultura.cdmx.gob.mx/comunicacion/nota/0667-18> [accessed 23 October 2021]. 5

Norma Hartell, Lucha Libre: Stories from the Ring (El Paso, Texas, 2021), El Paso Museum of History. 6

INTRODUCTION

one method, ‘…relies on pleasure in recognition, […] galleries summon their visitors to convert archival memory into repertoire through their own affective responses, triggering re-performance in the spectator of what once was experienced live if not by them, then by others’.7 As museum visitors and lucha libre fans of varying ages visited the museum on opening night, clad in t-shirts and face coverings referencing their favorite luchadores, they arrived with an expectation of reliving experiences through the archive. Performances also leave physical traces, like the items in the museum’s exhibition. Objects in these collections, including costumes, awards, photographs, and even fan memorabilia, are valuable evidence of the environmental factors that make performances possible. While lucha libre is perhaps most identifiable for its material culture through masks, few pieces of academic study on the subject take an object-based approach. This project uses case studies and objects to examine how contemporary luchadores in El Paso engage with materiality. I propose that luchadores performing within specialized areas, as an exótico and luchadora, exert agency through character design while navigating constraints from performance tradition and gendered conventions. Using elements that span the hair, body, and face, they also develop recognizable visual character design traits that can be simplified and disseminated through other media with reference to individuals rather than generic iconography.

L I T E R ATU RE RE VIEW First, it is important to note that, while some Spanish sources are part of this study, most of the secondary literature used is in English or offered through translation. Perhaps due to lucha libre’s growing international market, a significant number of articles and books are offered in both English and Spanish, often with texts in both languages presented side-by-side. In a 2015 special issue of Artes de México on lucha libre, published in both English and Spanish, anthropologist Susan Bennett, Theatre & Museums (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). 7

L I T E R AT U R E R E V I E W

Adela Santana wrote: ‘Up until now, academics and intellectuals have approached wrestling in much the same way they approach art: they identify symbols that they first interpret and then classify. This process tends to clash with the way in which the actual agents of a given field see or understand themselves’.8 Because of the ease with which objects become distilled into iconography, Santana recognizes lucha libre as performance that is fodder for creative possibility but prone to stereotyping. Writers examining lucha libre through an academic lens often draw on a series of tropes: as a representation of the larger political landscape, the justice system’s symbolic distillation into good vs. evil, an offshoot of a violent society preoccupied with ritual, primitive entertainment suitable for rural and working-class Mexican people, or other ideas that work to characterize both wrestlers and audiences through stereotype. Santana points to glaring issues within this framing, particularly the use of generalization and distance assumed between academics and audiences: ‘We have seen how important wrestling is for cultural producers, but if we are looking for studies on the topic, the only thing we will find are works that are extremely analytical and shroud the phenomenon in bombastic language. […] In order to truly gain a better understanding of lucha libre, we must begin with an exhaustive description of its reality and allow the performers to speak for themselves’.9 Material culture, especially the history of design, seeks to scrutinize objects and their details to replace and re-perform historical context through people, addressing the issues Santana describes. A material culture approach can bring the agency back to luchadores within academic work through the objects they use. This notion is the basis for this project’s approach, not as a history of lucha libre and the production of meaning but as an investigation into how material culture contextualizes

Margarita de Orellana and others, ‘Lucha Libre: Stories with No Time Limit’, Artes de México, 119, 2015, 65–80 (p. 80) <https://www.jstor.org/stable/45228163> [accessed 9 May 2021]. 8

de Orellana and others, p. 80.

L I T E R AT U R E R E V I E W

performance and agency. One of the most dominant voices in lucha libre study is anthropologist Heather Levi. Along with several articles in collections on professional wrestling, Levi’s seven-month ethnographic study on lucha libre, with firsthand experience training, interviewing, and competing as a luchadora, is recorded in the 2008 book The World of Lucha Libre: Secrets, Revelations, and Mexican National Identity.10 Levi’s work is significant for its extensive collection of personal interviews and oral histories, allowing fundamental forces in Mexico’s lucha libre landscape to speak for themselves. Oral histories bring challenges, especially when speaking to interviewees about events that occurred years or decades before the interview. In this case, there may also be gatekeeping around parts of the industry that are not part of public consumption. Levi is transparent with interviewees that the information they provide may become part of a published study. She suspects, due to her role as a researcher, interviewees possibly withhold information to safeguard industry secrets, especially when discussing the mechanics behind match outcomes.11 She addresses this issue by confirming information through other sources and providing commentary that contextualizes the interviews. Levi divides the book into six chapters that examine lucha libre’s placement within theatre and sport, the secretive and protective atmosphere around production, wrestlers and their personae, use of masks, representations of gender, and the dissemination of lucha libre throughout Mexico and beyond. Notably, the book interrogates lucha libre’s engagement with television and the internal politics that kept the sport off Mexican airwaves from 1954 to 1991, especially the effect on live performances and fears that athleticism would become overshadowed by the theatrical aspects of the matches when broadcast.12 Furthermore, the move to

Heather Levi, Gilbert M. Joseph, and Emily S. Rosenberg, The World of Lucha Libre: Secrets, Revelations, and Mexican National Identity (North Carolina, United States: Duke University Press, 2008). 10

Levi, Joseph, and Rosenberg, p. 33.

Levi, Joseph, and Rosenberg, p. 234.

L I T E R AT U R E R E V I E W

television led to a divide among wrestlers pre- and post-broadcasting, with a split between amateur and professional participation. The tension between mediated and live performance is not limited to lucha libre, becoming heightened in many different areas of creative practice as new media become accessible. This factor is consequential to this study for the effect broadcasting had on costume. With cameras around to capture their matches, luchadores sought out mask embellishments like beaks, horns, and fringe to distinguish them from their opponents for television audiences.13 New design elements also indicate a willingness to break from traditional costumes to build a performance reputation through visual elements. Levi’s work is a monumental contribution to the field, cited in English and Spanish studies that engage with lucha libre and other issues through gender, immigration, cinema, boxing, literature, journalism, politics, professional wrestling in American, British and Japanese settings, and performance at large. However, because Levi’s work is dominant, it creates a central narrative that includes inaccurate information. Levi’s book bridges a gap in research around lucha libre, but it also perpetuates points that deserve clarification, especially in relation to this project. For example, when describing lucha libre’s origins, Levi writes that Salvador Lutteroth viewed and attended matches in Eagle Pass, Texas.14 Newspapers from 1928 place Lutteroth in the El Paso/Juarez area as a representative to the Mexican government with a delegation of El Pasoans from the city’s Chamber of Commerce, indicating regular residence in the area.15 While Lutteroth may have conducted business in Eagle Pass, which borders Piedras Negras in Coahuila, Mexico, the city is also 471 miles (758 km) away from Juarez using modern roads. It is more likely that Lutteroth attended matches in nearby El Paso during his leisure time before returning to Mexico City and founding the Empresa Mexicana de Lucha Libre (EMLL).

Levi, Joseph, and Rosenberg, p. 111.

Levi, Joseph, and Rosenberg, p. 22.

‘El Pasoans Will Fly to Mexico Ceremonies’, El Paso Evening Post (El Paso, Texas, 28 November 1928), p. 12 (p. 1), Newspapers.com <http://www.newspapers.com/ image/44351976/?terms=lutteroth&match=1> [accessed 28 August 2021]. 15

L I T E R AT U R E R E V I E W

It is possible Levi interpolated Eagle Pass for El Paso, a small detail but repeated in other sources that use Levi’s work as a foundational material. Furthermore, Levi makes a small but impactful error when discussing Cassandro. Levi mentions Cassandro three times in her book but calls him ‘Cassandra’. For example, Levi writes, ‘Adrian and Cassandra performed a style of wrestling that shifted the role of exótico away from Gardenia Davis knockoffs toward a potentially more subversive presentation’.16 Unfortunately, this detail undercuts the sentence’s impact. While detailing the lineage of his current name, Cassandro, the subject of the first case study, explains that his lucha libre moniker is a tribute to a woman named Cassandra, but he was adamant about his gender identity and insisted on changing the name to Cassandro.17 The mistake is as tiny as three letters within the entire text, but these three are consequential for scholars looking at Levi’s book as an entry point into lucha libre and Cassandro’s impact. Levi briefly engages with object histories, specifically mask design and construction, helpful to this study. However, her project is primarily phenomenological rather than object-focused. Film director, artist, and researcher Nina Hoechtl also contributes an article that includes Cassandro in 2017’s Performance and Professional Wrestling, a collection of essays edited by Broderick Chow, Eero J. Laine, and Claire Warden. Hoechtl’s essay, ‘Wrestling with burlesque, burlesquing lucha libre’ features Cassandro and Lucha VaVoom events, which combine lucha libre with Burlesque and comedy, playing to audiences worldwide. Hoechtl’s article takes place in Los Angeles at the Mayan Theatre. After the initial event, Hoechtl returns six more times to experience the ‘celebration of the entire spectrum’: bodies, ethnicities, sexualities, and genders.18 Like Levi, Hoechtl frames the article around personal experience but then analyzes Karis and Cassandro’s performances through José Esteban Muñoz’s work on

Levi, Joseph, and Rosenberg, pp. 153–54.

William Finnegan, ‘The Man Without a Mask’, The New Yorker <https://www.newyorker. com/magazine/2014/09/01/man-without-mask> [accessed 5 May 2021]. 17

Broderick Chow, Eero J Laine, and Claire Warden, Performance and Professional Wrestling (New York: Routledge, 2017), p. 73. 18

L I T E R AT U R E R E V I E W

disidentification. The analysis emphasizes the performances as reflections of the audience’s ‘role in the performance of gender and race/ethnicity as a constant state of becoming’.19 Though Hoechtl’s study is not rooted in object study, it provides a valuable theoretical perspective on Cassandro’s movement style and the production of meaning around exótico, or drag, performance while describing lucha libre’s connection to other performance disciplines. In a 2015 Ph.D. thesis for University of the Arts London, ‘Resituating the Cultural Meanings of Lucha Libre Mexicana: A Practice-Based Exploration of Diasporic Mexicanness’, artist Marcela Montoya Ortega uses lucha libre iconography in her art practice alongside contextual research around the items and images used.20 While Ortega’s work comes in the form of an unpublished Ph.D. thesis, it is part of the research landscape for this project because of her perspective as a Mexican citizen working within a UK university and her research on materiality in lucha libre. Ortega also includes several interviews that illuminate the state of academic research on lucha libre in Mexico and are essential to consider in a historiographic study. Ortega identifies a common sentiment among interviewees and invested parties: the need for ‘formal recognition of Lucha Libre Mexicana as a legitimate representation of popular urban culture, in the form of a dedicated museum and research center’.21 One of the academics Ortega interviews, Orlando Jiménez Ruiz, also provides a piece for the Artes de México issue that includes Adela Santana’s essay. Jiménez Ruiz offers a unique perspective as a historian and lucha libre referee and provides a brief history of lucha libre in Mexico.22 While Ortega uses an interpretation-classification model that favors semiotics, it is vital to remember that her goal is not to provide historical analysis but the context for her art. The work engages with materials but focuses on José Esteban Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics, Cultural Studies of the Americas, v. 2 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999); Chow, Laine, and Warden, p. 78. 19

Marcela Montoya Ortega, ‘Resituating the Cultural Meanings of Lucha Libre Mexicana: A Practice Based Exploration of Diasporic Mexicanness’ (University of the Arts London, 2015) <http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/8728/>. 20

Ortega, p. 193.

de Orellana and others, pp. 66–69.

L I T E R AT U R E R E V I E W

symbolism rather than the process or production of objects. As a result, the scope of significant literature for review extends beyond lucha libre and into other performance areas that offer useful approaches. Lucha libre falls under the umbrella of performance studies alongside drag and drama, which include studies that offer compelling models for engaging with materiality in performance. Rosslyn Prosser contributes an essay to Drag Histories, Herstories and Hairstories: Drag in a Changing Scene Volume 2 (2021) on Adelaide-based showgirl Vonni Diva. Prosser compares older showgirls like Vonni, whose career started in the 1960s, with younger drag queens through costume and performance style. The latter half of Prosser’s chapter uses an exhibition featuring Vonni’s costumes to explore the relationship between performer and costumer, the context behind each garment, and the advantages and disadvantages of viewing garments in an exhibition rather than the site of performance. Prosser describes, ‘The costumes provide a visual and material documentation of the many years that Vonni has spent performing and present through their changing styles an appreciation of the artform of costume’.23 This text offers an approach that considers multiple garments and changes over time through a single performer’s history. This model is especially suited for investigating a figure like Cassandro and approaching garments in an exhibition separated from the performer and their original context. The essay also considers other aspects of performance required to develop a drag identity, like gesture, choreography, hair, and comedic style. While it does not explore these components in detail, the text offers a blueprint for working with persona and drag costume. Prosser writes, ‘Costumes can be read as part of a wider framework of thinking about material and material culture, however drag costume produces a set of meanings that circulate both through and within drag and non-drag

Mark Edward and others, Drag Histories, Herstories and Hairstories: Drag in a Changing Scene Volume 2 (London, United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2021), p. 105 <http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rcauk/detail.action?docID=6458981> [accessed 23 June 2021]. 23

L I T E R AT U R E R E V I E W

culture, set to a background of pre-existent prejudices and attitudes’.24 Though the essay falls outside of lucha libre study, Prosser provides a helpful example for working with costume in performance-specific contexts and within exhibitions that present representations of a performer’s career. Though the work is from a theatre context, Aoife Monks’s 2009 book, The Actor in Costume, engages with the process behind performance preparation and backstage spaces that is significant for analyzing lucha libre. Monks’s work helps ground costume and makeup analysis in this project, highlighting the importance of keeping the performer and the costume connected, even when the costume is removed. Monks also addresses makeup use in performance, which can be rare, even in costume study.25 That aspect of her work outlines a relevant framework, especially concerning unmasked wrestlers who use makeup as a component of costume and an identifying feature. Though Monks analyzes other performance areas, her work helps provide a practical costume analysis that supports an approach based on material culture and work with case studies.

M E T H O D O LO GY This project uses the sequin method outlined in Mark Edward and Stephen Farrier’s Drag Histories, Herstories and Hairstories: Drag in a Changing Scene Volume 2 (2021) as a framework. Edward and Farrier present a collection of essays on drag history, using the first chapter to describe the rapidly-growing and evolving definition of drag, particularly the growing understanding of intersections between drag and other performance cultures.26 Rather than attempt to assign a single mode of drag performance or history as ‘dominant’ or ‘mainstream’ over another, Edward

Edward and others, p. 104.

Aoife Monks, The Actor in Costume (London, UNITED KINGDOM: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2009), p. 80 <http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rcauk/detail. action?docID=4763180> [accessed 31 October 2021]. 25

Edward and others, p. 6.

M E T H O D O LO GY

and Farrier adopt a methodology they term the ‘sequin method’: ‘…we look to the shiny bits of historical narrative, fallen off more visible histories. Of course one has to be in the right position to see the sparkle – and to be looking in the right direction. In part, that positioning is what we have articulated here. To position oneself to see the sparkle and be attracted to the moments and people unstuck from a larger thing is not only an intellectual positioning, it is a political and ethical one’.27 Parts of this project intersect with the performance and drag history Edward and Farrier outline, especially in Cassandro’s case. However, this methodology is also aptly suited to this project as a whole for its approach to marginalized subjects. Most analyses focus on lucha libre in Mexico, especially where it intersects with national politics, labor, popular culture, and art history; this microhistory examines specific luchadores with El Paso connections, returning to its roots to show contemporary stories, starting from 1987 to late 2021. This project presents two of the sequins that make up the more comprehensive ‘garment’ of lucha libre history and, in the process, shed light on costuming, identity, labor, and movement on the US-Mexico border over time. As an El Paso native with the ability to research in London and the El Paso area, I am ‘sensitive to the light’, as Edward and Farrier describe, for these particular subjects and local culture. Part of this research was conducted in person through visits to the El Paso Museum of History’s exhibition offering access to costumes. While it was not possible to handle objects, extensive photography and close viewing allowed me to capture details and multiple perspectives unavailable through images or footage of performances. Furthermore, it is essential to note that, while El Paso and Juarez are sister cities and share many ties, accessibility is often vastly different based on citizenship or visa status. The subjects in this research are U.S. citizens with ties to Juarez and can travel between both countries; this is not always the

Edward and others, p. 11.

M E T H O D O LO GY

case for Mexican counterparts. A study focusing solely on Juarez-born wrestlers, like the subjects of Paola Calvo’s documentary film Luchadoras (2021), would be a related but different project.28 This project also uses multiple research methodologies: oral histories, primarily gathered from interviews with wrestlers, close readings of archival footage and photographs, and object analysis taken from personal photos and in-person viewing to build case studies. These case studies then work under a comparativehistorical methodology contrasting contexts that compare lineages within barriers from gender, sexuality, performance style, and character design.29 The purpose of this work is not to draw sweeping conclusions or generalizations about all luchadores but to highlight areas where two performers from specific performance lineages engage with material culture. Lucha libre is often simplified to flattened, stereotypical iconography, but moving away from symbolism and representational imagery relates lucha libre to specific people through their objects. However, these methodologies also present challenges. Oral histories, while important, are also reliant on memory and description that fade over time or are cemented once a narrative has settled in a performer’s memory, becoming a performance of that memory. To counter this issue, I use multiple interviews with wrestlers discussing the same topics and, where possible, pair events with other materials like match records and photos. It is also essential to consider the source material for photographs and footage. Archives are not neutral sources. Elizabeth Yale explains that ‘archives are sources of history, but they are also its subjects, sites with histories and politics of their own’.30 Some of the material comes from film, and it is vital to understand that the medium must undergo an editing process. Furthermore, ‘Cinema, Wrestling and Gender Violence in Ciudad Juárez - A Talk With “Luchadoras” Co-Director Paola Calvo’, Shuffle Online, 2021 <https://shuffleonline.net/2021/03/18/a-talkwith-luchadoras-co-director-paola-calvo/> [accessed 10 May 2021]. 28

James Mahoney, ‘Comparative-Historical Methodology’, Annual Review of Sociology, 30 (2004), 81–101 <https://www.jstor.org/stable/29737686> [accessed 8 September 2021]. 29

Elizabeth Yale, ‘The History of Archives: The State of the Discipline’, Book History, 18 (2015), 332–59 (p. 332) <https://www.jstor.org/stable/43956377> [accessed 3 November 2021]. 30

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film appearances are also performances and, like promotional photographs from stage productions, should not be considered accurate representations of events. Barbara Hodgdon describes this photography as, ‘The image par excellence of looking at performance in reverse, a rehearsal photograph generates the illusion of giving entrée into the mysteries of the player's craft at a moment when no one, supposedly, is looking’.31 This illusion must be considered within the analysis, particularly concerning the backstage area and liminal spaces. It is also important to remember that the goal of using this footage is not for the content but the context behind the performance preparation space and the tools used to create character personae. Monks’ work on the backstage and photography also provides an example that addresses this issue by contextualizing visual material throughout the analysis. This study addresses a gap in the field using object-based analysis to approach lucha libre, moving away from generalization into a methodology that considers the individual performer. It also contributes to design history by approaching an under-studied region and discipline with ties to a range of performance areas. The first chapter explores Cassandro (Saúl Armendariz, 1970-), an exótico wrestler, a term loosely used to describe wrestlers who perform in drag. Using costume theory to analyze Cassandro’s choices, compared against descriptions of his early career, provides an account of how he and his contemporaries utilized makeup and costume in the 1980s to implement a design change that shifted expectations around exótico performance and subverted images of masculinity disseminated through various media. The second chapter observes Dulce Tormenta/Sweet Storm, a luchadora, or female wrestler, and the process of retiring an established persona while introducing a new character in February of 2021. Using the same approach to Tormenta’s costume design exposes the labor behind re-invention, the mechanisms behind performance management, and the ways costume and performance lineage are bound by gender

Barbara Hodgdon, ‘Material Remains at Play’, Theatre Journal, 64.3 (2012), 373–88 (p. 384) <https://www.jstor.org/stable/41679615> [accessed 16 April 2021]. 31

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convention. Working from different times and social contexts, as a masked and unmasked wrestler, Cassandro and Tormenta present two case studies that show El Paso-based wrestlers' connection to lucha libre and the objects in a wrestler’s repertoire that shape performance. Through these objects, the investigation will classify the materials that communicate a character and are left behind after the performance is finished, as well as the extent to which performers have been able to shape the existing culture associated with their lucha libre contexts.

C H A P T E R 1:

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Fig. 2: Roger Ross Williams, Cassandro, 2016. The New Yorker.

With hair and makeup finished, after applying spray-on oil and ointments to his knees, Cassandro pulls on a gown, the final piece of his costume, flaring the train behind him. The announcer calls his name, and Gloria Gaynor’s 1978 disco classic, ‘I Will Survive’ blares over the venue’s sound system, his cue to enter the ring. He takes a light jog, ducking under the ropes and ensuring the train of his gown billows behind every few steps. He then poses a few times before removing the gown to reveal a bright spandex leotard, dropping it outside the ring for safekeeping until after the show. The gown and leotard evoke majesty, ceremony, and acrobatics, prefacing later parts of the match where he will climb to the top of the post to perform his signature back-flip onto his opponent, the Cassandro Bomb. By the time Cassandro enters the performance space (Fig. 2), he has completed the ritual process that helps him transition from the private Saúl Armendáriz into the public Cassandro El Exótico, also known as the Liberace of Lucha Libre. Saúl Armendáriz, known better by his wrestling name of Cassandro El Exótico,

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was born in El Paso, Texas, in 1970. Cassandro is part of a generation of openly gay exóticos, or wrestlers who perform wearing drag costume, and the first exótico to win a league championship title.1 Armendáriz describes: ‘Once I get there, from the moment that I start putting my makeup on, the Cassandro comes in. Saúl is being left behind. And once I do my run with my gown and walk into the ring, my macho side kicks in. I’m ready for battle’.2 The objects around him are the elements that recreate Cassandro, the character, for every performance and imbue the backstage area with transformational power. Paraphrasing Victor Turner (1917–83) and Edith Turner (1921–2016) in their work on liminal and ritualized spaces, performance theorist Richard Schechner describes a two-step event process within the liminal, or transitional, space. First, the performer temporarily becomes ‘nothing’, releasing their personal identity and place within the world. Then, they initiate a new status, rewriting the self with the identity of performance.3 Armendáriz describes a ritual process within performance preparation that builds a new persona, both personally and publicly. What starts with hair, makeup, and costume preparation is completed with the run into the ring but embedded with messages communicated through costume and materiality that exist once the show ends. Exóticos have existed since the early days of lucha libre. Sterling Davis (19141983), born in Houston, Texas, was one of Salvador Lutteroth’s American wrestling recruits who made his Mexican debut in the 1940s. He quickly made a name for himself as ‘Gardenia’ Davis and is considered the first exótico, using gardenias, effeminately characterized moves, and long cape-like robes as part of his gimmick. Gimmicks are essentially theatrical constructs or distinguishing traits, which can be costume-, object- or movement-related, that wrestlers use to distinguish their wrestling persona from others. Davis incorporated props and audience interaction

William Finnegan, ‘The Man Without a Mask’, The New Yorker <https://www.newyorker. com/magazine/2014/09/01/man-without-mask> [accessed 5 May 2021]. 1

Phillip Bidwell, ‘STM Episode 9 - Cassandro El Exotico’, Slouching Towards Masculinity <https://philbedwell.podbean.com/e/stm-episode-9-cassandro-el-exotico/>. 2

Richard Schechner and Sarah Lucie, Performance Studies, Fourth (New York: Routledge, 2020), p. 145. 3

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Fig. 3: Unknown, Gardenia Davis, ca. 1940s.

into his gimmick, entering the ring with a personal assistant and a bouquet of gardenias to distribute to women in the front rows. He also incorporated gardenias into costumes he designed and created.4 The press and audiences were the ones who coined the ‘exótico’ nickname, a reflection and reference to the strippers at the Tivoli Theatre in Mexico City who were part of the early luchadora matches.5 Characterized as ‘dandified gladiators’, the exóticos were neither rudos nor técnicos.6 They also used hypersexual moves as a defense, groping or delivering a beso, or kiss, as a way to halt opponents and draw laughs from the audience.7 Because of the association with stereotypical perceptions of femininity and homosexuality, exóticos

‘Wrestling’s Odd Mr. Davis Must Have Something Anyway, Digest This Blurb “Coronet” Gave Him’, The Windsor Daily Star (Windsor, Ontario, Canada, 22 January 1944), p. 3 <http://www.newspapers.com/image/501171007/?terms=salvador%20lutteroth&match=1> [accessed 19 July 2021]. 4

Lourdes Grobet and others, Espectacular De Lucha Libre (México, D.F.: Trilce Ediciones : Editorial Océano, 2009), p. 38. 5

Grobet and others, p. 38.

Nina Hoechtl, ‘If Only for the Length of a Lucha: Queer/Ing, Mask/Ing, Gender/Ing and Gesture in Lucha Libre’ (unpublished doctoral, Goldsmiths, University of London, 2012) <http://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/8056/> [accessed 3 May 2021]. 7

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gained a reputation as subpar wrestlers, using the gimmick to hide a lack of skill. Unlike lucha libre pioneers El Santo (Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta, 1917-84) and Blue Demon (Alejandro Muñoz Moreno, 1922-2000), who upheld their persona outside of the ring, exóticos were quick to affirm their heterosexuality publicly and insist that actions in the ring were strictly part of the gimmick.8 The 1980s saw ‘La Ola Lila’, or ‘The Lilac Wave’, of exóticos like Pimpinela Escarlata (Mario González Lozano, 1969-), May Flowers (Florencio Díaz Bolaños, 1962-) and Cassandro.9 They were protégés of Baby Sharon (Armando Octaviano Haro Viramontes, 1954-2008), one of the first exóticos who publicly came out as gay in the mid-seventies and a celebrated Juarez-based designer who created costumes for himself and took commissions from fellow wrestlers.10 Of course, queer wrestlers have participated in all facets of lucha libre, whether or not their sexuality or gender identity is publicly known. Some luchadores were more open about their sexuality in the dressing room, understanding that other wrestlers would not divulge their secret, similar to the expectation that luchadores not reveal masked wrestlers’ identities.11 However, this should not imply an atmosphere of acceptance. After following Sharon’s example of coming out as gay, the Lilac Wave exóticos experienced homophobic remarks and abuse. The decision to alter their costumes and wear makeup was an act of noncooperation, a visual signal of a new type of exótico that could compete with any wrestler, rather than offering comic relief at their own expense. Nonetheless, as concentrated as the transformation from performer and Aaron D. Horton, Identity in Professional Wrestling: Essays on Nationality, Race and Gender (McFarland, 2018), pp. 124–26. 8

Grobet and others, p. 38.

Elizabeth Medina, ‘El lado oscuro de la Lucha Libre’, El Paso Times (El Paso, Texas, 2 April 1992), section Vecinos - Neighbors, pp. 1A, 4A <http://www.newspapers.com/ image/430098532/> [accessed 2 October 2021]. 10

Marjorie Tapp and Jean Michel Berthiaume, ‘We Meet CASSANDRO EL EXOTICO’, Putes de Lutte <https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/prise-de-lutte/we-meet-cassandro-elexotico-DdYjZwWLF-t/>; Marjolein Van Bavel, ‘Morbo, Lucha Libre, and Television: The Ban of Women Wrestlers from Mexico City in the 1950s’, Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, 37.1 (2021), 9–34 <https://doi.org/10.1525/msem.2021.37.1.9>. 11

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character may be, it can never be comprehensive. At the most fundamental level, the performer bears the mental and physical effects of the performance. When abuse is also homophobic and directed personally, it is likely difficult to separate the emotional effect, spurring the desire to change the perception of exóticos. The performer is also responsible for advance preparation that makes the performance possible before stepping into the dressing room. Aoife Monks writes, ‘The secret of the actor’s work is that there is none: it turns out that the “magic” of the stage is conjured up through dull and hard work’.12 This part of the process, the costume care and honing of skill, typically include acquiring objects that enable that transition into character and later become the material remains of the performance. As an investigation into luchadores’ engagement with material culture, this section examines Armendariz’s use of costume, hair, and makeup as tools to construct the design for Cassandro. These elements prove that the performance does not begin when the wrestling begins, but much earlier with makeup application, costume care, and the work done inside a gym. Understanding how Saúl/Cassandro engages with objects in his role as a performer and specifically as an exótico helps link the persona with the reality that belongs to the performer, mainly as cultural sociologist Ian Woodward describes, using objects as ‘a crucial link between the social and economic structure and the individual actor’.13 Cassandro reshaped the parameters around what exóticos could be, exerting agency through costume and makeup to pay tribute to the performance tradition while staking a claim as a new type of performer, creating a template for future exóticos. Not long after debuting as a masked wrestler at sixteen in 1986, Armendáriz had the opportunity to wrestle for a more prominent Juarez promotion looking for an exótico. Armendáriz found that he was a natural choice, based on reactions from those around him, describing, ‘Everybody was like turning around and looking 12

Monks, p. 17.

Ian Woodward, Understanding Material Culture (London: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2007), p. 4. 13

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at me, and I was like, “Oh my god, is this like my coming out day or what…”’.14 This cultural attitude is critical, as it is part of the reason Armendáriz became an exótico and changed costume design, makeup use, and performance style in the course of that choice. It also gives a framework for understanding the relationship between nonverbal disclosure of queer identity for Mexican-Americans and gender performance. Using Mexican singer and Juarez resident Juan Gabriel (1950-2016) as a starting point, a 2020 study in the Journal of Latinx Psychology investigates the cultural and social factors around ‘coming out’ for Mexican American gay men. The study is especially relevant to this case study for the findings concerning machismo and the conflict between Spanish colonial gender rules and fluidity in Mexican indigenous understandings of gender and sexuality. The study argues, ‘In the case of coming out, these gender expectations may inﬂuence how gay Latinxs negotiate their behavior in order to pass as heterosexual or utilize gender “transgressions” as a means of nonverbal disclosure’.15 By this measure, behavior deemed too effeminate from Armendáriz or even the first exóticos would seemingly have been associated with homosexual identity. When Armendáriz reached the ring and experienced a nonverbal disclosure moment in 1986, it was almost expected that he should be the one to accept the offer because of his sexuality, solidifying an expectation between gender performance and sexual identity within the performance space. This relationship also affects costuming and design for exótico performers through images of masculinity established by early mainstream luchadores.

BODY In an investigation of costume as a performative object, Donatella Barbieri

Tapp and Berthiaume.

Kevin Delucio, Melissa L. Morgan-Consoli, and Tania Israel, ‘Lo Que Se ve No Se Pregunta: Exploring Nonverbal Gay Identity Disclosure among Mexican American Gay Men.’, Journal of Latinx Psychology, 8.1 (2020), 21–40 (p. 24) <https://doi.org/10.1037/lat0000139>. 15

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discusses Joseph Gramldi (1778-1837), English performer and clown, writing ‘Grimaldi’s powerful onstage presence was developed by making changes with costume. By altering and distorting the proportions of the body playing with fit, scale, and combination of elements, his costumes emphasized both its grotesqueness and its expressive qualities.’16 Clowning and wrestling hold several similarities: exaggerated movement through acrobatics, communication through costume, and using coded physicality to entertain. Armendáriz describes early exóticos as being the ‘clowns’ of the ring, using exaggerated femininity, stereotypes towards gay men, and hypersexualized speech and movement for comedic effect. Armendariz states that redesigning exótico performance aimed to dignify the practice, interrupting the existing connotation. This interruption is propelled by costume, one of the main set pieces in lucha libre and part of the reason most luchadores use costume to distinguish themselves as performers. Monks writes, ‘The appearance, abilities and dimensions of the working body are produced and rendered meaningful through costume’ and ‘the aesthetic body can function as part of the design of a production, communicating atmosphere, creating spectacle and sometimes working as a substitute for the set’.17 Cassandro’s gowns function primarily as a communication tool, especially in lucha libre, where sets are minimal; he applies them only at the moment before stepping into the crowd, using them to make an impression during the journey to the stage, then removing the garment before starting the match. Cassandro’s costumes, especially the gowns he wears into the ring and in press photos, connect with past exótico tradition, create a projection of power, and show investment in his performance. Cassandro’s gown, though perhaps more easily thought of as a gown-robe hybrid or coat with train, is made from two pieces that snap together as a jacket that buttons up entirely from the waist with a train open at the bottom that fits under Donatella Barbieri, ‘Performativity and the Historical Body: Detecting Performance through the Archived Costume’, Studies in Theatre & Performance, 33.3 (2013), 281–301 (p. 295) <https://doi.org/10.1386/stap.33.3.281_1>. 16

Monks, p. 21.

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the jacket. Based on Marie Losier’s 2018 documentary film, Cassandro, the Exótico!, and photos of his appearances, there are likely at least five versions of the gown with a similar pattern featuring gold embroidery and sequins. In the documentary, he estimates each gown uses twelve yards of fabric at thirty-five dollars per yard, placing the cost of each gown at around four-hundred twenty dollars.18 Rather than purchasing new gowns frequently, he seems to have amassed a collection that he re-uses for different performances. When discussing Vonni Diva’s costumes, Rosslyn Prosser writes, ‘Costumes are an important way into storytelling and the documenting of memory. Each costume has a story of who made it, where and when it was made, or where it was bought’.19 Unlike Baby Sharon or Gardenia Davis, Armendáriz did not craft the garments himself but shared a collaborative relationship with his wardrobe maker, Omar Morales. Morales passed away from COVID-19 in May of 2020 but was Cassandro’s costume maker for twenty-five years.20 Morales’s workshop was located in Juarez near Telas del Mundo, a fabric shop that could have been a resource for his work. Both shops are within two miles of the Paso del Norte International Bridge into El Paso, making the location convenient for customers like Armendáriz, who often travel between both cities. These also exist within a more extensive network of small workshops in the city that create customized garments, especially for momentous occasions like weddings and quinceañeras, as well as maquiladoras, or large foreign-owned factories.21 Cassandro states that the original inspiration for the gowns was Diana, Princess of Wales’s wedding dress. The wedding dress, designed by Elizabeth and David Marie Losier, Cassandro, the Exotico!, 2018 <https://vimeo.com/ondemand/ cassandrotheexotico> [accessed 12 June 2021]. 18

Edward and others, p. 105.

‘Celebration Honors El Paso Wrestler Cassandro El Exotico with Unveiling of Specialty Beer’ <https://www.elpasotimes.com/picture-gallery/news/local/el-paso/2020/07/28/elpaso-wrestler-cassandro-el-exotico-honored-specialty-beer/5524334002/> [accessed 4 May 2021]. 20

ANGELA McCRACKEN, ‘Beauty and the Quinceañera: Reproductive, Productive, and Virtual Dimensions of the Global Political Economy of Beauty: Angela McCracken’, in Feminism and International Relations (Routledge, 2011). 21

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Emanuel, featured a twenty-five-foot-long train. Like Cassandro’s gowns, the train attaches through a hidden mechanism.22 Diana’s support of LGBT+ communities, especially her 1987 to a residential ward for people with AIDs, propelled her status as a queer icon and made the design element meaningful for its inspiration.23 Cassandro has participated in lucha libre exhibitions worldwide and, to honor her during one of his performances in London, he wore a purple version of the gown with sequined embellishments and a ten to twelve-foot train, the longest in his repertoire.24 As a communicative tool, Diana’s gown was created to command attention on the steps of St. Paul’s cathedral. Cassandro’s gowns deliver the same message in a different context, whether at the Roundhouse in London or a small outdoor ring in El Paso.25 Over time, aided by Marie Losier’s documentary, media profiles, and appearances worldwide, Cassandro’s name has also evolved into Cassandro the Exótico, declaring him as not just an exótico, but the exótico. Losier’s documentary features an image of Cassandro posing in the red gown, which was included in the El Paso Museum of History’s exhibition. Though it still garners attention, once in the exhibition, the costume’s communicative ability changes. The gown is placed on a mannequin, displayed without barriers where a viewer can observe the garment differently than during the performance. Even as a spectator in the front rows of the audience, it would be unlikely to gain the same perspective as viewing the garment in a well-lit, quiet room. The gown is presented as a complete piece during the performance, but the exhibition grants the opportunity to see how each part of the material functions in tandem to create

Alice Newbold, ‘The Real Story Behind Princess Diana’s “Amazing, Completely OTT” Wedding Dress’, British Vogue, 2020 <https://www.vogue.co.uk/fashion/article/princessdiana-wedding-dress> [accessed 5 November 2021]. 22

Louis Staples, ‘The Queer Mourning of Princess Diana’, Harper’s BAZAAR, 2021 <https:// www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/film-tv/a38092562/the-queer-mourning-of-princessdiana/> [accessed 5 November 2021]. 23

Losier.

‘Lucha Libre’, Roundhouse <https://www.roundhouse.org.uk/whats-on/2019/lucha-libre/> [accessed 5 November 2021]. 25

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an effect. Each piece is built from several layers. The inner lining is made from satin and makes up a thicker under-layer. The top part of the train and bottom sections of the jacket have a hidden white strip with fasteners that hold the pieces together. The satin inner shines underneath an outer layer of embroidered fabric made from two cotton tulle or netting layers that feature a delicate looping pattern. Netting or cotton tulle is better suited for holding embroidery than stiff tulle made from other materials like rayon or polyester. The netted layer creates a delicate base for the gold lamé embroidery that loops around a lighter white gold or silver thread, simulating small loops of gold chain covering the garment (Fig. 4). The gold detail runs throughout the garment in curving lines, opening up into sparkling red orchids made from more red lamé thread and sequins that reflect magenta, blue, and yellow under bright lights. The embroidery runs through the entire coat and tailpiece to the ends of the train (Fig. 5). Fine netting extends beyond the inner coat sleeves, creating a sheer embroidered section near the wrists and hands (Fig. 6). The ends of the sleeves are then sealed with thicker cuffs that create piping at the ends from zigzag stitched seams. The less visible inner edges of the coat are finished with a red overlock stitched seam at the ends. The coat also has inner fasteners that close from the waist up to the higher, stiff collar. When put together, the pieces create the illusion of a seamless jacket with an extended train (Fig. 7).

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Fig. 4: Omar Morales, Red Gown Sequin Detail, 2021. El Paso, Texas, El Paso Museum of History.

Fig. 5: Omar Morales, Red Gown Train Detail, 2021. El Paso, Texas, El Paso Museum of History.

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Fig. 6: Omar Morales, Red Gown with Train, 2021. El Paso, Texas, El Paso Museum of History.

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Fig. 7: Omar Morales, Red Gown with Train, 2021. El Paso, Texas, El Paso Museum of History.

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In an essay on camp and drag, performer Simon Dodi writes, ‘On a surface level, the camp of a drag queen is exposed through makeup and costume or in the energies between the performers and the audience; however, behind such theatricality is the labour of a working artist’.26 Likewise, Cassandro’s gowns project the elevation of regality over the masses, but it is clear that Morales also created each costume with practicality for the performer in mind. The garment contains several design features suited for performance. First, it is light enough for Cassandro to run in for his ring entrance. The snaps must also be reasonably strong to ensure the two pieces do not separate during his entrance, losing the train by accident. Second, Losier's documentary features a scene with Armendáriz doing his laundry at home, hanging several of his costumes on a clothesline to dry in the midday sun in his backyard at home in El Paso. The delicate embroidery and fabric would likely be too fragile for a standard American dryer, but disassembling the two sections makes accessible care and storage more manageable, especially for the longer train pieces that drag onto the ground or become heavier when wet after washing. He uses the costume to project an image of authority in the ring, but at home, as Saúl, he is still a working performer who must handle the chore of personally cleaning his costumes. Underneath the gown, Cassandro’s typical gear (the general technical term for the overall wrestling singlet or leotard, kneepads, armguards, and tights) consists of nude pantyhose or fishnet stockings under a brightly colored plunging V-necked cotton-LYCRA or spandex blend leotard with triangular lapels and matching arm sleeves that attach from the middle fingers running up through the edge of the bicep. The singlets and arm gauntlets are usually embellished with flames, lightning bolts, or other shapes in contrasting colors from additional pieces of material. He also wears matching knee guards over knee pads in some instances but often eschews these in appearances where he is not wrestling. The knee pads are essential for protection, especially for a wrestler like Cassandro, who has endured painful knee injuries in the 26

Edward and others, p. 93.

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past. The covers help mask the visual interruption and, in essence, hide a point of weakness. Spandex material, especially for leotards and sportswear, is ideal because it is a white fiber, easily dyeable, washable, and resistant to perspiration.27 It also clings to the body, highlighting physique and musculature, key parts of wrestling performativity. Leotard or bodysuit use in wrestling dates back to the days of the circus strongman. Barbara Brown and Danny Graydon write, ‘The strongman makes a career of physical labor, and dresses accordingly. The costume is pulled tight over his muscles, so as to evidence his extraordinary size and tone, and is flexible, enabling the gymnastic stretches that he may perform for audiences’.28 They also relate formfitting costumes to superheroes and the impression of brightly-colored capes and bodysuits in comic books. El Santo and Blue Demon also played superheroes on film in the late 1960s and early 1970s, battling all manner of horror monsters, which were then used in comic books, with each medium culminating into the live ring performance. They wore their masks for the duration of each film, appearing in street clothes (usually leisure suits fashionable at the time), before appearing in the ring shirtless with wrestling tights and glittering capes that echoed other famous American comic book superheroes.29 This interaction between media can be viewed through an intertheatrical lens, described by Jacky Bratton as a ‘reading [that] goes beyond the written. It seeks to articulate the mesh of connections between all kinds of theatre texts, and between texts and their users’.30 These connections drew many luchadores to the live performance, including Cassandro, who first encountered

Senthilkumar Mani and N. Anbumani, ‘Dynamic Elastic Behavior of Cotton and Cotton / Spandex Knitted Fabrics’, Journal of Engineered Fibers and Fabrics, 9.1 (2014), 155892501400900100 (p. 94) <https://doi.org/10.1177/155892501400900111>. 27

Barbara Brownie and Danny Graydon, The Superhero Costume: Identity and Disguise in Fact and Fiction (Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2016) <https://doi. org/10.5040/9781474260114>. 28

Bobb Cotter, The Mexican Masked Wrestler and Monster Filmography (Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Co., 2005) <http://archive.org/details/mexicanmaskedwre0000cott> [accessed 19 July 2021]. 29

Jacky Bratton, New Readings in Theatre History (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 37. 30

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lucha libre through film or comic books and, once able to attend matches live, were eager to see their superheroes in person.31 They also used costume and exposed skin to project an image of idealized masculinity that moved from media into a live environment. Many early luchadores wrestled only in boots, masks, and trunks that exposed significantly more skin. Exóticos typically used the same costume template, opting for elaborate robes and exaggerated movement to distinguish their performance.32 When the Lilac Wave exóticos, the supposed sexual deviants, chose to recreate their costume style, they covered up more skin. First invented in 1959, LYCRA experienced a resurgence in the 1980s and became popular in fashion and sportswear.33 Armendáriz describes a moment in 1989, at the beginning of both their careers, when he met with rival-turned-friend Pimpinela Escarlata, and they decided to incorporate pantyhose and ‘bathing suits’, or V-neck leotards into their standard costumes.34 Pimpinela and Armendáriz decided to embellish their costumes and gear while underlining their physical ability as wrestlers as a way to oppose the idea that exóticos were not as athletic as their more stereotypically masculine counterparts. They initially tested several looks, including more-exposed thong bathing suits that they ultimately decided were too uncomfortable and too explicit for their new style.35 Nearly a decade after celebrities like Olivia NewtonJohn and Jane Fonda helped popularize spandex leggings and leotards in different environments, they would have been able to access a variety of women’s sportswear styles easily. As his career progressed, he commissioned matching sets of gear from

Don Shapiro and Valentin Sandoval, ‘Power at the Podcast Featuring Cassandro El Exotico and Diego Martinez’, Power at the Podcast <https://open.spotify.com/episode/1AIb vvPrFiyt8JaQD3Bhtc?si=ylUI-fYUSKqBRTCVEv4r0w&dl_branch=1>. 31

Grobet and others.

Mette Bielefeldt Bruun and Michael A. Langkjær, ‘Sportswear: Between Fashion, Innovation and Sustainability’, Fashion Practice, 8.2 (2016), 181–88 (p. 185) <https://doi.org/ 10.1080/17569370.2016.1221931>. 33

Tapp and Berthiaume.

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Omar Morales, who created the suits recognizable from the later parts of his career.36 Cassandro also dances into the ring for some matches, shimmying his shoulders and shaking his hips before removing the train and tossing it away, performing a pseudo-striptease. Writing on the dynamics of stage nudity and striptease, Monks proposes: ‘…dressing or undressing establishes a “normal” body (naked or clothed) and taking off or putting on clothes then crosses the boundary of that normal body. It is less the loss of clothing that matters, as much as the shift in the boundaries of the body that makes the striptease erotic’. 37 By the end of the routine, when he removes the gown and prepares to wrestle, he will still have less exposed skin than most opponents, but the removal and movement style make the costume reveal underneath the gown provocative. The act of removal becomes part of the performance, with the absence of costume functioning differently than if he had arrived on stage without the gown. Santo and Blue Demon also performed a version of this, changing from their regular clothing into lucha libre uniforms over the course of a film. Cassandro subverts this image of exposing a typically masculine uniform that fully reveals his chest by removing the gown to uncover a feminine costume (though it is not necessarily the costume a luchadora would use) with a plunging neckline (Fig. 8). In 1990, though he nearly took his own life from the pressure around the event, he competed against El Hijo del Santo (Jorge Ernesto Guzmán Rodríguez, 1963-) and credits that match as the turning point that earned exóticos legitimacy and respect among other luchadores.38

Shapiro and Sandoval; ‘Celebration Honors El Paso Wrestler Cassandro El Exotico with Unveiling of Specialty Beer’. 36

Monks, p. 102.

Finnegan.

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Fig. 8: Katie Orlinsky, Cassandro in the Ring, 2016. The New Yorker.

In his work on disidentificatory practice, José Esteban Muñoz outlines a mode of performance wherein artists reformulate cultural logic within the performance to neither assimilate to nor oppose mainstream culture.39 Armendáriz views the work he and others built around ‘dignifying the exóticos’ as an act of defiance against abuse he experienced away from lucha libre and through harassment from other wrestlers and promoters. Additionally, Muñoz remarks that comedy does not exist independently of rage; this is visible through Cassandro’s playful performance and the material he uses. The ring became a space for empowerment and a place to create a new type of performance that used material culture to experiment with maintaining a specific mode of performance for exóticos while competing with mainstream wrestlers.40 Cassandro engages in worldbuilding through performance that also affects his life away from the ring by exposing his private life and sexuality to the performance audience. Furthermore, Saúl is never entirely erased from the performance. There are

Muñoz, p. 6.

Bidwell.

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elements of his personal identity and life in the objects he uses that carry Saúl along with Cassandro. He has also used his status as a public figure to advocate for LGBT+ issues and is transparent about his previous struggles with mental health and substance abuse. As he builds this public identity, disseminating more images of himself as Cassandro but speaking as Saúl, his costumes become embedded with his personal history and part of the next performance. He typically rounds out his character design with distinctive butterfly boots that reflect his identity and stay with him in the ring as Cassandro. There are two different sets of boots that appear most consistently: a pair with multi-colored butterfly outlines in magenta, yellow-green, sky blue, and redorange, white soles and laces through fourteen sets of eyelets over a white leather upper and full boot, and an additional pair featuring monarch-style butterflies with multicolored wings, gold trim over a white leather upper, and about fourteen sets of eyelets. Each pair is usually laced tightly up to mid-calf. It is unclear whether Morales also created Cassandro’s boots, but they are likely, like the gown, made for Cassandro and expensive enough to commission several pairs and wear them multiple times. In 2021, it is possible to order a custom pair of leather wrestling boots online for around two hundred dollars, albeit without the advantage of returning to the shoemaker quickly if they do not fit correctly.41 In many of the photos featuring these two sets of boots, he adds strips of rhinestones in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, and magenta in reference to the LGBT+ pride flag (Fig. 9). There are other sets of boots, but with one exception that uses orchid motifs, every pair features some type of butterfly element and uses a cushioned rubber sole. Like the early wrestlers who contracted Antonio Martinez’s services, any boots need to be flexible with enough grip for Cassandro to climb onto the ropes easily and quickly perform acrobatic tricks without falling.

‘World Wrestling Wear The Number One Boots’ <https://www.worldwrestlingwear.com/ stock.html> [accessed 5 November 2021]. 41

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Fig. 9: Rowdy Lee Dugan, Cassandro with Butterfly Boots, 2019. Marfa, Texas.

Cassandro’s performance often includes movement atop the ropes, bringing the boots to eye level with the audience. The boots are as much an opportunity to express support or pride for Saúl’s community, blurring the separation between performer and character through costume, especially for audience members familiar with his personal life. Simon Sladen writes about a similar occurrence when Pamela Anderson played a British pantomime role in 2009, performing as the Genie in Aladdin but wearing a costume reminiscent of her iconic red swimsuit costume on Baywatch. Sladen describes, ‘This mode of performance relies heavily upon the layering of illusion, the foundations of which are present in the construction of Role; a conflation of Character (Genie of the Lamp) and Performer (Anderson)’.42 As an exótico, Cassandro performs a version of homosexuality in the ring while also drawing attention to his sexual identity outside of the ring through costume.

Simon Sladen, ‘“Hiya Fans!”: Celebrity Performance and Reception in Modern British Pantomime’, in Popular Performance, ed. by Adam Ainsworth, Oliver Double, and Louise Peacock (London, UK: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2017), pp. 179–201 (p. 189). 42

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As a young luchador, he experienced the same partiality through identification when seeing Baby Sharon perform. The performance still draws on stereotypes of femininity and homosexuality but, rather than isolate LGBTQ+ fans, the perception of authenticity earns him support. Cassandro and Pimpinela also brought exótico gear closer to drag than Davis's original dandy image by wearing high-cut women’s leotards and stockings compared to traditional wrestling trunks or tights with bare chests. The key to their new formula was maintaining charismatic audience engagement while moving the performance style closer to typical luchador wrestling but subverting masculinity through costume. Barbieri characterizes Grimaldi’s costume adjustments as having lasting effects on the industry, writing, ‘By reconnecting to the outsider status and constructing visually a role that allows him to critique human failing, while empowering its wearer through dignity, movement and presence, costume here is a second body so effective that it becomes a lasting blueprint for generations of future clowns.’43 Within Baby Sharon’s mentorship and the tradition started by Gardenia Davis, Cassandro and Pimpinela successfully altered material culture associated with exóticos while ‘dignifying’ the practice, as they set out to do, by setting an example of legitimate competition with all luchadores.44

HA IR Though names are intangible entities, the process behind retiring a name is not as simple as rewriting advertising materials and acquiring new gear. When Armendáriz debuted as an exótico, he started as Rosa Salvaje. When he decided to retire the character and become Cassandro, he was forced to wager his name in a lucha de apuesta, or betting match. To participate in a lucha de apuesta, wrestlers must bet their hair or mask. If a wrestler’s mask is removed by their opponent during

Barbieri, p. 295.

Tapp and Berthiaume.

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the match as a result of the challenge, they must reveal their identity and retire the character. If a wrestler who competes unmasked bets their hair and loses, they must stay in the ring where their hair is immediately shaved and given to the opponent as a token. The shaving or unmasking is a display of humiliation and, while the outcome is often pre-determined, it can draw an unexpectedly emotional response and affect wrestlers’ mental health over the loss.45 However, it may also offer other rewards. After losing a lucha de apuesta to Hijo del Santo in 2007, Cassandro lost his hair but earned a $25,000 windfall.46 On a 2011 episode of his talk show, Experiencias, El Hijo del Santo introduced the episode by describing Cassandro as a well-regarded luchador and a fierce fighter both in and out of the ring whose career progression has paralleled his own. He then segues into a lengthy segment that brings the viewer into the ‘sanctuary’, or the room holding his collection of career artifacts, focusing on walls of masks and title belts. Santo then returns to the scene, walking to a motorized glass case with revolving rows of masks, opening it, pulling out a small glass box containing Cassandro’s hair from the 2007 match. He lifts the lid, allowing for an extreme close-up of the box in his hand (Fig. 10) before the segment ends, and cuts to a reel of Cassandro’s matches.47 The past haunts every part of the scene. Marvin Carlson writes, ‘…theatre spaces, like dramatic texts and acting bodies, are deeply involved with the preservation and configuration of cultural memory, and so they also are almost invariably haunted in one way or another, and this haunting of the space of performance makes its own important contribution to the overall reception of the dramatic event’.48 The segment, or dramatic event, is the performance of a collection. Whether or not the clip shows Hijo del Santo’s rooms or a set created for the show, the camera’s 45

Alex Hammond and Ian Markiewicz, Lucha Mexico, 2015.

Finnegan.

El Hijo del Santo, ‘Experiencias con Cassandro, El Exótico’, Experiencias, 2011.

Marvin Carlson, The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine, Theater--Theory/ Text/Performance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), pp. 131–32 <http://hdl. handle.net/2027/mdp.39015049624524>. 48

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presence transforms the area into a set filled with the relics of his career, the memory of each opponent and match, and the legacy of his legendary father, El Santo. In essence, because he uses the same mask design as his father, he cannot act without evoking that history. With this tradition present, placing Cassandro’s hair into the collection is treated as a sign of reverence, at least in the context of the talk show. The act also draws attention to the materiality of hair, especially once it becomes detached from the person.

Fig. 10: Hijo del Santo, Experiencias, 2011.

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Part of Cassandro’s trademark look is his bleached blonde hair styled to resemble Farrah Fawcett’s famous short, feathered layers popular in the late 1970s and a tribute to his fondness for the era and the point when he first encountered lucha libre.49 He describes, ‘For me that I don't use a mask, the most valuable thing is my hair. This gives me identity, gives me protection, gives me a lot of personality and everything. The guys that use the mask, that's like their secret. They cannot lose their mask because then you see their real identity’.50 He grows his hair out to several inches long with the sides shaved, an ideal length for curling and drying. He uses rollers, a curling iron, or a hairdryer and brush to create voluminous waves at the top and sides. He sprays each roll with hairspray before breaking the curl and fluffing the hair out with his head upside down, then finishing with more hairspray. When he returns to standing, the hair should hold its volume and remain in place through the performance, withstanding any sweating or movement. The 1970s inspired Cassandro, but he also made his debut during the height of glam rock and hair metal in the 1980s. Anna Kurennaya deconstructs magazine images of glam metal rockers, primarily white and male, and the contradictions they hold, which ‘communicate a potent, dominant and stereotypically masculine sexuality, but at the same time they make use of the feminized glamour typically associated with the historically feminine pin-up format’.51 Musicians like Sebastian Bach pose in images with long hair and makeup while advertisements aimed at women in the same publications tout a need for feminine beauty to appear ‘natural’, even when advertising chemical perming products to achieve the over-the-top hairstyles popular for women at the time. Kurennaya argues that glam rockers complicated ideas of masculinity by drawing attention to its performativity through hair and makeup.52 In this context, Cassandro’s hair choices appear more closely 49

Finnegan.

Losier.

Anya Kurennaya, ‘Look What the Cat Dragged In: Analysing Gender and Sexuality in the Hot Metal Centerfolds of 1980s Glam Metal’, Critical Studies in Men’s Fashion, 2.2–3 (2015), 163–211 (p. 203) <https://doi.org/10.1386/csmf.2.2-3.199_1>. 51

Kurennaya, p. 206.

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aligned with popular aesthetic images of masculinity for the time, even if styles have changed. Life on the border also comes with popular culture from each country, presenting both images of masculinity. The perception of masculinity as free from artifice or performativity is also worth interrogating in terms of luchadores. While there is an area for further exploration around body development and performance-enhancing drugs that falls outside this project's scope, exótico or not, luchadores essentially perform masculinity and use products to manipulate their bodies and heighten this perception. For example, many luchadores use body oil to simulate sweat and highlight muscle definition when performing. While some luchadores, especially in the 1970s and 80s, contrast this image, most also display a distinct lack of body hair. Body hair removal is also standard within ballet and other dance forms but is associated with uncleanliness in women in a way that is not present with men.53 Cassandro likely also uses hair removal techniques but enhances this perception through the nude nylon pantyhose he wears under the leotard. Most masked luchadores often cover their hair, making the absence of visible hair as much a design choice as drawing attention to it as Cassandro does. Hair preparation is part of the pre-performance ritual and liminal space where a performer transforms from the self to the character, the ‘not me’ and ‘not not me’, or double negative relationship between private and social, that performance theorist Richard Schechner poses.54 Lucha libre stretches this liminal space, mainly through wrestlers who perform masked but keep their identities private, leaving and arriving with the mask. Hair is also an identifying feature that, as much as they become their character, is part of the performer associated with the self. If pulled, it garners a reaction from the person. However, hair can also be highly ephemeral, Lyndsey Winship, ‘“The Bikini Line Is Still a No-No”: Why Does Dance Have a Problem with Body Hair?’, The Guardian, 3 November 2021, section Stage <https://www. theguardian.com/stage/2021/nov/03/bikini-line-dance-problem-body-hair-chests-armpitslegs-waxed-diverse-performers> [accessed 4 November 2021]. 53

Richard Schechner and Victor Witter Turner, Between Theater & Anthropology (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania press, 1989), p. 112. 54

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altered instantly, or disguised through specialized techniques, whether chemical or temporary. By applying the same styling techniques consistently, along with masking the aging process, it is built into Cassandro’s design identity, re-created before each performance. As Cassandro, Armendáriz utilizes chemical treatment to bleach and color his hair, which requires additional upkeep and cost. Permanent color also means that Armendáriz carries part of Cassandro with him in his personal life through his hair, cementing this connection between his professional and personal identities. This point is reinforced by actor Gael Garcia Bernal, who promoted other projects with uncharacteristically bleached hair in between filming the upcoming biopic on Cassandro. It also embeds an identifying quality into the hair when removed. People lose hair naturally each day and, if the norm in their cultural environment, have it cut regularly with little regard to the parts removed. However, when attached to a ritual process, it also acts as a tangible memorial remnant of a person, whether through items like Victorian mourning jewelry or hair match winnings that become part of the victorious wrestler’s archive, like the box in El Hijo del Santo’s collection. Marcia Pointon describes mourning jewelry as a museum-inminiature, where, ‘This process of containment (the hair element can no longer be touched once it is captured and collected in the ‘museum’ of jewellery), reduction, and universalization is a visible enactment of mourning in which individual loss is experienced as a total world-transformation’.55 After an emotional experience after losing his trademark tresses in a hair mask to a younger wrestler, Cassandro states, ‘It's more of an honor for you to have my hair than for me to have your […] mask’.56 This speech is significant to a material culture study as Armendáriz directly refers to hair’s object status and value once removed. However, at the end of the scene, he also states, ‘Yes, I care about my hair, but it'll grow back’, pointing out the ephemeral

Marcia Pointon, ‘Materializing Mourning: Hair, Jewellery and the Body’, in Classic and Modern Writings on Fashion, ed. by Peter McNeil (Berg, 2009), pp. 39–57 <https://doi. org/10.5040/9781847887153>. 55

Losier

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quality hair has when on a person’s head, but permanence it gains once detached.57 In lucha libre, hair in place of a mask can transform from a communicative tool for the wrestling persona to a valuable part of the event’s material remains, haunted by the individual wrestler to whom it once belonged.

FAC E Prior to the Lilac Wave, exóticos like Baby Sharon and Rudy Reyna (Andrés Rodolfo Reyna Torres, 1946-2015) performed in elaborate costumes but did not use masks or makeup. Like hair, makeup became part of Cassandro’s design identity in place of a mask. However, it does not leave the same physical remnants or join collections as hair does. It is possible to collect cosmetics that belong to a person, as the Victoria and Albert Museum has done with Kylie Minogue’s dressing room, but it is not possible to physically collect a makeup look without mediation, like photography or videography. Started in 1946, the Clown Egg Register acts as a copyright collection for the members of Clown International, recording each clown’s makeup design onto an eggshell (though they now use ceramic eggs for longer preservation).58 However, this is not quite the same process as collecting hair or a costume. Aoife Monks writes, ‘Make-up unsettles the distinction between the real and the illusion. It has the same but more condensed effect as costume by remaining perceptually indistinct from the actor’s body, yet resisting total absorption into that body’.59 Makeup has physicality and must be applied and removed, making the sum of each component temporary. Wearing exaggerated eyeshadow, false eyelashes, and glittery red lipstick is preparation for Cassandro, the character that occurs

Losier.

Luke Stephenson and Helen Champion, The Clown Egg Register, 2017 <https://www. overdrive.com/search?q=379A3C14-E6D1-49C5-BD04-F886E71A154C> [accessed 6 November 2021]. 58

Monks, p. 80.

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through Saúl, the performer. Further supporting Schechner’s proposal of the ‘not me’ and ‘not not me’ space, the makeup application process marks the beginning of his transformation. It occurs more slowly than putting on a mask and is applied layer by layer, a skill the performer must acquire since he does not employ a makeup artist. As the first exótico world championship holder and multi-linguist, Cassandro is featured in many short pieces about exóticos and lucha libre. As his image spreads through film and live performances worldwide, he becomes the primary template for exóticos, solidifying makeup use as a standard. In turn, his use of makeup while wrestling communicates to audiences that he is an exótico because he and the other Lilac Wave exóticos created the standard. Monks also remarks on the history of paintings and photographs depicting actors in dressing rooms, which ‘undertake the task of displaying the seams between the illusion and reality, of showing us what the actor is “really” like offstage’.60 Aligned with Monks’s argument, Marie Losier’s 2018 documentary includes a sequence where Cassandro applies makeup in a dressing room. It is critical to view the images with the understanding that the backstage image is a representation and the documentarian’s presence in the space, along with Armendariz’s awareness of the camera, create a performance out of the makeup application. Nevertheless, the sequence also provides insight into his process, providing a loose template of the skills and tools needed to craft this aspect of Cassandro, applied through eye makeup and lip color. Makeup artist and theorist Thomas Morawetz writes, ‘Although part of the purpose of self-change is decoration, enhancement, or beauty, the deeper and more radical purpose is transformation’.61 When creating the look for Cassandro, Armendáriz opts for glitters and graphic, contrasting eyeshadow, exaggerated rather than ‘natural’, as the 1980s magazine advertisements urge for women in Kurennaya’s

Monks, p. 14.

Thomas Morawetz, Making Faces, Playing God: Identity and the Art of Transformational Makeup (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001). 61

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glam rock study.62 The style aligns more closely with drag performers like Divine (1945-1988), whose makeup extends facial features and pushes eyeshadow beyond the eyelids and into the eyebrows to demand attention. Cassandro’s base routine begins with techniques that apply to many different application styles, then veers into a design intended for a performance setting. The sequence begins with the makeup application in progress with hair pulled back with a jersey headband and wearing a base layer of stick foundation. He then applies powder with a round sponge applicator and finishes the look with a highlighting powder over the nose, chin, and forehead. The most significant aspect of the face makeup application is not necessarily the technique but the products used. Rather than heavier stage makeup offered by specialist brands like Mehron, he uses widely available products from mainstream brands that are inexpensive. While still using commercially available products, the eyeshadow application moves from a standard beauty makeup into specialized techniques less likely to appear outside a performance setting. First, Cassandro lines his top and bottom waterlines with black eyeliner, applies a thin line of eyelash glue on the top eyelid, and uses a small brush and sponge applicator to apply white highlighting lines for eyeshadow over an eye primer. Eyelid primer is beneficial in a high activity setting for preventing creasing on eyelids, especially with glitter eyeshadows that attract oil. Without priming skin first to extend the makeup’s ability to remain in place, it can quickly melt from sweat and exertion, breaking the illusion Cassandro has foregrounded with other parts of his costume. Once eyeshadow is applied, he places false strip eyelashes with rhinestones to glue at the base of his eyelids and uses color to fill in, shape, and exaggerate his eyebrows, creating visual balance within the face and enhancing facial expression. Cassandro then uses bold red lipstick to accentuate his lips, following this step with a layer of bright red lipstick and lip gloss.

Kurennaya, p. 203.

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Fig. 11: Marie Losier, Cassandro Styles Hair with Completed Makeup, 2018. Cassandro, the Exotico!

It would be an oversight to ignore the connection between red lips, thin, drawn eyebrows, and the Chola figure, particularly within this geographic and cultural context and in terms of makeup design over time. Chola is a slang term for a member of a subculture within Mexican-American communities, with a look usually characterized by dark, visible lip liner, red lipstick, thick eyeliner, eyebrows plucked thin or shaved, and drawn in with an eyebrow pencil. This style evolved from the pachuco style of the 1940s, which also prized an accentuated outline and exaggerated shapes in men’s clothing. Pachuca and Chola fashion, which used similar pieces of clothing, likely arose from women with lower socioeconomic status inheriting clothing from brothers or fathers and making their own alterations.63 The pachuco style also developed out of defiance toward assimilation after aggressive Mexican Repatriation efforts between 1929 and 1944. During this period, nearly two million people of Mexican ancestry (and those who happened to be in areas where raids occurred) were forcibly deported from the United States into Mexico,

Barbara Calderón-Douglass, ‘The Folk Feminist Struggle Behind the Chola Fashion Trend’, 2015 <https://www.vice.com/en/article/wd4w99/the-history-of-the-chola-456> [accessed 7 October 2021]. 63

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with the majority of deportees having been U.S. citizens.64 As a result, the style became popular within many communities along the border, like El Paso, in the 1960s and 70s.65 Cassandro describes sneaking glances at his mother as a child while she applied makeup and becoming inspired by her, though he was not allowed to experiment with it and developed the skill over time later in life. Adding makeup to the standardized performance style for exóticos also meant building a new skill. Recalling a time early on when he and Pimpinela experimented with their new images, Armendáriz states, ‘I remember we had one lipstick, and we did, with one lipstick, […] the eyes, the blush, the lip. With one red lipstick, we used to do everything. And nowadays, we have a full table full of makeup and everything like that.’66 The evolution of his kit and look over time reflect growth in the cosmetics industry, with dedicated national cosmetics stores like ULTA Beauty and Sephora expanding into El Paso in 2008, and a better understanding of makeup application with the fiscal ability to purchase tools as an established performer.67 With makeup finished, hair styled, and costumes applied, Armendáriz completes the transformation and moves out of the liminal space into the ring as Cassandro. While these elements carry parts of Armendariz’s biography and personal choices, they also become part of how Cassandro is interpreted outside of the performance space. Wrestlers like El Santo and Blue Demon are recognizable through their masks, but Cassandro’s interpretation relies on alternative components that, when combined, are identifiably associated with him and disseminated through various media. By mid-2022, there will be two different films featuring Cassandro: Marie Losier’s 2018 documentary Cassandro the Exótico! and an upcoming biopic, currently titled Cassandro, directed by Roger Ross Williams and starring Gaél García

Dunn, SB 670 Senate Bill - CHAPTERED, 2005 <http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/05-06/ bill/sen/sb_0651-0700/sb_670_bill_20051007_chaptered.html> [accessed 7 October 2021]. 64

Calderón-Douglass.

Tapp and Berthiaume.

SEC, ‘Ulta Beauty, Inc. 2008 Current Report 8-K’, SEC.Report <https://sec.report/ Document/0000950137-08-008176/> [accessed 4 November 2021]. 67

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Bernal and Roberta Colindrez. The main poster for Losier’s documentary (Fig. 12) features Armendáriz as Cassandro with torso turned one quarter away from the camera with one arm outstretched. His hair is fluffed out, blonde and voluminous in feathered curls, with teal and black eyeshadow up to his brows. He wears a red singlet with green flame-lightning shimmering pieces with matching arm covers and kneepads. The film poster also uses visual references to circus posters that are worth examination. As part of Ross Williams’s production, artists Jesus ‘CIMI’ Alvarado and Fabian Chairez painted a mural (Fig. 13) combining Armendariz and Garcia Bernal’s ‘rostros’ or visages. The mural shows Cassandro, as the film’s version, taking down a masked wrestler in a flowing cape at the edge of a ring. Cassandro wears gold and silver boots, a low-cut singlet with wide lapels, and leopard print patch details in characteristic lightning and flame shapes. He has matching arm and kneepad covers with a long train, like his trademark gowns, though only from the bottom half and without the embroidered details. The painting was initially meant to last through the film’s production but will become a permanent fixture at the building owner’s request.68 These pieces become identifying items in the collection relating to Cassandro’s career but are made identifiable through the materiality in his performance. These pieces become identifying items in the collection relating to Cassandro’s career but are made identifiable through the materiality in his performance. The more expensive and exclusive items are part of Cassandro’s costume, which required skill from Omar Morales to complete. Additionally, the specialized features for storage and cleaning show a collaborative process in which Morales is aware of the labor of care needed from the performer to extend the garment’s life. These garments also indicate a performer at the height of a career rather than the beginning but build an image for new exóticos to aspire to, just as Baby Sharon did

Monika Acevedo, ‘“Cassandro” Biopic Taps El Paso Artist For New Downtown Mural’, 93.1 KISS FM, 2021 <https://kisselpaso.com/cassandro-biopic-taps-el-paso-artist-for-newdowntown-mural/> [accessed 11 October 2021]. 68

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for Cassandro. Ultimately, this aesthetic change also marked a new space for LGBT+ wrestlers, who were always part of mainstream lucha libre and continue to be in varying capacities of openness, as evidenced by events like the Cassandro cup and participation from trans and gender-nonconforming wrestlers.69 Utilizing a material culture framework to deconstruct Cassandro’s essential elements leads to several conclusions about the performer and context. The case study shows specific moments where Armendáriz and his contemporaries exerted agency through design to build on a heritage that started with elders like Gardenia Davis and Baby Sharon. They used feminized costumes and exaggerated makeup to visually signal change while emphasizing their athletic ability through movement. Their success was cemented when Cassandro competed against Hijo del Santo, pitting the weight of tradition against a new type of performer.70 The parallels between his and Cassandro’s careers demonstrate the sequin method's importance in looking in all directions. Rather than favoring one history over another as mainstream, especially when Cassandro is less associated with a dominant image of masculinity, the sequin method places each wrestler at different spots, influential in their unique ways. However, in many narratives, Cassandro and other exóticos are ignored or relegated to a marginalized spot. As a frequent participant in lucha libre showcases worldwide, Cassandro saturates media as not just a representative for exóticos but lucha libre as a whole.

Billy Dixon on the Cassandro Cup: “It’s Time to Prove We Are Athletes”’, Daily DDT, 2021 <https://dailyddt.com/2021/03/22/billy-dixon-on-the-cassandro-cup-and-the-importanceof-the-event/> [accessed 7 July 2021]. 69

Finnegan.

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Fig. 12: Marie Losier, Cassandro, The Exotico!, 2018.

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Fig. 13: Jesus 'CIMI' Alvarado and Fabian Chairez, Mural for Cassandro Biopic, 2021. El Paso, Texas, Author’s Own Photograph.

C HAPTER 2

D ULC E TO RMEN TA/S WEET S TORM

Investigating the objects luchadoras use and inspire in their historical contexts illuminates the significance of performance environments and how they affect material culture. From exclusion in performance centers to costumes and gear created from other performance disciplines, luchadoras have worked to carve out a place in lucha libre and establish a performance lineage and legacy. Dulce Tormenta/ Sweet Storm’s experiences developing and introducing a new persona in 2021 demonstrate how luchadores use masks, hair, and costume to uphold performance tradition and personally connected performance legacies while expanding the parameters for luchadora performance. Tormenta negotiates the history behind luchadora participation, the legacy of previous El Pasoan luchadores, the formation of a new familial performance network amid industry gatekeeping, and a desire for a fresh start after injury and personal struggle. These factors become part of the objects that create the designed character, disseminated as she expands her reach in US wrestling networks. While different in some areas, women's participation has

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similar beginnings compared to lucha libre as a whole. Tormenta’s history and work are one of the sequins outlined by Edward and Farrier, where positionality in El Paso and familiarity with border culture provide the precise light to see and describe.1 This method also helps frame luchadora history, not as a marginal but parallel to other parts of lucha libre that receive more attention. The previous chapter showed that performers could consciously enact design change to shift the related material culture within a style of aesthetic tradition and disrupt a hierarchy of stereotyped performance to remake the style. On an individual level, it also showed how studying objects that enable performers to become their characters also highlights the context in which they live and work. The following case study shows how a performer may have the autonomy to create a persona through an ownership role in several levels of the production process and expanding her performance style into a new market while still facing constraints through international restrictions and the lineage of gendered performance costume. Luchadoras, or women wrestlers, have competed in Mexico since the late 1940s but did not receive the same support developing domestic talent as their male counterparts due to complaints from conservative figures in the Catholic church and Mexican federal government that women’s participation in wrestling was too sexually explicit.2 More well-known under her wrestling name Irma González, Irma Morales Muñoz (1936-) is one of the pioneers of lucha libre alongside figures like El Santo and Blue Demon. Gonzalez wrestled from the 1950s until her retirement in the 1990s.3 Gonzalez established two types of performance lineage: first as a luchadora and eventually as part of a tag team (a match where two wrestlers compete against another team while switching spots inside the ring) with her daughter, Irma Aguilar Mark Edward and others, Drag Histories, Herstories and Hairstories: Drag in a Changing Scene Volume 2 (London, United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2021), p. 105 <http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rcauk/detail.action?docID=6458981> [accessed 23 June 2021]. 1

Marjolein Van Bavel, ‘Morbo, Lucha Libre, and Television: The Ban of Women Wrestlers from Mexico City in the 1950s’, Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, 37.1 (2021), 9–34 <https://doi.org/10.1525/msem.2021.37.1.9>. 2

Van Bavel, p. 25.

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(1957-). The latter association proves that even if women do not typically inherit a persona from their parents or mentors in the same way as male luchadores like Hijo del Santo and Blue Demon Jr, they can still inherit a performance legacy. It is somewhat common for incoming luchadores to inherit a parent or mentor’s mask, going by ‘son of…/hijo de…’ as a signifier. When luchadores inherit a character, the inheritance includes the name, costumes, and weight of the cultural legacy and offers an entry point into the industry as well as a boundary around a performer’s ability to choose their career path. In 1954, the industry was disrupted for luchadoras when Mexico’s federal office in charge of regulating public entertainment bowed to pressure from conservative officials and announced that it would rescind Salvador Lutteroth’s permits within Mexico City as long as Mexican women were part of the lineup. They were tolerant of foreign women wrestlers but believed that Mexican women participating in lucha libre were harmful to the national image.4 Lutteroth complied, and the threat effectively banned Mexican women from performing lucha libre in Mexico City until 1983, creating a gap for luchadoras in the industry’s capital location and affecting their perceived legitimacy compared with male wrestlers. However, many continued to participate outside the city in smaller arenas and grew the industry in other places. Amid this background, luchadoras also developed costumes and performance styles that paralleled their counterparts who presented a display of masculinity through plain costume and exposed skin. Luchadoras often wore plain, solidcolored one- or two-piece leotards with boots and were often less exposed than men. Occasionally, their costumes also included tailoring in the chest and waist to accentuate hips and breasts, but their costumes were not embellished like the exóticos. The difference in their costume came from structure rather than detailing. By 2021, when Dulce Tormenta/Sweet Storm retired her original persona as Delilah and sought an alternative as COVID-19 restrictions cut her off from costume makers in Juarez, the design aesthetic has changed to include significantly more details 4

Van Bavel, p. 10.

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but similar structure around the garments. As a luchadora, an El Pasoan/Juarez resident, and a member of a wrestling family with a stake in the financial aspects of their wrestling management company, Dulce Tormenta/Sweet Storm is affected and influenced by various legacies communicated through visual signifiers. The following case study deconstructs her current persona, introduced in February 2021, through costume, choice, and the process of design leading up to this point.

BODY Costume researcher and academic Sofia Pantouvaki describes, ‘The unique ability of costume to perform, challenge and rethink matters related to human life through its tangible material and bodily dimensions, as well as through its wide frame of intellectual engagement, has the potential to promote ethical and inclusive representations within performance, impacting upon the society as a whole’.5 Like Edward and Farrier’s sequin method, Pantouvaki proposes costume study as a framework for expanding perspectives and representation in performance. Constructing Tormenta’s account of acquiring a leotard and undergoing physical preparation, both when first training to become a luchadora and after injury, is a more comprehensive account of a live performer’s experience with health and body care, life in a border city, and working through COVID-19. It also presents a new entry into the preparation process for debuting an original character through an established wrestler, from concept to merchandising and, eventually, archival collecting. Dulce Tormenta/Sweet Storm debuted in February 2021 but began preparing to introduce her new character near the end of 2020, working through several steps to go from character concept to live performance. Between receiving her finished costume and preparing to make her debut after injury, Tormenta found that renewed

Sofia Pantouvaki, Donatella Barbieri, and Veronica Isaac, ‘Costume as an Agent for Ethical Praxis’, Studies in Costume & Performance, 5.2 (2020), 145–52 (p. 151) <https://doi. org/10.1386/scp_00022_2>. 5

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Fig. 14: Unknown, Dulce Tormenta/Sweet Storm Initial Costume Promotional Photo, 2021.

training affected her costume fit. Within that time, the U.S.-Mexico border closed to nonessential travel amid COVID-19 restrictions, making it difficult to return to Ciudad Juárez for repeated costume adjustments. As an alternative, she purchased a dance leotard as a temporary replacement for traditional bespoke wrestling gear. Her mask designer then used the dance costumes to create custom wrist covers, kneepads, and boots, with a plan to commission gear specifically for lucha libre later when the Juarez-based design and fabrication market became accessible.6 The initial gear, mostly comprised of dance paraphernalia, can be seen during a May 2021 match with Mission Pro Wrestling and promotional photos (Fig. 14).7 At the surface, the costume contains typical hallmarks for lucha libre: wrist Chaos Theory, ‘EPISODE 36 Sweet Storm AKA Dulce Tormenta’, Chaos Theory, 2021 <https://wrestlingwithjohners.com/chaos-theory/EPISODE-36-Sweet-Storm-AKA-DulceTormenta/> [accessed 6 May 2021]. 6

Title Match Wrestling, Jazmin Allure vs Dulce Tormenta (Women’s Wrestling) Mission Pro Wrestling, 2021 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XetBWYdlA28> [accessed 18 October 2021]. 7

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covers, kneepads, mask, leotard, and tights. The wrist covers are mainly used for aesthetic quality and, while matches are relatively short, the items most likely to wear out quickly are the kneepads. One of the first experiences training for lucha libre is learning to fall, tumble and roll onto the knees. While most training will also include falling with opponent safety in mind and minimizing the risk of injury, similar to slapstick comedy, protective gear is still necessary. Each of these items is likely also made with cotton-LYCRA blends and embroidered with patches that connect them to the design motifs in the mask. Her dance leotard-turned wrestling singlet is one piece, black at the bottom with a gradient scheme that transforms to white at the neck, adorned with multicolored silver spangles and hot pink edges. It includes a black choker collar connected to the rest of the piece with a mesh cutout over the neck and shoulders, along with a flared skirt at the back. She also wears light, nudecolored fishnet stockings that simulate bare legs. While she gathered components of her wrestling gear from different sources, the detailing and character-specific additions helped bring uniformity and communicative elements to the look. From a textile perspective, there are many commonalities between dance and lucha libre where movement and choreography are fundamental; it is not surprising that Tormenta turned to this industry for a replacement costume. Cotton-LYCRA is commonly used within many sports, prized for its ability to hold a structure and use compression to emphasize the bodily form. While spandex is challenging to dye, the cotton in the blend is typically a high enough proportion to take the dye, even through home-dyeing techniques, and cover the LYCRA, allowing for a spectrum of prints and colors like the black-to-white gradient that stretches over the leotard.8 The choker and mesh fabric also have functional, structural properties, holding up the main garment’s bodice and securing the front and back pieces in place of straps. The skirt attached at the back of the waist also provides a small amount of cover.

Kunal Singha, ‘Analysis of Spandex/Cotton Elastomeric Properties: Spinning and Applications’, International Journal of Composite Materials, 2.2 (2012), 11–16 (p. 14) <https:// doi.org/10.5923/j.cmaterials.20120202.03>. 8

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However, it is perhaps more effective as an aesthetic addition, invoking the image of a gladiator or even the most recent film version of Wonder Woman introduced in 2017. Like their counterparts whose costumes work to project masculinity, luchadora costumes are not neutral and fit into a more extensive aesthetic history of superheroes and a dynamic of gender on display that has remained the same over time.9 Most performers showcasing physical prowess in nineteenth-century Britain, including dancers, wrestlers, and strongwomen, came from workingclass backgrounds. Edith Hall and Henry Stead speculate that these performers ‘frequently used reference to the classical world to authorise, legitimate and broaden the appeal of their artform’, especially toward wealthy patrons who paid to see them, and affected costume because, ‘To convert their physical and often erotic capital into economic and social capital they draped their performance in the garb of respectability, […] the lavish suits and dresses of the upper classes, or the fabric drapings, leather straps and bared flesh which people identified with Greco-Roman antiquity’.10 While Salvador Lutteroth established the business model around lucha libre in Mexico, the acrobatic style was developed through Enrique Ugartechea (18811963), a Mexican trainer and bodybuilder who presented exhibitions around the world during the early twentieth century after seeing performances from European strongmen as a child.11 In the process, he also adopted the European aesthetic and the dynamic between costume and exposed skin. Victorian strongwomen like Madame Julia ‘Victorina’ Veidlere, who reached the height of her fame in the 1880s, wore minimal costumes and bared a substantial

Super/Heroes: From Hercules to Superman, ed. by Wendy Haslem, Angela Ndalianis, and C. J. Mackie (Washington, DC: New Academia Pub, 2007). 9

Edith Hall and Henry Stead, A People’s History of Classics: Class and Greco-Roman Antiquity in Britain and Ireland 1689 To 1939 (Milton, UNITED KINGDOM: Taylor & Francis Group, 2020), p. 377 <http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rcauk/detail. action?docID=6124700> [accessed 7 November 2021]. 10

David C. LaFevor, Prizefighting and Civilization: A Cultural History of Boxing, Race, and Masculinity in Mexico and Cuba, 1840-1940 (University of New Mexico Press, 2020), pp. 41–42. 11

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amount of skin to display robust musculature while performing but affirmed her preference for modest clothing in her personal life through press interviews.12 Like the exóticos affirming their heterosexuality in public, cultural ideas of gender forced strongwomen to draw a firm line between the character and performer to mitigate subverted dynamics within the performance. Nevertheless, the costume’s purpose was to display the body and communicate otherness to audiences or, as Monks describes, ‘foreground the performer’s work’ by creating a barrier between the audience and performer.13 Brownie and Graydon outline a similar dynamic in superhero costumes, writing, ‘The most immediate impression of a person’s identity is conveyed through his [the superhero’s] appearance, and so a superhero’s costume cannot express the mundane. The superhero is, after all, “super.” He is capable of extraordinary feats, and so his costume must be equally extraordinary’.14 Like strongwomen and wrestlers, figures like Wonder Woman and Superman sport costumes that must remain outside fashion convention to avoid becoming dated over time while showcasing physical prowess that visually sets them apart from the audience. This mechanism valuing a bodily display that visually embeds otherness within the performer still exists within dance and lucha libre, creating a viable alternative for Tormenta through dance costume. Garments created for dance are also ideal for physical activity and suited to the performance style in lucha libre. Without customization, dance garments are also reasonably available to the public inexpensively through companies like Capezio and Danskin. Until recently, Danskin products were available to purchase through Walmart, one of the most widespread shopping locations in the United States.15 Tormenta’s change also points to an accessible route for luchadores unable

Conor Heffernan, ‘“A Strong Woman’s Troubles”: Victorina and the Strong Woman in Victorian Britain’, Women’s History Review, 30.3 (2021), 354–74 (pp. 362–64) <https://doi. org/10.1080/09612025.2021.1875606>. 12

Monks, p. 21.

Brownie and Graydon, pp. 41–52.

Danskin Active Apparel Brand Dropped By Walmart’, 2017 <https://www.pymnts.com/ news/retail/2017/walmart-danskin-apparel-iconix/> [accessed 26 October 2021]. 15

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to access the traditional design networks to acquire wrestling gear. The quick replacement would have likely gone unnoticed if not for Tormenta providing the information anecdotally when asked about her costume.16 The occurrence shows that it is possible to use mass-produced costumes as a base and embellish them with other identifying character-specific elements rather than commissioning bespoke garments if they are physically or financially unavailable. Pantouvaki also draws attention to body dimensions in her methodology, proposing ‘an understanding of human presence through costumed bodies and critical thinking, beyond an artefact-centred approach’.17 Tormenta gives a reasonably comprehensive account of her relationship with her body and the changes required for participation in lucha libre, through beginning the training process, injury, and even in the form of matching tattoos between her siblings. Tormenta was part of her school's volleyball team before showing an interest in wrestling and worked through the changes brought on by different training. ‘When I joined the wrestling team, of course, different conditioning, different type of strength, so I started to build muscle. I started to not look like Dulce, the volleyball player; I was muscular and getting bigger’, she recalls.18 Although lucha libre requires some level of theatrical ability, it also demands an athleticism that is different from acting or performing an artifice of athletic ability. For example, when they stand on the ropes and perform acrobatic flips into the ring, luchadores must be able to perform the trick unaided. Across different sports or types of performance, even settings where actors portray athletes, the body undergoes changes and is a form of design in itself. Actors portraying athletes on stage will usually do so only for the run of the production they appear in, requiring them to use movement and physicality to create a convincing and authentic portrayal, the illusion of an athlete, without having had the years of

Chaos Theory.

Pantouvaki, Barbieri, and Isaac, p. 146.

David ‘Panda’ Chen, ‘EP 84 | “Dulce Tormenta” Aka “Sweet Storm” Pro Wrestler’, Pandanomics Podcast <https://lnns.co/FEv9LaWGXzB> [accessed 27 August 2021]. 18

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training and preparation most sports require.19 In film, editing and other cinematic techniques can emphasize an actor’s physicality and athletic ability without necessarily demanding them to embody the physical ability a sport requires.20 In both settings, the movement typically serves a different type of narrative concerned with inner conflict and transformation. Lucha libre, while requiring some characteristics of a good actor, like charisma and emotional communication, still requires strenuous athletic ability to be truly convincing. Luchadores signal through costume and environment that they will play the part and provide an exciting show of physicality. In addition, the skintight leotards and tights or bare legs and arms create an impression of authenticity, a guarantee that the performer has nothing ‘up their sleeve’ and is unaided in the physical activity on display. Lucha libre is also a type of movement that necessitates preparation for both physicality and visual effect. The materiality that emphasizes bodies, whether makeup or costume, is a significant component of the design and part of the miseen-scene in lucha libre. Returning to lucha libre after a fall from another wrestler’s excess body oil led to a concussion, along with developing her gear and character, required months of training to reach competitive levels of fitness. Along with the designers around performance spaces, this detail hints at the network of medical professionals that underpin every type of performance and are crucial to its function. Without the ability to recover from injury or understand how to prepare their bodies for physical performance demands, the risk of injury is exponentially higher. The demands this level of fitness places on a performer cannot entirely remove the barrier between performer and character. There are also individual marks on the body that identify performers, even those who compete masked. In an interview in May 2021, Tormenta discusses a family

Vanessa Ewan and Debbie Green, Actor Movement: Expression of the Physical Being, Methuen Drama (London New York: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2017). 19

Sebastian Byrne, ‘Actors Who Can’t Play in the Sports Film: Exploring the Cinematic Construction of Sports Performance’, Sport in Society, 20.11 (2017), 1565–79 <https://doi.or g/10.1080/17430437.2017.1284806>. 20

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tattoo she and her brothers have, displaying a spot on her ribs with each of their luchador masks inked and serving as a visual reminder that she is part of her family’s legacy, especially when the tattoo is displayed while performing.21 A 2012 study found that women in the US were more dominant in the tattoo industry and were more likely to obtain a tattoo, usually connected in some way to family or perceptions of self.22 Tattoos, like makeup, provide a twist in the material culture framework, asking whether they should be considered a type of intangible object. They are bonded to the bearer’s skin but cannot be removed like makeup or hair. Tattoos will perish along with the body they exist on but are still something permanent that is obtained and usually referred to in the same terms used for objects with tangible qualities. While Tormenta is far from the only luchadora displaying a tattoo, she carries a physical marker of her identity, eliminating the ability to hide as long as her tattoo is displayed, which may also be the reason for applying it to her rib over an arm or wrist. Conversely, All she must do is display her tattoo to pay tribute to her family’s legacy as others have done through masks. As Monks argues, nudity is a form of costume, and the presence of a tattoo is an element that further brands the performer when skin is exposed.23 In this way, Tormenta uses her tattoo as an aesthetic object to honor the performance lineage she shares with her brothers and, subsequently, spread their influence through each appearance.

FAC E Tormenta also competes as a masked wrestler and builds the rest of the costume from this base. When retiring her Delilah character, she considered retiring mask usage. However, she decided to continue as a tribute to her roots in lucha

We Luv Wrestling, Sweet Storm (Dulce Tormenta) : Women On Wednesday <https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=41irEA2Slo8> [accessed 15 July 2021]. 21

Jung Mee Mun, Kristy A. Janigo, and Kim K. P. Johnson, ‘Tattoo and the Self’, Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, 30.2 (2012), 134–48 <https://doi. org/10.1177/0887302X12449200>. 22

Monks, p. 100.

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libre while building a career through US-based wrestling networks. Using objects associated with lucha libre outside of the performance network spreads its influence but, in the process, can also flatten its significance and change the meaning. As theatre academic Ric Knowles describes, in the context of touring productions and their differing venues, ‘whatever the conditions, the work performed within them is differently shaped and differently received because of the physical environment it inhabits’.24 In the context of lucha libre, she is Tormenta. Outside of that, she is a representative of lucha libre as a whole, solely through the associated material culture. Along with Cassandro’s gowns, the El Paso Museum of History’s exhibition also included items from the EP Heroes archive, including Delilah’s first mask (Fig. 15) and boots side-by-side with her first mask as Tormenta.25 The Tormenta mask is newer, with the design and production occurring sometime in late 2020 or 2021. The Delilah mask is a few years older, from at least 2015 though the items are undated, with more signs of wear. It also becomes clear when seeing the masks together that they are similar but carry distinctive parts of their different characters within the design. Both mask designs have more physical allowances than most of the masks in the display belonging to male wrestlers. Though the material makeup has changed from the original leather, many luchador masks utilize a foundational base mostly unchanged from the design that Antonio H. Martinez, a Mexico City shoemaker, created in 1934. Martinez initially created wrestling boots for early luchadores but was commissioned to create a mask for Cyclone Mackey/La Maravilla Enmascarada (Corbin James Massey, 1903-1979), who was familiar with masked U.S. wrestlers and

Richard Paul Knowles, Reading the Material Theatre, Theatre and Performance Theory (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 66. 24

Hartell.

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wanted to use the technique to build intrigue around his performance in Mexico.26 Martinez’s original masks used and created in the 1930s were made from pieces of suede leather. However, spandex would later offer a more suitable alternative even with structural refinements, customized fitting, and softer fabric (suede is made from kid leather and is usually more accessible to dye and shape).27 This base design is typically made from four pieces of cotton-LYCRA or other elastic fabric blends sewn together to cover the entire head with adjustable laces down the back of the hood that ties at the nape. Usually known as spandex or LYCRA, polyurethane is an artificial fiber created in 1959 and known for its elastic properties. Before its introduction, most clothing and textiles utilized heavier rubber thread for elasticity. Cotton-LYCRA blended textiles are relatively low-maintenance, boasting breathable, stretchy fabrics that do not require specialized washing techniques.28 The distinguishing features are color, prints, sheen/matte appearance, embroidered details around the eyes, nose, and mouth, or a combination of these elements. Tormenta and Delilah’s masks stray from the foundational design, covering most of the face but exposing the chin, mouth, and ears. In addition, Tormenta’s mask utilizes two straps at the back of the head, around the base and middle of the skull. The bottom strap at the nape of the neck fastens with two snaps while the upper strap stretches out wider to fit onto the head but contains the seam that holds two symmetrical pieces together. The top strap stays in place through tension but may also include a plastic insert that sticks to hair without adhesive to reinforce security. More common among luchadoras, the open design is also a feature that allows hair to spill up and over the mask, creating gendered visual variation. Tormenta's mask (Fig. 15) uses a black cotton-LYCRA blended base fabric with Nicholas Sammond and others, Steel Chair to the Head: The Pleasure and Pain of Professional Wrestling (Durham, UNITED STATES: Duke University Press, 2005), pp. 99–100 <http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rcauk/detail.action?docID=1168442> [accessed 13 May 2021]. 26

Valerie Steele, Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion (New York : Scribner/Thomson, 2004) <http://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofcl03stee> [accessed 23 March 2021]; Levi, Joseph, and Rosenberg, p. 110. 27

Singha, p. 15.

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diamond-patterned glossy elements, almost like simulated snakeskin. The outside edges use more hot pink cotton-LYCRA piping double-stitched on the edges of the straps, creating a pink halo-like effect at the top of the head and an additional circular piece at the back, though her hair would cover this part when worn. The two black snaps attach through a reinforced detail at the back of the neck, blending in with the rest of the piece (Fig. 16). As Tormenta, the mask incorporates visual components from her name into the design. Tormenta uses pinks and purples in these specific masks, traditionally more associated with women, but design in lucha libre does not seem to subscribe to the same color meanings. As long as their characters do not incorporate specific colors, most luchadores vary masks through color and maintain identifiability through base design and embellishments. Mexican writer Alberto Ruy-Sánchez writes, ‘No one living in Mexico, especially graphic designers, can remain indifferent to the carnival of colors and forms in the country's traditional arts. Whether or not we are conscious of it, they leave their mark on our world’.29 It is possible that this embrace of the color in lucha libre costume across the gender spectrum is a result of the Mexican culture that developed it. When creating her name, Tormenta worked with a designer to develop the visual elements in her costume. The initial brief was minimal, as she describes, ‘I have no idea how to have a mask, but I’m thinking like a candy as a cloud and thunder under it. I don’t know! […] This is why I come to you; I have no idea what my mask should be’, ultimately leaving the design to her costumer.30 The finished mask is part of the museum exhibition display, where it becomes clear that her mask details use two layers of leather or imitation leather stitched onto the black cottonLYCRA base. The bottom layer is made from more hot pink patent leather, outlining the jagged edges of the mask’s edges. The inner edges of the detail use a softer, pearlescent silver-lilac flat grain leather that shimmers under light and movement.

Alberto Ruy-Sánchez, ‘Traditional Arts and Artes De México’, Print, 51.1 (1997), 116–21 <https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=buh&AN=9702093555&authtyp e=shib&site=ehost-live&authtype=ip,shib&custid=ns010826> [accessed 26 October 2021]. 29

Chaos Theory.

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The main details at the center of the mask are a heart with jagged outlines over a lightning bolt. These stretch when worn from the edge of the nose to the top of the forehead. The lighter leather outlines the eye area, with smaller lightning bolt features stretching up and over the temples, stiff enough to poke up over the ears. One of the bolts on the right cheek pays tribute to the mask’s designer, whose first name is Nick.31 All edges of the leather pieces use a jagged design, resembling the zigzagged pattern from the lightning bolt, especially compared to the softer edges on the Delilah mask, which utilized a spade motif (Fig. 17). Brownie and Graydon write, ‘The observer knows that the mask is only surface decoration; superficial, and not representative of a complete identity. This inevitably creates the impression that there is more to be discovered, and encourages the urge to solve that mystery’.32 Though she wears a mask, Tormenta also applies makeup, pulling the human elements underneath forward. Visible through the openings in her mask, Tormenta wears false eyelashes, dark eyeliner, and lipstick. In more recent press photos (Fig. 18), the eyelashes are perhaps the most essential part of the makeup routine, helping bring out the eyes underneath shadows created by the top of the mask. During the performance, this element matters less but is valuable for masked luchadores who wear their masks at all times. However, mask fit also affects the ability to use false eyelashes. If the mask is tighter around the wrestler’s eyes, it will push the eyelashes down and impair sight. As an alternative, eyeliner helps create a visual effect that opens up the eyes under a mask.

Chaos Theory.

Brownie and Graydon, pp. 27–40.

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Fig. 15: Dulce Tormenta First Mask, 2021. El Paso, Texas, El Paso Museum of History.

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Fig. 16: Dulce Tormenta First Mask Side View, 2021. El Paso, Texas, El Paso Museum of History.

Fig. 17: First Delilah Mask, 2015. El Paso, Texas, El Paso Museum of History.

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Fig. 18: Alex Briseño, Dulce Tormenta/Sweet Storm, 2021. El Paso, Texas.

Tormenta’s headshots show a look with mink or faux-mink polyester eyelashes in recent press photos (Fig.18). While typically more expensive, this style carries a softer, feather-light effect at the edges than some of the wispy or typical strip lashes while using a dense concentration of fibers at the lash line. However, the products are widely available rather than through specialized stores. Increasingly over the past decade, drugstores and makeup-specific stores carry a variety of products aimed to enhance eyelashes.33 With the mouth and chin exposed, she uses ‘False Eyelashes Market Size | Global Industry Analysis Report, 2025’ <https://www. grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/false-eyelashes-market> [accessed 25 October 2021]. 33

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lipstick to add color and highlight parts of the face not covered by a mask. While not essential to the character design, makeup, like hair, accentuates the performer’s appearance. When receiving the invitation to make her debut with All Elite Wrestling (AEW) and enduring a night-and-day journey with no food or sleep, she describes, ‘With the adrenaline, I run to the restroom to get ready. I didn’t even do my makeup, I just put on my lashes, I did my lips, I put on my gear, and they said, “Get ready for pictures. We need your promo pics.” It happened so fast.’34 This was a pivotal instant, especially making her debut with a league broadcast online and on cable television, considered a competitor to World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. (WWE ), and acting as a representative of lucha libre to a new market.35 When making her debut at the San Antonio, Texas venue, Tormenta describes hearing audience members immediately cheer her on, referring to her mask and showing support because of the connection to lucha libre without having seen her perform.36 San Antonio, a city where sixty-four percent of the population is of Hispanic descent, has its own lucha libre supporters and a readymade fanbase, with a connection instantly made through material culture. In terms of the initial research question, it also demonstrates a moment when she uses costume to alter the expectation within the performance space. The mask’s design, associated explicitly with lucha libre outside of a lucha libre ring, introduces an ‘identical thing they [the audience] have encountered before, although now in a somewhat different context’, or what Marvin Carlson terms ghosting.37 The audience members recognize the mask, even if they are not familiar with Tormenta. Even though parts of her costume carry elements of the mask design, the mask is essential to creating this connection.

Chen

AEW DARK Elevation Episode 19 19-07-21, 2021 <http://archive.org/details/aew-darkelevation-episode-19-19-07-21> [accessed 28 August 2021]. 35

Chen.

Carlson, p. 7.

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HA IR While Tormenta does not participate in hair betting matches or luchas de apuesta, it is still essential to frame hair as an object used in performance with signifiers that work in tandem with costume. Many luchadoras wear their hair down when performing. When debuting as Tormenta, she sported dark red hair, sometimes in curls reaching down to about the bottom ends of her shoulder blades. Archival photos from previous matches as Delilah also show long, dark hair with waves, indicating that she has naturally wavy hair and potentially straightens it before matches. While this may seem a minor consideration, it makes a difference to a performer in completing added steps for their preparation routine. In addition, the concealment and subsequent ways that women’s hair is displayed can have cultural significance in other media. In Mexican and Mexican-American culture, light hair and eyes are often idealized, a remnant of colonial occupation and Eurocentric beauty standards. Light skin and hair are also associated with higher socioeconomic status, embodied through the contemporary ‘fresa’ figure, or privileged woman, descended from French and Spanish colonists.38 Many of these ideals are also reinforced through characters on telenovelas popular in Mexico but circulated throughout the US as well.39 However, long, dark hair also carries an alternative history in a Mexican or Mexican-American context dating back to the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920).40 As academic B. Christine Arce describes, actual women fighters, or soldaderas, who participated in the Mexican Revolution have become synonymous with the Adelita, the titular character in a popular ballad.41 Images of actual soldaderas (Fig. 19) show 38

McCRACKEN, p. 200.

Layla P. Suleiman Gonzalez, ‘Mirada de Mujer: Negotiating Latina Identities and the Telenovela’, Counterpoints, 169 (2002), 84–96 (p. 84) <https://www.jstor.org/ stable/42977475> [accessed 3 November 2021]. 39

Van Bavel, p. 31.

B. Christine Arce, México’s Nobodies: The Cultural Legacy of the Soldadera and AfroMexican Women (Albany, UNITED STATES: State University of New York Press, 2017), p. 91 <http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rcauk/detail.action?docID=4774210> [accessed 26 October 2021]. 41

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Fig. 19: Agustín Víctor Casasola, Las Soldaderas, 1910s. Archivo Casasola

women with long skirts and blouses, rifles strapped to their backs, and intersecting cartridges of bullets across their chests. They wear large hats or keep their hair under hats or tied up and away from their faces. This image, primarily through wartime songs circulated by male soldiers, became more sexualized over time, describing fearless women fighters wearing low-cut blouses and brandishing long, dark flowing hair. These descriptions continue to persist, most visibly as tropes and stereotypes like the ‘fiery Latina’ and, in lucha libre, point to a sexualized version of womanhood created by and for misogynistic consumption that calls for performers to wear hair loose instead of away from the face for protection in an athletic environment.42 This key detail indicates a stark difference between athletic competition and more traditional performance or theatrical spaces. While sport certainly falls within the overarching umbrella of performance studies, this material difference points to different modes of action.43 In a more specific sporting event, long hair is typically secured in some way to prevent it from obstructing eyesight or interfering with

Condé Nast, ‘Meet the Women Revolutionaries Who Shaped Mexican History’, Teen Vogue, 2019 <https://www.teenvogue.com/story/the-real-history-of-las-soldaderas> [accessed 26 October 2021]. 42

Schechner and Lucie.

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athletic performance. In a combat setting, it also risks becoming an easy target to an opponent for pulling. In lucha libre, especially matches between luchadoras, hair pulling may feature in the fight, but it also means trusting an opponent not to commit any permanent damage. Incidentally, this also points to a paradox within lucha libre. A performer must be able to convincingly commit violence against an opponent while trusting their opponent to handle their body and, in this instance, hair with gentleness and care. Pulled hair can quickly become excruciatingly painful with enough force. Though, even in fictional performance settings, hair can become a point of controversy over the lack of consideration for its physicality. For the 2020 film Birds of Prey: Harley Quinn, screenwriter Christina Hodgson received praise for including a scene where one character offers another a hair tie during a fight scene. Hodgson explained, ‘My sister and I always joke about the fact that women in superhero movies — or action movies generally — are always going into battle or doing this big, crazy, epic thing with beautiful flowing hair perfectly quaffed [sic], when both of us wouldn’t even consider eating a sandwich with our hair untied. So yeah, it had to go in there.’44 The decision for most luchadoras to leave hair loose and flowing demonstrates an awareness of the audience as a viewer and the way hair moves that places dramatic value over practicality or comfort. It also points to an affirmation of femininity, as long hair is associated with women in this cultural context, and the press discussion from strongwomen and exóticos after destabilizing gender expectations through performance. However, loose hair can also aid in concealing parts of theatrical convention. In a May 2021 match against Jazmin Allure, Tormenta creates the illusion of pulling her opponent by the hair. In actuality, her partner assists the move by holding onto Tormenta’s arms to release the tension on her hair. Loose hair helps conceal the

Brian Davids and Brian Davids, ‘How “Birds of Prey” Writer Christina Hodson Crafted That Hair Tie Moment’, The Hollywood Reporter, 2020 <https://www.hollywoodreporter. com/movies/movie-features/how-birds-prey-writer-christina-hodson-crafted-hair-tiemoment-1278778/> [accessed 15 October 2021]. 44

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maneuver to a live audience.45 For example, using specific techniques to fall slaps the boards, maximizing sound in the ring, and creating more convincing falls and hits for a spectator. Without doubting the athletic ability lucha libre requires or raising the debate around authenticity, it is possible to acknowledge that performers exaggerate movement and reaction for theatricality, including the use of long hair as a tool for performance. It also means working with opponents who understand how to navigate added safety considerations and risks that loose hair presents while wrestling. While not as vital to Tormenta’s recognizability, it reflects an image of Mexican women fighters embedded into cultural awareness and hair as an object and product of material culture. Each costume element culminates into the first appearance with Tormenta’s ring entry routine, where she blows kisses to the crowd and walks around the ring without removing a cape or gown. However, before running into the ring, she uses a pre-match routine, a ritual that dates back to her high school days. She elaborates: ‘When I’m outside, pre-match, I already have everything on, the first thing that I do is I pray. No matter what happens in the ring, tomorrow is never promised. I pray, I stretch, and I do my routine. When I was in high school wrestling, I had this little routine, this little shaky shaky thing that I used to do before my matches […] I do a little shaky shaking, I pray, I close my eyes, I take a deep breath, and then I’m ready to be Sweet Storm’.46 Once again, as Schechner describes, the liminal space between the preparation ritual and the performance is a process that helps reinforce the performer’s transition into the character. However, she also discusses the space and time after a match, where wrestlers must leave action inside the ring. With experience comes control over body, strength, and movement, but also over emotion when competing with fellow wrestlers and traveling with them later. She explains, ‘I hit pretty hard during my matches. As soon as it’s over, one two 45

Title Match Wrestling.

We Luv Wrestling.

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three, we’re coming down, I’m back to my sweet side. I have no problem, I know how it works’.47 Where the space to create a character, the liminal space between removing personal identity and embodying a new one is allowed time, the process of coming back can change in moments. It also means understanding and working with fellow performers in the same spaces after competing and immediately using the backstage area to dissect performances.48 Often, the time after a match is spent with fans, helping sell merchandise and build a reputation. This time is crucial given the number of luchadores who entered the sport after meeting their heroes after a match. It also helps reinforce the character created inside the ring. Marvin Carlson describes the curtain call as, ‘…a site where memory is particularly celebrated, primarily the short-term memory of the production just witnessed and now being recalled and acknowledged, but also, in many cases, the longer-term memory of past enjoyment of these actors or this company’.49 Viewed through Carlson’s framework, the merchandise table also acts as a curtain call for luchadores, especially when staying in character to greet fans. It also relies on this memory to sell products. Building the character, training, performing, and making an impression essentially all lead to this point. With success, a luchador will have made a significant enough impact to convince a consumer to spend more, providing the performer with enough financial support to repeat the process. As a controlling member of the family company that trains and stages lucha libre performances around El Paso, she has a higher degree of control in the process and a stake in the financial outcome of sales around the event. Dulce Tormenta/Sweet Storm originally debuted in El Paso through New Era Wrestling/EP Heroes, the wrestling promotion her family established as a way of subverting closed performance networks. She is also one of few intergender competitors and the sole woman in a lucha libre family that includes older brothers

Chen.

Carlson, p. 90.

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Tirano, Rey Lagarto, Triton, and younger brother Dastan, the same brothers whose masks are featured in her tattoo. Lucha libre is also one of several performance industries that utilize family or mentorship lineages as a mechanism for replication, like circus and drag. For example, Edward and Farrier describe drag mothering/ mentoring as part of the essential makeup of drag that works to transfer skills between performers.50 Lucha libre works in a similar way. While some luchadores are related to their trainers, they can still inherit the ‘Hijo del…’ title without being related by blood. The association with a retired luchador also gives the performer legitimacy and access to the industry’s entry points. However, the lack of attachment to influential trainers can hinder admittance, presenting an unknown entity compared to a name with a fanbase and history attached.

L AU N C H I N G A 'N EW ERA' According to Tormenta, the family moved to Juarez from El Paso for economic reasons, attending school in the United States throughout the week. Participating in high school sports also meant waking at three each morning to prepare for the border crossing and attend practices every day of the week. Early on, her father, Jose Ontiveros, also met the retired luchador Fishman (José Ángel Nájera Sánchez, 1951-2017) as a coworker while working as a taxi driver.51 Fishman, whose sons are also luchadores, offered to connect the family to a lucha libre trainer as a way to keep them focused on sports and away from the violence that has plagued Juarez over the last few decades. While homicide rates have fluctuated since the 1980s, Juarez remains one of the deadliest cities in the world as a result of international trade policy and upheaval as rival drug cartels battle for control of the city.52 The political tension within the city created the conditions of production

50 51

Edward and others, p. 7.

Chen.

SCITEL’ <https://www.inegi.org.mx/app/scitel/Default?ev=9> [accessed 14 October 2021]; Seguridad Paz Justicia y, ‘Boletín Ranking 2019 de las 50 ciudades más violentas del mundo’, Seguridad, Justicia y Paz <http://www.seguridadjusticiaypaz.org.mx/salade-prensa/1590-boletin-ranking-2019-de-las-50-ciudades-mas-violentas-del-mundo> [accessed 14 October 2021]. 52

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that led to the family deciding to become involved with lucha libre, as well as the economic environment and personal financial circumstances bringing Fishman and Tormenta’s father together. While Juarez is not the capital for lucha libre, it continued to exist as a center and entry point into the industry through retired luchadores, many of whom also become trainers, and the availability of competition spaces like the Plaza de Toros Alberto Balderas.53 Drawing from his established network, Fishman brought the family into contact with the luchador, Punisher, who became their trainer in Juarez. However, a lack of connection to specific performance lineages with local power created an obstacle in competing in El Paso. Tormenta laments, ‘Unfortunately, because me and my family don’t have any background history–you know, my father wasn’t a pro wrestler, my grandpa wasn’t a pro wrestler–we had to start from the very bottom. My oldest brother had a huge, huge hard time getting booked at pro wrestling events’.54 Where licensing bodies and official promotions exist, this also points to unofficial power structures articulating boundaries around who is allowed to participate. Historian and curator Simon Sladen describes, in the context of pantomime performance, formal and informal training routes that also apply to lucha libre. Where few institutional training routes exist, an alternative, and the most common route, occurs through knowledge transfer between retired performers and new students entering the industry in workshops or one-to-one training.55 For some, this also means inheriting the parent or trainer’s designed persona and gear, along with a built-in introduction into the local network. Sladen quotes comedian Oliver Double, who describes, ‘a standard way of starting out...is to fill your act with tributes to the big names of the day’.56 Similarly, wrestlers like Hijo del Santo and Blue Demon Jr. would have started with some of the most influential legacies, including 53

Hammond and Markiewicz.

Chen.

Simon Sladen, ‘From Mother Goose to Master: Training Networks and Knowledge Transfer in Contemporary British Pantomime’, Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, 8.2 (2017), 206–24 (pp. 208–11) <https://doi.org/10.1080/19443927.2017.1316306>. 55

Sladen, ‘From Mother Goose to Master’, p. 218.

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the pressure to uphold the reputations behind their masks. Lack of connection to an existing heritage can hinder access but leave the performer somewhat free to design their character. Frustrated at the lack of opportunities available to the elder boys, her father circumvented the existing network. After raising funds for raw material through shoeshine work, her father, an ironworker, built a ring for the family to use in their backyard, pointing to an additional area of production work and skills required to stage live events. Meanwhile, the elder brothers launched a lucha libre school, using a local park as a training ground until the ring was built, taking on about ten students at a time and generating revenue without the need to rent a space.57 This also marks the beginning of a vertical integration model, where a firm owns and manages several stages of production, holding greater ownership in the process.58 Over time, once the ring was complete and venues booked, these students became the luchadores who headlined the wrestling cards for New Era Wrestling, the family’s new wrestling promotion. As a result, the family built a reputation within the local lucha libre community, drawing larger audiences and moving slowly to larger venues – from a small hall with a fifty-person capacity to a ballroom that could fit 300 and finally a warehouse in 2017 that was available exclusively for their company, serving other aspiring luchadores without existing connections in the industry.59 The new venue also added the advantage of permanently housing their equipment, training facilities, and practice spaces. Ontiveros describes, ‘We had to set up the ring and tear it down every time we did it, so it was kind of hard. We had the shows outdoors, so rain, snow, or shine, we never canceled a show.’60 Ownership

Chen.

Michele Trimarchi, ‘Regulation, Integration and Sustainability in the Cultural Sector’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 10.5 (2004), 401–15 (p. 412) <https://doi.org/10.10 80/1352725042000299027>. 58

Adrian Broaddus, ‘A “New Era” of Lucha Libre Dawns in El Paso’, The Prospector <https:// www.theprospectordaily.com/2017/03/21/a-new-era-of-lucha-libre-dawns-in-el-paso/> [accessed 12 May 2021]. 59

Broaddus.

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of the performance venue provided a massive advantage by creating the conditions that allowed for a consistent rehearsal and performance space, in addition to establishing a new informal training route combining workshop, apprenticeship, and workplace training.61 It also implies, in this contentious atmosphere where familial legacies and hierarchical structures are coming undone, a claim to permanence within the performance network. It was within this context that Tormenta made her debut in 2015 as Delilah at fifteen years old. In February 2021, four years after dedicating the warehouse as a training ground and venue for lucha libre, with her elder brothers having retired from wrestling, and eight months after suffering a concussion, she re-entered lucha libre as Dulce Tormenta/Sweet Storm and renewed personal stakes in the performance level of production. The vertical integration model uncovers another connection between more traditional theatre forms and lucha libre: the role of the actor-manager. With notable actor-managers (and the term) rising to prominence from seventeenth-century London with the Globe Theatre, the actor-manager was a performer that leased or owned the performance space and acted as a figurehead within its ownership and management.62 While the practice has fallen out of favor over time, the Ontiveros family, decades and an ocean away from the actor-manager’s exemplary sites, show signs that performance management is still consequential to agency. Because of her role within the promotional company and ownership in multiple stages of production, Tormenta’s design choices are primarily her own, even if shaped by the constraints of gendered convention in the performance tradition.

OW N E R SHI P A N D MERC HANDISIN G Taking ownership over time of each production stage foregrounds the Ontiveros family’s most recent expansion into another level of manufacturing: fan merchandising. Many items intended for fan sales often include character design, 61

Sladen, ‘From Mother Goose to Master’, pp. 208–10.

Lucie Sutherland, George Alexander and the Work of the Actor-Manager (Cham, SWITZERLAND: Springer International Publishing AG, 2020), pp. 3–7 <http://ebookcentral. proquest.com/lib/rcauk/detail.action?docID=6270535> [accessed 17 October 2021]. 62

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pared-down and repackaged, primarily identifiable through costume. However, mask usage, particularly in markets that do not typically encounter lucha libre, offers a unique product beyond more common types of fan merchandise. For example, during an interview with Tormenta, a host describes, ‘My youngest son, my two-year-old, will not stop wearing it [her mask]. He loves that thing. It’s so cool because it’s a slip-on mask, it’s got the Velcro in the back, it’s easy to put on and take off. That, as a marketing idea, is genius’.63 At this particular event, which primarily featured US-style professional wrestling, Tormenta was the only luchadora participating. Subsequently, she distinguished herself at the merchandise table as the only wrestler with masks for sale. In addition to the support Tormenta received from fans solely for her mask use while performing, the anecdote indicates an opening in the market for products associated with lucha libre, primarily geared towards young fans. It also shows a fundamental difference in the mask materiality, specifically between secure, snapped fasteners that stay securely around the neck on a professional mask and the Velcro fasteners that are safer for children to use. Aside from disseminating wrestlers’ images and building their reputations, toys and apparel can also be lucrative for companies. The WWE, which licenses through Mattel, Inc., generated $86.1 million or 9% of revenue through consumer products, including video games, toys, apparel, and books.64 In turn, Mattel, Inc. saw a 7% increase in WWE-related action figures and building sets in the third quarter of 2021.65 The WWE is notoriously defensive of intellectual property, obliging luchadores like Cinta de Oro (formerly Sin Cara)

Chaos Theory.

Vincent K. McMahon, World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. 2020 Annual Report (World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc., April 2021) <https://materials.proxyvote.com/ Approved/98156Q/20200330/AR_464505/?page=12> [accessed 7 November 2021]. 64

Mattel, Inc., SEC Filing | Mattel, Inc. (Washington, D.C. 20549: UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION, 19 October 2021) <https://investors.mattel. com/node/33376/html> [accessed 7 November 2021]. 65

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to release any ownership of their character once leaving the company.66 While the Ontiveros’ company is much smaller than the WWE, ownership over their characters would also allow for new streams of revenue. In October 2020, Samuel and Andres Ontiveros, Tormenta’s older brothers, launched Plain Salty, a clothing and apparel company registered with the intent of selling ‘t-shirts, hoodies, shorts, underwear, long sleeve shirts, socks, crop tops, baseball caps, and hats’.67 By November 2021, their website offered cotton-polyester blend t-shirts, hooded sweatshirts, bags, adhesive stickers, and baseball caps with graphics related to their company or Tormenta and luchador Dastan. The catalog suggests that, though they may have retired from lucha libre, the eldest brothers still hold a stake in the company and are in the process of developing ownership in the merchandising sector of their industry. The Plain Salty website states that t-shirts include ‘blank product sourced from Honduras, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti, or Mexico’, indicating that they likely procure the base material from Gildan Brands, a wholesale apparel company, and print images themselves or use a third party to transfer the images onto blank t-shirts.68 The complexity in images and range of colors in each graphic also points to a significant amount of labor in the printing process. As a reflection, the shirt with the most photorealistic image is sold for $34.99, while others sell for $29.99. The shirt graphics are also unique to Tormenta and include visual iconography that refer to Mexican culture, the city of El Paso, and her own costuming. One shirt (Fig. 20), presumably the oldest given that it shows her first costume, features

Republic World, ‘Sin Cara Reveals His New Name after His WWE Release, Posts a Picture with a New Mask’, Republic World <https://www.republicworld.com/sports-news/wwenews/sin-cara-new-name-cinta-de-oro-wwe-release-aaa.html> [accessed 2 September 2021]. 66

Andres Ontiveros, TEAS Plus New Application for Plainsalty (El Paso, Texas: United States Patent and Trademark Office, 14 October 2020) <https://uspto.report/TM/90255353/ FTK20201017105825/> [accessed 5 November 2021]. 67

‘“Dulce Tormenta” Ft. Plainsalty Short Sleeve T-Shirt’, Plainsalty <https://plainsalty. com/products/dulce-tormenta-ft-plainsalty-short-sleeve-t-shirt> [accessed 7 November 2021]; Gildan Brands, ‘1301 Adult Tee_en_US’, Gildan Activewear S.R.L. <https://www. gildanbrands.com/en-us/alstyle-1301> [accessed 7 November 2021]. 68

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an illustrated version of her face and first mask, the black version with pink and pearlescent silver details. The second shirt (Fig. 21) features an image of a playing card in the style of Lotería, a game popular in Mexico and other Spanish-speaking communities. An illustrated version of her wears the first costume made from dance gear over a pink background with a number seven and the words ‘La Mas Dulce’, or the sweetest. Finally, the most recent design (Fig. 22) shows a new variation on Tormenta’s costume and mask featuring press photos from the latter part of the year. The photo shows Tormenta over a red circle with blue, yellow, and magenta lightning bolts behind El Paso’s signature mountain peaks, in themselves recognizable for the illuminated star that sits on one side near the downtown part of the city, with ‘Dulce Tormenta’ spelled out in white lettering. Each of these items shows a connection to the materiality of her costume and a design choice connecting it to something external, whether that is a softened, illustrated image, a Lotería card, or hometown mountain peaks.

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Fig. 20: Dulce Tormenta Illustrated T-Shirt, 2021. El Paso, Texas, Plain Salty

Fig. 21: Dulce Tormenta Lotería T-Shirt, 2021. El Paso, Texas, Plain Salty

Fig. 22: Dulce Tormenta Photorealistic T-Shirt, 2021. El Paso, Texas, Plain Salty

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P E R FOR MER M A N AGER Tormenta’s story shows the convergence of several themes: the material reality of life as a performer through COVID-19, expanding culturally specific work into new areas, costume tradition in gendered performance, and ownership over design choices as a relatively new performer. As a performer-manager, the relationship with commercial aspects of her design choices is symbiotic and, as a result, reliant on her success. While this choice carries responsibility, it also affords the opportunity to wrestle independently and hold ownership in intellectual property without friction from a hierarchical management structure or friction between an inherited performance style and conflicting ideas of ownership. It also means that design elements carry personal weight and connection to private life. However, they still occur within a cultural and social context. For example, designs are available within the construct of acceptable and common garment structures for luchadoras, namely form-fitting one- or two-piece spandex suits over tights. Mask usage also automatically associates performance style with lucha libre to audiences who are not familiar with it. Alternatively, it also produces interest and personal identification among fans who feel culturally invested in seeing lucha libre in a new setting. Finally, it shows the connection lucha libre has to other athletic and performance disciplines, from training to costume aesthetics and materials. When placed under pressure, it is possible to recreate and gather materials needed for lucha libre performance through items created for other disciplines, showing the availability of resources for new performers. While access to performance networks is an essential part of working in lucha libre, this case study shows that it is possible to enter the industry without connection to a previous family legacy and build a performance reputation through identifiable material culture and consistency within a geographic location. For performance tradition to reproduce, it must also allow for new entrants into the field. In many ways, this reach harkens back to Lutteroth’s

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original group of wrestlers building lucha libre in Mexican provinces, completing the cycle of looking to reach new audiences across the border and developing local talent.

C O N CLU SIO N Returning to Santana Adela’s essay in Artes de México, there are several conclusions to make about an object-based approach to lucha libre.69 First, costume theory has proven especially suitable for studying individual wrestlers, as it requires analysis that considers their specific contexts. Second, while it is tempting to study lucha libre solely in terms of mask usage, given its widespread use in other performance contexts and dissemination through iconography, focusing on masks alone would have prevented further study on Cassandro’s gowns and Tormenta’s dance costume. Cassandro’s gowns include design influences from Gardenia Davis and Diana, Princess of Wales, while functioning as part of his persona in a crowded arena or an outdoor lot. Cassandro, through costume, is the element that grounds the performance by creating a set piece through a combination of elements. Similarly, focusing solely on Tormenta’s mask would have prevented further observation of the parallels between dance and lucha libre through costume, leading back to their shared history with body entertainment and Victorian strongwomen. In terms of material culture, lucha libre has much more to offer than masks or generalization. The case studies show that luchadores have been able to shape their environments through character design and the dissemination of their images as individuals rather than generic images of lucha libre. Chapter One demonstrated how Cassandro and his fellow Lilac Wave luchadores disrupted the visual aesthetic around exóticos. His embroidered gowns link the costume design to the first exóticos, while makeup ties his image to other forms of drag performance. While most luchadores keep personal collections of 69

de Orellana and others, p. 80.

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career memorabilia, the presence of Cassandro’s hair in Hijo del Santo’s career archive calls for a consideration of hair as an object and its various states of permanence and ephemerality. It also illuminates a dynamic between a luchador acting to change cultural and social attitudes through the practice and another whose name is embedded with tradition. Over the last decade and likely even more so once Cassandro’s biopic is released, his image becomes dominant as a representative for lucha libre outside of Mexico. The material analysis contextualizes his popularity while also drawing attention to the labor behind maintaining theatrical glamor and the skills needed to become not just a luchador but an exótico. Chapter Two investigated the dynamic around gender and costume, even when a wrestler is masked. In many ways, the requirements for body, face, and hair in Tormenta, and aesthetics for luchadoras in general, demand femininity that attempts to subdue any subversion of traditional gender roles enacted in the performance. Hair, both over the mask worn loose and under the mask through extended eyelashes, amplify traits associated with femininity. Other parts of her costume provide examples of international trade networks and the dynamic between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, where the border does not impede cultural influences and most residents have ties to both areas. While still in the early stages, the production process and ownership structure around fan merchandising associated with the company points to a resurgence in lucha libre popularity locally and, like utilizing a dance costume or building an independent ring when excluded from performance networks, vertical integration seeking to create a new familial wrestling legacy in the city. Tormenta also disseminates lucha libre and associated merchandise at the performance level by working in the United States as a masked wrestler in markets unfamiliar with the style. Where inherited legacies have largely only been accepted for male wrestlers, she is now the dominant figure representing New Era Wrestling/ EP Heroes. An object-based analysis applied to lucha libre, especially an exótico and a luchadora, uncovers the labor behind performance and the extent to which a

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performer can transform into their character. Even as they apply layers of clothing and makeup, activating the liminal space between public and private, any consequences of action in the ring become a consequence for the person. This research adds to the field of study by looking for the performer behind the mask, interrogating how they build a persona, and communicating the line between the self, performance history, and the character through stylistic design to an audience. While masks certainly have an important place in lucha libre history, the performer’s labor is at risk of becoming overlooked when the focus remains on one area. Overall, these case studies show that luchadores work within performance tradition to shape the materiality around their performance disciplines, leaving behind a trove of objects that carry traces of the environments where they live and work. By exerting their agency and disrupting the norm, whether by embracing an alternative to binary gender performance and remaking the practice or building space outside of the dominant performance network to build a new lucha libre legacy, they work as individual performers, the sequins in the garment, to add to a larger design and performance history.

B I B L I O GRA PHY 1. Primary Sources 1.1 Printed Sources ‘El Pasoans Will Fly to Mexico Ceremonies’, El Paso Evening Post (El Paso, Texas, 28 November 1928), p. 12, Newspapers.com <http://www.newspapers.com/ image/44351976/?terms=lutteroth&match=1> [accessed 28 August 2021] Hammond, Alex, and Ian Markiewicz, Lucha Mexico, 2015 Medina, Elizabeth, ‘El lado oscuro de la Lucha Libre’, El Paso Times (El Paso, Texas, 2 April 1992), section Vecinos - Neighbors, pp. 1A, 4A <http://www. newspapers.com/image/430098532/> [accessed 2 October 2021] ‘Wrestling’s Odd Mr. Davis Must Have Something Anyway, Digest This Blurb “Coronet” Gave Him’, The Windsor Daily Star (Windsor, Ontario, Canada, 22 January 1944), p. 3 <http://www.newspapers.com/ image/501171007/?terms=salvador%20lutteroth&match=1> [accessed 19 July 2021]

1.2 Web Sources AEW DARK Elevation Episode 19 19-07-21, 2021 <http://archive.org/details/aewdark-elevation-episode-19-19-07-21> [accessed 28 August 2021] Bidwell, Phillip, ‘STM Episode 9 - Cassandro El Exotico’, Slouching Towards Masculinity <https://philbedwell.podbean.com/e/ stm-episode-9-cassandro-el-exotico/> Broaddus, Adrian, ‘A “New Era” of Lucha Libre Dawns in El Paso’, The Prospector <https://www.theprospectordaily.com/2017/03/21/a-new-era-of-luchalibre-dawns-in-el-paso/> [accessed 12 May 2021] ‘Celebration Honors El Paso Wrestler Cassandro El Exotico with Unveiling of Specialty Beer’ <https://www.elpasotimes.com/picture-gallery/news/ local/el-paso/2020/07/28/el-paso-wrestler-cassandro-el-exotico-honoredspecialty-beer/5524334002/> [accessed 4 May 2021] Chaos Theory, ‘EPISODE 36 Sweet Storm AKA Dulce Tormenta’, Chaos Theory, 2021 <https://wrestlingwithjohners.com/chaos-theory/EPISODE-36-SweetStorm-AKA-Dulce-Tormenta/> [accessed 6 May 2021] Chen, David ‘Panda’, ‘EP 84 | “Dulce Tormenta” Aka “Sweet Storm” Pro Wrestler’, Pandanomics Podcast <https://lnns.co/FEv9LaWGXzB> [accessed 27 August 2021] Davids, Brian, and Brian Davids, ‘How “Birds of Prey” Writer Christina Hodson Crafted That Hair Tie Moment’, The Hollywood Reporter, 2020 <https:// www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/how-birds-preywriter-christina-hodson-crafted-hair-tie-moment-1278778/> [accessed 15 October 2021]

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‘“Dulce Tormenta” Ft. Plainsalty Short Sleeve T-Shirt’, Plainsalty <https://plainsalty. com/products/dulce-tormenta-ft-plainsalty-short-sleeve-t-shirt> [accessed 7 November 2021] Dunn, SB 670 Senate Bill - CHAPTERED, 2005 <http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/ pub/05-06/bill/sen/sb_0651-0700/sb_670_bill_20051007_chaptered. html> [accessed 7 October 2021] El Hijo del Santo, ‘Experiencias con Cassandro, El Exótico’, Experiencias, 2011 ‘False Eyelashes Market Size | Global Industry Analysis Report, 2025’ <https:// www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/false-eyelashes-market> [accessed 25 October 2021] Finnegan, William, ‘The Man Without a Mask’, The New Yorker <https://www. newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/01/man-without-mask> [accessed 5 May 2021] Gildan Brands, ‘1301 Adult Tee_en_US’, Gildan Activewear S.R.L. <https://www. gildanbrands.com/en-us/alstyle-1301> [accessed 7 November 2021] Losier, Marie, Cassandro, the Exotico!, 2018 <https://vimeo.com/ondemand/ cassandrotheexotico> [accessed 12 June 2021] Mattel, Inc., SEC Filing | Mattel, Inc. (Washington, D.C. 20549: UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION, 19 October 2021) <https:// investors.mattel.com/node/33376/html> [accessed 7 November 2021] McMahon, Vincent K., World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. 2020 Annual Report (World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc., April 2021) <https://materials. proxyvote.com/Approved/98156Q/20200330/AR_464505/?page=12> [accessed 7 November 2021] México, Secretaría de Cultura de la Ciudad de, ‘Declaran a la Lucha Libre Mexicana Patrimonio Cultural Intangible de la Ciudad de México’, Secretaría de Cultura de la Ciudad de México <https://www.cultura.cdmx.gob.mx/comunicacion/ nota/0667-18> [accessed 23 October 2021] Ontiveros, Andres, TEAS Plus New Application for Plainsalty (El Paso, Texas: United States Patent and Trademark Office, 14 October 2020) <https:// uspto.report/TM/90255353/FTK20201017105825/> [accessed 5 November 2021] Paz, Seguridad, Justicia y, ‘Boletín Ranking 2019 de las 50 ciudades más violentas del mundo’, Seguridad, Justicia y Paz <http://www.seguridadjusticiaypaz. org.mx/sala-de-prensa/1590-boletin-ranking-2019-de-las-50-ciudadesmas-violentas-del-mundo> [accessed 14 October 2021] ‘SCITEL’ <https://www.inegi.org.mx/app/scitel/Default?ev=9> October 2021]

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Shapiro, Don, and Valentin Sandoval, ‘Power at the Podcast Featuring Cassandro El Exotico and Diego Martinez’, Power at the Podcast <https://open.spotify.com/episode/1AIbvvPrFiyt8JaQD3Bhtc?si=yl UI-fYUSKqBRTCVEv4r0w&dl_branch=1> Tapp, Marjorie, and Jean Michel Berthiaume, ‘We Meet CASSANDRO EL EXOTICO’, Putes de Lutte <https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/prise-de-lutte/ we-meet-cassandro-el-exotico-DdYjZwWLF-t/> Title Match Wrestling, Jazmin Allure vs Dulce Tormenta (Women’s Wrestling) Mission Pro Wrestling, 2021 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XetBWYdlA28> [accessed 18 October 2021] We Luv Wrestling, Sweet Storm (Dulce Tormenta) : Women On Wednesday <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41irEA2Slo8> [accessed 15 July 2021] World, Republic, ‘Sin Cara Reveals His New Name after His WWE Release, Posts a Picture with a New Mask’, Republic World <https://www.republicworld.com/ sports-news/wwe-news/sin-cara-new-name-cinta-de-oro-wwe-release-aaa. html> [accessed 2 September 2021] ‘World Wrestling Wear The Number One Boots’ <https://www.worldwrestlingwear. com/stock.html> [accessed 5 November 2021]

1.3 Object Sources Hartell, Norma, Lucha Libre: Stories from the Ring (El Paso, Texas, 2021), El Paso Museum of History

2. Secondary Sources 2.1 Printed Sources Ewan, Vanessa, and Debbie Green, Actor Movement: Expression of the Physical Being, Methuen Drama (London New York: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2017) Grobet, Lourdes, Alfonso Morales, Gustavo Fuentes, and Juan Manuel Aurrecoechea, Espectacular De Lucha Libre (México, D.F.: Trilce Ediciones : Editorial Océano, 2009) Horton, Aaron D., Identity in Professional Wrestling: Essays on Nationality, Race and Gender (McFarland, 2018) Knowles, Richard Paul, Reading the Material Theatre, Theatre and Performance Theory (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004) LaFevor, David C., Prizefighting and Civilization: A Cultural History of Boxing, Race, and Masculinity in Mexico and Cuba, 1840-1940 (University of New Mexico Press, 2020) Levi, Heather, Gilbert M. Joseph, and Emily S. Rosenberg, The World of Lucha Libre: Secrets, Revelations, and Mexican National Identity (North Carolina, United States: Duke University Press, 2008)

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2.2 Web Sources ‘About Gran Luchito - Our Story - Authentic Mexican Made By You’, Gran Luchito <https://gran.luchito.com/our-story/> [accessed 10 August 2021] Acevedo, Monika, ‘“Cassandro” Biopic Taps El Paso Artist For New Downtown Mural’, 93.1 KISS FM, 2021 <https://kisselpaso.com/cassandro-biopic-tapsel-paso-artist-for-new-downtown-mural/> [accessed 11 October 2021] Arce, B. Christine, México’s Nobodies: The Cultural Legacy of the Soldadera and Afro-Mexican Women (Albany, UNITED STATES: State University of New York Press, 2017) <http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rcauk/detail. action?docID=4774210> [accessed 26 October 2021] Barbieri, Donatella, ‘Performativity and the Historical Body: Detecting Performance through the Archived Costume’, Studies in Theatre & Performance, 33.3 (2013), 281–301 <https://doi.org/10.1386/stap.33.3.281_1> Bennett, Susan, Theatre & Museums (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) Bielefeldt Bruun, Mette, and Michael A. Langkjær, ‘Sportswear: Between Fashion, Innovation and Sustainability’, Fashion Practice, 8.2 (2016), 181–88 <https:// doi.org/10.1080/17569370.2016.1221931> ‘Billy Dixon on the Cassandro Cup: “It’s Time to Prove We Are Athletes”’, Daily DDT, 2021 <https://dailyddt.com/2021/03/22/billy-dixon-on-the-cassandrocup-and-the-importance-of-the-event/> [accessed 7 July 2021] Bratton, Jacky, New Readings in Theatre History (Cambridge University Press, 2003) Brownie, Barbara, and Danny Graydon, The Superhero Costume: Identity and Disguise in Fact and Fiction (Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2016) <https://doi. org/10.5040/9781474260114> Byrne, Sebastian, ‘Actors Who Can’t Play in the Sports Film: Exploring the Cinematic Construction of Sports Performance’, Sport in Society, 20.11 (2017), 1565–79 <https://doi.org/10.1080/17430437.2017.1284806>

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2.3 Unpublished Secondary Sources Hoechtl, Nina, ‘If Only for the Length of a Lucha: Queer/Ing, Mask/Ing, Gender/Ing and Gesture in Lucha Libre’ (unpublished doctoral, Goldsmiths, University of London, 2012) <http://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/8056/> [accessed 3 May 2021] Ortega, Marcela Montoya, ‘Resituating the Cultural Meanings of Lucha Libre Mexicana: A Practice Based Exploration of Diasporic Mexicanness’ (University of the Arts London, 2015) <http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/8728/>

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Lucha y Lucha: Change, Costume, and Character in El Paso's Lucha Libre Landscape from 1987-2021

Articles inside

1. Constructing Cassandro

2. Dulce Tormenta/Sweet Storm

Bibliography

Literature Review

Introduction