DC has a new luchadora and she’s looking for a mission
By hola | Published | No Comments
Photo © Ken Willis
In her blue and silver mask, silver miniskirt, leggings, and Cleto Reyes boxing shoes, Miz Luchaz isn’t your typical Washington bureaucrat.
On Mount Pleasant Street NW one weekday afternoon, her red sequined cape flapped lightly as she waved to passengers rolling by on an H4 bus. She greeted a few the down-and-outs lolling around Lamont Park as rubbernecking pedestrians and shopkeepers looked on from across the street.
“La Enmascarada de plata!” someone shouted in a reference to Santo, the renowned star of lucha libre, Mexico’s version of professional wrestling. Miz Luchaz shook the fan’s hand, slipping into street slang. “Que onda guey?” Roughly translated: “How’s it going dude?”
The District woman behind the double eagle mask is a bureaucrat with a day job in the federal government. She has donned headgear and tights and set out to wrestle pressing issues in the tradition of Superbarrio Gomez and “El Santo, el enmascarado de plata” (The Saint, the silver masked one).
“It fits when so often we are doing things that don’t fit,” she says of her burgeoning alter ego.
THE MYSTERY OF THE MASK
Trained as a biologist, she began her adventures in lucha about two years ago and is in no hurry to unveil her true identity. “That would remove the mystery of the character…” she explained in an email.
It’s probably a wise decision considering that, if D.C. had a dress code, it would be closer to Brooks Brothers than unitard.
“On Hollywood Boulevard you see it all. In D.C., people have to be careful,” says sociologist Karen Sternheimer. “Taking on the persona of a superhero might be more playful that people have ‘permission’ to be,” given the sheer numbers of Washingtonians whose careers depend on carefully crafted personal “brands.”
Indeed, Miz Luchaz is not Washington’s only masked avenger. The city is reportedly home to several “RLSH,” A.K.A. real life superheros (Think: Guardian Angels in drag).
A couple of local “RLSHs” eluded attempts to interview them for this story but were featured in an HBO documentary. Then there’s “Batman,” Baltimore County do-gooder Lenny B. Robinson. This being the capital of the country’s political theater, Washington also receives visits from out-of-town identity benders such as The Yes Men and Reverend Billy and his Stop Shopping Gospel Choir.
CLICK TO WATCH MIZ LUCHAZ’ HOLIDAY GREETING
SILLY BUT SERIOUS
Anonymity is a time-honored tradition in lucha libre. Santo was buried in his mask, while Superbarrio, more community activist than action hero and now reportedly retired, closely guards his identity.
Those two luchadores helped make the oh-so-serious-but-silly form of professional wrestling as famous for hijinks outside of the ring as the spectacular throws and smackdowns. Like the U.S. form of the “sport,” the ending is rigged but that detracts little from the morality play: The good guys, or “los tecnicos,” face off against “los rudos,” ruffians who cheat and break all the rules.
“It’s about honest people trying to get by in a world that’s dishonest,” Heather Levi, a sociologist at Temple University in Philadelphia, who spent more than a year training as a luchadora in Mexico City.
If the storyline resonates anywhere poverty and corruption run high, Levi says it has special meaning in Mexico, where the urban lucha libre fan is “deadly serious and tongue-in-check at the same time.”
That silly-but-serious quality has apparently seared lucha libre into the nation’s soul, even with people who have never seen it performed, which would include Miz Luchaz. Growing up in Mexico City, she says references and photos of lucha libre stars were everywhere.
“I’ve always liked the aesthetics although I have never been to a match,” she says.
UNMASKING
Photo by Ken Willis. All rights reserved.
She credits her former boss for impetus that led to the character; he urged her to stop being such a workaholic and develop some outside interests
“I ended up in a boxing class at the gym. I loved it. I was so wired. I felt like a rock star,” she says. How she went from sparring to lucha libre persona has more to do with the masks than a Lizbeth Salander complex. While there have been luchadoras for just about as long as the Mexican sport has existed, Miz isn’t interested in luchando for real; She’s searching for a mission.
She bought her first headgear from a street vendor in Mexico City a couple of years ago, which provided the basis for a knockout Halloween costume. Then, she met a troupe of Colombian clowns, who urged her to get serious about the character.
She enrolled in clowning workshops and theater classes. And while she frets that her science degree has ill prepared her for her new double life, a natural skill with language allows her segway effortlessly from proper Spanish into the cockney-like street slang of Mexico City; Accent and outfit obscure her other, more officious self.
“When I’m in my mask, I just walk up to people and start talking. There’s so much freedom in being myself, being goofy, and reaching out to people,” she says. “I would engage them differently in my suit and pearls.”
THE COURT JESTER
“I am both intrigued and amused by what happens to people when they wear ‘masks’ and how this opens a world of possibilities, both to ‘cover’ or ‘uncover’ one’s true personality,” she says.
It’s also an effective way to voice criticism, in the time-honored tradition of the court jester. It’s what Mike Bonanno, one half of “artivist” duo, The Yes Men, calls: “That trickster character; the shape changer who points out things or transforms the world around them.”
Photo by Ken Willis. All rights reserved.
Veterans of the artist/activist genre say their alter egos tend to jump the fence into their “real lives,” as well. The Yes Men, for instance, now answer to their aliases more often than their given names. But perhaps the most extreme example is Reverend Billy, Spiritual Leader of the Church of Earthalujah. Bill Talen, a.k.a. the Rev, was an actor before turning activist but becoming a preacher, of sorts, happened all on its own, he says.
He started his anti-consumerism crusade outside the Disney Store in Times Square in the mid-1990s. As a street preacher—or rather a parody of a preacher along the lines of Jimmy Swaggart with a touch of Elvis—he denounced Mickey Mouse as the antichrist and sermonized about the coming “shopocalypse.”
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, something unexpected happened: Distraught New Yorkers flocked to the Rev and his choir as they preformed “ministry” in Union Square, says Talen, who today presides over “post religious” baptisms and weddings.
“It’s not just a song and a dance anymore. Amen!” he deadpans.
MISSION LUCHAZ
Miz Luchaz isn’t looking for a mission quite that extreme. Her name is a pun that could be roughly translated as “my struggles.” She scoffs at the mention of Superbarrio Gomez, who started out as a tenants’ rights organizer and later joined Mexico’s leftist Revolutionary Democratic Party.
“He is definitely not present in my mind or my character,” Miz Luchaz says. “But it does bring up the question: How can a person in costume be influential and make a difference?
“Can you be funny and serious?” she goes on. “My rational side, the side that’s a scientist says, ‘Hey, what’s up with that?’ But my Miz Luchaz side, says, ‘Sure you can. Why not?’ I guess I’m constantly annoyed with the seriousness around us.”
——Christine MacDonald
FELIZ NAVIDAD! CLICK TO WATCH MIZ LUCAHZ’ HOLIDAY GREETING
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