It was a year ago that, in my paying duties for a daily newspaper in the Chicago suburbs, I trekked out to an elementary school where the kids were having a parade outside the building on Halloween.
It was a chance for the kids to be seen publicly in their costumes, and the one boy that sticks in my mind is the one who chose to come as a professional wrestler.
BUT NOT JUST any wrestler. He was Rey Mysterio, of the Lucha Libre school of wrestling, who is the son of a Mexican wrestler of the same stage name.
The kid wore a body suit that gave him the appearance of muscular arms, then had his mother use a marker to duplicate the professional wrestler’s tattoos.
An all-American Halloween party, and one of the kids came as a Mexican wrestler. Cute.
With that in mind, I can’t say I was shocked by a new report that Fox News put on their website (albeit only the website that is meant to appeal to Latino interests) about how Latino images are working their way into our society’s Halloween lore.
UNIVERSAL STUDIOS HOLLYWOOD added to their theme park’s Halloween display a La Llorona, making sure that the weeping woman and her story of how she tossed her children into the river to drown is included amidst images of Frankenstein and Freddy Krueger.
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| Would you spend just over $100 (including tax) to be La Llorona for Halloween? |
To equate a long-standing story of La Llorona (which has so many different versions that each have their own moral to the story) with a commercial flick like Nightmare on Elm Street? For shame!
Except that I can’t really get too worked up over that angle. I find acknowledging the weeping woman (who is supposedly the source of those wailing winds you hear, because she’s crying over the loss of her children) to be more respectful than, say, the nitwits of a few years ago who marketed a Halloween “costume” of a mask that made one look like a reject from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” an orange jumpsuit and an ID card proclaiming one to be a Mexican citizen.
AN ILLEGAL “ALIEN.” Get it?
I still groan in dismay at the thought. I find the thought of little Rey Mysterios running around the neighborhood trying to mooch candy off of us to be much more encouraging than that thought.
And as for anyone who seriously bought that “alien” costume when it came out, the next time you want to throw your money away, just send it to me.
Although, to tell you the truth, I’m not sure what to say of someone who would spend $99.99 on a La Llorona costume. Or even just $41.95 for the mask.
THAT ALSO IS someone who seems determined to blow away perfectly good money on something trite.
Perhaps it is because I have never gotten into the whole concept of anyone over the age of seven celebrating Halloween that I find this whole situation amusing.
It is nice to see some sense of inclusion, although I wonder how many people are going to think something along the lines of, “We gave them (meaning Latinos) Halloween characters. What more do they want?”
It’s going to take a lot more than that. For we won’t really be “there” as a society until the day comes when a kid can be Rey Mysterio, or someone can wear a mask making them the blood-sucking “el Chupacabra” and there won’t be anyone who will have to ask, “What the …. is that?”
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