CHAPTER FOUR
HE LOOKS LIKE ME
It is unlikely that anyone who sees Ramon Barreto walking on the streets of San Francisco will think to themselves, “This man must be a professional wrestler.” Professional wrestling in the United States conjures images of massive figures like Hulk Hogan, the Ultimate Warrior, Brock Lesnar, and the Rock. Barreto is several inches shy of six feet tall, and never possessed the kind of overly muscular physique that would have led to suspicions that he was a professional athlete or using some kind of performance enhancing drugs.
Ramon’s fifth grade teacher had the class write a paper on what they wanted to be when they grew up: he chose professional wrestler. His 1986 senior pictures show a handsome, skinny eighteen-year-old with a big smile and the world at his fingertips. Barreto was transitioning into a young man at a time when the World Wrestling Federation was establishing itself as the gold standard of American professional wrestling. It was difficult for someone who looked like Ramon to relate to massive wrestlers like Hulk Hogan and King Kong Bundy.
Representation is important as it allows people to dream, to see themselves doing something unique and larger with their life. Arguments over representation are now standard in social discourse as those who are not accustomed to being represented desire to see more and celebrate the presence of people like them in politics and pop culture. Many who are used to being represented scoff at efforts for more diversity, or at times are utterly furious that a given actor(ess) is cast in the role of a fictitious character. The men Ramon saw on television did not look like him, nor had the big names in the history of US wrestling been Mexican.
After school, Ramon made a habit of going to neighborhood drug stores to read wrestling magazines. The late 70s and early 80s was a remarkably different time for wrestling fans than it is for today’s generation, who now always have access to a virtually unlimited library of digital media. At that time there were few television channels, and the wrestling shows they ran were commonly regional. A west coast kid might be treated to east coast wrestling if stations swapped tapes to mix up their programming. Wrestling magazines helped bridge that gap by reporting on the larger world of wrestling. Depending on where one lived, a devoted fan may well spend years reading about the exploits of a wrestler before seeing them on television.
As Ramon sifted through magazines that he could not afford to buy, his worldview changed when he came across a luchador, a Mexican man who, at the time, was about the only luchador featured in magazines. It was a revelatory moment. Someone who looked like him was a professional wrestler, featured in the magazines alongside the biggest names in the United States. This man wore a mask, which made him mysterious. He had a strong and muscular physique but was not so large that he seemed an impossible standard to achieve. Ramon had gotten his first glimpse of Mil Máscaras, and it opened the world of Lucha Libre to him.
Dan Madigan compares Lucha Libre to gunslingers in a western, or Japanese samurai preparing for battle. He writes,
In Latino culture, these stories are played out within the squared circle—all the passion, pageantry, emotion, violence, adventure, love and hate find their outlet in the ropes of the wrestling ring. They call it Lucha Libre and that name resonates respect and awe throughout the Latin world. A combination of sport, entertainment and dramatic storytelling all rolled up into one flamboyant display. Lucha Libre can be realistic combat or over the top, wild and high-flying insanity. It’s an infectious way of life, a crowd-screaming spectacle and just plain fun.[i]
Professional wrestling is melodrama and Lucha Libre embraces that melodrama with colorful, acrobatic flare. Classic Lucha Libre embraced a style of wrestling quite distinct from its sister in the United States. Luchadores adopted a faster paced form of wrestling rooted in a variety of holds and grappling with daring aerial assaults. U.S. wrestling featured more power moves, especially moving into the 80s when the era of larger wrestlers began to emerge. Lucha Libre’s equivalent of faces and heels are técnicos and rudos, who engage in the same fundamental battle of good vs. evil as their brothers and sisters on the US side of the border.
Physical style is not the only difference as the culture of Lucha Libre has largely embraced the use of masking, and although this concept did not begin in Mexico, it became a cultural wonder in the lucha world. Many in the U.S. are largely unaware of the investment an enmascarado, a masked wrestler, puts into creating masked character. Frankly, many wrestlers in smaller promotions also fail to appreciate the gravity of masking for a luchador. Seeing U.S. wrestlers in smaller promotions wear masks into the ring is common. However, it is also common to see the same person, after their match, come out of the locker room, unmasked, to watch the rest of the show. At times they even wear t-shirts for their character or tag team, unmasked, in front of the audience, where it is obvious who they are. There is no mystery to their character and the mask serves as nothing more than costume while in the ring.
Masking in Lucha Libre has a life force of its own and requires creating a cultural endowment in mystery. The three biggest names in the history of Lucha Libre, the men who brought life to the power of masked luchadores, are El Santo, Blue Demon, and Mil Máscaras. These three men became cultural forces in Mexico, transcending wrestling to star in a combined total of over one hundred movies, where even as actors, they wore their masks.[ii] El Santo was the first of these and became the ultimate Lucha Libre icon, wearing a simplistic, silver mask that captured the imagination of fans in a way he could have little predicted. The gravity of Santo’s mask, and the importance of identity, can best be understood in the context of his career’s longevity. Santo began wrestling with his mask in 1942, and it was not until February 3, 1984, that on a national television interview with Jacobo Zabludovsky that he unmasked and revealed himself to be sixty-three-year-old Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta. He died two days later; he was buried in his mask.[iii]
Years before Chicano Flame was even an idea, young Ramon Barreto had no concept as to the true weight embracing the life of a masked luchador. Adopting a mask means adopting an identity where the wrestler’s true public face becomes their mask. Ramon’s first glimpse of Mil Máscaras was the first step of several into understanding the true responsibility of becoming masked character. The power of a mask in Lucha Libre comes from creating the mystique by publicly erasing the face a person was born with and fully committing their public persona to that mask. In the documentary “Lucha Mexico”, Blue Demon Jr. says that people who believe the life of a masked luchador comes with glamour are mistaken. He calls it a lonely life, one in which hidden identity is essential to a luchador’s success.
An investment of this level means constantly wearing the mask in public, when engaged in any function in which one can be identified as a luchador, in or out of the ring. Blue Demon Jr. estimates that he wears his mask an average of eighteen hours a day. It is a challenging craft to hide this identity from neighbors and the public alike. Simply wearing a mask in and out of the house to matches may not be sufficient if the neighbors know exactly what the person looks like. A luchador may have to leave the house unmasked, take a taxi to a spot near the venue, duck into a restroom, put the mask on in the hopes nobody paid much attention to the person who walked in, and then proceed to an arena. Similar efforts may be required to train at the gym, where many luchadores will lift weights and do cardio wearing their masks.[iv] Hiding one’s true identity is paramount to making the mask a success. The power of the mask is the power of mystery.
Mil Máscaras was the youngest of Lucha Libre’s three great names and was at the height of his career when Ramon discovered him. When asked why Mil Máscaras became his inspiration, as opposed to Santo or Blue Demon, Barreto recalled that it was the combination of Mascaras’s colorful and diverse masks (“Mil Máscaras,”in English translates to “thousand masks”), and his strong physique. Mascaras was of average height but had spent years doing body building and had a strong, muscular physique. His physique was in no way comparable to someone like Hulk Hogan or Paul Orndorff, nor would that have been inspiring to someone like Ramon Barreto. Rather here was a Mexican man with a strong but attainable build. In the ring, Mil Máscaras was highly athletic with an excellent array of holds, moves, and the ability to work with wrestlers of all sizes. When Ramon was finally able to see the man from the magazines on television, he marveled at how his hero moved with superior athleticism, besting larger opponents with intelligence and wrestling skill, not size and power.
Mil Máscaras was and still is a polarizing figure in sports entertainment; a reality Barreto knows well. Mick Foley, one of wrestling’s most likable figures, has publicly taken Mil Máscaras to task and expressed how much he hated working with the man.[v] Barreto does not downplay the frustration others feel with Mil Máscaras, but it does not mitigate what in impact the lucha legend had one him, and in some regards he understand Mil Máscaras’s situation better than most as the two have developed a friendship from working together at shows.
Around 2001, early in the career of Chicano Flame, Barreto had the opportunity to chauffeur Mil Máscaras and Tinieblas Jr. for a show with San Francisco Lucha Libre. The promoter told him to be there at 8:00 am to pick up the pair, but they had landed at 6:00 am. Neither was particularly happy to have sat there for two hours. This was an inauspicious start to meeting his hero, but fortunately all was forgiven. A couple of years later, Chicano Flame was attending a Cauliflower Alley Club event in Las Vegas and ran into Mil Máscaras. Despite still being starstruck by his childhood idol, a reality that still exists even in his fifties, Ramon asked for his phone number to possibly work shows and the lucha legend agreed. Not long after that, an opportunity presented itself as a group in San Fracisco was advertising a Lucha Libre exhibition and had Mil Máscaras on their fliers. When Ramon inquired about the event, the promoter admitted Mil Máscaras was not actually involved, and it was just a way to draw people in. Ramon could have gone on his way but instead asked if they would want Mil Máscaras in attendance. He made the arrangements, he flew Mil Máscaras out, and he helped make that exhibit better. The more one gets to know Ramon Barreto, the more they understand this is the kind of person he is to everyone.
Ramon and Mil Máscaras started developing their friendship at the exhibition and Ramon was introduced to the hard truths of what Mil Máscaras had endured early in his career. In the late 60s and into the 70s, Mil Máscaras became a big enough name that promoters in border towns started inviting him to the shows. This did not mean they viewed him with respect, or even as an equal human being, rather money was money. Mil Máscaras encountered a mortifying degree of racism that was sadly indicative of the era. He was told he could not share the locker room with the white wrestlers or use their showers. He was shorted money and often paired with unskilled and under-trained individuals that increased his risk of being injured; not to mention he never knew when he might end up in a shoot being the unwanted foreigner on the show.
Bigotry took a toll on him and Mil Máscaras pushed back hard, perhaps growing callous in the process. When promoters put him into a match with someone who was unskilled, rather than do the ten minutes they were supposed to, he would quickly dismantle them in the ring. Those promoters would complain, but he did not care. He refused to be treated as a second-tier human being. Over the years, Ramon and Mil Máscaras have worked matches together, they have gone to dinner together, and Ramon has had him over to his house. Ramon is a kind person and does not downplay the way that many view Mil Máscaras as being arrogant or difficult to work with, and even the last time he saw Mil Máscaras in Sacramento, Ramon acknowledges the legend was not as friendly. Nevertheless, he believes the terrible experiences in the U.S. shaped the way Mil Máscaras has responded to the industry, and he understands that. It has never dampened what Mil Máscaras meant to him.
Years later, when the moment came for Ramon Barreto to consider becoming a wrestler, Mil Máscaras came to the forefront of his mind. It is hard to imagine he would have taken this leap of faith without that connection. Ramon remembers clearly seeing that mask for the first time and asking his parents to buy him his first wrestling mask. He would make his sister wear a mask, and have a towel for cape, and defeat her night after night in household matches to take her mask. The childhood wonder of discovering masked luchadores always remained in his mind.
The journey to becoming a professional wrestler did not begin right away. By the time Ramon entered the industry he had a career making good money and a family. His life was going in a positive and strong direction, and he had never really thought about trying to become a professional wrestler. A commercial in 1995 changed all of that and sent him on an unpredictable trajectory. He never could have anticipated everything that would follow, good and bad, that came with the birth of Chicano Flame. The young boy standing in the drug store, reading magazines about wrestlers had no idea what an incredible journey awaited.
[i] D, Madigan, Mondo Lucha a Go-Go: The Bizarre & Honorable World of Wild Mexican Wrestling (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 16.
[ii] D. Madigan, Mondo Lucha a Go-Go, 25.
[iii] H. Levi, The World of Lucha Libre, (North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2000), 103-104.
[iv] Read H. Levi’s The World of Lucha Libre, chapter four for an excellent synopsis of this process.
[v] S. Lealos, “Mil Mascaras Unmasked: Why this Lucha Libre Legend is So Hated by Other Wrestlers”. The Sportster, 2022.
​
​
​
​