El Santo

I think El Santo is explained fairly well in The Devil's Highway, but I don't think his importance to Mexican popular culture is sufficiently explored. To get a better idea of why he was such a big deal, here's two sites that will give you a better idea: Luchador Libra at the Free Film School site and one at the Belated Nerd.The poster on the left is from Santo vs. The Martians, which, in the novel, is the image on the front of Alano's t-shirt when he first meets Frank and Bobby. I guess the other thing I should explain is how I know about El Santo. When I first saw him, he was called Samson and he was appearing in a black-and-white movie on my local UHF station (which specialized in cheap Japanese and foreign sci-fi movies). Three El Santo films had been purchased by American film producer K. Gordon Murray, dubbed into English and the hero's name was changed to 'Samson'. It took me years, and the Internet, to track down that film I saw one Saturday afternoon as a kid, and it was only then that I realized the masked hero was in fact El Santo. Although the quality of video isn't the greatest, if you've never seen El Santo in action, you can remedy that here: