Page - 154 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/02

mistakes when practicing their faith. This imaginary helps Mormons to explain why people from Mexico (and throughout Latin America) are more likely than those from other countries to listen to Mormon missionaries. This ability to feel the Spirit leads to caricatures that depict Mexicans – and people purportedly of Lamanite descent generally – in a simplistic light. Within this view, Lamanites may have a predisposition to accept the gospel, but they also often struggle with superstition.49 Throughout the film, Nacho, the orphans, the clergy, and even the atheist, Steven, exhibit a simple borderline-superstitious faith in their cosmologies of choice. As a result, Nacho Libre pokes fun at what it frames as sincere yet simplistic Mexican belief systems while viewing the practitioners themselves as generally good. Despite working at the orphanage, Nacho never earns the respect of the oth- er friars, all of whom ridicule him. He takes solace in the fact that the children love him, but he still feels ostracized. He begins to pursue a clandestine career as a masked luchador (wrestler) who participates in local lucha libre (profes- sional wrestling) events in order to secure more funds for himself and the or- phans. When a new nun named Encarnación (Ana de la Reguera) moves to the orphanage, Nacho immediately falls in love with her. However, their chastity vows interfere with any budding romance. Nacho begins to question his faith, particularly a supposed clause that holds lucha libre to be sinful. He befriends the atheist Steven (aka Esqueleto) (Héctor Jiménez), and together the duo starts to fight independent battles on the weekends. They lack any skill in their trade, but they soon learn that they can make good money even when they lose because the audiences enjoy their performances. At the end of the movie, Nacho earns the opportunity to fight Ramses, a wrestler whose golden mask is a combination of those of El Santo and Blue Demon, the two most popular luch- adores – or professional wrestlers – in Mexican history. Nacho receives divine intervention that helps him defeat Ramses and win enough money to buy a bus for the orphans. The film builds on several genres, but its most obvious influence is the Mex- ploitation cinema of the mid-twentieth century.50 Heather Levi places Nacho Libre within an emerging tradition of US film and television that appropriates Mexican wrestling also known as lucha libre into the US context.51 While such 49 In his talk “The Day of the Lamanites,” given during the October 1960 LDS General Conference, Spencer W. Kimball validated such views when he stated that in a recent visit to the Lamanites, he had “found evidence of waning superstition and growing faith in the gospel”. Even as he distances these new members of the Church from their “superstitious” forebears, Kimball also establishes superstition as a persistent element of Lamanite subjectivity. 50 Carlos Losilla notes certain similarities between Nacho Libre and the Spaghetti Western because it is a foreign (US) imitation of a Mexican style of cinema. See Losilla 2007, 122. For an in-depth discussion of Mexploitation, see Greene 2005. 51 Levi 2008, 222. 154 | David S. Dalton www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 141–165