The old man I’d met on the street turned out to be exactly the type of person you want in your court. He did disappear after about a week, and I didn’t see him for almost a month, but not before he’d arranged me interviews with the Secretary of Tourism, the Secretary of Employment, and a plethora of their underlings. I also accompanied him in his rounds to half the other bureaucrats of the city as he petitioned for a wheelchair on behalf of his 100 year old friend’s 88 year old wife. I was confused during a great deal of these interviews, just trying to catch enough of what was said to make an intelligent reply if anyone happened to ask me a question.

Coming out after talking to someone in the department of Medical Supplies, I took a chance and revealed some of my listening weakness: “So, I heard you saying something about a wrestler in there, but I didn’t really understand…” “I was a wrestler,” he replied, “and now I voluntarily represent a group of ex-wrestlers who don’t have any money for supplies, like my friend, and his wife.”

Learning he was a wrestler shed a different light on my previous thoughts that if he did turn out to be a psycho, I could probably take him, but it also added a new dimension to this old, short but strongly built man, who now explained to me that he had traveled the world, including to Canada, as a professional fighter.

The Lucha Libre, the Mexican Professional Wrestling, is an institution here: the garish masks are sold on street corners, the matches themselves are attended from everyone to groups of foreigners having a laugh to deadly earnest eighty-year-old women, shouting and swearing as the action unfolds. A recent free photography exhibition in the main square details the golden age of wrestling in Mexico, and as I walked through the galleries of scowling but irresistibly camp leotarded men, I couldn’t help but look behind every mask, to see if I could catch a glimpse of the prosaic eyes of my new friend.