El Santo

The man behind the mask

Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta was born on September 23, 1917, in Tulancingo, Hidalgo, and moved to Mexico City as a child. He began wrestling in the 1930s under several names before settling, in the early 1940s, on the character that would make him immortal: El Santo, the Saint, in a plain silver mask.

At first Santo was a rudo, a rule-breaker. In 1962 he officially switched to the side of the técnicos, the clean-fighting heroes, and that is how Mexico came to love him.

Comics, movies and a legend

In 1952, Santo became the hero of a comic book series that ran for 35 years, and in the late 1950s he moved into film. Over the next quarter century he starred in more than 50 movies, battling vampires, zombies, mad scientists, Martians and criminal gangs. He never removed the mask on screen, kept it on for public appearances and guarded his real face carefully for decades.

The films were cheap and often wildly strange, but they turned Santo into a folk hero, a figure of justice and dignity for ordinary Mexicans. To many fans, the line between the wrestler and the superhero simply disappeared.

Some of his best-known films paired him with other masked heroes, such as Blue Demon, his great rival in the ring. Audiences loved seeing the two old enemies join forces against monsters. The pictures played across Latin America and later found a cult following around the world, where fans enjoyed their mix of action, horror and earnest heroism.

One last reveal

Santo retired from the ring in the early 1980s. In January 1984, on a television program, he lifted his mask briefly and showed his face to the public. About a week later, on February 5, 1984, he died of a heart attack. In keeping with his wishes, he was buried wearing his silver mask. Thousands of mourners turned out for his funeral.

A family and a nation's icon

His son took up the silver mask as El Hijo del Santo and became a major star in his own right. Santo's image is everywhere in Mexico, on murals, toys, T-shirts and statues, and in 2017 Mexico City celebrated the centenary of his birth. More than any other figure, he explains why the mask in lucha libre is treated as something close to sacred.

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