Los Mandados, de Arturo Jiménez Salazar

Los mandados
It is October 23rd, 2010, and the UFC Heavy Weight Title is on the line. At the back of the hall the first fighter appears… on his chest is a tattoo, a legend which reads Brown Pride. As he walks approaching the octagon, greeting the euphoric crowd, some unusual background music is playing. Many will not understand what is implicit there:

Crucé el río grande nadando

sin importarme dos reales

me echó la migra pa’ afuera

y fui a caer a Nogales

            It is the other fighter’s turn, and there is also music in the background: nothing special. It is not that the music that represents him is ordinary; it is just that it is the standard. It is the music you would expect from a champion, for someone that considers himself “the baddest man on the planet”. Heavy Weight categories have many archetypal implications; maybe the most significant is the one symbolizing “the strongest man”. Those with some understanding of the sport and its evolution know that mixed martial artists are the toughest fighters in the world. More than any other fighter of any other pure martial arts discipline. They are truly artists, poet warriors blending technique, skill, and intelligence in a quintessential dance which is not just physical, but mental too.

            The fight has been over-hyped for marketing purposes. The first fighter “could be the first Mexican-American Heavy Weight Champion”, they said repeatedly. “My parents came here illegally”, he had stated on some Hispanic TV shows. Conscious of the marketing plot and of the implications of the Brown Pride tattoo, the second fighter felt the impulse to say: "You're not better than me, when I get done whipping your ass, I'm gonna go drink a Corona and eat a burrito just for your Hispanic heritage, how about that?" Nobody understood why he said such thing, maybe to hype the fight even more and to be controversial because at the end of the day all the show business and staying relevant was kind of related to his paycheck, or maybe he was overconfident because he, as the champion, as “the baddest man on the planet”, happened to have around twenty six pounds of a weight advantage; many said it could mean a big difference. “He cannot make a mistake,” they said about the contender. Regarding the champion´s Corona-burrito remarks there were different opinions: some celebrated it, others were very mad and felt offended, and some took it candidly: “it is just a joke, it is not that important.” It is impossible to know all the details or the real reasons why he said something like that. Maybe he did not even know. Words are just like that, creatures which once out of our mouths become wild animals. The only thing for sure was that this was the background the night of the fight, when the two men came face to face, their gloves touched respectfully. Words were not important anymore.

            All this was just marketing. Nobody without a special interest in such mundane aspects of MMA (which many consider a vulgar sport whose only purpose is to entertain a violent mob) or Heavy Weight Tittles should care about anything which has been stated lately, but nonetheless, these were the conditions for these two fighters to represent much more than what many would call “a gorilla fight.” It would be clear later, that night, that they were much more than two bodies trying to impose their will on each other, using their wrestling, kickboxing or jujitsu techniques. They had precipitated perhaps without much intention into the deeper layers of human collective unconscious, that bizarre, vast and rich region where symbols are found.

            The combat starts being anything but a technical fight. It is almost a bar brawl, quite intense. At some point near the beginning, the title contender is on his back, “there is the take down,” the commentator says, the massive champion on top of him trying to secure a position to ground-and-pound him, “it is the end.”

 More than one must have said so.

            But it is not the end, it is just the beginning. Overcoming adversity, the contender is back on his feet in no time, and from there, he has completely dominated the fight. The champion is unable to connect a single punch; actually, his face is a disaster. The fight is stopped. The new champion raises his arms as a sign of victory, then he smiles—we can see the image of the Mexican flag in his mouth guard. His mestizo face is radiant, he has done what nobody in the division had been able to do, to dethrone the champion, and he doesn’t have a scratch on him. He looks like the sun. At some point he picks up the microphone and at the end of his speech he shouts with emotion and sentiment:

“A todos los Latinos, we did it!” As if his words meant something else.

Maybe he was fighting for something more than the Heavy Weight UFC Belt. And while he is speaking, there is a close up of the defeated champion’s face which appears on the big screens, above the octagon. His emotionless blue eyes look at something which nobody can see, but those eyes are full of sadness; he may be seeing his own humiliation amplified on one of the screens. His face will never be the same. He has a huge scar on his cheek. He will definitely not be drinking a Corona or eating a burrito after all, or maybe he will. Who knows?

            The fight is not over, it’s continued verbally in the web. Many comments of “Mexican pride” start to flood the forums. Many are offended. “He won,” they say, “not because he is Mexican-American” —son of two illegal immigrants by the way— “but because he is a good fighter. And please keep the fight outside of politics, because we are all the same.” And others add that “the Brown Pride tattoo is a sign of anti-white racism,” because “if the former champ had had a tattoo saying White Pride everybody would have said he was a racist.” Some of the guys which are censuring the “Mexican Pride” explosion even claimed to be Mexicans too. But some others answer back and they say “No,” that “we are not all the same.” And that “in theory we should all have the same rights but we are not all the same.” That culture is something unique and different. And that “if we were all the same they would not be promoting all those draconian anti-migration laws just because they say we are muy feos.” And that “if we were all the same, proposals like the one denying citizenship to sons of illegal immigrants would never reach congress.” And that the tattoo “did not have anything to do with racism,” that “words by themselves do not mean much, but they are empty containers.” That they need context to be explained: “whoever knows history knows that his intention is not to consider himself racially superior but just to show that he is proud to be who he is, in a time when many Chicanos have forgotten who they are, bitching about the pinches ilegales mugrosos” even though “their parents or grandparents or whatever came here also without papeles.” And that Cain Velasquez “remembered 10 million people” when he said, we did it, that “there is a voice that wants to be heard,” even though now la moda is to say that “we are todos iguales.” As long as you have your papers, of course. And things like that.

            And as for the fate of his adversary, nobody could perhaps figure out that he was innocent of being the representation and symbol of a repressive, double moral political system. He probably did not even understand the final words of the new champion’s entrance song, and probably will never take the time to make sense —forget about a metaphor— out of them:

la migra a mi me agarró

trescientas veces digamos

pero jamás me domó,

a mí me hizo los mandados

los golpes que a mí me dio

se los cobré a sus paisanos.

Arturo Jiménez-Salazar

Phoenix Arizona, Nov., 2010