Superbarrio’s Olmec pedigree

It was the famous Mexican archaeologist and illustrator Miguel Covarrubias who presented most strikingly the well-known jaguar imagery at the heart of Mexico’s ‘mother culture’, the Olmec people (1250-400 BCE). ‘To the ancient Indians the jaguar was a symbol of supernatural forces - not a simple animal, but an ancestor and a god’. In their stone and jade carvings of humans, and of humans transforming into jaguars (the jaguar was the most desired animal ‘companion spirit’ throughout Mesoamerica), ‘the most characteristic feature is a large trapezoid mouth, known among archaeologists as the Olmec or jaguar mouth, with the corners drawn downward and a thick, flaring upper lip that gives them a despondent, fierce expression like that of a snarling jaguar’.

Olmec kneeling transformation figure of a jaguar-human, serpentine with red pigment, Dumbarton Oaks collections

What of Superbarrio’s mask?
’While Superbarrio’s mask connotes the traditional strength of wrestling championship, he subverts this exclusive function by adding to it an extra layer of signification. “Behind the mask there is the whole struggle of the city’s inhabitants, to make it more livable, more democratic, to resolve the great problems we face. The mask is the symbol, the identification of the people in this struggle...it is not an individual struggle...” For Superbarrio to keep his mask on in the wrestling ring and the social struggle means that we are all winners, we are all Superbarrio’ (hemisphericinstitute.org).

Superbarrio’s mask