Summer Road Notes, El Paso, Texas
Cuca Aguirre and Eva Aguirre & the Juarez Border Arts Renaissance of the 30’s
In my brother-in-laws’ X-Terra I head toward El Bronco, an El Paso flea market.
I am in search of “Arriba Juarez,” a tiny clothes booth where Cuca Aguirre, now Cuca Aguirre García, at ninety-two years of age, sells clothes and waits for me, perhaps the one of the last pioneers of the Juarez Border Arts Renaissance of the 30’s that laid down the groundwork for the aesthetic revolution we are still living. José Montoya comes to mind, poeta, muralista and an RCAF general whom I met in the early seventies, back in Logan Heights, San Diego. Then I think of Alma Lopez, Lila Downs and Yolanda Muñoz, a digital artist, a singer and a sculptor – going strong.My initial interest was to get more info on my own familia – los Quintana – who arrived in Juarez from Mexico City a few years after the Mexican revolution of 1910. And it happened that my uncle Roberto was a leading figure of Juarez’s “El Barco de La Ilusión” radio-theatre cast of XEJ and who worked with Germán Valdez (Tin-Tan), the comedic actor, originally from Guadalajara, Jalisco. After Tin Tan left Juarez to Mexico City in the early 40’s, he became a major movie star of the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema. An intimate portrait of Tin-Tan lured me too. After meeting Cuca and listening to her stories, songs and poems and returning a month later, things changed.
The more Cuca described her leap, as a teenager, into song, theatre, comedy and dance in the Juarez border Jazz and Ranchera scene from 1932 to 1942, the more I began to realize that she was a seminal part of an explosive site of cultural production.With her sister, Eva Aguirre, now Eva Aguirre Amezcua, and Elvira Macías, Cuca formed part of “Las Tres Chatitas” singing and dancing and on occasion reading out loud, “declamando,” poetry touring Texas with Tin-Tan, and other artists. Returning to Juarez, she and her sister would delve back into a thriving cadre of radio and teatro artists, including “El Charro” Pancho Avitia, Pepe Gamboa, Meño García, Alfredo Corral and Roberto Quintana. The performance schedule was an intense project of experimental theatre based on improvisation and multiple characters all elaborated through various radio stations and radio shows such as “La Familia Feliz,” “Pablo el Ranchero” and “Pablo Barranquillo y Su Comadre Chencha.” There was no set script other than a last-minute given theme.
Cuca laughs recalling a one-act called, “El Millón,” that La Familia Feliz presented on XEJ. “They told us we had won a “million.” So, we jumped up and cried out our dreams – a palace, a world tour, a mink stole! Then the announcer gave us the leash to a tiny dog called ‘El Millón. We were so disappointed!”
The Juarez arts collective was tireless in production and in mentoring each other. Local singer Miguel Aceves Mejía, who later became a national sensation, stopped Cuca and pointed out various options in singing in harmony. “Once Miguel showed me how to do it, I never changed my style
By: La Bloga,
on 7/16/2008
Blog: La Bloga (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Semana Negra, Paco Taibo, Gijón, Thania Muñoz, crime fiction, España, Germán Robles, Jesús Palacios, Fernando Mendéz, El Vampiro, A mordiscos, cine de oro mexicano, Christopher Lee, 2008, Add a tag
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4th day - Mexican actor Germán Robles 
This year La Semana Negra is paying homage to Germán Robles. Robles is a very well known actor in México and other parts of the world for the collection of vampire movies he did during the late 1950s. He is considered “the” Latin vampire of our time. As critic Jesús Palacios (author of the ¡A mordiscos! book distributed free each night) said, “the Americans have Bela Lugosi, the English, Christopher Lee. We have Germán Robles, one of the greatest”.
La Semana Negra has been screening his movies since Saturday, every night at ten thirty. Since the first day the tent has been full, definitely because at the beginning of each screening, Germán Robles himself presents the movie, and tells spectators an anecdote about the movie. Although he is an elderly person now, he still maintains a posture and an enviable elegance. He is a great actor and is not afraid to say it himself, as on Sunday, “I’m a great actor, and since I don’t have my grandma to be saying good things about me, I have to say it myself: I’m a really good actor!” 
Although he has been recognized for his work around the world, and his movies have been translated into more then fifty languages, he is not very well known in Spain. This is especially sad, because although his whole career is centered in México, Robles is from Gijón.
This was a big surprise for the people of this city. Robles’s dad fled the country during the years of the war and settled in Mexico City. Seven years later his wife and son Germán followed him, and the seventeen-year-old Germán Robles started working as an actor and draftsman. He filmed “El Vampiro” in 1957, directed by Fernando Mendéz, before Christopher Lee!
Germán told Sunday’s audience an amazing anecdote about this. He said he had a Mexican friend who used to work at London’s BBC, and at an event he had the opportunity to talk to Christopher Lee. Lee asked him if he was from México and if he knew the actor Germán Robles, to which the reporter, Robles’ friend, answered, “Yes, yes, we are like brothers”. Then Lee told him, “Well, tell Mr. Robles that he was been a true inspiration for me.” Who would have thought that a Mexican inspired the acting as a vampire of an Englishman! An incredible anecdote that Robles told with great pride and a definitely well deserved recognition.
I don’t know how hard it is to find his movies now, but it is definitely worth a try. There are incredibly good Mexican movies from the so-called, “cine de oro mexicano.” Instead of gothic cathedrals or houses with enormous chandeliers as we are used to seeing in dark vampire movies, you see an old Mexican hacienda in a little town of provincial México, a beautiful actress, and an indigenous man, endlessly praying throughout the movie.
Germán Robles's character is an elegant vampire who speaks well, and as Robles himself said, “you can smell his lavender cologne from meters away.” Well directed and aesthetically perfect, even though it was 1957, the special effects are good and the acting amazing. 
I emphatically recommend Roble’s vampire collection, and as La Semana Negra continues, so the screenings will continue special homage to a special bloodsucking Gijones.
Thania Muñoz
By: xenos,
on 2/27/2008
Blog: Sugar Frosted Goodness (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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Enjoy.
Nice Job!
At this moment I don't remember if I had seen that movie, The Vampire, but I am pretty sure that I did since that was my grandpa's passion and hobbie, to watch Cine de Oro Mexicano. Felicidades Thania por este trabajo. Thanx for keeping us update of what is happening at La Semana Negra.
Changuito