"Don't you want a little taste of the glory? See what it tastes like?"
Jared Hess' 2006 film Nacho Libre lands a knockout punch about an orphan's inner conflict with power and the necessary desire to belong to a community.
My family watched a lot of movies throughout my childhood. We’d fill two giant plastic bowls full of microwave popcorn that was drenched in salt and butter. We’d sit together on a diarrhea green, sectional couch and watch two, sometimes even three, movies a night. This was one of the most enjoyable family traditions growing up because when the movie began, the chaos would stop.
My siblings and parents would call a temporary truce from the usual fighting so we could share blankets and pillows. For two hours or more, our house would dramatically transform from a loud daycare to a quiet library. Yes, I am a very loud individual still to this day. Yet the chill environment I prioritize now stems from the brief moments of quietness from yesterday.
Caption: The iconic Hastings store in Hutchinson, KS in 2016 (photo from The Hutchinson News). Rest in peace, Hastings.
Every Friday evening after work, one of my parents would come home after making a pit stop at our local Hastings video rental store. They would bring two to five DVD rentals of the latest movies that were available to watch. The DVDs were always placed on the side table next to the living room couch and I would immediately walk over to see what was included in the weekly batch.
Many, many films became favorites in our little cult which was the Kilpatrick family. Jared Hess’ 2004 film Napoleon Dynamite was viewed by my father every single morning for several weeks while I was in high school. He would replay the same awkward and hilarious scenes over and over again for my younger brothers as they would finish their breakfast and catch the bus to school (which was three blocks away from our home).
Napoleon Dynamite was funny. I was enamored with the film for a year and I even perfected impressions of side characters like Rex Kwon Do. However, one of the most quoted movies for my siblings and me growing up was Hess’ follow-up movie in 2006, Nacho Libre. The movie stars Jack Black as Nacho, an underappreciated cook at a monastery in rural Mexico who embarks on his lifelong dream of being a luchador to afford the ingredients he needs to feed the orphans he cares for.
My favorite shot from Nacho Libre.
While identical in aesthetic and higher budget than Napoleon Dynamite, the plot of Nacho Libre is what separates a good first feature from a deeply influential second film. This movie immediately connected with a pre-teen MAK growing up in the middle of Kansas. And 16 years after the release of the movie, I still find Nacho Libre to be a critical story that shapes my worldview and why I choose to feel hope, not nihilism, every morning when I wake up.
Professional wrestling is an amazing contemporary form of performance art born from poor and working-class cultures around the world. For thousands of years, religion also has had a deep and global history of both empowering and disenfranchising poor and working people in the struggle for power with the wealthy and elite. Combine these two major themes (wrestling and religion) and you got yourself a wonderful story of how poor and working communities can create a better world from the bottom up…not top-down.
No, I don’t love this movie because it is about professional wrestling in Mexico. I love Nacho Libre because it portrays a realistic process of how poor and working people rationalize their pursuit of more power against the upper classes in ways that are similar to my own life. This movie also paints the necessity of establishing one’s individual identity with a broader community… something I am proud to say that I now finally understand.
“Beneath the clothes, we find a man... and beneath the man, we find his... nucleus.”
Nacho Libre is an efficient and quick movie that doesn’t beat around the bush with its 92-minute running time. The opening credit scene of Nacho Libre immediately informs the viewer of Nacho’s lifelong dream and passion through a quirky and genuinely sweet montage. Young Nacho (played by Troy Gentile) creates his wrestling costume so he can practice his moves against graveyard statues and rest on gravemarkers. Nacho is an orphan and nuns quickly push little Nacho off the path of lucha libre and into the necessary but devalued role of head cook for the monastery’s kitchen.
Nacho lives up to the selected assignment bestowed on him for years. He receives no money for fresh ingredients and can’t provide the necessary nutrients the orphans need because his monastery is dirt poor. Every morning Nacho plops some nasty ass soup topped with small tortilla chips into the bowls of monks and orphans. The children are reminded of the family they no longer have and the harsh reality of living in poverty with every nasty meal they receive. What would life look like if the monastery could afford to feed their orphans with a healthy diet?
When Nacho thinks about his job as a cook and about the children he cares for he feels powerless. How can he get out of the kitchen and pursue his dream? How can he find a way to feed the children? Think of the children! Nacho realizes his solution after his tortilla chips are stolen by his future sidekick and friend Esqueleto (performed by Héctor Jiménez). Nacho can pursue his dream of being a luchador to win cash for his orphans. However, this comes into direct conflict with Nacho’s religious worldview. Lucha libre is not “the way of the lord” because of its path to individual power and greed.
Nacho’s hesitancy to seek more power is deeply relatable to many poor and working people today, including so many friends and acquaintances I know. Many of us might view those with power as inherently bad or negative and we can’t judge people for feeling that way. We read the news every day and we understand how billionaires, oligarchs, and multi-billion dollar companies wield their power to exploit people like you and me. It is easy to assume that as a person gains more power they become more motivated to only care for the preservation of themselves. It doesn’t have to be that way though.
The movie seems to uphold this value by setting up the powerful and intimidating luchador Ramses as the main antagonist (Ramses is portrayed by real-life luchador Silver King, who passed away in 2019 while wrestling a match in London). Ramses is hailed as being the numero uno wrestler in town, giving him a lot of power and premiere status in the local village. We learn about Ramses’ self-centeredness when Nacho takes the orphans on a field trip and they discover how much of a dick Ramses is. Ramses refuses to talk to the orphans despite Nacho’s pleas and he shoves Nacho over a watermelon stand, destroying a working-class vendor’s fruits in the process. Ramses only cares about himself and retaining his top status. This is because he sought power, right?
This is exactly how I felt about my life and the concept of power before the COVID-19 pandemic changed my worldview. If I gained more social and political power, I would become what I hate. I would become Ramses. This fear takes away the opportunity for people like to us attain power and achieve higher status altogether with those we are in community with.
Nacho Libre challenges this concept of power throughout the entire film. Nacho is forced into a binary decision: should he leave the monastery and pursue a career in lucha libre? Or should he abandon his dreams to be a man of god? Fortunately, through the support of his friends and peers, he realizes can do both. You can seek power for yourself… and you can also seek power with others.
Power is neutral. How we use our power and who we use our power for are defined based on our relationships with one another and can change what we think is possible in our world. For the last decade of my life, I have shied away from positions of power simply because of my fear to hurt and devalue those I care about the most. Nacho did the same by hiding in his kitchen. Instead of wasting time and looking back in regret, Nacho and I both realized our future can be built by accepting our current status in power and taking action to change that now for a better outcome.
Nacho begins to seriously reconsider his position of power when a new nun joins the monastery, Sister Encarnación (played by Ana de la Reguera). Yes, on the surface, Sister Encarnación’s main purpose is to play the attractive love interest for Nacho in the film. Viewers will also realize she serves a huge purpose in driving the story by not judging Nacho and guiding him towards a new worldview: it is okay to seek more power if you use power to benefit yourself and the ones you love.
This simple line of dialogue is one of my favorite aspects of the movie: it is quick and efficient. There is no three hour-long film pondering the existence of power. There are no metaphors or deeper meanings to analyze through multiple viewings. Nacho needed to listen to somebody else validate what he has been feeling inside his entire life. To provide a better life for his impoverished monastery, he and his community must seek more power. Nacho’s route to power is through lucha libre, which puts him at odds with Ramses. And you know what? That is fine. Ramses has had plenty for himself for too long.
Closed mouths don’t get fed and playing nice with the powerful will not benefit a poor or working collective as a whole…only for the few individuals exceptional enough to be accepted by those in power. Wealth and power ain’t trickling down anytime soon, no matter how many times your grandfather or father will tell you that. You gotta fight to take it for yourself. You can’t do it alone though. There is strength in numbers.
With this newfound clarity and confidence, Nacho eventually wins over the almighty Ramses with support from Sister Encarnación, Esqueleto, and the orphans. What does he do with his new status and winnings? He brings it back to the monastery by buying better resources and opportunities for orphans at the monastery. With his rise in power and status, Nacho did not immediately abandon his principles, his religion, and those he cares about. He brought his power back home and worked with the orphans to provide the salads they wanted for lunch and the field trips they never got to have. He held himself accountable to the collective.
Most importantly, the orphans themselves now recognize the importance of agency and power. The new resources also provide better opportunities to the orphans now than when Nacho and his friends were growing up at the monastery.
Can’t go wrong with a salad like that.
“There is no place for me in this world. I don't belong out there and I don't belong in here. So I'm going out into the wilderness. Probably to die.”
Nacho’s original motivation to become a luchardor was so that he can feel seen. Throughout most of Nacho’s life, he has been looked over and underappreciated by the monastery’s orphans and fellow monks. He felt no connection to community and in return, felt no real connection to an identity for himself.
Early in the film, Nacho shares a dry toast with Sister Encarnación in an attempt to get to know her. We learn that folks in the monastery call Nacho a güero because he is white. His mother was a Lutheran missionary from Scandinavia and his father was a deacon in Mexico. After failing at converting each other, the couple married and had Nacho before both of them passed away. Nacho becomes homeless at a young age and is raised in the monastery as one of their orphans. His güero appearance background is an overlooked detail as to why he might be left out of the community from time to time.
The lack of external support and validation from loved ones around you is enough to make anyone question their identity and importance in the world. Nacho is a monastery cook not because he wants to but because he has to be. This feels more like a burden and with that pressure comes the desire to leave altogether and try something new.
Lucha libre provided a new outlet for Nacho to seek the praise and admiration he desired. Nacho’s heart and wrestling charisma draw cheers from the crowd while he and Esqueleto are losing matches throughout the entire film. This brings new feelings and perspectives for Nacho, ones that he has never experienced before. Some people, like Nacho, can even feel dirty and think this amount of appreciation and applause is negative. When you feel wrong for so long it doesn’t feel right when you are actually right. Does that make sense?
One of the most important lessons from Nacho Libre is a core value that should be practiced in all healthy relationships: we have to meet people where they are at and appreciate people for who they are. Only then can you build the trust and love that allows people and their communities to grow together. If Nacho had been accepted and not socially pressured to hide his wrestling identity his entire life then he would not have had to deal with such unnecessary stress and depression. Leading up to the climax of the film, the monastery learns that Nacho has been secretly wrestling in the evenings. This leads to a stand-off between the two parties, resulting in Nacho choosing to go his own way. The monastery quickly packs his belongings and sees his way out.
Identity is not something that should solely come from one’s idea of themselves. Identity can also be validated and reinforced through one’s relationships and roles with others. Far too often I hear how the emphasis on individuality is more important than one’s identity in a collective. You can find peace and acceptance of your true self by realizing who you are with those in community with you. You are not comparing yourself to others but you are seeing how you can show up in the relationships around you.
Sister Encarnación understands Nacho’s need to be validated and eventually supports his wrestling pursuit just in time to watch him win the final match against Ramses. She organizes the orphans into supporting Nacho and brings them to watch the final match. This gathering fulfills his desire to have a valuable role and identity in the monastery. Out of everyone cheering in the crowd, it is the support of the orphans, Esqueleto and Sister Encarnación that matter to Nacho the most. Nacho can now enjoy his life again because he can continue to serve his community as a cook without leaving behind his mission to wrestle.
When you meet people where they are at people will feel more comfortable revealing who they actually are. People can build trust and be more comfortable being themselves by being vulnerable and leaning into tensions directly. We should not judge when we hear tensions or discover something different. Instead, we must learn to love all over again. Establishing this kind of camaraderie makes it easier for people to draw boundaries and communicate in ways that deescalate and ensure collective buy-in and support. It takes time to develop that ability.
This aspect of Nacho Libre resonates with me because, for the past several years, I worked purposely to not identify with a collective group. Afraid to share my taste in art, afraid to write, afraid to be honest about my anger, afraid to be non-binary, afraid to voice my political views, afraid to embrace my Hispanic origins, and afraid to be anything and everything! That list can go on and on. And much like Nacho, the loneliness of hiding who you are takes a toll and alienates you further into the isolation of despair and nihilism. Believing in hope means we have to believe in others. We have to believe in our communities.
Nacho Libre is a story about that kind of hope. One of the motivating factors for why I am writing in a public space is because I fear the future in all kinds of ways. I would be lying to you if I said I wasn’t afraid. However, I also know I have a lot of hope in our collective ability to change the world as it currently is. We can turn our vision for a brighter future into how our world should be. Let’s talk about it!
When it comes to being cool, nihilism is in and hope is out. We see it everywhere in the media we watch, our social media habits, and the decisions we make in our personal lives. Nihilism makes it easier for who to have power over us? The rich! The wealthy assholes and their megacompanies will continue their path of greed until someone puts them in check. They are bullies and bullies won’t go away with our attitude of doom and gloom. You have to be confident in the hope you believe in. I know it sounds corny but honestly, it shouldn’t be.
Upon reflection, I should not be surprised by Nacho Libre’s deep influence on me as a child. The story’s focus on how poor and working people realize their power against the upper classes is something I live day-to-day as a community organizer in Kansas City. Nacho’s identity crisis connected with me and my journey of feeling alone and insecure for an entire decade. I now understand the need to establish my own identity with the communities I am involved in and wear that identity with pride, much like Nacho. Nacho Libre is a story that will stand the test of time because of its genuine heart and warm portrayal of poor and working people coming together to win. Give the film a watch and let me know what you think. I’d love to hear your thoughts.