>Lastly, the letters! Omg, do they ever sound like a happy, goofy, good-natured musician who loves his wife and daughter to pieces! And yet you've managed to add little ominous hints like Luckily he hasn’t heard your definition of brother, mi amor, [imitating Imelda’s handwriting] an infuriating person you can’t kill.’ and He says it’s a good song to play at the end of a show but I don’t want to and I wrote it so I win.
Those were my favourite parts to write, so I'm really glad to hear you liked them! I was smiling over that 'person you can't kill'. Poor sweet Héctor, so trusting. "I told Ernesto I was leaving him for a woman, drank something he handed me and fell over dead? Huh. What a weird coincidence."
>I also like that there is a sketch, known to be Ernesto, that shows Héctor -- so while his identity might not have been know to researchers, his existence as a musician who Ernesto knew isn't in question. There won't be much doubt that Héctor was Ernesto's music partner, not when some of their own records back up the Riveras' letter collection.
I expect some Ernesto scholars are kicking themselves now, having successfully ferreted out some tiny detail about Ernesto that suddenly turns into a plank for his scaffold. "Look, I found out Ernesto bought eighteen pounds of rat poison on July 20th! I wonder what he was planning to do with it? ... oh."
>There's probably going to be suspicious amount of arsenic in the abdominal space, I think.
"Uh. Well, the results from the testing are back, and I think we should be standing further away from the body."
>The little details, like the archivist immediately washing her hands (and probably wishing for a pair of gloves to protect the paper)
I hope you won't mind if I dork out for a minute... not for paper, actually! Films and TV always get it wrong. I swear they just use white cotton gloves as shorthand for 'oooo, important'. Gloves are for photographs, microfilm and negatives, because they're super susceptible to oil damage, and for big things like paintings. If you're dealing with thin little sheets of paper, though, gloves make you so clumsy you're likely to break them in half by mistake and wow, is that embarrassing. I do a bit of book conservation as a volunteer, nothing fancy, and we just have a strict handwashing policy.
Miguel should definitely be wearing gloves to handle the guitar, though! And certainly not playing it or dragging it around Santa Cecilia or letting it fall on the floor when he gets dragged off to the land of the dead! So careless. It's lucky the writer doesn't know about that, or she'd be playing percussion on the table with her head.
Those were my favourite parts to write, so I'm really glad to hear you liked them! I was smiling over that 'person you can't kill'. Poor sweet Héctor, so trusting. "I told Ernesto I was leaving him for a woman, drank something he handed me and fell over dead? Huh. What a weird coincidence."
okay, that 'leaving him for a woman' line is funny but so open to innuendo. I can just imagine a lot of raised eyebrows and Héctor having to clarify 'not like *that*!'
I expect some Ernesto scholars are kicking themselves now, having successfully ferreted out some tiny detail about Ernesto that suddenly turns into a plank for his scaffold.
Well, there's also that scene in the movie 'El Camino a Casa'... talk about a horrible bit of evidence; there's almost certainly going to have been research into Ernesto's film career, and that poisoning scene has to have had lots of input from Ernesto to be so close to what happened between him and Héctor. Can you just imagine the film historians reactions after it comes out that Ernesto lied and stole from his musical partner... and then put a parallel scene into one of his movies?! ... whether or not anyone believes the murder accusation, that scene becomes creepy icky retroactively.
Heck, Ernesto may not have had to buy rat poison. There was a patent medicine containing arsenic as its active ingredient in the USA until the 1950s -- Fowler's Solution -- and I'd be really surprised if there wasn't something similar available in Mexico in 1921.
"Uh. Well, the results from the testing are back, and I think we should be standing further away from the body."
Ha! I spent a lot of time as a volunteer and as a student in natural history museums and research collections. Memorably, there was one cabinet that held golden eagle specimens that we weren't to open without due cause and *serious* consideration because they'd a) been collected in the 1910s, b) were irreplaceable because you can't legally collect eagles is the USA anymore, and c) had been treated with arsenic dust as an insecticide sometime in the 1930s.
That poor guitar -- hung up in a tomb for 75 years! I think the only reason it is still in playable condition is that it is slightly magical, somehow. I mean, yes, guitars can last a long time if they're taken care of... but it wasn't.
>Heck, Ernesto may not have had to buy rat poison. There was a patent medicine containing arsenic as its active ingredient in the USA until the 1950s -- Fowler's Solution -- and I'd be really surprised if there wasn't something similar available in Mexico in 1921.
Really? Wow! I knew about the heroin and the radium, but that's just spectacularly optimistic. Prescribed for malaria and... syphilis? Imagine all the scholarly articles about Ernesto de la Cruz possibly buying a treatment for syphilis. It'd be the single biggest issue in de la Cruz studies up until, you know, the murder.
> c) had been treated with arsenic dust as an insecticide sometime in the 1930s.
Salvarsan is generally considered the first true chemotherapeutic drug, and it was an arsenic compound used to treat syphilis -- not that Ernesto would have it available (much too delicate to work outside a careful medical establishment). But yes, I can totally see the scholar articles about Ernesto de la Cruz buying a treatment for syphilis; most of the researchers would admit that he did, but wouldn't have made too big a deal out of it, except somebody has a pet theory that the side-effects of treatment were why Ernesto seemed to stop writing such brilliant songs after 1921...
Oh yes, it worked. Those eagles were in lovely condition, the one time we opened the cabinet while I was there. You couldn't handle them or anything stored in the same cabinet without gloves and a dust mask, and you were told to wash yourself and your clothes afterwards, but there was no insect damage at all.
Well, yes it is. Because imaginary scholars are probably as dramatic and ridiculous as real scholars, and as long as they are imaginary, no one is hurt by their shenanigans.
Meaning, if you want to write a follow-up with what happens in the music history, film history, and local history circles after the Rivera Letters are authenticated, I would be *delighted* to read it.
Watch this space! ... watch this space very patiently. :D
Sorry for the late reply! I've had horrible computer problems; my operating system literally ceased to exist for a few days there. Luckily it's fixed now!
We don’t know the guitar wasn’t preserved correctly. It’s not behind glass, Miguel took it down easily, and the mausoleum isn’t that hard to get into, either by key or broken window. And Ernesto strikes me as the kinda guy to demand that guitar be preserved in working condition in his will. ‘It wouldn’t do for anything belonging to Ernesto de la Cruz and his legacy to be anything less than pristine.’ He probably left money for it. They probably give it regular tune ups, but make sure it’s back home for Dia de los Muertos.
I'm sorry, but I'm not sure I'm following your argument right.
It's entirely possible some work was done on the guitar before it was hung up in the tomb, but all maintenance no matter how good has to be done again and again, and extra handling just makes that again come sooner.
> We don’t know the guitar wasn’t preserved correctly. It’s not behind glass, Miguel took it down easily, and the mausoleum isn’t that hard to get into, either by key or broken window.
It was behind glass a little; Miguel had to smash some to get to it.
I suppose I see the two points as being contradictory. If you judge that whoever's responsible for Ernesto's tomb wasn't taking enough care to keep the guitar from being stolen or damaged, how likely are they to take better care of it with regards to maintenance and tuning?
I saw him smashing the locked window, not a glass case. And it seemed like his tomb didn’t have a lot of security, just a locked door. The caretaker of the tomb had easy access with his keys, and could easily access the guitar on a daily basis. Plus, from what I’ve seen, Santa Cecelia is a small, relatively poor (by East Coast American standards, anyway) town in one of Mexico’s poorest states. High tech security might be beyond their means. Plus small town means everyone knows everyone else, and Ernesto de la Cruz is THE town economy. Why would anyone in town (except a desperate punk kid like Miguel, who had every intention of returning it, I'm assuming) steal it?
I guess I just didn’t see the guitar not being maintained as outside the realm of possibility.
Although I do agree with Neotama that the guitar was magical. Heck, the film even states that it's cursed. "Stealing from the dead curses you," Miguel is told in the Land of the Dead. And Ernesto stole that guitar from a dead Hector. Remember, it was the guitar that sent Miguel to the Land of the Dead, not Imelda's photo. That fell off the ofrenda by accident, Miguel just didn't replace it. The drumstick he swiped off a grave to distract Dante didn't curse him. But stealing an already-stolen-already-cursed guitar? That put Miguel over the top, and I can't help wondering if that was the curse on Ernesto coming due. Maybe the guitar was just waiting for an opportunity for Justice.
I think that stealing from the dead on Día de los Muertos specifically is what curses you. Ernesto stole Héctor's songbook and guitar at a bare minimum, according to canon, but he was never cursed so far as we know. As for the drumstick? I don't know. Maybe it's deliberate, premeditated stealing that does the trick. I doubt Miguel would have nicked the drumstick if Dante hadn't needed distraction, so it was more spur-of-the-moment. On the other hand, Miguel taking the guitar was clearly purposeful. He meant to do it, even if he felt somewhat bad about it.
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