Breathe
By Patricia Vega, cultural journalist, National Journalism Award 2010.
Patricia Reyes Spíndola is, without a doubt, one of Mexico's most talented and outstanding actresses. Her performances, many of them memorable, have earned her multiple awards and recognitions. She has ventured into practically all possible genres and formats, in addition to being an acting teacher, director, union member, producer, activist and entrepreneur of diverse cultural projects. Since her extensive trajectory is available on the Internet, I will add a few brushstrokes to celebrate her 70th birthday.
Since she made her film debut in 1974 at the age of 21, under the direction of Jaime Humberto Hermosillo in El Señor de Osanto, Patricia became the crush of Alejandro Xavier Díaz, a neighbor on my block who is now also the actress' age and who always read every news item about the actress in front of the newsstand. I remember, in particular, the film reviews of Francisco Sanchez, in the newspaper Esto. The following year, in 1975, Reyes Spíndola won her first Ariel for best female co-actress for her participation in Actas de Marusia, the Mexican film directed by Chilean Miguel Littin. From then on, Patricia showed her great talent and professionalism every time she appeared in front of a screen -cinema or television- or directly in front of a theater audience.
Our professions led us to meet personally in 1985, as a result of her masterful performance in Los motivos de Luz, a film by Felipe Cazals, based on the real case of Elvira Luz Cruz, a woman imprisoned for the murder of her four children, whose journalistic coverage I carried out for almost a decade.
Patricia Reyes Spíndola studied and documented the facts until she imbibed them and then let them loose to create a character that gave way to various reflections and controversies that unfortunately are still in force due to the situation of inequality that, in particular, especially harms women from the most vulnerable sectors of a country that continues to go through a macho culture. Thus, in professional terms, we clashed head-on: Patricia defended her right to create the character Luz, who, although inspired by real events, belonged to the world of fiction, while I was in favor of Elvira Luz Cruz's right to keep her story out of the limelight since, at that time, her case was still open, without a definitive legal sentence. We firmly believed that a film of the dimension of Los motivos de Luz, could affect the mood of the judge in charge. Patricia Reyes Spíndola knows that I never questioned the quality of her magnificent performance, for which she won several awards. Our differences pertained to other public arenas: freedom of expression, the macho culture and the legal system in Mexico, among other similar issues.
Over the years we established an intimate friendship that allowed me to discover a Patricia who has a comic flair and a great sense of humor - caustic, more often than not - such as usually characterizes brilliant and witty minds. Her profession has placed her in mostly dramatic roles, but even in short, Reyes Spíndola is funny and funny to a fault, and she is overwhelmingly so. In short, she is a great storyteller.
That spark is, I maintain, what made it possible for Patricia to win one of the most bloody battles a woman can face: the fight against breast cancer, which in 2011 led her to lose her left breast. In writing these lines, I am not committing any infidelity because Patricia Reyes Spíndola decided that her passage through this illness should serve as an experience for other women, even though it is already a closed chapter. That is why she created Lupita Holística, an esoteric character who, between fortune teller and tarot reader, allowed her to mock and exorcise cancer, not as a sign of the zodiac but as a disease. Thus, without much fuss, Reyes Spíndola opens a window to that metaphysical world that is of great interest to her.
I cannot close these brief lines about Patricia Reyes Spíndola without referring to the importance of the Fuentes Berain sisters -Sandra, Marcela and Rossana- in the life of my admired actress and friend. Nor can I fail to mention the great companionship that her beloved dogs have been to her.
Like a good wine aged in a special barrel and macerated with rich spices, Patricia, my dear namesake, has matured in a unique, surprising and inspiring way. Congratulations!
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of Opinion 51.
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