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Tenoch's interview at the Vagos de la Vida Real Podcast

Hi! sorry this took so long, I'm a bit rusty. Sorry for any grammar mistakes too. If you find difficulties understanding anything or if you have any correction, let me know.

Bold is the interviewer, normal is Tenoch and italics are comments made by me (mostly explaining things or when I don’t understand what they’re saying)

We already have some followers here in this radio experimentation laboratory called "Vagos de la vida real", produced by La Universidad Autónoma de San Luis. And to start talking, I'd like to ask you something that has to do with your past, with your dreams, with nostalgia, I think. Let's see what you tell us: What does Ecatepec represent in your life?

Well, it’s the place where I was raised. I grew up on the border, right there, a few blocks away in between Ecatepec and Coacalco, and to me, apart from being the place where I grew up, it’s the place that gave me identity. Between the contrasts of things that I saw at home, what you see on the street, what you see at school, I think that at the end of the day the place where I grew up was very privileged because I was able to understand many dynamics and see many points of view and understand many types of lives and experiences based on the place where I grew up.

Back then, going from Mexico City to Ecatepec or from Ecatepec to the city was the equivalent to a trip outside the city, let’s say, it’s like going to Cuernavaca, to Querétaro, you know? It was literally like going to a city in a different state. The metropolitan area had not swallowed that part of the state of Mexico, so it was… Very particular, because I recall that when I have talked with friends that were raised outside the city, let’s say Jalisco or places like that, we have similar experiences about living “outside” the city, in another state and at the same time, this other identity that’s a lot more urban. In my case, it was formed towards my teenage years as a result of the closeness and “distance” between Ecatepunk (another way of calling Ecatepec that Tenoch uses) and Mexico City.

That's right. Hey, right now we're going to talk about Ecatepunk, the term was among the questions I had (Tenoch laughs). Do you remember your friends from there?

Yeah, yeah!

What was everyday life like? Tell us about your friends, what did they do? Did they play in the street? Were they naughty nuisances? What was everyday life like when you were in middle school there in Ecatepec? Because you went to middle school in Ecatepec, right?

Yes, they're sons of a gun (the host laughs and I don't get to hear what Tenoch says properly, but he mentions something about being naughty or doing naughty things). Some were worse than others, you know, there's a bit of everything, from really quiet dudes, the majority of them are hard-working people, with their families and so on, but there were always the miscreants (he says malandrillos, idk how to translate it but basically reckless kids, 'bad' guys, etc, just in case this word is weird) and I just so happened to befriend them. I always had the... (Tenoch laughs and doesn’t finish the sentence). I was a very easy going kid, imagine that my first drop of alcohol... Well, I had tasted something, but I drank my first real drink when I was 21, 22 years old. I was finishing college when I had my first drink. Actually, I was really easy going and the majority of my friends were, let's say, a little more adventurous in life than me. And so I was friends with the bad guys and also the guys that were top in class, so I could move in all aspects, let's say, in all the areas that a public middle school could offer. I went to the Moisés Saenz middle school and when I was a little boy, that was the most posh school in the area, but by the time I started middle school there, it was a step before juvenile prison because everyone was a son of a gun, but the truth is I had a great time, it was fun and I still have many friends from middle school.

That's important, yes, yes. Hey, something that comes to mind about what you're talking about is, how did you and your friends saw Mexico City? You already told us it was like a trip to another city, but how did you guys see it? How did you imagine that urban monster that was growing? Did you ever realize that it was going to absorb you? You didn't realize? What was the imagery of those who lived there?

Well, you truly don't realize it. For starters, it was like a mythical place, it was a distant place, the big city. At the end of the day, it is the country's capital, so when you're a young what interests you is, or in my case, were the raves, the rock shows, going to bars and so on, but we didn't have enough money or the age... 14 years old, where the hell were they going to let us in? So that was like the dream of the city, the city, the city and suddenly, it began to become too urbanized there and when I started college... I mean, in high school I already acquired a little clearer awareness of the immensity of the city and the complexity of it. At the end of the day, I lived in a microcosm. When I was a child, there were, I don't know, four or five subdivisions and I lived in one of them. There were five or six villages that ended up being absorbed by the urban sprawl and now are interior villages and everything else was for plots. Then little by little it became urbanized, the city swallowed it up.

When I started my degree in the UNAM was when I really got to experience Mexico City, I was visiting it on a daily basis. I studied in Aragón, but the majority of my activities post-school where in Acatlán, because I played american football with los Pumas de Acatlán and the other part of my activities were in Mexico City, in Channel 22, where I did my social service, in ABC radio that's in the press building by the Hidalgo subway station, where I also did internships and eventually I did some work as a reporter and journalistic notes in the radio, I went on air and read news. Anyway, it was a whole adventure to discover... While I was growing, let's say... It's very funny, because while I was growing, my horizons were growing too. In terms of the city, the 'chilango' identity, that I personally love, I'm not a chilango supremacist, even though I make a lots of jokes about it, but the truth is I'm not. The bottom line is that something beautiful about Mexico City is that people from everywhere live in the city and Mexico City wouldn't be so cool if only us chilangos lived in it, because it's a really, really boring city. All the diversity, the food, the ambiance, the places, the people... I mean 25 millions of souls are 25 millions of different worlds, so there's a bit of everything for everyone and the truth is that I can brag that I have been able to live, well the precise term of the word is cosmopolitan, the cosmopolitan life of Mexico City, because we're a country that measures half of Europe. So, when we talk about cosmopolitanism, just with the inner immigration in the country is already half of Europe, that's how cosmopolitan Mexico City can be. So, truly, I've had a great time. Now I live in chilangolandia, I have become a chilango completely.

Full time

And I enjoy it a lot. Full time, truly. And I enjoy it a lot, I mean, we also have to keep the distances and proportions. I live in a central area of the city, in a middle class area, so obviously services such as transportation and security are greater, so it offers me a much more comfortable life in the city than to other people.

Hey, would you let us go back to your story?

Let's go, let's go. Yes.

In 91', before you went to college, one of the most complicated decades for this country began. In 94' the Zapatista war blows up, they kill Colosio, there's a series of complications that arose and are part of who we are today. I'd like for you to tell us if you remember how did you see it, if you were already in high school... How did you see everything that was happening? Or you didn't see it? It's something I've asked every guest we've had here in Vagos and the answers have been very diverse, from people that never knew, to people who participated, that went to protests. How was your experience with the '90s?

No, I was very... My parents politicized me since I was little. I went to my first march when I was 7 years old, which was the march in '88 ... (I don't understand what the march was for because they speak at the same time but I managed to hear something about something that they did to someone named Cardenas I think). So yeah, actually, I made things uncomfortable in the classroom since middle school, because when they started to talk about history, I'd bring up my facts like 'no, but wait, Porfirio Diaz did this and that' and they were like 'shut up, asshole' or I would go with my friends to chat and I'd start saying things like Mexico is a great nation and they have to respect us and they were like 'shut up, dude'. Eventually, the majority of my classmates ended up working in political parties and the only one who didn't work with political parties was me. It's like those people that tell you 'you're an atheist because you haven't read about religion' and you say 'no, because I've read about religion I'm an atheist', that happened to me. Since I was a kid my dad politicized me and well, yes, we saw all the events that were happening in the country, and well, I didn't only see them and was aware of them, my dad would talk to me about them and well when the... When the zapatista army arrived at Mexico City, I was there in the Zócalo with my family to receive them. I remember I learned a very important lesson there, I was telling my dad 'I think that Mexico isn't a racist country, but rather a classist country' and my dad told me 'go out to the street and yell 'indio' (indio it's used as a derogatory term in Mexico, meaning someone who's ignorant or uncivilized. Even though the original meaning is being descended from indigenous people) at any person and you'll see how it goes'.

That's right.

'If that is not racism, I don't know what is', and I was like 'oh, fuck'. I was around 13 or 14 years old at that time and since then I began to have a lot of awareness. I thank my dad for that, because regardless of the ideological or political positions that one might have, having awareness and being politicized in life allows you to make better conditions-- decisions, sorry.

Yeah, that's right.

I could say that a good part of the decisions I've taken in my career are based a lot on what I read in the newspapers and especially in the international news.

You have been telling us about your father. Would you like to tell us who your father is? About him?

Yeah, well, look, to me, my heroes in life are my parents. My mom and my dad, they're my fucking heroes, the two of them. My mom lost her mom when she was 11 or 12 years old and my dad lost his dad when he was 5 or 6 years old. So, the fact that my mom didn't have a mom and my dad didn't have a dad meant that no one ruined them (they laugh at this joke, and Tenoch adds something else but he's laughing so I can't manage to grasp what he's saying, though he says something about 'bad examples at home').

They both have worked their whole lives. My mom was raised in what was back then the Iztapalapa village, and it was just that, a village. There were only a few streets that had lights. My dad was from the Colonia Obrera, so it’s funny now that I mention it to you, because my dad was from the Colonia Obrera, a very urban area in Mexico City and my mom was from Iztapalapa, a village, a very rural area in Mexico City and the place where I grew up was a mix between the urban and the rural, right? Because there were many lots there, and at the same time there were a lot of subdivisions, Mexico City, well, the state was starting to split.

My dad was a kid that worked since he was 5 years old as a shoemaker assistant and he was a laborer since he was 13 years old. And being a laborer and having 2 or 3 children, I don’t remember if my sister who was born before me had already been borned, but my dad being a laborer and everything ended up in night-time studies at the polytechnic university (not sure if this or trade school is a better translation but I think you can grasp the idea) and he graduated as an engineer and won a scholarship to study in Germany for a year and a half.

Well I never!

Well, yes. Back then, when going to college actually meant social mobility. And my mom was raised by her aunt, she studied a technical career, starts to work and meets my dad, they get married and made the decision that my mom would stay at home taking care of the kids and my dad was going to work, because back then, before people judge without knowing and understanding, and as the wise says ‘there’s no text without context’. The context about the period when my parents were young, the 60-70s, is that one person, with one salary could sustain a family of 6 or 7 members. In our case, we were six: four siblings, including me, my dad and my mom. So, with my dad’s salary as a teacher, because first he was a teacher at a technical school… With my dad being a teacher, he could sustain us, the whole family. And my mom, by her own decision, wanted to stay home, which I thank a lot because without my mom's effort of taking care of us, of being at home, having always the clothes clean for us and warm food, a mommy that would hug us and pamper us, and when we got sick she would send us to school anyway, she didn't give a fuck, but when we got back from it she would receive us with a hot soup and kisses. And my siblings got hit (he says ‘les ponía su chingazo’, I don’t think it means he hit them violently or anything, it’s probably more like a telling off? just putting this here because slang and intentions are hard to translate at times) because they earned them, those fuckers, but without that mommy, we wouldn't had made it. So that's why I say that both of them have given me great examples. My mom, by staying at home, my dad, by going to work and with all that life experience accumulated, from the two of them, their lives, everything they went through since childhood, their loss of mom and dad, well, they raised us... We're four, the four of us went to college, we're professionals, we are good people, so the clear thing is that without my parents, without my mother and without my father we would not be what we are and that is why I will always be eternally grateful to my parents. And I hope that one day I can give that same example and that same support to my two little girls that I adore, these two little girls are my raison d'être (I looked this up, but basically they’re his reason to exist), they are my solid rock. Someone told me “I’m glad your daughter, the eldest in this case, was born, because otherwise you would have gone crazy, she’s your anchor to reality”, then the little one came along also at a very important time in my life and these two brought good luck to me when they were born. The truth is that these two kids are now what my parents showed me we were for them.

Hey, so I have a question. I read in an interview somewhere that you said that in Ecatepec the microphones were turned off and it was not easy to get out of there. Did you realize this in middle school? Or when you went to high school? Or did you rationalize it when you were already in college?

I realized when I was in college, because you know what? When I was in middle school and high school to me it was normal, I was just another kid from the suburbs and that was it. I lived my life, I went to political rallies and things like that with my parents, but beyond that, well, no.

And your classmates? What were their dreams about their future? Or they didn’t dream of the future?

Well, besides having a good life, earning a good salary and having a house, the truth is that I don’t remember us having any other kind of talks about the future. I think that is something that happens when you’re young, which I think is very healthy too. But also, when you live in less fortunate contexts you’re not thinking so much about the future, because you’re worried about the present and how to overcome things.

Here and now.

For the here and now. I think not all of my classmates, but most of us thought about the future in terms of what career we wanted to pursue and things like that, but there was also a significant part of my classmates who didn’t even question such things, they didn’t have the sense of urgency about the future, really. Beyond buying a house and having a good job, there wasn’t any sort of talks or points of views and I think it has to do with age.

When I started to study my career, when I was accepted at the UNAM in ‘99, just when the 99 strike was happening, the climate was extremely politicized and I appreciate it a lot because it made us question other things. I personally did have the belief that Mexico had to change, that there would have to be a revolution. I thought that at that moment, like a lot of young people and people who came before me, actually, my dad is from the ‘68 generation, several of his classmates lost their lives… Well, they didn’t lose them, they were killed, they died in the movement in ‘68. I did think that the revolution had to be armed, but that didn’t mean that the political fight should be left aside. Anyways, when I started college, I started to understand a lot of things and I realized that college was giving me a lot, a college that was sustained with the taxes of a society, well, it was a college that was giving the less fortunate sons of the revolution… It was giving us a future, right?

Hey, we're running out of time for this segment, we're going to continue talking about this later and I'd like to take this opportunity to tell our listeners, you've heard who's here with us. With studies in communication and journalism at the FES Aragón of the UANAM, from a very young age he dedicated himself to acting and the quality of his work has led him to participate in more than fifty films, more than twelve Mexican, European and North American series. Nominated for the Ariel on five occasions and recognized in one of them as best actor and recognized as best supporting actor in the 54th version of the awards granted by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, in the United States. Author of the book Orgullo Prieto, published in Editorial Grijalbo.

Tenoch huerta, I thank you with all my heart that you have opened a space in your agenda, an agenda that has a lot of work, that has many commitments and yet you still agreed to come and talk with us in this space. I'm going to play a song that closes this segment and I will continue talking with Tenoch Huerta in the next segment.

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We’re back with Vagos de la Vida Real

We're back here, thank you for continuing with us in this radio experimentation laboratory called Vagos de la Vida Real. I take this opportunity to thank Gabriela Hernandez, our university radio director, who allows and supports this project in its second season. I thank you for your calls to the booth. Thank you for the messages we receive in our social networks, remember we have an Instagram for Vagos de la Vida Real if you want to write to us and there, we’ll say who’s going to be the next guests who will come to this program. Today, we have a top-level guest, Tenoch Huerta. Let’s continue talking with you, Tenoch.

I’d like, because of everything you said about Ecatepunk and all of that, to give a little more context: Ecatepec has always been considered as one of the municipalities with the biggest rate of violence, insecurity and femicides. Meaning, the zone where you grew up was very rough, then you moved to Coacalco and went to college. Something I’d like you to do is take us to the memory of your first day of college. I understand, if you want to tell us about that, that when your high school classmates applied for the exam, you were the only one admitted to college.

Yeah, yes, precisely. In the whole high school, I was the only one, which, now that I say it outloud, instead of speaking well of me, speaks badly of the school.

Indeed.

But well, that’s how it was. I was admitted to college. I took the test because my school wasn’t incorporated to the UNAM, it was rather incorporated to another system, so I had to take the test. I was admitted to journalism and I remember the first day I was very nervous. My first day of class was in extramuros, which was really funny because I felt a lot of affinity for the movement and its postures, from which I had some idea, but when I entered I could soak up much more about what was going on thanks to the flier distribution. The people in the general strike board would do it constantly and well, I started to read and soak up the ideas and overall, what the college was looking for at that moment, that topic seemed more important and attractive to me. I was never part of the strike board because I didn’t feel comfortable. Anyone could enter, right? You just went to the assembly and that was it, you were involved. I remember going to a few of them, and later on I went to another and no, it wasn’t something that moved me, but the things they talked about and the reason we were fighting mattered to me. So, yeah, I truly had a great time, but that first day I was very nervous, it was like the first day in kinder, middle school and high school, all of them together and multiplied for ten. So, that’s how the first day of class in my career felt, but the truth is I had a great time, I made great friends and the majority of my classmates are people that in one way or another, I still keep contact with.

Also, it was very gratifying that the first college strike in the XXI century was in Mexico, and it also was a victorious one, because a lot of the things we were seeking, regardless of the phobias or philias of each person, well, the college is still public, free, secular and it still is and continues to have the status of the best college in Mexico. So, with all the love and respect that public and autonomous universities throughout the country deserve and also the private ones, well I come from a public school so evidently, my heart beats a bit more to the left. So, school, public education to me… If there’s something you have to bet on… Betting on the future is betting on education, but not education in an abstract way, but rather on a humanist education with a deep social commitment, which, at the end of the day, I ended up absorbing to a greater extent at the UNAM. Once I started having a bigger status in the film industry, I understood that my position is not only to enjoy the success, but also distribute the jar of honey. Start to distribute that jar and most importantly, well, take over the hives so we can start producing honey for everyone, that’s the idea I’ve always had in life, I know it sounds chairo (Chairo is a pejorative word that is used in Mexican politics to discriminate, disqualify or relegate militants or sympathizers of left-wing causes) and it’ll probably scare a lot of good consciences, but what can I say? Without social justice there’s no future.

No, that’s really poetic. That’s how it is, that’s how it is. Hey, something that comes up that I want to imagine, but I want you to tell us, how did a kid that enters college, what, were you like 18 years old?

Yeah

How do you make it coincide? How do you reconcile the college where you were going to study communication, journalism… But also you were already involved in acting for a bit, for a few years, and a while ago you told me you played american football in college. Which one do you want to start telling us about first? Football, acting, what came first?

I played American football since I was 5 years old.

Oh, since you were a kid!

Yeah, since I was 5 years old until I was 21 years old.

Wow!

Here and there I didn’t play two or three seasons for different reasons, but I played. I played every year my season of american football. I played in a lot of teams, the last team I played with was at the UNAM, with the Pumas de Ataclán. After that, I dislocated my shoulder and I couldn’t do anything and my dad… I had taken acting workshops when I was 17 just as a hobby, because I was really happy doing nothing on the couch in my living room, waiting for it to be 11:45 to watch Golden (they both laugh because golden was a channel where they would show adult movies around that hour). No, no, it’s not true. It’s a joke, but if you want to, it’s not a joke.

But it happened at the time, yes.

So, I was really happy doing nothing in life and suddenly, my dad said ‘go and do something with your life’ and he almost dragged me to take those acting workshops. I liked them a lot, but it was just a hobby and when I was in college, as I was telling you, I played my last season, I dislocated my shoulder and my dad told me ‘Why don’t you take the workshops again?’ So I went back to the workshops, a little bit for curiosity and a little bit for having something to do.

Hey, before you tell us about the workshops and acting, what position did you play in american football?

I played as everything, but like my natural position, I figured it out the last 3 or 4 years that I played and it was the defense. For those who don’t know a lot of american football, the front line is the defensive and in that line, in the edges, there’s a pair of players that are the defensive ends and basically and elementally you dedicate to run into the coreback and beat the crap out of him so the dude would see you come and would be scared and wouldn’t be able to play at ease. So, basically, you’re a beater.

And it’s a complex position to play. I also played american football and the line is tough.

It’s tough (Tenoch goes on to mention something about receiving kicks I think, but the host speaks over him and I don’t understand).

And even more here, the american football played in universities is tougher than in the United States, what we see on TV. Here, the hits hurt in a different way.

Yeah, no, yeah, yeah. I played equipped when I was five, imagine it. The atom ant. We looked like little martians with the helmets that would make us lean to the side, but we start to bump into each other since we’re little, you can imagine… (Tenoch adds something but the host talks over him).

Now, tell us about the workshops. You repeated workshops.

Well, since I couldn’t play anymore, I started to take acting workshops and well, more than see these acting workshops as a way of living, I rather took it seriously because I liked it. So I dedicated it all my time and energy to my texts, monologues, to prepare, to give it a spin over and over again, because I truly liked it, I never had aspirations or anything, I simply liked it and it was something I was doing because all my time, energy and abilities were poured into accomplishing the job. Later on, a therapist told me that I’m obsessive and that obsession makes you not be able to let go until it comes out perfectly. It will never be perfect, so you never let it go. So, that obsession or profile made me always try harder. I was bad, I was terrible as an actor, really bad, but since I didn’t give up and I always kept going and I thank american football for that…

The discipline

One time, they blew the skin off one of my fingers while playing, and you could see the bone. I was 10 years old, I went out of the field and told the doctor ‘put a bandage on me’ and he put a gauze on and adhesive tape on my finger and I went back to play, even though they had torn off my skin, because that’s how it is, I don’t understand life in any other way. So they put the gauze and in you go. That’s why I get so angry when I watch soccer players, they tell them ‘good day’ and they tumble around four hundred times and they cry, and throw themselves and drag their feet and cry tears in front of the camera. I say, ‘dude, these people should be acting, they should be in soap operas and not in soccer’. And I know good soccer players who are actors and should be on the field, dude, but oh well.

So, there’s this thing about holding onto pain, not giving in without moving forward, continuing to fight until the referee whistles the end of the match, it’s what took me to eventually go from the worst actor in my workshop to the worst actor on set, but I was a professional! I wasn’t a student anymore, I was a professional actor. A very bad one, but I was there fighting, battling and that leads you to question yourself, and demand yourself and put the ‘this doesn’t end until it ends’ always in front of you, and you can’t take it for granted until it’s perfect, so that’s how I’ve always tried to do my job. I obviously have to measure myself, because there were times when I didn’t sleep or would hurt my body because I overtrained or demanded too much of myself. So, my therapist told me ‘yes, dude, but calm down a bit, it’s not a vow (he says ‘tampoco es manda’ so I guess he’s talking about when people ask a favor from a deity and then they pay it back by sacrificing their physical integrity at times) either’.

But I think that American football gave me a fighting spirit, a sense of camaraderie, of teamwork, of strategy and of what you can't do… A player on his own is no one in a match, it’s always teamwork. I mean, you’re a team, a group and in that group, there are many individualities, but at the end of the day, they align towards the same objective and it allows you to achieve something. So I think all of that shaped me, not only on a professional level, but also on a personal level and it ended up making me the actor that I am now.

I finished my degree, I worked for a while, and suddenly, they called me to make a movie professionally, beyond those little calls here and there I took because I was simply bored and looking for something to do and earn some money, no, it was in a professional way. Deficit by Gael García Bernal was my first professional film, and although I had already done things before, it was my first professional film for real. And since then I have not worked on anything else, I haven’t earned a living from anything that is not acting. I’ve lived well, I’ve had seasons of skinny cows, fat cows and seasons where there even aren’t cows (cows are used to talk about money, like, época de vacas flacas is equal to lean years. I kept it because otherwise it didn’t make sense and I don’t know if there’s like a proper translation for this saying, but basically he’s saying he has struggled, has seen a lot of money and sometimes nothing at all). But I keep going, and overall, I think it has allowed me to find myself, to question a lot of things about life that eventually make us grow and now gives me the chance to offer a life, the best life I can, to my daughters. Someone told me something very nice recently: our ceilings will always be the floors of our children, so I want to elevate my ceilings a lot, so my daughters can have firm, solid floors, but they’ll have to build their own buildings. I’m not building anything for these damn kids! (He laughs).

Hey, let’s see if you allow me to go back to Ecatepec but in another sense. I read somewhere, in some interview you gave about the movie where you star as a cop and before you starred in it, you went to enroll in the police academy in Ecatepec, but without saying you were an actor. Tell us about that, because at the end of the day you returned to your land in some way.

Well, yeah, when we were preparing the movie, by the way, I had the script like a year and a half before, well, when the time to prepare the character arrived the director… I wasn’t giving what it needed. Actually, when I finished reading the script, I was about to tell the director that I couldn’t do that, that he needed an actor with more life experience, meaning, an older actor or with more training, because I had only taken workshops, I didn’t study acting as a career. So I was about to quit when he sent me the script and I read it, I was going to see him to tell him “you know what, dude? This story deserves someone who’s more prepared than me or has more life experience’ and when I arrived, he tells me ‘before you tell me anything, before you even speak, I would like to tell you that there’s no other actor in Mexico that can do this, only you. Now, what did you want to tell me?’ and I was like ‘When do we start, dude?’

So, the truth is I wasn’t enough, so the director suggested… And at the end of the day it was an agreement, but he said ‘dude, what if you take a few trips to the police academy?’ So I went to the police academy in Mexico City and they told me that no. I said well, I’m going to sign up as a cadet, and they told me that I couldn’t do that either because, I think I can say it openly, I don’t have a military service card, so I couldn’t sign up. And I was like ‘damn it’ and then, my mom knew people in the municipality of Coacalco, from Ecatepunk, and my mom told me ‘go there, they’ll receive you’, so right there my mom did production work, that’s how cool my mom is. So I arrived at the academy and the production intervened, obviously, and the agreements that had to be signed were signed, because I was going to train as a police officer, but since I wasn’t going to sign up, because if I did sign up, like with paperwork and so on, well, after I finished the training I would have had to serve in the police for at least six months. So, we reached an agreement with both the academy authorities and the municipal authorities, which was that I would train there an in exchange, we were going to talk about what was happening, which meant the process, about the Ecatepec police, to whom, to be honest, despite everything, at least what I could see is that a lot of the people that are in the police academy and in the Ecatepec police are people that wants to do things right, good people, honest people. At least that’s what I discovered from my experience. Obviously, every person might have a different one, but I met really good people, with good intentions and well, I graduated. I was going everyday, I was treated just like any other cadet.

In fact, no one knew I was an actor, except for the directors. Only the two of them knew that I was an actor, and well, obviously the municipal president, but apart from them no one else knew. And well, I finished my cadet training and thanks to all that experience I was able to play a role that ended up winning an Ariel and we also were part of the official selection of the Cannes Film Festival, we were in the main competition and we had a great chance of winning, but that was the year when everything happened with Florence Cassez (Not sure if I picked up the name right, but if it’s the right person, she is “a French woman convicted in Mexico of belonging to the kidnapping gang Los Zodíacos (The Zodiacs). She received a 60-year sentence for the crimes of kidnapping, organized crime, and illegal possession of firearms”.). And so there was a lot of…

The camera lens was turned the other way

Yes. I don’t want to say that that’s why… I don’t want to say that that’s why we didn’t win the Cannes Film Festival, but it did have an influence because there was a lot of general animosity towards us.

Tenoch Huerta, we reach the end of the program, the end of this episode. I want you to briefly answer me this last question. That little boy that wore his american football uniform, that little boy that went to college, where you explained that it was like arriving to kinder but 10 times worse, the one that started acting and has conquered international stages, how does he see the future? Where is Tenoch Huerta headed now?

I think that everytime I’m… It’s funny because I think that while my path goes further inward, the further inward I go, ironically, my career is taking me further outward, it’s taking me further in geographical terms, obviously in work terms too, but also in emotional terms. It’s taking me inwards, towards my heart, towards my spirit, towards my mind, towards love. The love I have at home, the love I have from my daughters, even the love from my puppies that were just barking, you know? I think that the further inwards I go, the more the world expands. It’s very funny, they say that universals become universal because they talk about the local, so I think that universalizing ourselves implies, or its first condition is being really honest with an introspective look to see the more human, because in the most intimate and in the most human, it's what we all connect on.

Tenoch, I wish you to continue winning on stages, to continue receiving interesting projects, to continue growing. I thank you for accompanying us until the end of this episode and I ask you to recommend a song to close.

Goodness! There’s a song that was considered the best song of the year and probably of the time, of the decade, it’s called “Oye Mujer” by Raymix. By the way, this dude, if I’m remembering it right, worked in a NASA project, experimenting with sounds and so on, so this dude takes part of the sounds he used the most, he’s an engineer, so he uses his knowledge to design this song that to me seems so beautiful, it’s one of my favorite songs because it’s so pretty and it gives me so much peace and it makes me… It’s funny because he uses sounds from NASA and truly, if you hear it, this song does take you to the stars, no matter how cliché of a romantic gentleman that might sound.

I thank you again, I send you a hug. And I’ll wait for you (the listener) in the next episode.

***

To be honest, I'm a bit dissapointed he didn't speak about future projects, but I understand he might not be able to or doesn't want to just yet. It was fun to know more things about his background, though. It's good to hear him again ❤️‍🩹

(Also he said PUPPIES as in more than one?? I'm DECEASED)

@teeunderscorebee @artintel001 @cutelatinagirl @observers-journal @talokanda-forever @cantstayawaycani @too-many-atoms @neoboha @aolechan @chaoticcatbunny

(sorry if I didn't tag you, as I said I'm rusty and can't remember more usernames rn lol or you speak spanish so this isn't useful to you <3)

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