What to Know About The Saltwater Threat to Louisiana’s Drinking Water Supply

A long-lasting drought in Louisiana is impacting the drinking water in the Mississippi River, posing a risk for the state’s near 5 million residents, and particularly those in the New Orleans area.

At the root of the cause are low freshwater levels in the Mississippi River, making it vulnerable to a process known as saltwater infusion, which brings an influx of saltwater from the Gulf of Mexico. This marks the second year in a row when drought has decreased the flow of the water in the Mississippi River. Much of the central and southern regions of the state are currently recording exceptionally high drought levels.

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The process is cause for concern. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said on Friday that he is just a few days away from requesting a declaration of emergency from the federal government to help. “Unfortunately, we just haven’t had the relief from dry conditions … so that intrusion is worsening, in the sense that it’s moving further up the river,” said Edwards during a Friday news conference. 

In the meantime, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell signed an emergency declaration for the city on Friday. And some areas of the state, including Plaquemines Parish and Empire Bridge in the southeast, are currently under drinking water advisories. 

Here’s what to know about Louisiana’s water emergency.

What is happening in the state?

When climate conditions are balanced, the movement of freshwater stops saltwater from infiltrating bodies of freshwater. But in a process called saltwater intrusion, the zone of transition between saltwater and fresh groundwater is affected and saltwater enters the aquifer, reducing the amount of freshwater.

Droughts are relatively common in Louisiana, where periods of dryness are a natural part of their climate. But global warming is increasing the risk of drought all across the country. The Southwest is expected to be particularly affected by droughts that occur more frequently, intensely, and for longer periods of time, according to the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. 

“Most of the state has been experiencing prolonged drought and above-average heat, and has presented a number of challenges including wildfires, drought, heat-related deaths, injuries and so forth and now saltwater intrusion,” said Edwards during a press conference Friday.

How are officials trying to combat it? 

Officials built an underwater sill in the Mississippi River to reduce the flow of saltwater in July. Authorities are working on expanding that sill by 25 feet, but construction would take at least another 24 days and will only delay saltwater intrusion by another 10 to 15, according to a press release from the Louisiana Governor’s office.

The best thing that can be done to help avoid greater saltwater intrusion, however, is out of the officials’ hands. “I found out today that the forecast is for above average amounts of precipitation in winter. But that’s still several months away,” said Edwards. “And what we need most in Louisiana right now, for the Mississippi River, we need rain further up north in the Ohio Valley.” About ten inches of rain would be sufficient to help the river flow high enough to push back against saltwater.

For now, authorities advise residents to stay calm and avoid hoarding bottled water. “We just need to make sure that we are aware of the situation and that we don’t do anything that would exacerbate it and do anything that we reasonably can, as soon as we can, to help us get through this period of time,” Edwards said.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will also be sending 36 million gallons of freshwater daily to affected areas in southern Louisiana.

How is climate change impacting the state of Louisiana?

A 2016 Enviornmental Protection Agency report predicted that climate change in Louisiana would bring about severe floods and droughts, with rainfall expected to “arrive in heavy downpours,” impacting the soil’s health.

The Mississippi River has been at the center of climate emergencies for years, as intense flooding impacted the region in 2019, a year that was particularly rainy. Now, in 2023, we’re seeing the opposite. In August, residents were impacted by the Tiger Island Fire—the largest wildfire in Louisiana’s history—which forced 1,200 people to evacuate and took down at least 20 homes and structures. That same month Gov. Edwards issued a state of emergency due to record-breaking heat levels after temperatures reached the mid-90s and low-100s for weeks.

Aside from concerns about access to drinking water, increased temperatures due to climate change have already impacted people’s health. The state passed its average number of heat-related deaths and emergency room visits in mid-August, according to local public radio station WWNO.

source https://time.com/6317056/saltwater-threat-mississippi-river-drinking-water/

How NASA Captured a Piece of the Solar System’s Past From an Ancient Asteroid

Infrared sensors on the ground detected the heat signature of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft’s sample-return capsule when it slammed into the atmosphere at more than 45,000 km/h (27,650 mph), at 8:42 a.m. MDT today. The 46 kg (101 lbs.) capsule was dropped off by its much larger OSIRIS-REx mother ship as that spacecraft went whizzing briefly by Earth. The capsule hit the air off the coast of California, aiming for a parachute landing in the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range southwest of Salt Lake City. Even before the capsule landed, four search helicopters scrambled to meet it, and the people at NASA waited anxiously to hear that it had returned safely.

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It had. The capsule thumped down at 8:55 a.m. MDT and the helicopter crews scooped it up and whisked it to a clean-room on the military base, preparing to send it off to the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The scientists there will have a lot to look at. Sealed inside the capsule are 250 gm (8.8 oz.) of rock and dust from the asteroid Bennu—a 4.5 billion-year-old fossil of the ancient solar system that NASA has spent more than $800 million and seven years working to explore. The return of the sample made OSIRIS-REx only the third spacecraft—and the first American one—to pull off the asteroid-spelunking trick, after Japan’s Hayabusa and Hayabusa 2 managed it in 2010 and 2020 respectively. Understand the chemistry and history of Bennu’s dust and you can understand the chemistry, history, and even origins of the solar system and the Earth—as well as the life that calls our planet home.

“It sort of speaks to the reasons people explore,” says Rich Burns, the OSIRIS-REx project manager. “We can learn about the evolution of the solar system, why the Earth exists in its present state, why it’s special. We can get at the question of where we come from.”

Collecting that Bennu sample was not easy. It was on Sept. 8, 2016, that OSIRIS-REx (short for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) lifted off from Cape Canaveral in a round-about pursuit of Bennu. The asteroid is a small target—just 492 m (1,614 ft.) across—and circles the sun in more or less the same orbit as the Earth. At its most remote, it is about 300 million km (186 million mi.) from us. The most direct way to reach it would be to cut across the solar system in an as-the-crow-flies pursuit, intercepting Bennu on the other side of the sun. But that would have seen the spacecraft approaching the rock at a 90-degree angle, blazing past it at 19,300 km/h (12,000 mph). That’s fine for the kind of brief, photographic flybys the Voyager spacecraft conducted of the outer planets in the 1970s and 1980s; the OSIRIS-REx mission, however, called for the spacecraft not just to fly past Bennu, but to enter a lazy orbit around it. To do that, the ship had to make two complete circuits around the sun, slowly catching up to the asteroid and matching its speed and trajectory. During that time, OSIRIS-REx put more than 2 billion km (1.24 billion mi.) on its odometer.

On Dec. 3, 2018, the spacecraft at last caught up with Bennu and fired its thrusters to enter orbit around the rock. It took barely a puff of propellant to do that, and it would take just as little to pull away: Bennu’s gravity—to the extent that it has any at all—is 100,000 times less powerful than that of Earth. Settled into the asteroid’s tenuous gravitational grip, the spacecraft began a remote surveying campaign, using its multiple on-board instruments—including three cameras, an infrared spectrometer, an X-ray imaging spectrometer, and a laser altimeter—to study Bennu’s mineral and elemental makeup. It also exhaustively mapped the asteroid’s surface, looking for a place to collect its sample. At some points, OSIRIS-REx flew at altitudes as low as 1.6 km (0.99 mi.) above Bennu—the closest any spacecraft has ever gotten to any body it was orbiting.

Read more: Scientists Solve the Mystery Behind the Oumuamua ‘Alien Spacecraft’ Comet

Drawing so close came with perils. Bennu rotates on its axis once every 4.3 hours—giving it 2.15 hours of sun-facing day, and 2.15 hours of space-facing night. During those transitions, the temperature on any given spot on the rock swings from 116°C (240°F) to -73°C (-100°F) and back again. All those changes in thermal pressure make for a lot of expansion and contraction of the rocks and other rubble on the surface—enough to make them, effectively, leap off Bennu’s surface.

“It ended up looking like popcorn,” says Dante Lauretta, professor of planetary science at the University of Arizona and principal investigator on the OSIRIS-REx mission. “Every time we looked we saw stuff exploding off the surface. We were saying, ‘Oh man, this could be a hazardous environment for the spacecraft. We might have to back away and redesign the whole encounter.’” Ultimately the team concluded that that wouldn’t be necessary. It doesn’t take much energy for small rocks to pull free from Bennu’s microgravity grip, so even if the rubble struck the spacecraft it wouldn’t be packing any meaningful wallop. 

All of the up-close orbital scrutiny the rock got paid off: just a week after the spacecraft arrived at Bennu, NASA announced that it had discovered the presence of hydrated—or chemically water-logged—minerals mixed in with the soil. With no atmosphere and its mere whisper of gravity, Bennu could not harbor any deposits of pooling liquid, but the finding of even traces of water does suggest that the rock was once part of a much bigger mass—perhaps even a moon or planet—that did have muscle to hang onto its water.

“The thinking,” says Burns, “is that Bennu was part of a larger parent body that had a collisional event.”

It wasn’t until Oct. 20, 2020, nearly two years after OSIRIS-REx arrived at Bennu, that the spacecraft began the capstone maneuver of its mission—descending that last mile to collect its sample. NASA had narrowed the potential collection sites down to four candidates that it dubbed Sandpiper, Osprey, Kingfisher, and Nightingale—choosing those because they had the fewest rocky obstacles for the spacecraft’s descent, as well as abundant loose soil to collect. Ultimately NASA determined that Nightingale—located in a crater high in Bennu’s north—was the best of that group. 

Taking the sample required the spacecraft to land briefly on Bennu, in a maneuver NASA named TAG, for touch-and-go. In the 16 seconds OSIRIS-REx was on the surface, it extended its 3.3 m (10.8 ft.) robotic arm, which was equipped with a collection chamber at the end. At that point, nitrogen bottles in the arm fired, blowing soil and loose pebbles into a chamber. The lid to the chamber was then sealed and the precious sample transferred to the return capsule. On May 10, 2021, after completing nearly seven more months of orbital surveying, OSIRIS-REx at last peeled off and headed back for Earth.

Read more: NASA Tried To Knock an Asteroid Off Course—And Succeeded Wildly Beyond Expectations

With the Bennu sample now on the ground, more than 200 scientists from around the world will set to work studying it. The most intriguing questions they’re trying to answer concern the role incoming asteroids may have played in seeding the Earth with water, nitrogen, carbon, and other ingredients necessary for life to take hold. 

The moon is believed to have formed close to 4.5 billion years ago, when a Mars-sized planetesimal collided with Earth, throwing up a cloud of debris that coalesced into a brand new body. Any oceans, much of the atmosphere—and any potential earthly biology—that may have existed on our planet would have been wiped out in the violence. “We think the surface was completely sterilized,” says Lauretta. For life to reemerge, it would take asteroids crashing into Earth and resupplying it with the necessary chemistry. Studies of Bennu’s soil and rocks will help show if asteroids indeed carry sufficient quantities of those raw materials in the first place.

And as for OSIRIS-REx itself, which did not even pause in this morning’s flyby of Earth? Originally, the spacecraft’s mission was supposed to end after the sample-return capsule was released. In April 2022, however, NASA announced that it had other plans for the ship, and would be sending it off for a second orbital rendezvous, this time with the asteroid Apophis, after the 340-meter (1,100 ft.) rock makes a close approach by Earth in 2029. OSIRIS-Rex will spend about 18 months at Apophis—and some members of the team are dreaming that it may not be finished even then.

“Never say never,” says Lauretta. “I’m stepping down as the principal investigator and one of my mentees is taking over. I told her, ‘Don’t break the spacecraft. It might have a third asteroid in it.’”

source https://time.com/6316104/osiris-rex-returns-asteroid-sample-to-earth-nasa/

Some U.K. Police Refuse to Carry Guns After Officer Is Charged With Murder in the Shooting of a Black Man

LONDON — London’s police force said Sunday that some officers are refusing to conduct armed patrols after a colleague was charged with murder in the fatal shooting of an unarmed Black man.

A Metropolitan Police marksman was charged Wednesday over the September 2022 death of Chris Kaba, 24. Kaba was killed after officers in an unmarked vehicle pursued and stopped the car he was driving. He was struck by a single bullet fired through the windshield as he sat in the Audi car.

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The case renewed allegations of institutional racism within the London police department. Kaba’s family welcomed the murder charge against the officer, who has not been publicly named. He was granted conditional bail and is expected to stand trial next year.

Only about one in 10 of London’s police officers carry firearms, and the ones that do undergo special training.

The Metropolitan Police force said Sunday that “a number of officers have taken the decision to step back from armed duties while they consider their position.” It said officers were concerned that the murder charge “signals a shift in the way the decisions they make in the most challenging circumstances will be judged.”

The BBC said more than 100 officers had turned in their firearm permits and that police from neighboring forces were called in to help patrol London on Saturday night.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who is in charge of policing for the U.K.’s Conservative government, said she would review armed policing to ensure that armed officers “have the confidence to do their jobs.”

“In the interest of public safety, they have to make split-second decisions under extraordinary pressures,” Braverman posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. “They mustn’t fear ending up in the dock for carrying out their duties. Officers risking their lives to keep us safe have my full backing, and I will do everything in my power to support them.”

Fatal shootings by police in the U.K. are rare. In the year to March 2022, armed officers in England and Wales fired weapons at people four times, according to official statistics.

It is also extremely rare for British police officers to be charged with murder or manslaughter over actions performed while they were on duty.

In one of the few cases in recent years, a police constable was sentenced in 2021 to eight years in prison for the killing of Dalian Atkinson, a former professional soccer player who died after being shot by a stun gun and kicked in the head during an altercation. The officer, Benjamin Monk, was cleared of murder but convicted of manslaughter.

source https://time.com/6317036/uk-police-shooting-black-man-murder-charges/

Pope Francis Says Europe Doesn’t Have a Migrant Emergency

MARSEILLE, France — Pope Francis challenged French President Emmanuel Macron and other European leaders to open their ports to people fleeing hardship and poverty, insisting Saturday that the continent isn’t facing a migration “emergency” but rather a long-term reality that governments must deal with humanely.

For a second straight day in the French port city of Marseille, Francis took aim at European countries that have used “alarmist propaganda” to justify closing their doors to migrants, and tried to shame them into responding with charity instead. He called for migrants to have legal pathways to citizenship, and for the Mediterranean Sea that so many cross to reach Europe to be a beacon of hope, not a graveyard of desperation.

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The Mediterranean, Francis told Macron and a gathering of regional bishops, “cries out for justice, with its shores that on the one hand exude affluence, consumerism and waste, while on the other there is poverty and instability.”

The pope’s visit to the city in southern France, which drew an estimated 150,000 well-wishers Saturday, comes as Italy’s far right-led government has reacted to a new wave of arriving migrants by threatening to organize a naval blockade of Tunisia and to step up repatriations. The French government, for its part, has beefed up patrols on its southern border to stop migrants in Italy from crossing over.

After the bishops’ meeting ended, Macron and Francis held a private, half-hour meeting. They spoke about migration issues and a series of other topics, the French presidency said, adding that both leaders share a “joint will” to bring human solutions to the situation.

France is a “host country” to migrants — especially to asylum seekers — and is supporting European solidarity policies, including through financing and fighting human trafficking, the French presidency said. The Vatican provided no readout of the meeting.

Macron’s centrist government has taken a harder line on migration and security issues after coming under criticism from French conservatives and the far right. With elections for the European Union’s parliament set for next year, Macron is pushing for the EU to strengthen its external borders and to be more efficient in deporting individuals who are denied entry.

Macron greeted Francis on a wind-swept promenade overlooking Marseille’s old port, and helped him walk into the Palais du Pharo for the Mediterranean bishops meeting. With his wife by his side, the French leader listened as a young Italian volunteer working in Greece and the bishop of Tirana, Albania, who fled to Italy during Albania’s communist rule, spoke of the welcomes they received in foreign countries.

“May we let ourselves be moved by the stories of so many of our unfortunate brothers and sisters who have the right both to emigrate and not to emigrate, and not become closed in indifference,” Francis said. “In the face of the terrible scourge of the exploitation of human beings, the solution is not to reject but to ensure, according to the possibilities of each, an ample number of legal and regular entrances.”

Francis’ two-day trip was scheduled months ago, but it is taking place as mass migration to Europe is once again making headlines. Nearly 7,000 migrants who boarded smugglers boats in Tunisia came ashore on the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa within a day last week, briefly outnumbering the resident population.

Nevertheless, Francis said talk of a migration “emergency” only fuels “alarmist propaganda” and stokes peoples’ fears.

“Those who risk their lives at sea do not invade, they look for welcome, for life” he said. “As for the emergency, the phenomenon of migration is not so much a short-term urgency, always good for fueling alarmist propaganda, but a reality of our times.”

In addition to Macron, the pope’s audience on Saturday included European Commission Vice President Margarítis Schinás, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde and French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, who has said France would not take in new migrants from Lampedusa.

The French president and first lady Brigitte Macron later attended Francis’ final Mass at the Marseille Velodrome that drew an estimated 50,000 people and featured a giant banner of the pope hoisted up in the stands. The Vatican, citing local organizers, said 100,000 more lined Marseilles’ central Avenue du Prado to cheer as his popemobile passed by.

History’s first Latin American pope has made the plight of migrants a priority of his 10-year pontificate. For his first trip as pope, he traveled to Lampedusa to honor migrants who had drowned while attempting to cross the sea.

In the years since, he has celebrated Mass on the U.S.-Mexico border, met with Myanmar’s Rohingya refugees and, in a visible display of his commitment, brought home 12 Syrian Muslims on his plane after visiting a refugee camp in Lesbos, Greece.

Migrants and their advocates living in Marseille, which has a long tradition of multicultural hospitality, said Francis’ call for charity and paths to citizenship gave them hope that at least someone in Europe was sympathetic to their plight.

“It is a very beautiful opportunity for us,” said Francky Domingo, who is part of a Marseille-based association representing migrants seeking official identification documents. “We really want the pope to be our spokesperson to the politicians because the European policy on migration is very, very repressive for us migrants.”

Stephanie Tomasini, a 48-year-old Marseille resident who attended the mass, said the pope sent an important message. “We must be able to … extend a hand and share, all of us should do that. Today, we’re not faced with difficulties, but we could be tomorrow, and we will want someone to open the doors for us,” she said.

Many faithful came from across French regions to see the pope, who last visited the country almost a decade ago. Catherine Etienne, from Brest in western France, watched Francis’ parade with joy. “We are really happy to have seen the Pope. We’re very moved,” she said.

In his remarks, Francis also repeated his opposition to euthanasia, which he has long decried as a symptom of a “throwaway culture” which treats the elderly and infirm as dispensable. Listing euthanasia as a “social evil,” he criticized supporters of assisted suicide as providing “false pretenses of a supposedly dignified and ‘sweet’ death that is more ‘salty’ than the waters of the sea.”

The issue is current in France, where Macron is expected in the coming weeks to unveil a bill that would legalize end-of-life options in France. French media reported that he delayed the presentation of the measure until after the pope’s visit to keep the sensitive topic from interfering.

No details of the government’s proposal have been released, but several options are under consideration, including legalizing assisted suicide and euthanasia for adult patients with incurable conditions under strict conditions that guarantee their free and informed consent.

The French presidency said Francis and Macron discussed the issue during their bilateral meeting but didn’t enter into the details.

source https://time.com/6316960/pope-francis-europe-migrant-emergency/

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Dismisses Idea of Military Manipulating Coming Elections

UNITED NATIONS — Pakistan’s interim prime minister said he expects parliamentary elections to take place in the new year, dismissing the possibility that the country’s powerful military would manipulate the results to ensure that jailed former premier Imran Khan’s party doesn’t win.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Friday, Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar said it’s the Election Commission that is going to conduct the vote, not the military, and Khan appointed the commission’s chief at the time, so “why would he turn in any sense of the word against him?”

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Pakistan has been in deepening political turmoil since April 2022 when Khan was removed from office following a no-confidence vote in Parliament. He was arrested in early August on corruption charges and sentenced to three years in prison, later suspended though he still remains in jail. The country is also facing one of the worst economic crises in its history and recovering from last summer’s devastating floods that killed at least 1,700 people and destroyed millions of homes and farmland.

The commission announced Thursday that the elections would take place during the last week in January, delaying the vote which was to be held in November under the constitution.

Kakar resigned as a senator last month after outgoing Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and opposition leader Raza Riaz chose him as caretaker prime minister to oversee the elections and run the day-to-day affairs until a new government is elected.

He said that when the commission sets an exact election date, his government “will provide all the assistance, financial, security or other related requirements.”

Asked whether he would recommend judges overturn Khan’s conviction so he could run in the elections, the prime minister said he wouldn’t interfere with decisions by the judiciary. He stressed that the judiciary should not be used “as a tool for any political ends.”

“We are not pursuing anyone on a personal vendetta,” Kakar said. “But yes, we will ensure that the law is appropriate. Anyone, be it Imran Khan or any other politician who violates, in terms of their political behavior, the laws of the country, then the restoration of the law has to be ensured. We cannot equate that with … political discrimination.”

He said fair elections can take place without Khan or hundreds of members of his party who are jailed because they engaged in unlawful activities including vandalism and arson, in reference to the violence that rocked the country following Khan’s initial arrest in May. He added that the thousands of people in Khan’s party who didn’t engage in unlawful activities, “will be running the political process, they will be participating in the elections.”

The Pakistani military has been behind the rise and fall of governments, with some of Khan’s supporters suggesting there is de facto military rule in Pakistan and that democracy is under threat.

Kakar, who reportedly has close ties to the military, said those allegations are “part and parcel of our political culture,” to which he pays no attention. He called his government’s working relationship with the military “very smooth,” as well as “very open and candid.”

“We do have challenges of civil-military relationships, I’m not denying that,” he said, but there are very different reasons for the imbalance. He said he believes, after one month leading the government, that civil institutions in Pakistan have “deteriorated in terms of performance for the last many decades” while the military is disciplined, has organizational capabilities and has improved over the past four decades.

The solution, Kakar said, is to gradually improve the performance of the civilian institutions “rather than weakening the current military organization, because that’s not going to solve any of our problems.”

One major problem is Kashmir, which has been a flashpoint for India and Pakistan after the end of British colonial rule in 1947. They have fought two wars over its control.

In 2019, India’s Hindu nationalist government decided to end the Muslim-majority region’s semi-autonomy, stripping it of statehood, its separate constitution and inherited protections on land and jobs.

Kakar said India has sent 900,000 troops to Kashmir and its people are living in “a large imprisonment” with no political rights, in violation of the United Nations Charter’s right to self-determination and the resolution calling for a U.N. referendum.

While the world focuses on Ukraine, he said, Kashmir “is a crisis which primarily has a wrong geography.”

If Kashmir were in Europe or North America, would there still be what he called a “callous attitude” toward resolving it, he asked.

“The most important player in this dispute is the Kashmir people,” Kakar said. “It is neither India or Pakistan,” but the Kashmiri people who “have to decide about their identity” and their future.

India boasts of being the largest democracy, he said, but it “is denying the basic, democratic principle to have a plebiscite. … So what sort of a democracy they are boasting about?”

As for Pakistan’s relations with neighboring Afghanistan — under the Taliban rule since 2021 following U.S. and NATO withdrawal — Kakar said “there are some serious security challenges” from the Afghan side, pointing to the Pakistani Taliban, or TTP, the Islamic State and other extremist groups, who at times vie for influence with each other.

When asked whether the government had requested the Taliban to extradite the leadership and fighters from the TTP, he said they are in contact with authorities in Kabul, “but there is nothing specific which I can share with you.”

The international community has withheld recognition of the Taliban-led government in Afghanistan.

He said a meeting of regional leaders to discuss what incentives and changes of behavior the Taliban would need to make for recognition to be considered hasn’t been finalized, but “I think we’re heading toward that milestone.”

Kakar was a little-known first-time senator from Pakistan’s least-populated, least-developed province when he was tapped to be the caretaker prime minister.

“It’s a huge privilege,” he said. “I feel I never deserved it. It’s just a divine blessing.”

By law, he can’t contest the elections when he’s interim prime minister, but Kakar said in the future he hopes “to play a constructive political role in my society.”

source https://time.com/6316948/pakistan-prime-minister-election-manipulation-military/

Hunter Biden’s Controversies Explained

source https://time.com/6316738/hunter-biden-controversies-explained/

Gael García Bernal Plays a Charismatic Hero for Our Dismal Times in Cassandro

Delight is hard to come by in 2023. Social media is both a fantastic tool for self-expression and a convenient town square for public scolding—sometimes the noise of the latter cancels out the benefits of the former. Self-righteousness and preening selfies are everywhere; individuals with a sense of humor about themselves are few and far between. Into this somber arena steps a character—based on a real person—who’s so sure of himself that he doesn’t mind having a laugh at his own expense. In Roger Ross Williams’ Cassandro, now streaming on Prime Video, Gael García Bernal plays Saúl Armendáriz, the man who would become the lucha libre star Cassandro, a scrappy, glamorous, openly gay wrestler who carved a place for himself in a world of machismo. As Bernal plays him, Cassandro is a hero for our dismal times, not just because he crashes through norms, but because he makes it look fun, even when it most certainly isn’t. This is a performance filled with truthful joy, and it floods this modestly scaled but open-hearted movie with light.

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Before Saúl becomes Cassandro, he’s an amateur luchador living in El Paso but regularly crossing the border into Juarez for local matches. He hopes to make his mark in Mexican wrestling without resorting to adopting the identity of an exótico. An exótico is a fighter—possibly straight, possibly not—who dresses in drag as a way of drawing attention to the manly-man qualities of his opponent. The exótico’s job is to get the crowd hyped up, attracting their jeering epithets. He’s never supposed to win; in fact, the ugly homophobic subtext is that the audience ostensibly takes pleasure in seeing him beaten. (In lucha libre, the winners are generally predetermined.) Then Saúl meets a trainer, Sabrina (Roberta Colindrez), who thinks she can make him into a better wrestler. She also convinces him that an exótico isn’t a bad thing to be, and that embracing that role might end up being the very thing that sets him apart.

Read more: Director Roger Ross Williams Always Roots for the Underdog

Saúl has been raised solely by his mother, Yocasta (played, in a spirited performance, by Perla De La Rosa), whom he adores. Luckily, she has a closet well-stocked with leopard-print bodysuits and shiny going-out tops. Saül fashions a flamboyant costume and re-emerges onto the scene as Cassandro, the exótico with a difference. As Saúl says mischievously, “He wins.” Unlike most lucha libre wrestlers, Cassandro doesn’t wear a mask; makeup is his armor, and when he steps into the ring, he’s a vision in glittery metallic fabric and artfully applied eyeliner, his hair a punky bleached-blonde tousle. He teases and flirts with his opponents, which seems to infuriate them—their faces may be hidden by their stretchy patterned masks, but it’s not hard to read their body language. Yet the crowd, as it turns out, loves it. Cassandro’s fighting style is acrobatic and jubilant. He tumbles past his opponents in naughty elfin fake-outs, only to whirl around and grab them, sometimes with theatrical amorousness. He’s so wiry and fast they don’t know what’s hit them.

But there are times, too, when he’s pinned to the mat so brutally that it’s clear he’s in a world of pain. Cassandro is up for all of it—it’s part of the cost of being in this world—and with the help of an ambitious if somewhat sleazy promoter, Joaquín Cosio’s Lorenzo, he lands a high-profile Mexico City match that could make or break his career. His opponent is the silver-masked El Hijo del Santo (playing himself), who’s part of a lucha libre dynasty—and who must not, under any circumstances, be beaten.

Cassandro is a deeply affectionate film, tracing the highs and lows of Saúl’s career, with a focus on the highs. (Director Williams, who won an Oscar in 2010 for his documentary short Music By Prudence, also profiled Armendáriz in 2016 for Amazon’s New Yorker Presents series.) But Bernal, in this exuberant yet subtle performance, draws us into Saúl’s darker moments too. Right before his big match against El Hijo del Santo, Saúl has a breakdown of sorts, tumbling from a cocaine high into darkest despair; it’s Sabrina who draws him out of it. (In real life, Armendáriz was so distraught by the negative chatter preceding the match that he attempted suicide by slitting his wrists a week before. Another exótico and close friend saved him.) Saúl is grief-stricken when his mother dies suddenly, and he struggles to reconcile his feelings for his estranged, disapproving father, Eduardo (Robert Salas).

Saúl’s love life, too, is brushed with melancholy. He’s in love with another luchador, Gerardo (the wonderful Raúl Castillo), a married family man intent on protecting his hetero facade. Their furtive trysts are playful and erotically athletic, but it dawns on Saúl that Gerardo doesn’t want him to grow out of his assigned role. When Saúl playfully suggests that his more assertive alter ego Cassandro might be “a top,” Gerardo waves the joke off. Gerardo is happy to sleep with sexy, adorable, compliant Saùl; he’d rather not deal with the more self-assured Cassandro, who might make demands on him that he doesn’t want to fulfill.

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As played by Bernal, both Saúl and Cassandro, two sides of the same man, are so charismatic that even straight guys (or, at least, guys who assert their straightness) are tempted. When Saúl flirts with Lorenzo’s young right-hand man, Felipe (played, charmingly, by Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, also known as Bad Bunny), Felipe deflects this flirtatious seduction but doesn’t recoil from it—he accepts it as the compliment that it is.

Because to turn away from Bernal’s Saúl is to miss out on sunlight. The pleasure of Cassandro lies in watching Saúl learning to fill up every corner of his identity, as a gay man, as a performer and athlete, as a person who is always just yearning for more. To watch Cassandro bounce around that ring, sometimes kissing his opponents full on the mouth and drawing back with a grin, or miming sexual acts with the faux innocence of an ingenue, is to see a person reveling in the gifts he’s been given. He can laugh at himself, even when his world seems dark. At one point he assesses an opponent’s fighting style: “That guy has no poetry.” Cassandro, on the other hand, has plenty. It sings in every muscle, including his heart.

source https://time.com/6316358/cassandro/