Hey guys! Here’s a painting of the Land of the dead for Coco done at Disney Publishing :). It’s never enough to say how much I love my team and how hard everyone works here to reach the top quality on every single thing.
This painting was huge and challenging but of course super fun to do!
I’ve been reading theories about the end of the movie and how quickly people in the land of the living seemed to “forget” Ernesto. A good explanation for this is that some people might have already been suspicious of Ernesto.
Imagine the inheritors of Ernesto’s possessions after his death. They might not have critically analyzed the song book right after he died, but eventually someone would notice it was not written in Ernesto’s handwriting. People who research every detail of a celebrity’s life might have checked the ledgers of old hotels looking for Ernesto’s name, and they’d find Héctor’s name right along with it. They might have even looked up birth records from Santa Cecilia to find this mysterious
Héctor and confirm that Héctor and Ernesto likely grew up together.
Of course, those who questioned the Rivera family about a musician were immediately shown the door, so no leads there. Nevertheless, there would probably have been conspiracy theorists who wondered what happened to
Héctor
and predicted foul play before Miguel’s journey. Evidence from the suddenly-musically-inclined Rivera family likely fueled the fire to a decades old unsolved mystery.
I would honestly love to see the de la Cruz historians because you KNOW they mapped out EVERY INSTANCE OF THIS MAN’S LIFE.
Like, even before Miguel goes to the Land of the Dead, there’s all this debate about H. Rivera–who pops up in ledgers and in a few notes Ernesto made–and who they were. Were they a music partner? Just a travel buddy? A lover? Like, there’s at least one documentary made trying to uncover the secret identity of H. Rivera.
(Miguel watched it before and after going to the Land of the Dead; the first time he brushes it off because this H. person isn’t important to the music and the second time he just screams because the conclusion they made about Papa Hector is SO WRONG.)
Can you even imagine the slap-in-the-face feeling Miguel gets when he first watches that documentary a second time, realizing that Hector was right in front of him the whole time??
I love this headcanon because it’s a reminder of how easily facts can get shuffled over with time, and how clues in plain sight can be taken waaaay off the right trail. Surprisingly this ESPECIALLY happens with the hyper-famous as historians (and mostly the non-historians) latch onto tiny scraps of non-clues and run with them.
(I’m an English major and don’t even get me started on how much amateur historical headcanon there is on Shakespeare precisely because 100+ years of speculators have been imaging up extra bits of his life that have no real historical backing.)
I’m pretty sure the reining theory on H. Rivera was that they were a “Helena Rivera,” a b-list actress and suspected lover of Ernesto’s who was often spotted around the sets of his first movies. (Or some such speculative nonsense.)
DO YOUR GENEALOGY PEOPLE, these are the stories that matter. (And more importantly, resist the urge to prune your family tree!!)
– During the 1920’s there was a lot of money to be made in smuggling alcohol from Mexico to the United States, which was in the middle of the prohibition era.
– Hector was a young man that found easy work as a people pleaser, the man in a smuggling crew who maintained the underground network needed to get goods through border checkpoints undetected.
– Although not worth much in a fight, Hector was a smooth talker who could talk his way in or out of anything and worked the underground network to get whatever information his crew needed. A real charmer, he had all the buyable prohibition officers in his pocket, largely because of small things, like remembering when an officer mentioned their daughter had a piano recital last week and following up a week later to ask about how it went.
– Imelda was the daughter of the smuggling boss Hector worked for. Her family did not view themselves as criminals but as business people. Imelda kept rather aloof from the less than strictly legal actions of the family business by direction of her father, but one day she happened to answer the door when Hector was coming to give a report.
– Instantly smitten, Hector began courting her, using every bit of his practiced charm and musical prowess to woo her, patiently waiting out the months it took for her to return his affections.
– It took several months after that to convince Imelda’s father to agree to the marriage, and Hector had to agree to quit working on the smuggling route and get completely legal employment. As a musician on the side and a hard worker, Hector agreed immediately and he and Imelda were married soon after.
– Completely devoted to each other, Imelda and Hector were the envy of everyone around them, earning a reputation as star-crossed lovers and an unbeatable team, not to mention low-key dangerous to cross, mostly because of Imelda’s training as a sharpshooter. (She carried a small firearm wherever she went by direction of her father. Hector found this incredibly attractive.)
– When their daughter was born they cut off all ties with the smuggling world and with the help of Imelda’s father settled down in the small town of Santa Cecilia to raise their family in peace, overjoyed to have the chance to raise Coco and be happy together.
– This changed when Ernesto, an old childhood friend of Hector’s and a smuggling colleague, come calling one day. He asked if Hector wanted to join him on a music tour like they’d always dreamed of as kids, assuring Hector that it had nothing to do with smuggling this time.
– Although Imelda was unhappy with the plan, she and Hector decided to accept Ernesto’s offer, assuming that Hector would return safely in a few months time with some extra money to help support the family and some new inspiration to support his musical endeavors.
– Neither of them realized that Ernesto had secretly orchestrated his own smuggling deal (an incredibly dangerous one that if pulled off could launch him to great riches and power in the black market, even greater than Imelda’s father) and that Ernesto needed a smooth talker to pull it off.
– When Hector never returned from the trip and Ernesto abruptly rose to great fame and fortune (in the smuggling as well as the musical world) Imelda assumed that her husband had abandoned her and Coco for a life of crime with Ernesto.
– Devastated and heartbroken, Imelda erased Hector’s memory from her life as best she could, banning music from her home and taking a personal vendetta against the world of crime that had stolen away the love of her life.
Stop talking and start doing: My Fallout Shelter for my Tumblr blog 