im-fairly-whitty:

slusheeduck:

kryptoncat:

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!!)