The Real Vedette

In the bibliography of the scribe’s book “Vedette,” it is noted that, “Finally, it is worth pointing out that somewhere in Mexico there lives a real Vedette Gloriella. Apparently, she was something of a sexual bombshell whom appeared in a serialized pictorial magazine 'Rarotonga' in the 1960s and 70s. I read an account of her arrest following an attempted robbery of a gas station in the Mexican interior. I had never heard of a 'vedette' and began looking into the origins of the word. The rest, as they say, is history.

Well, as the scribe was doing a Google search for reviews of the novel, news out of the Mexican press turned up that she had been killed 9 days ago. Just 52 years old, Gloria Cárdenas Sandoval had retired from the stage and screen and lived by renting apartments in a building she owned somewhere around Mexico City.

There are few details, only that a man walked into her office, shot her once in the chest, driving her to the ground, and then stood over her to finish the job off with a second shot, before running away. He has not been detained.

the scribe fantasized that someday he would meet the real Gloriella and explain how her own story had inspired his signture work, but it was not to be. Instead her tragic death only serves to underline the terrible situation, circumstances, and violence women the world over remain exposed and vulnerable to.

Her feminine charms diminished, the second half of her life was not only sad and difficult, but too short. the scribe mourns Gloriella in an odd way, from afar, this woman he read about only twice in 15 years, but whose story opened a powerful and fateful chapter in his own life.