Rafael "El Centinela" Domínguez was one of the most popular luchadores in Mexico City's independent wrestling scene. By 2019, he was filling arenas in the Arena México circuit, earning more money than he had ever imagined for a kid who grew up in Neza — Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, one of Mexico City's roughest neighbourhoods. He had a manager, sponsors, and a cult following. He was thirty-one years old and at the peak of his career. Then one night, driving home after a match, he passed under the Periférico bridge near Observatorio and saw what he had driven past a thousand times before: children sleeping on cardboard, wrapped in plastic bags, huffing solvents.
The Voice Under the Bridge
Rafael pulled over. He had grown up near this kind of poverty, but success had insulated him. That night, something cracked open. He sat in his car and heard a voice — not audible, but clearer than anything he had ever experienced: "They are Mine. Take care of them." Rafael was not a churchgoer at the time, though his mother had taken him to Mass as a child. He drove home, could not sleep, and returned to the bridge at dawn with bags of tortas and bottles of water. He found seventeen children between the ages of eight and sixteen living under the overpass. Most were addicted to inhalants. Several had been sexually abused. All were hungry.
The Wrestler Who Quit
Over the following six months, Rafael visited the bridge children every day. He learned their names, their stories, their fears. He paid for medical treatment out of his wrestling earnings. He found temporary shelter for four of the youngest. But it was not enough. In June 2020, he announced his retirement from wrestling at age thirty-two — a decision his manager called "insane" and his sponsors could not understand. Rafael used his savings to rent a house in Iztapalapa and opened it as an informal shelter. He called it Casa Centinela — the Sentinel's House.
Forty-Three Children
By 2024, Casa Centinela has sheltered forty-three children. Nineteen have been reunited with family members. Eleven are in school. Three are in vocational training. Rafael teaches them wrestling — not for careers, but for discipline, confidence, and the knowledge that their bodies are worth something. He leads a Bible study every evening, teaching from a battered Bible his mother gave him. "God did not speak to me in a church," Rafael says. "He spoke to me under a bridge. He showed me the children that the city pretended did not exist. And He said: these are worth more than any arena, any title, any cheque. These are Mine."
