The Marvel fandom was stunned in an unexpected and yet unpleasantly familiar way this weekend following sexual assault allegations made against Tenoch Huerta, the Mexican actor most known as Namor in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. This is the second time one of the MCU’s most exciting additions has faced such accusations in 2023, following the well-publicized case of Jonathan Majors, who likewise played the villain of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
In the wake of Majors’ own allegations, others came forward to speak out against him. In the case of Huerta, Twitter detectives are unearthing unsavory — to put it lightly — tweets from his past. One of his tweets, in particular, is doing the rounds which seems chillingly pertinent to the current situation. The tweet — originally posted in September 2017 — begins, “We are all potential rapists, murderers…”
In another, posted just over a year later in December 2018, Huerta made what can at best be described as a highly tasteless joke to mark the Christmas season. “Merry Christmas to everyone except the poor, immigrants, homosexuals, trans, feminists, liberals, indigenous people… And if they don’t understand, it’s a joke neither for you!” the tweet reads, as translated into English by the Twitter app.
This isn’t the first time, either, as fans initially discovered these tweets back when Huerta was first reported to be playing the MCU’s Namor in 2020. At the time, this resulted in a subset of Marvel lovers turning against his casting, with such labels as “racist,” “homophobe,” and “misogynist” being flung at him. Nevertheless, the backlash came to naught and was mostly forgotten about by the time his franchise debut released in theaters in November 2022.
Musician and activist MarÃa Elena RÃos made her allegations against Huerta while explaining her split from Mexican anti-racism group Poder Prieto which she accuses of trying to hush up any controversy surrounding Huerta, who has ties to the organization, in the wake of his success in Black Panther 2. RÃos describes Huerta as a “sexual predator” and emphasizes that she is not the only one to have this experience.
If you know someone suffering from sexual violence, contact RAINN or the National Sexual Abuse Telephone Hotline at 1-800-656-4673.
