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The Battle of the Cholitas
or
And You Thought Monday Night Wrestling Was Stupid!

Bolivians are wild for wrestling. Posters of famous wrestlers are everywhere and you can't go a block in La paz without seeing such a poster on a building, post, or billboard.

Bolivia doesn’t have a professional wrestling league on the same level as the USA’s WWE (a truly high goal to aim for). But in La Paz, Sunday afternoon "Lucha Libre" ("free fighting") makes a solid substitute.

Just as in Mexico, the male fighters wear masks and costumes. But in Bolivia, they also allow women to fight in the ring - not only against other women, but also against men.

Like wrestling in many other places, though, the matches are more for entertainment than for real.

La cholita en blanca seems to be having a bad day.
La cholita en azul is making sure of it.

The women wrestlers are called, "Cholitas". The term, "Cholita", was invented by colonialist Spaniards as a way to denigrate the Andean population they were trying to conquer. But the term has since been adopted by the very people it was meant to injure. Native women refer to themselves proudly as “cholitas”, and even hold a pageant to crown "Miss Cholita Paceña". But it’s still a dangerous word for foreigners to be tossing about. The historical sting of racism is just below the surface, so if the word “cholita” escapes your lips, you had better make sure that it’s used respectfully.

Before the match pictured here, there was an unbelievable "fight" between two male wrestlers, "El Doberman" and "Jitano" (the Gypsy). The referee was a constant source of laughs, always aligning himself with the bad guys, helping them with fast counts, and even attacking the good guys when convenient. Then, "Rayo Azteco" (The Aztec Ray),"Hombre Lobo" (Wolfman), Mr. Atlas" and "Commando" fought and provided plenty of fun, but the show only really got going once the cholitas were introduced.

Cholita vs "El Esquelito" (The skeleton)

"Alicia Flores" was the first to enter, dressed in traditional Andean garb, dancing around the ring to the delight of the fans. Her opponent was a "El Esquelito" (the skeleton), her assistant was a midget woman (seen in the background, behind Alicia's skirt) and, once the fight got going, none of them held back. Face-slapping, ball-grabbing, midget-stomping, high-flying action. It was awesome. At one point, after throwing "El Esquilito" against the ropes, Alicia lifted her skirt in his face, resulting in him falling to the canvas in frightened shock.

The evening’s highlight, though, was the Cholita vs. Cholita main event, pictured here: "Jenifer Hipócrita" (two-faced Jenifer)", the lady in white, fought against "La Loca" ("The crazy woman"), in blue. No one has ever so completely owned her nickname as "La Loca". As soon as the fight started, she went completely out of control. "La Loca" threw "Jenifer" over the ropes and into the foreigners section of the crowd (seats for which tourists pay the equivalent of 7 US dollars, 3 times the regular price for locals).

Then she hopped over the ropes herself, grabbing coke bottles and spraying them over the crowd, howling like a beast.

She kept at it, throwing chairs into the crowd and smashing Jenifer’s face into the bleachers repeatedly, causing Jenifer to bite into the pill of fake blood so it would flow from her mouth. Jenifer was a game fighter and brought the match back into the ring, but La Loca was just too loca.

"Seriously, Ref, there was just a lettuce crate lying around in the ring!
Why, I have no idea where it came from!
So, I'm just going to hit this @*#()@ with it, now. OK?"

Soon enough, foreign objects, like the lettuce crate shown above, had entered the melee, and more (fake) blood began to fly. With a little help from the evil ref, La Loca eventually pinned her opponent and exited the arena to the boos, whistles and shocked applause of the crowd.

In the end, Jenifer lost the match and was led from the ring soaked in fake blood...

..... but returned all cleaned up and danced for the crowd, just to show that nobody - but nobody - can conquer a true cholita.

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If you got impressions for which this feedback is insufficient, please take a look at the following web sites for more:

Bolivia for 91 days
Wikipedia
Vimeo-Picture gallery of "The Fighting Cholitas of Bolivia"
National Geographic - lots of background information.