Cholita Wrestling
Our bus slowly crawls up the hill as we put more distance between us and La Paz. I feel like we are an airplane rising into the clouds, and with each turn we see higher mountains surrounding more houses of La Paz and its burbs. The bus is loaded with Yanks, Aussies, and assorted other nationalities, our destination El Alto and the cholita wrestling event. It is a crisp 75 degrees outside and the previous warnings of colder weather in El Alto are relentlessly mocked.
Our guide is a scrawny five foot four, 100 pound guy named Carlito, who explains the wrestling circuit on our way to El Alto. Carlito himself was a professional wrestler when he was young, he admits, although one look at him prompts guffaws and serious questions as to how he, a man equipped with little more than skin and bones, could have survived such a violent sport usually dominated by musclemen or men who are just plain beefy enough to knock you into next week.
Of course, all of this is relative, since the wrestling we are about to watch is as related to the real world as much as sand is related to gold.
The star of the circuit, he explains, is Rebecca La Loca (Rebecca the Crazy), the unofficial champion.
When we park the bus in front of the arena, we see a band playing for some religious denomination whose existence I am unaware of. The trumpets and trombones are playing on a wooden makeshift stage while a cholita is smashing the cymbals together.
Before we leave the bus, Carlito has managed to get Rebecca La Loca herself on the bus to great applause and fanfare. This meet and greet is priceless for us, needless to say, and a wonderful photo opportunity.
Spoiler alert: the arena is not really an arena but an old gym that is so old and dilapidated you would be pressed to find anything comparable in the west anywhere. Yet there's the ring in the middle of the basketball court, and golden curtains at the far side mark the entrance and exit points for the fake wrestlers.
As a reminder: a cholita is a native of the country whose features are, well, Indian, I guess with far east influences. She is what you'd expect on a poster for Latin American tourism: long braided black hair topped by a bowler hat that complement long colorful skirts that stream over a plump physique. You would expect these cholitas to be anywhere – in the street, feeding lamas, selling black market items...really anywhere except in a wrestling ring.
The label Cholita Wrestling is misleading, really, since there are plenty of guys featured on the card as well – El Commandante, El Chico, El Lupo (the big bad wolf) – the names are as plenty as they are colorful.
We have ringside seats and are warned about wrestlers flying into the audience. Of course, this also means that we have more opportunities to capture photographs of and with the wrestlers, although I learned long ago this might not be such a good thing. I recall a women's wrestling match I attended outside of Tijuana more than a decade ago when one of the female wrestlers asked me for a kiss and in the end gave me some tongue with no teeth. Not good.
When we settle in, we are ready to roll and see that the guys are still on the card. The cholitas are the main attraction, as we will see later.
Our guide is a scrawny five foot four, 100 pound guy named Carlito, who explains the wrestling circuit on our way to El Alto. Carlito himself was a professional wrestler when he was young, he admits, although one look at him prompts guffaws and serious questions as to how he, a man equipped with little more than skin and bones, could have survived such a violent sport usually dominated by musclemen or men who are just plain beefy enough to knock you into next week.
Of course, all of this is relative, since the wrestling we are about to watch is as related to the real world as much as sand is related to gold.
The star of the circuit, he explains, is Rebecca La Loca (Rebecca the Crazy), the unofficial champion.
When we park the bus in front of the arena, we see a band playing for some religious denomination whose existence I am unaware of. The trumpets and trombones are playing on a wooden makeshift stage while a cholita is smashing the cymbals together.
Before we leave the bus, Carlito has managed to get Rebecca La Loca herself on the bus to great applause and fanfare. This meet and greet is priceless for us, needless to say, and a wonderful photo opportunity.
Spoiler alert: the arena is not really an arena but an old gym that is so old and dilapidated you would be pressed to find anything comparable in the west anywhere. Yet there's the ring in the middle of the basketball court, and golden curtains at the far side mark the entrance and exit points for the fake wrestlers.
As a reminder: a cholita is a native of the country whose features are, well, Indian, I guess with far east influences. She is what you'd expect on a poster for Latin American tourism: long braided black hair topped by a bowler hat that complement long colorful skirts that stream over a plump physique. You would expect these cholitas to be anywhere – in the street, feeding lamas, selling black market items...really anywhere except in a wrestling ring.
The label Cholita Wrestling is misleading, really, since there are plenty of guys featured on the card as well – El Commandante, El Chico, El Lupo (the big bad wolf) – the names are as plenty as they are colorful.
We have ringside seats and are warned about wrestlers flying into the audience. Of course, this also means that we have more opportunities to capture photographs of and with the wrestlers, although I learned long ago this might not be such a good thing. I recall a women's wrestling match I attended outside of Tijuana more than a decade ago when one of the female wrestlers asked me for a kiss and in the end gave me some tongue with no teeth. Not good.
When we settle in, we are ready to roll and see that the guys are still on the card. The cholitas are the main attraction, as we will see later.
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