Cholita Wrestling

Last Sunday in La Paz, Bolivia, we all went to an event called "Cholita Wrestling."  Cholitas are indigenous ladies who wear big skirts, petticoats and bowler hats. Cholita Wrestling takes place in El Alto.  El Alto is almost like a separate city on the outskirts of La Paz.  All the rich people live in the bottom of La Paz and all the poorer people live in El Alto.  El Alto is up in the hills of La Paz, two to three thousand feet higher.  It's only been there for 28 years and about one million people live there.  Cholita Wrestling takes place in a run down gym with seats set up around the ring.  About 50% of the audience consists of 20-29 year-old gringos.  The feeling of the place is crazy, dirty and hectic.

If you know what WWF is, it's kind of the same thing, just in Spanish and a lot less realistic.  In case you don't know what the WWF is,  it's kind of like wrestling, except it's all staged and half the time, all they do is trash talk and talk about fighting...  Anyway, Cholita Wrestling is pretty much the same thing, just super super super entertaining and exciting.

The "show" started with "Angela de la Florista" vs. "El Mercenario."  The commentators would introduce each fighter as s/he came in.  They would do some trash talking and then the match would begin.  Angela, the hero, and El Mercenario, the villain would start off equally.  Then the referee would side with the bad guy and start kicking Angela.  After they tossed each other around in the ring, they would take people out of the audience to help with the match.  Angela took two guys and made them take off their shirts.  They then proceeded to beat up El Mercenario.  While Angela ran away to the other side of the ring, El Mercenario grabbed a chair and threatened the two audience members with it.  While this was happening, Angela made a dash back to the other side and poured some liquid on his pant leg and threw a match.  It went up in flames.  This caused El Mercenario to run from the ring screaming.  In other words, Angela de la Florista won.  In about ten minutes,  El Mercenario returned and gave a speech about how he would beat her up next week.  And with that, the next match began.