Have you heard of the women of Bolivia who have special skills in wrestling? They are the daredevils of wrestling. They are known to be dangerous and fearsome.
The Fighting Cholitas are a group of female wrestlers who perform in El Alto, Bolivia. The Cholitas are part of a group called the Titans of the Ring, which includes both male and female wrestlers.
The Titans perform each Sunday for an audience of hundreds at El Alto’s Multifunctional Center. Tickets to the exhibitions
cost $1.
The Cholitas train twice a week and watch YouTube videos of Lucha Mexicana to improve their techniques and tricks.
“The fight, more than anything, is a constant update of maneuvers. It’s like riding a bicycle; if you learn to walk, you
never forget. But if you want to do tricks, you need to practice. The fight is the same.
The idea of including female wrestlers as a maneuver for publicity came from Juan Mamami, a wrestler and president of the Titans. They routinely attract over a thousand spectators to their bouts in El Alto and several hundred spectators when they travel with the Titans to smaller towns.
The better they get, the more they can assert their presence in a field dominated by men. At times, both genders are even pinned against one another.
“When a woman fights 100 percent, men want to fight 1,000 percent. They do not accept that they are overcome. In our companions, there are also some anti-Cholas,” says Mary Llanos Saenz, known as Juanita La Cariñosa
in the ring, who’s been fighting for almost 20 years. “In the beginning, we were not allowed to enter the men’s room.
We used to change in the stands and wait outside. That’s why we created the Association of Fighting Cholitas. There, men do not get involved.”
The Fighting Cholitas was featured in an October 2008 e
pisode of the American reality series The Amazing Race, in which a contestant from each team was tasked with learning and performing a six-step wre
stling routine with a Cholita. Most cholita wrestlers are Aymara, an indigenous nation residing in the high plains of South America.
The group has faced ethnic oppression and exploitation since the Spanish colonization of the region. Referred to pejoratively as “cholo” or “chola” at the time, they were forced to perform menial tasks for aristocrats; required to adopt European customs; refused entry to restaurants, public transpor
tation, and certain wealthy neighborhoods; and denied the opportunity to vote, own land, and learn to read.
Resilient, the community organized, leading several successful movements over many decades, the latest of which was the ousting of President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada—currently facing charges for extrajudicial killings—and the election of an Aymara politician, Evo Morales, to the country’s
highest office. In the process, they’ve reclaimed the once-pejorative name and style of dress, turning both into symbols of pride.
