CHOLITA WRESTLERS
Before being discovered by television, the Aymara female wrestlers took part in real and brutal fights in a ring in El Alto, La Paz. They were paid between 25 and 50 dollars for a show.
Rock music thrashes out at full volume. It's so loud, it drowns out the shouting and stamping of the crowd. Ana aka La Vengadora (the Avenger) laughs and sings. The more they hate her, the better. A woman gives her a drink. La Vengadora throws it over her face. Someone insults her. She hurls insults back at the crowd threefold, answered by a hail of plastic bottles, chicken bones and orange peel. The worn down canvas of the ring, two inches thick and made up of old rags and wool, is covered in rubbish which the umpire clears away.
In one corner, Carmen Rosa stands, furious, in her traditional Aimara dress, shawl, manoletinas (flat-soled shoes), and pollera (petticoats), two long braids dangling from under her felt top hat: the outfit of thousands of Bolivian women since the 17th century. She is not going to let La Vengadora, in her gringo lycra tights, destroy what she represents in the ring – the indigenous pride.
The highest ring in the world – in the cold Multi-use Hangar in the workers city of El Alto, at 13, 451 feet above sea level – brings hundreds of spectators together every Sunday...
