Mini Bear Travels: Cholitas Wrestling

Sunday afternoons in a catholic country are a gamble. Will anything be open? What is there to do? Fortunately, La Paz has the perfect solution: cholitas wrestling.

For fifty Bolivianos (US $8), you get a ringside seat, two tickets to use the tourist bathroom, a Dixie cup of Pepsi, some popcorn, a souvenir pack with a postcard, a sticker, and a quarter sized ceramic doll (action figure?), and three hours of first rate entertainment. And, to help you get into the atmosphere, vendors sold wrestling masks for fifteen Bolivianos.

The venue was a high school size gymnasium with 1980s style stick figure athletes painted on the walls and a wrestling ring in the center. Four rows of chairs had been set up around three sides of the ring for foreigners and locals, who pay just twenty five Bolivianos, packed the bleachers.

The first match was between Spiderman and a skeleton. Their choreographed match was a riot: bouncing off the ropes, body slamming each other, prancing around the ring mocking the opponent, dancing, momck kissing, over the top celebrations after a victory, the whole nine yards.

Each wrestler was a complete character with a relatively well rounded personality that they managed to communicate effectively to the crowd. Not to be left out, even the referee gets in on the action and helps beat up one of the wrestlers. It's not necessary to be in stellar shape to wrestle and the obviously homemade costumes only added to the charm.

Most matches followed a straight forward formula: opponent #1 comes out, does a lap of the arena to intimidate the audience, and enters the ring while opponent #2 comes out, does a lap of the arena to either intimidate or endear the audience, and enters the ring. Whichever wrestler dominates the first part of the match will surely lose. The variables included whether or not they'd use props like a chair to hit each other, whether or not the fight would spill over into the audience, whether or not a third wrestler would join the match, and to what degree the ref would participate.

Women's rights must be doing well in Bolivia as women also wrestled, both against each other and against men. It was all in good fun but there was one match in particular where the male wrestler and the ref were beating up on the female wrestler so badly, I felt as if I were witnessing domestic violence. Fortunately, the tide turned before long and she came back to defeat him soundly. The women wore traditional outfits but removed their hats before wrestling.