Viva Las Luchadoras!
© Nick BallónLucha Libre (free wrestling) is loud, action packed fun, but also a ‘great spectacle ofs uffering, defeat and justice’ as Barthes tells it. Its a sport that requires incredible athleticism but it’s not like a sport because its staged like a pantomime. Thus the functionof the wrestler is not to win: it is to go exactly through the motions which are expected of him/her. Every Sunday afternoon hundreds of people congregate at the public gymnasium in El Alto,Bolivia to watch the wrestlers act out something similar to a ancient Greek drama broken down into the acts of suffering, defeat and finally the justice given by the indigenous female wrestlers as they take to the stage.
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