On October 12 I went to the Library of Congress to dig around in old Bolivian newspapers. I was hoping to find evidence of the beginnings of lucha libre in the country. While I waited for my requested microfilm to be pulled, I wrote this:

Here I am in a strange, bureaucratic, florescent-lit room looking up Bolivian newspapers from 1965. I feel like I should be in Café Berlin instead. Or maybe that place on Camacho V took me while we waited from micración to open for the afternoon. I want a salteña and a Paceña. I want to loose my breath, sweat, and shiver all at once while I walk home. I want to wake up at night  from the drafts or fall asleep on a mattress on the floor. But even as I write this, I look down and see my scar. And I smile. I hope it never fades, because some of the memories already have.

Though I intended to spend a good amount of time at the Library of Congress this fall, I’ve only made it twice. I was hoping that upon turning up there, the periodicals librarian would offer me some magic (digitized) solution to finding mentions of lucha libre or catchascán in Bolivian newspapers from the 1950s and 1960s. I did not have such luck, but fortunately, there was only one Bolivian newspaper that LoC has dating back that far, El Diario, thus, narrowing my scope, at least slightly.

I began with 1965, owing to former luchador and current trainer DT’s memory of starting to wrestling in that year. He mentioned that he began wrestling when Mexican wrestlers Huracán Ramírez and Blue Demon arrived in La Paz and taught Bolivians the craft. The Lucha Libre Bolivia blog has also featured newspaper clippings from such events in 1965, seemingly corroborating DT’s story.

Surprisingly, however, in June of 1965, the paper mentions a devolución [restoration] of the use of Coliseo Cerrado, the arena in which the matches of March and April, references by Lucha Libre Bolivia were to have taken place (leading me to wonder if, in fact, the wrong year was associated with the newspaper clippings). 

The most promising detail I found was that on March 15, 1965 in the Suplemento Deportivo, there was an announcement for an “important meeting” of the local boxing association, that referred to the group as the Asociación de Box y Lucha Libre, when usually (and subsequently) it is simply referred to as the Asociación de Box

Today, I decided I would try out Kid's side of the story, and check 1952, the year that he cited as that when Mexican luchadores arrived in La Paz. This time frame seemed less plausible to me, particularly because luchadores who claim to have begun wrestling at the age of 15 in 1952 would now be 74. And that seems a bit too old to still be wrestling. Kid certainly doesn’t look like a young lad, but I’d put him in his early 60s (which would then put his beginnings wrestling in the early to mid 1960s). Further, he mentioned Huracán Ramírez, a character that was not created until 1952. Seemingly, Ramírez would have needed a bit more time to develop a following in Mexico before heading out on the road to train others. But there was also something alluring about the possibility that lucha libre may have arrived in Bolivia in 1952. That was an important year for the country, during which the “April Revolution” took place, nationalism was institutionalized, and mestizaje promoted. Bigenho has written about the relationships between the revolution and theatrical performances, while Levi has demonstrated the ways that lucha libre in Mexico was connected to a modernizing project. Oh, wouldn’t it be lover-ly if this all just fit together perfectly, and lucha libre was actually some magnificent cultural expression of the modernizing nationalizing project of the MNR in Bolivia???

Right.

So, I sat myself down again, yesterday at a microfilm reader and got to work. On January 18, 1952, I found an announcement of a new open air theater, Teatro Lirico, which would include a ring “para box y catch” [for boxing and exhibition wrestling]. Again a sign that lucha libre was happening with enough frequency to warrant its mention in possible uses of a new facility, but nothing concrete or exciting.

And then, I got to March 12. And there, like a little gem, was an article titled Se Proyecta para Junio Gran Temporada de “Catchascán.” My heart skipped a beat. Not only was this a real reference to a real lucha libre event, but I thought maybe the quotation marks around catchascán might indicate the word is new, not well-known, or institutionalized yet (looking for confirmation or references on this currently…). The article describes the arrival of a number of luchadores who were touring South America and stopping by La Paz on their way to Lima after stints in Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile and Rio de Janeiro. The wrestlers mentioned are a Spanish luchador, Vicente García (who seems to have mentored Chilean wrestlers at some point), Renato “El Hermoso” (who seems to be Argentinian), Barba Roja (a Mexican), Bobo Salvaje (another Argentianian), and Takanaka hailing from Japan. Alas, none of these men have been mentioned by the oldest luchadores I’ve spoken with, and only one is Mexican. And once again, more questions were posed than were answered.

So the “history” of lucha libre in Bolivia is about as clear as the “realness” of professional wrestling itself. Which is to say—not clear at all. But, as Heather Levi told me, perhaps it’s the mythologies that are more important than the histories. How are people remembering it and why?  What identities are being constructed? What memories are being instantiated? Through these “histories,” what stories are people like Kid and DT telling about themselves?

For me, these questions are still unanswered.

Near the end, I was also excited to find some references to Luna Park, which is the park where Kid suggested that the Mexican luchador matches took place. When I was later transcribing the interview with Kid, I wasn’t sure I had heard “luna” correctly, and asked R if he knew where it was. R had been with me at the interview and Kid had specifically asked him if he knew the park. In the recording you can hear R respond by saying “Oh yes, I know it.” Though, of course, when I asked him about it during my transcribing, he said he had never heard of the place and had been lying. To which I could only giggle. So, I was quite pleased to find that on February 7, 1952 an anniversary celebration of the park featured “en el ring, figures del Boxeo nacional e internacional” [in the ring, figures of national and international boxing]. It would of course make perfect sense for lucha libre to have begun in a place known for boxing events. “Fantastic!” I thought. “This place does exist!” And then the article mentioned that President Perón and his wife attended. "Strange," I thought. And then I realized the article was referring to a park in Buenos Aires. Well, so much for that making anything clearer either…

Titanes del Ring events are some of the most popular tourist attractions in La Paz, but tourism in Bolivia is not a big business compared to many surrounding nations. Bolivia garners roughly 300,000 tourists per year, while neighboring Perú attracts more than two million. So Bolivia tends to retain a sense of being somewhat “undiscovered” for many travelers. In fact, one day when I asked some Ekko hostel bar workers [some of whom I have discussed previously] how much of the “Gringo Trail” they had been through, Dr. Joe declared “Bolivia’s the best. No one even knows where Bolivia is!” [Indeed, the wikipedia entry I linked here doesn't even include La Paz on its list of Gringo Trail "highlights."]

The Andean Secrets advertisements and the Cholitas Luchadoras themselves appeal to travelers’ sense of adventure, inviting them to experience something “crazy” and unpredictable; something unknown at home. Many backpackers related that other young tourists had told them that there would be fireworks, “midget tossing,” and “women on women action” as part of the show. These comments, along with those suggesting the show might be “brutal,” “disturbingly real,” or “crazy” suggest that some travelers hope for something understandable, yet beyond the bounds of what can be found in travel locations closer to home. 

This desire for adventure became strikingly apparent to me on a bus ride in 2009, when I heard a group of Dutch young men recommend a specific tour guide to some women who were leaving La Paz for the Peruvian Amazon the next day. The men, who had just come from the Amazon, suggested that the women ask for their previous tour guide because “He’s the best. He’s crazy.” They then recounted stories of him throwing a piranha at his wards and picking up pythons. I also heard tourists boarding a bus to a wrestling match joke about combining Peruvian and Bolivian “cultural” experiences; they envisioned holding a rave at Machu Picchu that featured midget wrestling and strobe lights. 

Not surprisingly, by far the most popular tourist attraction in La Paz was riding a bike down “death road” [which I have written on briefly, before]. Officially known as Yungas [Jungle] Road, this 38-mile road leads from La Paz to the city of Coroico. It was built as a single lane width gravel road in the nineteen-thirties, and includes some overhangs of 1800 feet with no guardrails. It is estimated that between two hundred and three hundred vehicles have plummeted off the road, leading the Inter American Development Bank to bestow on it the title of World’s Most Dangerous Road. Particularly hazardous portions of the road were closed in 2006, leaving it open to biking tours. Despite the fact that about 20 cyclists have died on the road since 1998, it remains popular because of the amazing scenery it provides, and the simple sentiment that “you can’t find this anywhere else.” 

There was a seeming refusal on the travelers’ parts to believe that the death road was truly dangerous, despite the fact that several people per month were sent to the hospital after minor falls, and one woman even died while biking during my time in La Paz. Cater argues that “the prime motivation for the practice of adventure is thrill and excitement.” Beck further suggests that even though adventure experiences are understood within a discourse of risk, tourists that engage in them have no desire to actually be harmed. Instead, it is the unpredictability of the experience that attracts them. As one German woman proclaimed on facebook, “Today I survived the World’s Most Dangerous Road. Just like 50 other people every day.” Much like exotic animals, crazy tour guides, and death-defying bike rides, “cholitas” wrestling fulfills the need for an epic and hazardous journey into the unknown exotic continent of South America and legendary stories to tell other backpackers and friends at home, upon return.

Cholita wrestling is quite obviously a scripted spectacle and further, clearly resembles the exhibition wrestling of the United States most travelers have seen numerous times on television. No matter what travelers expect on the bus ride, once the show starts they discover “its far too WWF” to be unknown. So while tourists are often motivated by a desire for unknown experiences, something more nuanced motivates travelers to see the Cholitas Luchadoras events. The Andean Secrets flyer in fact clearly depicts an audience made up of gringos and gringas, with piercings, brightly colored hair and sunglasses. 

In this case, “the unknown” creates a focus primarily on difference as something to be accumulated. Whether situated in natural landscape formations or in the local people, difference is there to be collected in the form of stories and pictures, primarily shared with friends at home through facebook posts and compared with other travelers when flipping through previous pictures on their digital cameras in the hostel bar. 

I concur with Adler’s assertion that travel is a “performed art” which includes the anticipation and daydreaming that precede the journey as well as reflection during and after the journey. Molz points out that these performances include the consumption of symbolic items that allow travelers to perform and recognize each other as legitimate. Indeed, while tourism may expose travelers to “traditional” cultural practices, their consumption behaviors are motivated by the desire to possess a symbol of those cultural practices. And while an ugly llama sweater may be requisite attire in the Ekko bar, consumption also includes the accumulation of non-commodified symbols, such as photographs or the identification bracelets from hostels that many travelers collect on their wrists. The photographs, including those of the Cholitas Luchadoras, function as a friendly competition of evidencing the strange, unusual, exotic, and “risky” things travelers have seen on their trips. 

Adler, Judith
1989 Travel as Performed Art. American Journal of Sociology, 94:1366-1391.

Beck, Ulrich
1992  Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Cater, Carl I.
2006  Playing with risk? participant perceptions of risk and management implications in adventure tourism. Tourism Management 27(2):317-325.

Molz, Jennie Germann
2006  Cosmopolitan Bodies: Fit to Travel and Traveling to Fit. Body Society 12:1-21.

The iconicity of the buttercow is even more apparent as it remains in the context of the state fair. As agriculture shifts in the United States, from a family-based mode of production to a more and more mechanized and large-scale industrial complex, the meanings associated with “authentic” representations of agricultural livelihoods change. The icon of the buttercow has shifted from an emblem of pride in the dairy industry’s success to a nostalgic symbol of the disappearing culture of family agriculture. Singer writes that such cultural displays “[cast] much light on the way in which cultural themes and values are communicated as well as on processes of social and cultural change." The context in which butter sculpture now exists gives immediacy to the art form as the social dramatic action of transformed farmland takes shape in and legitimizes butter sculpture as culturally and artistically important. 

The buttercow, as an icon, also forms the locus for the construction of cultural identity. Identity is, at its foundation, the ways that people index or perform sameness and difference from one another. Scholars such as Clifford have written on the ways that “international” or “non-western” art marks difference by emphasizing the “primitive,” “exotic,” or “tribal” nature of the art. The buttercow works in the converse, illustrating a sense of commonality for its enthusiasts. Bucholtz and Hall suggest that the dichotomy between genuineness and artiface is a key site for the instantiation of identity. The authenticity of the buttercow as confirmed by the context of the state fair, then, is central to the successful performance or indexing of a rural Iowan or Illinoisan identity. To know the buttercow is to say something about your own history, experiences, and values. Not every state has a buttercow. And not everyone in the state even knows what the buttercow is. Like playing euchre in La Paz, it is not just a pastime, but a performance of real Midwestern identity. 

And so I will end with one of my favorite quotes from Renato Rosaldo:
Culture lends significance to human experience by selecting from and organizing it.  It refers broadly to the forms through which people make sense of their lives, rather than more narrowly to the opera or art museums.  It does not inhabit a set-aside domain as does, for example, that of politics or economics. From the pirouettes of classical ballet to the most brute of brute facts, all human conduct is culturally mediated. Culture encompasses the everyday and the esoteric, the mundane and the elevated, the ridiculous and the sublime. Neither high nor low, culture is all-pervasive. (1989: p. 26)  

Clifford, James
1991  Four Northwest Coast Museums: Travel Reflections. In Exhibiting Cultures, I. Karp & S. D. Lavine, eds. pp. 212-254. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.

Rosaldo, Renato
1993  Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis. Boston: Beacon Press.

Singer, Milton
1972  When a Great Tradition Modernizes: An Anthropological Approach to Modern Civilization. New York, Washington, London: Praeger Publishers.

Perhaps reading the buttercow within its state fair context as Americana, rather than art, is what has kept it so sacred to ISF viewers. Its authenticity remains assumed, because it has not been removed from its specific spatial and temporal context. Though the notion of authenticity has been tossed around and contested by anthropologists in recent years, to go back to earlier instantiations of the term may be useful. Shepard suggests that we must move beyond the idea that subjectivity to market forces destroys authenticity. However, in this instance, the fact that the buttercow remains in its original context outside of the “art world” preserves a sense of authenticity for its enthusiasts and viewers.

Desai argues that “high culture” art objects are revered based on the aesthetic experience they provide, in ways that could not be achieved by a reproduction. The buttercow as well, is read as authentic because the context of the state fair is part of the experience of viewing the buttercow. It is an object that to many people is symbolic of home, family, roots, and notions of community based in actual physical proximity and personal knowledge.

Thus, much as Anderson argues the census, the map, and the museum shaped notions of identity and community, the buttercow stands as symbol of “us-ness.” Like the colonial map, it demarcates “us” from “them,” and acts as a logo, and becomes a “pure sign” or emblem for a certain kind of community affiliation. Its presence at the state fair attests to its authenticity, and to view the buttercow in an art gallery or other space outside of the agricultural milieu, would be to surrender it to the Other who cannot appreciate its intricacies, thus commodifying and degrading its form. 

Despite the dichotomy I have constructed between state fair and museum, Anderson’s discussion of the museum as a contributor to imagined communities is helpful as well. Anderson focuses on archaeological exhibits, rather than artistic ones, and presents the colonial museum as a context in which peoples were able to systematically study their history. Further, the state constructed museums with the maintenance of ideological structures in mind. As Desai writes, “Authenticity, whether cultural or aesthetic, is a notion that serves political interests.” The buttercow, as displayed at the state fair, evokes place-based pride and nostalgia in its viewers, (re)connecting them to the state (of Iowa, or Illinois), and the agricultural lifestyle being promoted within the fair. Much like the Monumental archaeology Anderson presents, the buttercow “allow[s] the state to appear as the guardian to a generalized, but also local Tradition,” in an attempt to revive prestige. 

But where the buttercow parts from Anderson’s examination of colonial iconicity is in the work of reproduction. Anderson writes that it was the states ability to reproduce the icon—exemplified in the postage stamp—was instrumental in the logoization of state symbols. The buttercow presents an interesting example, because in some ways it has been logo-ized. The 1993 & 2011 Iowa State Fair collectors' pins were images of the buttercow. And the Iowa State Fair edition of the Monopoly board game features a space for the buttercow. But even these commodifications remain on a small scale among collector-enthusiasts, and are not necessarily readily available to outsiders. These ephemera stand not as widely circulating objects, but as limited edition symbolic items that allow enthusiasts to perform legitimate claims to identities connected to the buttercow or fair [much like travelers’ collections of photographs and hostel bracelets].  Thus, even in the process of logoization the authenticity of the buttercow is not only preserved, but bolstered through the limited circulation of ephemera. 
 

Desai, Dipti
2000 Imaging Difference: The Politics of Representation in Multicultural Art Education. Studies in Art Education 41(2):114-129.

Shepherd, Robert
2002 Commodification, Culture and Tourism. Tourist Studies 2:183-196.