User:Propaniac/fc

The Fighting Cholitas are a group of female lucha libre wrestlers who perform in El Alto, Bolivia. The Cholitas were the subject of an award-winning 2006 short-subject documentary, The Fighting Cholitas. 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 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.

Like the general population of El Alto, which consists almost entirely of Aymara and Quechua residents, the Cholitas are indigenous. They wear braided hair, bowler hats and multilayered skirts in the ring.

According to a 2005 New York Times article, the Titans earn about $13 for each bout. Most of the wrestlers have other jobs besides their wrestling careers.

The Fighting Cholitas were featured in an October 2008 episode of the American reality series The Amazing Race, in which a contestant from each team was tasked with learning and performing a six-step wrestling routine with a Cholita.

2006 documentary
The twenty-minute documentary The Fighting Cholitas was directed by Mariam Jobrani and produced by Jobrani, Teresa Deskins and Kenny Krauss. The film received an honorable mention in Short Filmmaking at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. It won the Jury Award for Best Documentary at the 2007 Aspen Shortsfest; the Jury Award for Best Documentary Short at the 2007 Atlanta Film Festival; and the award for Best Documentary Short at the 2007 Nashville Film Festival. It was also a finalist for a 2007 International Documentary Association award.

In addition, The Fighting Cholitas was shown at the 2007 Arizona International Film Festival, the 2007 Seattle International Film Festival, and the first annual Canadian Sports Film Festival in May 2008.