The Fighting Cholitas are a group of female lucha libre

Lucha libre

Lucha libre is a term used in Mexico, and other Spanish-speaking countries, for a form of professional wrestling that has developed within those countries...

 wrestlers who perform in El Alto, Bolivia

El Alto

At one time merely a suburb of adjacent La Paz, Bolivia, on the Altiplano highlands, the city of El Alto is today one of Bolivia's largest and fastest-growing urban centers. As of the 2001 census, the population was 649,958. In 2010, the population may be nearly 900,000, or more. The city contains...

. 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

Quechuas

Quechuas is the collective term for several indigenous ethnic groups in South America who speak a Quechua language , belonging to several ethnic groups in South America, especially in Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia and Argentina.The Quechuas of Ecuador call themselves as well as their...

 residents, the Cholitas are indigenous

Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...

. They wear braided hair, bowler hat

Bowler hat

The bowler hat, also known as a coke hat, derby , billycock or bombin, is a hard felt hat with a rounded crown originally created in 1849 for the English soldier and politician Edward Coke, the younger brother of the 2nd Earl of Leicester...

s 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

The Amazing Race

The Amazing Race is a reality television game show in which teams of two people, who have some form of a preexisting personal relationship, race around the world in competition with other teams...

, 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

Sundance Film Festival

The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...

. 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

Atlanta Film Festival

The Atlanta Film Festival is an Academy Award qualifying, international film festival held in Atlanta, Georgia. Started in 1976 and occurring every April, the festival shows a diverse range of independent films, including genre films such as horror and sci-fi...

; and the award for Best Documentary Short at the 2007 Nashville Film Festival

Nashville Film Festival

The Nashville Film Festival , held annually in Nashville, Tennessee, is the oldest running film festival in the South and one of the oldest in the United States. In 2009, Nashville Film Festival received close to 2000 submissions from 86 countries, programmed nearly 260 films and had an attendance...

. It was also a finalist for a 2007 International Documentary Association

International Documentary Association

International Documentary Association , founded in 1982, is a non-profit organization promoting documentary film, video and new media, to support the efforts of documentary filmmaking and video production makers around the world and to increase public appreciation and demand for the art of the...

 award.

In addition, The Fighting Cholitas was shown at the 2007 Arizona International Film Festival

Arizona International Film Festival

The Arizona International Film Festival is the oldest and longest running independent film festival in Arizona. Taking place yearly, film programmes include a mix of shorts, children's films, feature length films, documentaries and animation films. The festival is also a Film Festival Grant...

, the 2007 Seattle International Film Festival

Seattle International Film Festival

The Seattle International Film Festival , held annually in Seattle, Washington since 1976, is among the top film festivals in North America. Audiences have grown steadily; the 2006 festival had 160,000 attendees...

, and the first annual Canadian Sports Film Festival in May 2008.