Morbo, lucha libre, and Television: The Ban of Women Wrestlers from Mexico City in the 1950s

This article examines the emergence of the ban on women wrestlers from the sporting spectacle of lucha libre in Mexico City in the 1950s. Set against broader moral preoccupations about the growing popularity and visibility of lucha libre in Mexican society as a result of its broadcasting on television, luchadoras were seen as examples of transgressive femininity, which rendered attempts to make them invisible necessary. This work joins the efforts of scholars who write the history of women’s participation and exclusion from sporting activities and contributes to the growing fields of sports studies and studies of mass culture within Mexico.

La Fotografía de Lucha Libre Mexicana

La imagen fotográfica se ha encontrado constantemente ante diversas encrucijadas: epistémicas, tecnológicas, estéticas y representacionales. En el caso de la fotografía de lucha libre, la imagen de esta personificación forma ya parte de un imaginario colectivo identitario. Por ello nuestro objetivo es realizar una propuesta sobre por qué la fotografía de lucha libre puede ser considerada una “imagen fuera de lugar”, una imagen de características liminales. De igual manera, pretendemos analizar por qué el fotógrafo de lucha libre en México podría ser considerado también un sujeto liminal. En concreto, se argumenta que dichas imágenes pueden ser consideradas liminales porque muestran espacios de “carnaval” en los que la lógica cultural habitual se paraliza y temporalmente aplican otras reglas. Para ello, plantearemos a través de los conceptos de catarsis, simulacro y espectáculo el por qué la fotografía de lucha libre puede ser considerada como una imagen “al margen”.

Performing Mexicanidad I

This chapter takes as its focus the intersection of the discourses of Mexican criminology (based on international narratives) and those of lucha libre (Mexican wrestling) spectacle. The analysis focuses on the merging of personas—the serial killer disguised as a nurse and that of La Dama del Silencio, the wrestler persona adopted by Juana Barraza, that various accounts used as evidence that she, Barraza, was indeed the serial killer. These discourses have served to criminalize La Dama del Silencio, the wrestler, more so than Juana Barraza, the woman. This chapter shows how discourses of criminality and the spectacle of lucha libre intersect to regulate and perform the parameters of mexicanidad, reinforcing the limits of Mexican masculinity and femininity, but also revealing these limits as subject to redefinition. The gendered, sexed and classed police and criminological accounts, that interpret Barraza’s wrestling practice, with “masculine” features, and “muscular” body, as proof that Barraza was “evil”, and therefore capable of killing “without remorse” are interrogated. The chapter concludes with an analysis of how this merging of personas, the serial killer and the wrestler, circulates in different popular cultural forms, including a cumbia music video, a novel, and a police video.