Paceña: Es Cerveza

Anna, my dear old porchmate, is visiting from Cochabamba for the weekend. She´s been studying Spanish in a school down there, and also doing some research in political movements for her BA, but she made the 8 hour busride down here to see the best and the brightest of La Paz. Actually, our main goal for the weekend was to go up to the 16 de Julio Feria (street fair) in El Alto and see the "Luca Libre," the fighting cholitas. It´s like the WWF, but with hardy Aymara women dressed in polleras (skirts) and hats, beating the living daylights out of each other. This article is in Spanish, but has some interesting photos of the fights.

We weren´t sure what time the attraction began, so we took a bus to El Alto early in the morning (10:00, on a Sunday it´s early) to try to buy tickets and scope out the venue. After wandering around looking for the "Multifuncional" where the "cholitas pelean", we found the building, a pink and rundown looking warehouse. Turns out the fighting wasn´t until 3:30, so we spent the next 5 hours wandering around the fair, walking ourselves to death. In the end, we didn´t actually get to see the Lucha Libre - we were dead tired by the time the fighting was scheduled to start, and of course being on Bolivian time, the doors weren´t even open at 4:00. Furthermore, neither of us wanted to watch and wince through the opening event, Bolivian wrestlers dressed in tacky spandex...

The highlight of the day, however, happened right after lunch as Anna and I were wandering around in search of a sprite for me. I was holding her beer, Paceña of course, as she was trying to take a few pictures of the canyon, when a cholita woman selling a few polleras started mumbling "You´re going to get drunk with that beer." At first I thought she was telling us not to take a picture, but then I realized she thought we were getting drunk at the Feria. I explained to her "It´s okay, it´s the only beer we have, really, all day," but she shook her head and said "No, one leads to another." Eventually, as I stood there trying to defend my sobriety and honor, she warmed up to the sight of two gringa tourists and started asking us how we liked La Paz, El Alto, the Feria. The mistrust turned to amusement, and as we walked away she was smiling a big toothless grin.