"The World of Lucha Libre" is an insider's account of "lucha
libre," the popular Mexican form of professional wrestling. Heather
Levi spent more than a year immersed in the world of wrestling in
Mexico City. Not only did she observe live events and interview
wrestlers, referees, officials, promoters, and reporters; she also
apprenticed with a retired "luchador" (wrestler). Drawing on her
insider's perspective, she explores lucha libre as a cultural
performance, an occupational subculture, and a set of symbols that
circulate through Mexican culture and politics. Levi argues that
the broad appeal of lucha libre lies in its capacity to stage
contradictions at the heart of Mexican national identity: between
the rural and the urban, tradition and modernity, ritual and
parody, machismo and feminism, politics and spectacle.
Levi considers lucha libre in light of scholarship about sport,
modernization, and the formation of the Mexican nation-state, and
in connection to professional wrestling in the United States. She
examines the role of secrecy in wrestling, the relationship between
wrestlers and the characters they embody, and the meanings of the
masks worn by luchadors. She discusses male wrestlers who perform
masculine roles, those who cross-dress and perform feminine roles,
and female wrestlers who wrestle each other. Investigating the
relationship between lucha libre and the mass media, she highlights
the history of the sport's engagement with television: it was
televised briefly in the early 1950s, but not again until 1991.
Finally, Levi traces the circulation of lucha libre symbols in
avant-garde artistic movements and its appropriation in left-wing
political discourse. "The World of Lucha Libre" shows how a sport
imported from the United States in the 1930s came to be an iconic
symbol of Mexican cultural authenticity.
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