This week I went to one of the bi-weekly Lucha Libre events,
which happen every Tuesday and Saturday. Lucha Libre is like wrestling (WWF
style), with two significant differences. First, most of the wrestlers wear
masks. I’m not entirely sure why. Going into the Coliseo, I actually saw a
wrestler entering the stadium, already with his mask on. .The second big difference,
apparently, is that lucha libre is all about the crowd. The fact that there are
wrestling matches going on in the background is really more of secondary
importance. It appears that the primary form of entertainment actually occurs
by different parts of the crowd yelling and screaming insults at each other,
and to a lesser degree the wrestlers.
The entire two hours of the event was thus a back-and-forth between these guys and the crowd below. The guys upstairs had a vast repertoire of vulgarity-laced chants, most of which I couldn’t make out. In between renditions, they’d single out individuals sitting downstairs and start hurling insults en masse. The downstairs was much less creative, usually replying with the simple chant (translated again), “Poor people, poor people, go <> your mother”.
Despite being outnumbered nearly five to one on this particular night (apparently a big soccer game pushed down turnout), the upstairs crowd dished out a lot more then they received. Everybody seemed to have a great time, though.
Over the weekend, I went to Zacatecas. This is a colonial town about 5 hours northeast of Guadalajara. At first, I wasn’t too impressed. The town seemed very slow, and in the daytime definitely didn’t have anywhere near the character of Guanajuato. However, the city really came alive at night, with people pouring into the main street through town. It also got really stunning, as the lighting on all the old colonial buildings looks really dramatic on the pinkish stone buildings, and most particularly on the façade of the incredibly elaborate baroque church.
The crowd actually breaks down into two segments, the
downstairs (abajo) with the theater-style seats which are are all essentially
at ring level, and the upstairs (arriba) where there are open, unassigned,
bleacher-style seating, and which you need to access from a separate entrance.
There’s a clear economic divide between the two areas with the pobres (poor
people) sitting upstairs, and everyone else downstairs. It’s these two groups
which pass the entire match hurling insults at one another.
I was seated in the upstairs. On this particular night,
there were actually many more people seated downstairs the upstairs, but it
really didn’t matter. It’s clear that the upstairs crowd gets a lot more bang
for their buck in terms of noise. I was seated right in an organized group of
guys that are apparently regulars at this event. Their ring-leader, and
distinguished 66-year old man in bifocals that went by the name of ‘Ghepeto’ (I
don’t think that’s his real name), said he’d been there every single Tuesday
for years. He had a crowd of buddies, most all of which were in the 25-35 year
old range, that formed their own very efficient epithet-hurling machine. Most
of them were wearing matching T-shirts, the front of which had the masked head
of a luchador and read, roughly, “Whores – those that sit below” (Putos los del abajo). The backs
read, “To be 1000% poor is not luck, it is a gift from God. --- Your mother is
my whore”. You can tell they made them themselves as they each also had an
individualized name on the back. Some seemed to be real names, but others
included nicknames such as “Potato Face” and “The Little Rooster”.
The entire two hours of the event was thus a back-and-forth between these guys and the crowd below. The guys upstairs had a vast repertoire of vulgarity-laced chants, most of which I couldn’t make out. In between renditions, they’d single out individuals sitting downstairs and start hurling insults en masse. The downstairs was much less creative, usually replying with the simple chant (translated again), “Poor people, poor people, go <
Despite being outnumbered nearly five to one on this particular night (apparently a big soccer game pushed down turnout), the upstairs crowd dished out a lot more then they received. Everybody seemed to have a great time, though.
Over the weekend, I went to Zacatecas. This is a colonial town about 5 hours northeast of Guadalajara. At first, I wasn’t too impressed. The town seemed very slow, and in the daytime definitely didn’t have anywhere near the character of Guanajuato. However, the city really came alive at night, with people pouring into the main street through town. It also got really stunning, as the lighting on all the old colonial buildings looks really dramatic on the pinkish stone buildings, and most particularly on the façade of the incredibly elaborate baroque church.
