You’re right in the middle of it. On a bus, driving through the desolation of garbage and cacti, among women of all ages. No man anywhere, but the stories about men that are told on this trip are about: You hear about the factory worker who took a bus home in the evening and was raped by the driver. Abused and tortured over and over again by other women whose bodies were found in the desert. They are stories from Ciudad Juárez, the city where every woman is in danger of being killed at any moment because no one stops the men.
That’s how it is in Mexico, near the border, in the immediate vicinity of the USA. As you drive past, you pass factories in the desert, American industry that makes a lot of money that Mexican workers see too little of; from a distance one senses a big city on the other side of the fence that separates the USA and Mexico, that is El Paso, Texas, no entry without a visa. Which is a shame, because it is said here that it is the safest city in the world. Then the view of the glittering city of murder, Ciudad Juárez, opens up in a large nocturnal long shot.
The camera work is worth mentioning in “Luchadoras” by Paola Calvo and Patrick Jasim, because the will to style is all too seldom discernible in documentary films. Here, however, you can see the directors walking with their protagonists, carefully choosing the light and the environment, striking great poses to show the beautiful and the wild that Ciudad Juárez can offer. Still, there are enough pitfalls to remind you of where you are – in the wrong part of town, in the wrong territory. Nervousness quickly sets in as soon as the film team realizes that men are watching them. The thought of violence is omnipresent.
Fighting back is definitely an option, explain the local superheroines
You can see that on the walls of the house, which are plastered with missing persons notices, you can hear it in the background, there’s always some ambulance siren wailing. You’re there when a dead person is picked up from a street, probably stabbed, the neighbors watch and chat. But “Luchadoras” doesn’t just want to denounce femicide. Rather, the counter-violence in the city should be presented here, women fighting politically and women fighting physically. This brings the film to “Lucha Libre”, with the female fighters in masks and colorful costumes, who publicly display this Mexican wrestling variant.
But they don’t just do show, they also teach self-defense. Often the first thing they have to do is clarify that resistance is an option at all, and only they have sufficient credibility for that. They are local superheroes, and on weekends their performances are filled with cheering audience members. In a run-down arena, rags fly, women against women, women against men, everyone likes to fall out of the ring, hit each other with the furniture, never admit defeat. It’s not entirely clear where the line is between art and brawl, but it’s clear that this is some loud, upbeat entertainment that everyone here can use.
The Luchadoras are beautiful, burly, not unharmed women, well trained and well livin’ in this town. The film accompanies a few: “Baby Star” never takes off the mask, she is a superheroine without a break, she was raised as a wrestler since childhood. “Lady Candy” works in a funeral home, her husband has taken the children to the USA, so wrestling doesn’t help. Or maybe it is, because it earns you an additional fee that you can use to pay a lawyer. It’s amazing how little women rely on men in everyday life, how few men there are at all. Female solidarity is valued, otherwise as a woman you can get by on your own, even if you sometimes have to cry.
The film then approaches the topic of self-empowerment again, the organized cohesion of women. They provide networks to take care of each other, demos to create public awareness. This is not new, the media has been reporting on the series of murders in Ciudad Juárez since the 1990s, and there have already been documentaries and feature films in response. Whether that actually has any effect in reality, who knows, probably not. But in any case, “Luchadoras” has the effect that at the end one joins in the battle cry: “Abolish patriarchy!”
Luchardoras, D, Mexico 2021. Director: Paola Calvo, Patrick Jasim. Distribution: Missingfilms, 92 minutes.