I hunted him down near the El Alto gym, and after an unpromising start—he kept trying to duck past me—I said the magic words "Mexico" and "Blue Demon." The face of Juan Mamani, the ogre, was suddenly wreathed in smiles. "My greatest passion is lucha libre," he said. "And for us, Mexico is the example. Blue Demon is for me lo mas grandioso".

Mamani's wrestlers all hold daytime jobs, and he makes a living from a small electrical-repair shop. But he has invested a good part of his life's earnings in a huge wrestling ring at home, where his group trains. He pays his wrestlers between $20 and $30 a match and probably doesn't clear vastly greater amounts himself. "Here in Bolivia it's impossible to make a living from this great passion of mine," Mamani said. His dream was to create a Bolivian school of wrestling heroes to equal the feats of the great Mexican lucha legends; their daring leaps and backflips, their unique costumes and regal bearing. Had I seen Blue Demon fight? Really? He shook my hand as I left.

About seven years ago, when he was fretting about the diminishing audience for the weekly lucha libre spectacle at the El Alto gym, Mamani had the inspired idea to teach women to wrestle and put them in the ring in cholita clothes. "Martha la Alteña," an outgoing luchadora, not remarkably muscular but very strong, was among the 60 or so young women who answered Mamani's open audition call. Like several of the eight or so who ended up staying, she comes from a wrestling background. "My father was one of the original Mummies," she said proudly, referring to one of the best loved, or most dreaded, of Bolivian lucha's creatures.

Amorous Yolanda was also inspired by her luchador father, and even though her parents separated on unfriendly terms when she was an infant, she used to sneak into El Coliseo in downtown La Paz—long since gone—to watch him perform. "But a lot of times men don't believe in women," she told me. "Once I heard my father say that he wished he'd had a son instead of me, so he could follow in his footsteps as a luchador." When she heard about Mamani's casting call, Yolanda, then still called Veraluz Cortés, raced to audition, leading to a temporary rift with her father. Whether her lucha stardom also contributed to the breakup of her marriage is not clear.

Outside the ring, Martha la Alteña generally wears what is called the senorita style of dress—blue jeans and sweaters—and part of the glamour of her cholita costume is provided by turquoise-blue contact lenses. Yolanda, on the other hand, who is thin and very intense, wears a bowler hat and petticoats and skirts, even when she is knitting sweaters at her day job, and considers herself an authentic cholita.

"Sometimes my daughters ask why I insist on doing this," she said. "It's dangerous; we have many injuries, and my daughters complain that wrestling does not bring any money into the household. But I need to improve every day. Not for myself, for Veraluz, but for the triumph of Yolanda, an artist who owes herself to her public."