We walked by as we wandered downtown, drawn not by destination but by the quiet rhythm of the city itself. There, tucked beside a cracked sidewalk and a low-slung lot marked Estacionamiento Público, was something worth stopping for. The lot was nearly empty—just a few sunbaked cars and a vendor pushing sodas in a plastic cooler—but the wall beside it shouted with color and purpose.
A mural, raw and defiant, sprawled across the cinderblock: a luchadora mid-leap, arms flung wide, her boots barely touching the ropes. Her mask—a burst of violet and gold—clung to her face like a second skin, equal parts protection and identity. Around her, other masked women moved in frozen choreography: some grappling, others flying, each rendered with the kind of reverence usually reserved for saints. These were not decorations. They were declarations.
I had grown up with lucha libre in the periphery—bits of it bleeding into Saturday morning cartoons or the occasional bootleg DVD. But always the men. El Santo, Blue Demon, Mil Máscaras. The women, if mentioned at all, were footnotes. And yet, here in Juárez, they loomed larger than life. I later learned why.
Lucha libre in Ciudad Juárez has deep roots, stretching back to the mid-20th century. The city’s proximity to the U.S. border made it an essential stop on the lucha circuit. By the 1950s and 60s, Arena Coliseo Juárez was regularly packed with spectators eager to see their heroes—masked, muscled, and mythic—battle under the lights. But it was more than sport. For working-class families, lucha was catharsis. The técnicos (heroes) stood for justice; the rudos (villains) for chaos. Crowds cheered, jeered, threw popcorn, lived vicariously through the chaos of the ring.
Women had to claw their way into this world—sometimes literally. Though women had been wrestling in Mexico since the 1930s, they were banned outright from performing in Mexico City from 1955 to 1986. While the capital locked its gates, border towns like Juárez became rare sanctuaries. Here, women could step into the ring. They could train. They could headline. For many, Juárez was not just a stop—it was a proving ground.
One of the first women to make her mark was Irma González, who helped pioneer the sport for women despite intense social and institutional resistance. Others followed. During the 1980s and 90s, women’s matches in Juárez were often the most anticipated events of the night. Stars like La Sirenita, La Briosa, and later Lady Apache would electrify crowds. In Juárez, they were not novelties—they were contenders.
And then there’s the role Juárez played in developing exóticos—wrestlers who performed in drag, often queer-coded or openly queer—which added another layer of defiance to the sport. The city, often unfairly flattened in the press into a headline about violence, has always had a more complicated story. The lucha rings here became places where identity, gender, and power collided. Literally.
The mural we passed might have been painted last year or ten years ago—no date, no artist signature, just the raw immediacy of bodies in motion. But its meaning was timeless. It honored not only the luchadoras of the past, but the women training in backyards and gyms across the city right now. Women like Sexy Violeta and La Hija del Vikingo, newer faces still fighting to be seen.
As we walked on, I couldn’t help but think about what it meant to wear a mask. In the world outside the ring, a mask often hides. But in lucha, the mask reveals something truer—a mythic self, a persona that can leap higher, strike harder, stand taller. The luchadora on that wall wasn’t hiding. She was ascending.
And maybe that’s what Juárez is too—so often misunderstood, flattened, masked by its own headlines. But underneath, it's a city in motion. A city of fighters. Of women who climbed into the ring and said, I will not be forgotten.
The parking lot faded behind us, but the mural stayed. Not in sight, but in spirit. And if you listen closely in the alleyways and old arenas of Juárez, you can still hear it—that low roar of the crowd, rising into something almost holy.