"Welcome to lucha libre, freestyle wrestling with a Bolivian twist. This macho sport in this macho country, South America’s most impoverished and conservative, has been flipped into an unlikely feminist phenomenon.  Indigenous women known as cholitas, physically strong from manual labour but long considered powerless and subservient, have become stars of the ring. They train like men, fight li More..ke men - and beat men. "We have been discriminated against since the beginning for the simple fact of being women, and indigenous women at that," said Carmen Rosa, whose real name is Polonia Ana Choque. "Men used to mock us but we have come further than male fighters." At a recent night-time bout in El Alto, an impoverished satellite city overlooking the capital, La Paz, the 38-year-old mother-of-two emerged bloodied but triumphant. The crowd applauded and young women and girls chanted: "Women on top, men below." A ramshackle ring with pantomime theatrics in a near-freezing slum high in the Andes, with drunk men among the spectators, it was an incongruous scene for female empowerment and the subversion of gender cliches. Yet it reflected a wider breakthrough for indigenous women. For centuries Spanish colonialists and indigenous patriarchs restricted cholitas to child-rearing and manual labour and denied them education. Strikingly visible in felt bowler hats, colourful shawls and multilayered skirts, they were a silent underclass. That has begun to change. Since sweeping to power two years ago, President Evo Morales, the country's first indigenous leader, has championed the rights of the Aymara and Quechua majority, including women. Cholitas occupy many junior official posts and several senior ones in the government and judicial system. "The system was made for us to be peasants all our lives," said Celima Torrico, Bolivia's first indigenous woman justice minister. "We have more space now but it is lamentable we were kept in the darkness for so long." ...