Yolanda La Amarosa fies through the air in a swirl of gold lamé and petticoats, her calves clamped around the throat of her opponent. He spins across the ring to land in a sprawl on the canvas, hand pressed against his lower back, face set in a grimace of agony. Quieres mas, cabron? Yolanda cries as she strides over and kicks him in the back of the head. There's a ripple of applause and laughter from her fellow wrestlers, who are hanging on the ropes, waiting to practice the same sequence.

The ring is set up in a junkyard on the outskirts of El Alto, a sprawling migrant city that was once just a suburb of La Paz, the capital of Bolivia.The wrestlers, two women and two men, are training on torn mattresses atop wooden planks, the only things breaking their falls. It's late afternoon and the sun dips quickly behind the peaks of the Andean Altiplano. At well over 4000 metres, the air is thin and freezing. As the session ends, Yolanda puts her bowler hat on at a jaunty angle, sits on a pile of bricks and asks me, pues, que quieres saber... (so what do you want to know)?

Bolivian All-In-Wrestling has been around since the 1950s. Inspired by Mexico's famous Lucha Libre, it's a theatrical mix of cartoon violence, acrobatics and costumed goodies (tecnicas) and baddies (rudas). But by far its most famous exponents are the Cholita Luchadores. With their pollera bustle skirts, bowlers and pigtails, Bolivias indigenous Aymara women are icons of Andean culture. About 12 years ago, local wrestler and promoter Juan Mamani hit on the inspired idea of putting them in the wrestling ring.Yolanda, then simply Veraluz Cortez, was one of the first to respond to his casting Call.

Born in Brazil, Yolanda moved home to Bolivia when her parents separated. She was divorced herself 11 years ago and raised her two daughters as a single mother until she remarried this year. "I started wrestling to prove to myself, to the macho guys, to everyone that I could succeed in such a dangerous sport," she explains. Her speech is declamatory, as if she were holding court in the ring, but it's a sentiment that's shared by the other cholitas I meet. In a country where machismo is almost a reflex, they see themselves as symbols of female empowerment.

There are other perks too of course. While wrestling doesn't pay a lot - between US$20-30 for a typical Sunday night session - cholitas like Denita the Untouchable, Carmen Rosa and Maria the Damned enjoy the status of minor celebrities amongst their fellow alteñas. They even get to tour internationally in Chile, Argentina and the States.

Life is tough in El Alto. The city was effectively built by the rural poor, fleeing an even harder life in the countryside. Domestic violence is a big issue - in 2009 the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights estimated that up to 70% of Bolivian women suffered some form of abuse.Wrestling is not only a soap opera escape from the daily grind, it also casts Aymara women as forces to be reckoned with.

There's a problem with the whole emancipation narrative though - or at least, there was. Until last year, El Alto's wrestling scene was controlled by a man. Juan Mamani ran a virtual monopoly, with his Titans of the Ring brand drawing large crowds to El Alto's Multifunctional Centre each Sunday - including high paying tourists. But in October 2011, many of the top cholitas broke away from Titans and set up their own association. "All of the best wrestlers left," says Marta La Alteña, real name Jenny Herrera, another of Mamani's original protégés. "Mamani was taking all the money.When I broke my arm, he didn't help me at all and he kept telling me to lose. I wasn't prepared to do that."

Populist president Evo Morales, himself Aymara, has been a vocal champion of Bolivias predominantly poor indigenous population - in particular its women. In 2010, he put together a cabinet that was evenly split between genders and which included three indigenous women. There are signs of an emerging indigenous middle class in the capital La Paz.