HEATHER LEVI:  Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2008.

Luis Jaramillo, a trainer retired from the wrestling ring and his masked identity as Águila Blanca, or White Eagle, agreed to take on Levi as an apprentice only if she understood that he dealt in the true lucha libre, not the spectacle for television viewers. Clearly Levi operates on the participant-observer model common to anthropological research. But she is not content to simply report on her field work. She wants to study lucha libre as "performance ... subculture...and symbol" in Mexican culture and politics.

She begins her book in 1988 with the advent of Superbarrio during the presidential elections, a masked wrestler functioning as a superhero representing the concerns of the popular classes whose homes were devastated by the 1986 earthquake in Mexico City and who were fed up with the inaction of politicians.

She discusses the question of what constitutes a sport as well as the question of genre: is lucha libre a sport, theater, spectacle, or ritual? The answer seems to be yes, it can simultaneously be any or all of those genres. Is lucha libre hegemonic or counterhegemonic? Yes again.

Levi provides a history of lucha libre in Mexico, imported from the United States in 1933. She explains the three styles of wrestling (Greco-Roman, Olympic, and Free Style), the creation and power struggles of the empresas, the companies that promote wrestlers and wrestling in the arena and on television. She explains the extensive training involved, which is why wrestlers argue that lucha libre is clearly a sport with wrestler-athletes. She describes the basic movements and wrestling holds and the orchestration of the matches, in which técnicos and rudos, or good guys and bad guys, play out their assigned roles in a highly stylized choreography. She explains and analyzes the various uses of the mask, as alter ego, as identity, as assigned by the empresa, as handed down from father to son or brother or nephew, as secret and as revelation.

Levi relates lucha libre back to politics again, as she portrays Mexican politics with its good guys and bad guys, and in most situations and elections, most certainly a previously choreographed "match" and outcome, particularly during the almost seventy-year reign of the PRI, the Partido de la Revolución Institucional, or the Institutional Revolutionary Party.

Levi delves into issues of gender, masculinity and femininity, machismo (the hyper masculine view of men) and marianismo (the code of conduct for women which suggests that, like the Virgin Mary, they should be pure and willing to suffer for their men). In addition to the técnicos and rudos, she analyzes the exóticos who are also luchadores, or wrestlers. Feminized wrestlers include some who are openly gay, some secretly gay, and some heterosexuals who have chosen the exótico role. The homosexual exóticos, Levi argues, can serve as a positive role model for young gay Mexicans, who see an openly gay performer with economic success and public admiration. Levi presents Divino Exótico as an example of a heterosexual wrestler who has chosen to develop the effeminate identity of his masked character in order to appeal to the women in the audience.

Levi spends some time examining the audience, both the spectators in the arena and the viewers of televised broadcasts, which leads to a discussion of class and gender, politics and economics, and the influence and power of the media. She details the golden age of lucha libre films and film stars, particularly Mexico's most popular luchador, El Santo.

Levi also takes up the symbolism of wrestling and the wrestler. The neo-pop arts movement's search for lo mexicano, the true Mexican identity, led the artists to lucha libre as representative of the people; popular and urban, lucha libre allowed for a new interpretation of Mexican identity, which had become increasingly urban. In Levi's view, all the threads of Mexico can be woven together in "staging [the] contradiction[s]" of Mexico, with its competing identities of rural/urban, male/female, machismo/feminismo, modernity/tradition, all in a ritualized spectacle not unlike Mexican politics.

Levi ends her text with an Epilogue from 2007. Much of the world in which she immersed herself is gone; the mediation (by television) of lucha libre seems to have led to its degeneration. The American film, Nacho Libre, serves as a sad example of how far lucha libre has fallen from its semi-heroic halcyon days.

At times Levi's text reads very much like the doctoral thesis from which it no doubt originated, with comments like "In this chapter I will" and ... small errors such as colonía for colonia.

Despite the aptly chosen neo-pop cover art, "Santo Santo" by Sergio Arau, featuring a masked wrestler flanked by masked cherubs with wings in the colors of the Mexican flag, Levi's study of professional wrestling as adapted in Mexico as lucha libre is not for the popular audience. Only the most die-hard fans will wade through the sometimes tedious language of "hegemonic" and "counterhegemonic," and supporting citations from theoreticians such as Roland Barthes, Pierre Bourdieu, and Octavio Paz. Clearly written more for an academic readership rather than a popular one, the text is a thorough history of lucha libre with extensive footnotes and a solid bibliography. Though on occasion the reader may suspect that Levi has teased out more from this quintessential Mexican sport/spectacle than lucha libre merits, she has nevertheless written a commendable cultural study of an important aspect of Mexican identity. Part of Duke University Press's American Encounters/Global Interactions, The World of Lucha Libre fits well within the framework of a series aimed at new interpretations of the influence of the United States.

Linda Ledford-Miller                                                         University of Scranton