LA RUDA is not just set in the physical terrain of the Tijuana border area: it occupies psychic space in the myths and belief systems of the area. Much of what seems fantasy to Americans is merely fact across the border. American women come to Tijuana to dance and mud-wrestle. Criminals who control bars also control drug cartels, own wrestlers, and operate clinics. Street children are herded and abused. The powerful criminals take any license they see fit regarding other people's lives and bodies. This is just history.

        Beyond that is the undercurrent of local belief...and the beliefs that Mexicans in other areas have about the dangerous, wicked border. It is commonly accepted in much of the local culture that children are kidnapped and sacrificed in black clinics to provide rejuvenation and health for rich gringos. That masked wrestlers are not only superb athletes, but super heroes that struggle to help the common man against forces of crime and corruption. That mansions in Las Playas are used for cult worship and killings. That the Virgin of Guadalupe intercedes in human events, and that she takes wrestlers to her heart as champions.

        Then there is the Tijuana of its own image. The sex pharmacies, the body and upholstery shops, the Lucha Libre events, the whore bars and gay clubs, the narcos, the meth and steroid labs, the police that disappear young women.

        LA LUCHA might seem peculiar to Americans, exotic and unbelievable. But in Tijuana, and in the superstitions, whispers, common knowledge, shared gossip, and daily newspapers of Mexico, it's a story that practically tells itself.