Quantity with Quality
Just Who is La Dama Enmascarada?
How willing are you to put your identity on the line?
This is my next story in a series of articles responding to Dr Mehmet Yildiz’s challenge to produce a short quality article with three take home points each day for thirty days.
I have chosen to use Wikipedia’s main page as inspiration, choosing one topic from the “Did You Know” section as topical encouragement.
Born into a circus family, Magdalena Caballero later became the first Mexican National Women’s Champion professional wrestler, or luchadora.
Competing under her ring name of La Dama Enmascarada, she began training with other female wrestlers in 1950, a time when women’s wrestling in Mexico was non-existent.
La Dama Enmascarada held her title for a little over a year before being unseated by Irma Gonzalez. The two competitors would meet many times over their careers fostering an intense rivalry.
In 1958 La Dama Enmascarada regained the National Women’s Wrestling title sparking a showdown, once again with Gonzalez. This time the match was a Luchas de Apeustas (a match with a bet), a practice common in Mexican men’s wrestling since 1940, where combatants would wager the consequence of being either unmasked or shaving their hair on the outcome of the match.
Gonzalez won the 1958 match which resulted in the unmasking of La Dama Enmascarada; making her the first woman wrestler to lose her mask in Mexico.
La Dama continued wrestling, sometimes using her given name and occasionally under the La Dama Enmascarada moniker, despite not wearing a mask.
Eventually La Dama evened the score, besting Gonzalez in a second luchas de apeustas bout wherein Gonzalez was forced to shave her head after the loss.
La Dama continued to compete for one more year and then moved on to a new phase, playing a supporting actress and coordinating the fight scenes for female wrestlers in a series of movies through the 1960’s.
One not-insignificant footnote is that Magdalena maintained her professional career whilst a single mother with six children following her divorce in the 1950’s.
What We Can Learn from La Dama Enmascarada
We occasionally might talk about the idea of losing our identity, but Magdalena actually did lose hers in her professional pursuits.
While this is one of the possibilities of a luchadora lifestyle, it likely is nonetheless very impactful to be de-masked. In this case it was not just allegory, but a real-life public unmasking.
It says a lot about a person that they are willing to put their identity on the line to achieve success.
Magdalena seemingly took this in stride however and came back to regain her championship crown and exacting some revenge on her long-time nemesis.
Even more inspiring is how she continued on using her talents after her career in wrestling.
Take home points:
- Be willing to take some extreme risks to achieve your goals. La Dama risked her identity to achieve a championship.
- Be resilient. La Dama came back after defeat and regained her championship title.
- Be adaptive. Magdalena balanced a career and single motherhood, then later leveraged her wrestling success into movies.
People generally gain notoriety from doing things no one else can do or previously has done. La Dama is an excellent example of this and there is a lot to take away from her being a pioneer in a non-existent branch of wrestling as well as her adaptability and resilience throughout her career.
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Timothy Key spent over 26 years in the fire service as a firefighter/paramedic and various fire chief management roles. He firmly believes that bad managers destroy more than companies, and good managers create a passion that is contagious. Compassion, grace and gratitude drive the world; or at least they should. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and join the mail list.