A year ago, I stumbled across a Pro Wrestling Revolution show in the Mission District of San Francisco and soon found myself standing up and screaming, “Mexico, Mexico!” along with an almost entirely Latino crowd. The promoter Gabriel Ramirez wanted to bring lucha libre, traditional Mexican-style professional wrestling, to the United States. When he dressed American professional wrestlers as Border Patrol agents to play the main villains, he knew he had a lucrative idea that would appeal to Latino audiences. More than entertainment, however, what he built is a type of Theater of the Oppressed, where social hierarchies are turned upside down and where, unlike in some media coverage, the Mexicans are the heroes.

The members of the Border Patrol tag team are not actual Border Patrol agents. They follow in a long tradition of villains, or heels as they are known in wrestling lingo. The cold war produced Nikolai Volkoff. The Iran Hostage Crisis produced the Iron Sheik. And the current battles over immigration have produced “El Patrón” Oliver John, in real life Oliver John Steinwandt, who plays the anti-immigrant leader of the Border Patrol tag team. Though Oliver John is a wrestling purist and thinks the wrestling should be the focus, and not the characters and narratives that swirl around each match, he also admits that there is nothing quite like the thrill of antagonizing a crowd.

The wrestler Blue Demon Jr. carries the mantle of the lendary luchador Blue Demon (who he says is his adoptive father). He sees his role as part of a larger mission to speak up for Mexican immigrants. Blue Demon Jr.’s feud with Oliver John is an allegory for the political battles being fought right now across this country. After years of feeling under attack by oppressive laws, heightened deportations and xenophobic language in the media, the audience watching these shows get to participate in a genuine act of cultural resistance and emotional release.

This Op-Doc video is a short companion piece to a documentary film, still in production, that follows Blue Demon Jr. and Oliver John as they battle it out in the Pro Wrestling Revolution universe.