Boxing-From Tepito to Paris: Olympians inspire new generation of female boxers in Mexico

By Sarah Kinosian

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - On a Saturday morning in a gym tucked deep into a maze of market stalls in Mexico City’s gritty Tepito neighbourhood, 12-year-old Africa Normandia Curiel traps 10-year-old Fernanda Flores against the ropes.

Older men in each corner shout directions as she lands multiple body shots, gearing up for a left hook.

"Remember the upper!" Raymundo Flores, a former boxer himself, screams to his granddaughter who is struggling to free herself. "Don't drop your hands!"

Without taking her eyes off the ring, coach Guadalupe Lincer smiles and says "the girls are more aggressive than the boys."

Lincer, a former boxer, helps run a program for girls in Tepito, known as "Barrio Bravo," or fierce neighbourhood. Here, as in other areas considered bastions of the sport in the capital, the legacy of boxing runs deep in its soul.

For many of the girls, boxing is not just a sport; it's a source of empowerment and self-defence in a society still grappling with machismo, she says.

Today, gyms across Mexico are seeing more young women eager to step into the ring.

Now, with Olympic contenders like Citlalli Ortiz and Fatima Herrara, a fighter who is an equal force of nature in the ring from central Mexico, representing the country at the Paris Games, they have their eyes set on gold medal glory.

Africa, like many young female boxers in Mexico, dreams of following in Ortiz's footsteps.

"Of course we know her," Africa says, her eyes lighting up. "We all know her. We want to be like her."

FEMALE WARRIOR

The 24-year-old Ortiz, a dual citizen of Mexico and the United States known as "Bellatrix," Latin for female warrior, is a rising star in Mexico's burgeoning women's boxing scene.

"Fighting for Mexico, you've already won because there are so many well-known fighters, though most are men," said Ortiz, currently in Paris ahead of her fight on Wednesday.

"But women here also have the same heart and hopefully me making noise as a boxer helps showcase the strength that women and girls have."

Her fighting style, characterised by relentless aggression, strategic body shots, and close-range combat combinations, embodies the quintessential Mexican boxing tradition.

This tradition, forged in neighbourhood gyms across Mexico, has produced scores of great fighters like Salvador Sanchez, Julio Cesar Chavez and Canelo Alvarez.

Boxing came to be a pillar of Mexican pride after its arrival in Mexico City in the late 1880s, when matches between foreigners were promoted for elite consumption.

Following the Mexican Revolution that toppled Porfirio Diaz's dictatorial regime in 1911, the authorities lifted restrictions on working-class participation.

By the late 1920s boxing was a fixture throughout Mexico City, along the U.S. border and in oil towns like Tampico, Veracruz on Mexico's coast, where waves of U.S. workers would wrap napkins around their knuckles and stage fights.

Now the country is regarded as a boxing powerhouse with the likes of Cuba and the United States.

But older female fighters like Jackie Navas and Ana Maria Torres who cleared the path for younger ones like Ortiz, had to claw their way into the sport.

For decades, women's boxing was illegal in Mexico City, part of a broader trend in patriarchal policies that swept the globe after World War II, according to professor Stephen Allen, who wrote the book "A History of Boxing in Mexico: Masculinity, Modernity, and Nationalism."

Underground female boxing culture meanwhile thrived. But it was not until 1999, after a landmark legal battle led by boxer Laura Serrano, that women were finally allowed to compete professionally.

Ortiz understands the significance of her success in a country where traditional gender roles can confine women.

"Things are changing," she says, citing the recent election of Mexico's first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum. "The more women that break the mould, the more we will see the mentality of, 'if she can do it, why can't I?'"

For young girls like Africa, Ortiz has a simple message: "Believe in yourself. It doesn't matter if other people think you can do it, you have to know you can do it. I was a chubby eight-year-old girl that no one wanted to coach – now I'm in the Olympics."

(Reporting by Sarah Kinosian; Editing by Ken Ferris)