Muxe

by Mateo Curiel

I am a Queer, Zapotec contradiction. Or so I thought. When I was younger, I never really thought that there was a place for me as a Queer man in my family. My conception of Indigenous heritage did not mesh particularly well with identifying with the LGBTQIA+ community because of some of the impositions that were put on me from since I was born. Decades of a tumultuous history with colonial powers preceded me, and it would take a significant portion of my life to realize the different interpretations of my family’s heritage. For a while, I thought I would have to choose between Queerness and Indigeneity.

I was born to an Indigenous-Mexican, immigrant family in Los Angeles, California. More specifically, we are Zapotec from Oaxaca, Mexico. Being ‘Indigenous-Mexican’ is really up to interpretation unless it is specified. Many of my Latine friends growing up identified as mestizo or ‘mixed’ in English. I identify myself as belonging to this word, but given that my father’s side of the family is fully Zapotec while my mother’s side of the family is Spanish mixed with Indigenous-Mexican, I also use Zapotec as an identity marker. But what exactly does it mean to be ‘Zapotec’?

‘Zapotec’ constitutes an overarching group of related peoples (Morales). For example, I can further specify that my family speaks San Lucas Quiaviní as a heritage language. This is one of the many varieties of the so-called ‘Zapotec language’ which is really a family of related languages with varying degrees of mutual intelligibility. The variety of Zapotec that one speaks and where one’s family hails from influences the type of Zapotec that they might identify with the most.

The Zapotec language family consists of many endangered languages. Some are more endangered than others, but all of them are faced with the challenge of the number of native speakers rapidly declining. In my family, it was more advantageous to learn Spanish and/or English than it was to continue speaking Zapotec outside of the house. Learning a more dominant language comes with better prospects for a job and more opportunities to engage with the local Latine communities in Los Angeles. Therefore, to better assimilate with life in the United States, my family gradually transitioned into speaking Spanish and English. I moved away from my father’s side of the family at a young age and I never really had the chance to learn my variety of Zapotec. Today, I connect with my heritage language through an online talking dictionary developed by researchers interested in documenting San Lucas Quiaviní Zapotec (Lillehaugen 2019). Its inclusion of voice clips from native speakers of the language has really helped me better understand how the language sounds and lets me check my pronunciation immediately after learning a new word. This is one of the steps towards inclusion of Zapotecs on the world scene.

Another aspect that unifies Zapotecs and other Indigenous-Mexican communities is our relationship with Spanish colonialism. The Spanish Inquisition has imposed many beliefs and customs that did not originate from Mexico. A major imposition is Catholicism (Morales). My family, like many other Mexican families, is devoutly Catholic as a result of Spanish colonization (Morales). This in turn further solidifies a machismo or hyper-masculine societal expectation of Mexican men. My Zapotec family was not always patriarchal, but because of Spanish colonization and immigration to the United States, passing down the family legacy became increasingly more important. My father only had sisters and I was born a male meaning that I would be expected to carry the family name: Curiel. Furthermore, because I was also the first born son, I would inherit the land that they owned in Oaxaca. When I came out as Queer and therefore unlikely to have biological children, my mother joked, “At least we saved them the heartbreak by moving before they found out you wouldn’t have children.”

Yet, in spite of the pressure of gender expectations stemming from Spanish colonization, there is pushback of the gender binary system by some Zapotec communities. Indigenous conceptions of gender existed before the Spanish Inquisition, and some of these beliefs were retained. One such retention is identifying as a muxe, which is pronounced as ‘moo-shay’ (Kaur 2023).

Outside of Zapotec society a muxe is a concept that not much is known about. Even in Mexico, the word muxe is seldom used outside of the communities from which it is a tradition. Muxes are distinct community members in Zapotec society who were assigned male at birth, but take on roles traditionally associated with women while dressing in traditional, feminine Zapotec attire (Kaur 2023). Forms of dress to express gender, however, are more nuanced as some muxes choose to dress effeminately for both traditional events and on the job, while others choose to dress more masculine for work, or otherwise daily life (De Castro 2020). Muxes do not identify as men nor women, rather they self identify as being part of an entirely separate category of gender. Despite dressing and socially performing effeminately, a significant number of muxes do not intend to become women (De Castro 2020).

In Juchitán, where many muxes call home, the origin story of the muxe is passed down throughout the generations. A saint was caring, three bags of seeds. One bag was full of male seeds, another bag was full of female seeds, and the third and final bag had a mix of both seeds. All of a sudden the third bag ruptured and the mix of seeds were scattered around Juchitán. Men, women, and muxes alike emerged from the seeds (Kaur 2023).

During the fall of 2022 I was able to watch a screening of a documentary titled Mitzary—Muxe and the Visibility of Otherness by Tonatiuh Ramírez Rocha. It focused on Mitzary, a muxe, in the process of putting on a performance associated with muxes. They wore a dress and make-up for which every detail was accounted for, and danced among the other muxes at the traditional social event. Mitzary talked about how proud they were to engage with Zapotec heritage and the documentary highlighted their passion to perform and encourage visibility of muxes.

In a post-documentary Zoom interview with Mitzary, they elaborated more on the role of the muxes in their respective communities. They focused on how muxes usually engage with some type of community service or being family-oriented. For example, many muxes are expected to take care of older family members, and not to be involved in long-term relationships that may hinder their caretaking role. Mitzary holds an especially exemplary role in their community and was crowned Mexico’s Muxe Queen in 2022. Something that came up in many of Mitzary’s responses to questions raised by the audience is that “there is no one way to be a muxe.”

Although there are many positive qualities associated with muxes, they face a unique set of challenges. In Juchitán they are accepted and even revered as a gift to the family, but they can still face rejection from a disapproving family and from other parts of Mexico that are more rooted in Catholicism (De Castro 2020). A muxe has the risk of being driven out of the family should they not be welcomed.

Another difficulty that muxes face is being fetishized by tourists. Joe Furey, a journalist, worked closely with two muxes named Elena and Carmelita to learn more about Zapotec customs and traditions (2019). Initially, Furey was unaware that Elena and Carmelita were muxes, but once they had gotten to know Furey better, they felt comfortable enough to confide in him. After revealing that they were muxes, the pair told Furey why they were not in Juchitán: “... they were in Oaxaca City to track down muxe friends who they suspected had been taken there by American sex tourists. ‘These Americans, they call Juchitán ‘Hoochie Town’,’ said Elena in disgust” (Furey 2019). The fact that Elena and Carmelita took it upon themselves to search for their missing friends speaks to the apparent lack of resources for muxes. Furthermore, the name “Hoochie Town” used by American tourists shows a lack of respect for the people who call Juchitán their home and reduces the muxes to merely being “hoochies.”

But in spite of these challenges, muxes continue to persevere, with some even taking up residence in Los Angeles (De Castro 2020). Muxes advocate for visibility in a time where the Spanish Inquisition has led to the mass adoption of Catholicism in Mexico and thus, the gender binary has shaped many societal expectations. They live in their truth, even when other people express their discomfort with sharing a restroom with them (De Castro 2020). The muxes predate Spanish colonization, and they intend on keeping their place in Zapotec communities.

When I researched the muxes further after initially watching Mitzary—Muxe and the Visibility of Otherness at Dartmouth, I slowly understood that my Queer and Zapotec identities did not exist in opposition with each other. Rather, they complement each other. There are many contrastive elements in Zapotec culture such as the discourse regarding Indigenous cultural traditions and Spanish colonization. But being Queer is not one such element that is out of place in connecting with Zapotec heritage despite the relatively recent adoption of the gender binary. Learning about the muxes changed my worldview, even as someone who was already somewhat familiar with Zapotec history. Should visibility continue to be advocated for, it has the power to shape how muxes are viewed by other people. I wonder what might happen for the muxes if they were more closely associated with Zapotec identities.Curiel 7

Works Cited

Darling, Juanita. “The Women Who Run Juchitan: Matriarchy Flourishes in this Mexican Town Where Wives and Mothers Dominate Economic and Family Life. Residents Defend Themselves Against Outsiders Who Dismiss their Society as Being Machismo in Reverse.” The Los Angeles Times, (1995).https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-03-31-mn-49349-story.html.

De Castro, Rafa Fernandez. “Meet the Muxes: How a Remote Town in Southern Mexico Reinvented Sex & Gender.” Fusion Interactive, (2020).https://web.archive.org/web/20200519010729/http://interactive.fusion.net/meet-the-muxes/?fbclid=IwAR0A9XT9U8bTgDpAOJ5p5qDj1j4xj4Vw6aa8qw06wxs0pDT7AHeVpfKgGto.

Dickerman, Kenneth and Nuria Lopez Torres. “Meet the mixed-gender ‘muxes’ of southern Mexico.” The Washington Post, (2019).https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2019/08/02/meet-mixed-gender-muxes-southern-mexico/.

Furey, Joe. “The Muxes of Juchitán de Zaragoza.” World Nomads, (2019). https://www.worldnomads.com/explore/north-america/mexico/the-muxes-of-juchitan-de zaragoza#:~:text=Muxes%20make%20up%20about%205,sites%2C%20sometimes%20on%20fishing%20boats.

Kaur, Harmeet. “This Community in Southern Mexico has Defied the Gender Binary for Generations.” CNN, (2023). https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/muxes-mexico-gender-binary-cec.Curiel 8

Lillehaugen, Brook Danielle, Felipe H. Lopez, Pamela Munro, with Savita M. Deo, Graham Mauro, and Saul Ontiveros. San Lucas Quiaviní Zapotec Talking Dictionary, version 2.0. Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, (2019).http://www.talkingdictionary.org/sanlucasquiavini.

Mirandé, Alfredo. “Hombres Mujeres: An Indigenous Third Gender. Men and Masculinities.” Men and Masculinities 19, no. 4 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1177/1097184X15602746.

Morales, Manuel Ríos. "The Zapotecs of Oaxaca: A Critical Review of our Identity." The Social and Linguistic Heritage of Native Peoples in the Americas. The struggle to Maintain Cultural Particularity, 101-126.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14vwEHpKrbJaSXKqUj0BZzwof1nwnMY vf/view?usp=sharing.

Ramírez Rocha, Tonatiuh. Mitzary—Muxe and the Visibility of Otherness. Documentary.