In Juchitan de Zaragoza, Oaxaca there is a belief that the patron saint of the city, San Vincente Ferrer, created muxes. The legend goes that he carried with him a bag full of seeds that he was going to spread across the world. There were male seeds, female seeds, and a bag mixed with both. As he passed through Juchitan, the third bag ruptured and from them sprung the muxes.
What Are Muxes?
Muxes are recognized as a third gender within the culture of Juchitan. They are people who are assigned male at birth but live as and present themselves with characteristics of both men and women. They wear feminine clothing, put on makeup, and generally live lives as both men and women. Felina Santiago, a muxe in Juchitan, says “we are people of two spirits. We are the duality, neither man nor woman. You are neither less nor more” (CNN).
Within Juchitan, muxes coexist with the members of their community and have widespread acceptance due to the community believing muxes are part of their tradition. Although muxes typically take up the social roles and norms of a woman within their society, there is no one way to be a muxe.
“What is muxiedad for muxes? A way of living. This is how we were born.” – Elvis Guerra in the HBO Max documentary “Muxes”
It has been reported that when mothers take note of their boys showing an interest in the ways of womanhood when they are young, the mothers take charge in showing them the ways. There is generally no resentment from the mother towards her son when he begins to show femininity but rather appreciation for the assistance in her duties.
Muxes Today
Muxes exist as a beacon of life before Spanish colonialism “westernized” the country of Mexico and changed the lives of all the indigenous people there. The Zapotecs, the indigenous people of Oaxaca, were forced to enter a mestizo lifestyle, or mixed lifestyle, with European and indigenous cultural blends. However, muxes today are representative of that Zapotec culture that was attacked when the conquistadors arrived in Mexico. Muxes are proud of their Zaptoec heritage and uphold many traditions including culinary traditions and other rituals attributed to the ancient Zapotec people. Because of this, muxes garner a level of respect from the Zapotec communities of Oaxaca and are sometimes even seen as a blessing by those whose homes they are residing in. The Zapotec language itself does not contain any gendered language and uses only one form of word for every kind of person.
Unfortunately, through the prevalence of machismo culture and the patriarchy in Mexico, muxes do sometimes face backlash. Women in Juchitan do have more autonomy and power within their communities than in other places in Mexico, but there is still rejection and exclusion within homes towards muxes. There are also high occurrences of legal and public health discrimination, leading to public services being inadequate and scarce for muxes within Mexico.
La Vela de Las Auténticas Intrépidas Buscadoras del Peligro
In the face of adversity and in celebration of their own existence, the muxe community hosts La Vela de Las Auténticas Intrépidas Buscadoras del Peligro, or The Vigil of the Authentic, Intrepid Danger-Seekers, annually. With other muxes and the entire community around them, La Vela acts as a large celebration with a parade filled with floats, a large religious mass, and a party. People from within Juchitan and outside of the area go and witness the beauty of the muxes and the Zapotec culture. The event climaxes once the queen of the muxes is crowned at the ceremony, and the party continues in their honor.
La Vela acts as a space where muxes can get together and exist in their own created space while showing off who they are to the wider community. La Vela started as a response to the violence and discrimination that they faced in the 70’s and evolved into a mass gathering of people for a good time, symbolizing the widespread acceptance of muxes.
Under the Western Lens
The existence of muxes and two-spirit individuals are a clear example of the pushing against the binary set in Western culture. In our modern society here in the United States, there is a lot of emphasis on the gender of an individual and what that means for them as they live their lives. Men and women are traditionally expected to have separate roles in the household, at work, in a conversation, and even at social gatherings. However, the muxes and other indigenous communities elucidate how these boundaries created by the binary are not universal and can be manipulated.
It would be very easy for us as people who live in a Western society to label the muxes as transgender individuals or non-binary people, but that does not entirely capture the essence of what it means to be a muxe. Because those terms come as an escape from a binary, they do not provide enough emphasis on the nuance of being a muxe. I will explain.
Within our Western and “christianized” society, the LGTBQ+ community serves as a way for those who don’t feel like they fit within the heteronormative and cisgender expectations to fit into their own community. Anyone who doesn’t only have attraction to the opposite sex and doesn’t identify with the sex assigned to them at birth is a queer individual. However, all of these terms and identities are very gendered in their language and presentation, which muxes exist outside of.
Muxes can find partners in both men and women within their community, but would not label themselves “gay” or “straight” while in these relationships. This is because muxes exist outside of the regulation of gender and sexuality; they exist as a social and cultural embodiment.
The muxes of Oaxaca offer a glimpse into the possibilities of life outside the binary set on our own. From the moment we are born, the genitalia we are born with or the chromosomes within our bodies determine who we are for the rest of our lives. There are expectations set for us because of how we were born and we are expected to stay within those boundaries for our entire lives. However, the muxes show us that we can be more than those expectations. These boundaries set upon us are not rigid nor eternal; they can be broken and twisted so that we can be whoever we want. We can make our own destinies and live our own lives without the watchful eyes of Western society beating down on us.
Sources/References:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28552025/
https://nhm.org/stories/beyond-gender-indigenous-perspectives-muxe
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/27/travel/mexico-muxes-third-gender.html
https://www.humanrightspulse.com/mastercontentblog/los-muxes-disrupting-the-colonial-gender-binary
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/muxes-mexico-gender-binary-cec/index.html
Definitely learned a lot from this blog post. It is exciting to see different conceptualizations of gender in cultures which are informed by tradition rather than science or other frameworks. It’s interesting to me that to have the existence of muxes as a third gender, there is still some notion of a gender binary. Specifically, considering the different seeds of San Vincente Ferrer and the determination of gender expression as ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’. It is great to see though that gender expression and different sexualities are not frowned upon through this cultural lens; moreover, it is exciting to see the ability to move away from the more restrictive Western lens of gender and sexuality.
I really loved this blog post. In my first blog post, I kind of explored the idea of gender and how people are categorized into the gender binary that exists, especially when traits, specifically voice, are harder to determine. I think your discussion of how colonialism affected gender was really enlightening in the role and function of gender in society. Pre-colonialism, Zapotecs were able to carry out their culture and traditions, free of external ideologies, but were later forced to adopt their colonizers’ culture. In particular, language would have likely had a huge impact, since Zapotec language is not gendered, and Spanish very much is, introducing a new way of viewing everyday words. One question your post left me with was how much colonialism might have affected machismo culture and patriarchy. Did it fuel machismo culture, or shift it in any way?
I had never heard of muxes before, until this blog post, and I found it to be really really interesting. I love how you clarified that muxes are not transgender or nonbinary; they exist outside of that, and while that may be hard to understand it is interesting to see how different cultures always have those who break the binary.
I think your mention of boys showing interest in womanhood from a young age really ties to the opinion piece, Where are All the Transgender Children? Everywhere.” These identities are not something that has randomly appeared in this current decade; these identities have existed for centuries and are not something grown people choose to be, it is what they are and they know this from a young age.