MARIE CLAIRE, March 2007 (Volume 14, Issue 3), pages 120-127
[no URL]
 
International Report
 
DATELINE MEXICO: WHERE IT PAYS TO BE A GIRL
Welcome to Juchitan, Mexico, where sons turn themselves into 
daughters 
 
By Kimberley Sevcik
Photograped by Shaul Schwarz/Getty Images
 
MEET VIDAL GUERRA & HIS MOTHER, ANTONIA. 
SHE'S TURNING HIM INTO A GIRL.
 
In Juchitan, Mexico, daughters are more valuable than sons. So 
mothers are encouraging their boys to become girls.
 
 At the festival of the Virgin of Juquila in Juchitan, a 
small Mexican city near the Guatemalan border, men sit quietly on 
the sidelines of a makeshift dance hall, swilling Corona from 
bottles, cowboy hats pulled low over their eyes, while women 
arrange chairs in a semicircle, dressed in traditional Zapotec 
galawear -- long, swirling skirts and velvet tops embroidered 
with multicolored flowers -- red roses pinned to their straight 
black hair. And when the four-piece salsa band starts to play, 
they dance not with their men, but with each other.
 
 At the fringes of the semicircle, a group of younger women 
in their 20s and 30s linger. They are dressed in utterly modern 
clothes: clingy polyester cocktail dresses, three-inch heels, and 
glittery eyeshadow. One has tossed a scarf around her neck that 
trails down her back. Another is clad in an ice-blue camisole 
and tight capris.
 
 They are strikingly different from their older counterparts 
with the long gray braids, who wear petticoats beneath their 
full, ankle-length skirts. The biggest difference, though, isn't 
the clothes. It's the fact that these glamorous, slightly tawdry 
women are actually men. Muxes, they're called in the Zapotec 
language, which literally means "gay men" but translates 
culturally as a third gender, with few similarities to gay men in 
America. Muxes dress and wear makeup like women. They shave 
their legs and tweeze their eyebrows into high, thin arches. 
They are respected in their community for excelling at "women's 
work" -- designing festival gowns, embroidering blouses, and 
making the elaborate decorations that adorn parade floats.
 
 But perhaps most distinctively, muxes in this Mexican 
village seem to have little interest in romantic liaisons with 
other men. Of the 500 to 800 muxes estimated to live in 
Juchitan, locals say only three live with lovers. They are 
classic mama's boys, who pledge to live with and care for their 
mothers until the day they die.
 
 "I will stay with my mother always," Estrella Vazquez 
Guerra, 25, tells me when I meet "her" on the front porch of her 
family's turquoise one-room house, where she sits embroidering a 
blouse. Estrella, a member of the third gender, is tall and 
thin, with long limbs, high cheekbones, and an aquiline nose. 
Though she claims to have a boyfriend -- "not serious, of course" 
-- she would never consider living with him, she says. Her 
mother, a squat woman in her mid-408 with warm brown eyes and a 
gold-capped smile, beams across the porch at her daughter/son.
 
 Whether there are more muxes in Juchitan, which has a 
population of 67,000, than in other small Mexican cities is 
arguable and hard to prove. At the very least, muxes in Juchitan 
are more accepted than muxes in other parts of Mexico, with its 
notoriously macho attitudes and male-dominated politics. One 
reason is that muxes here play an integral role in perpetuating 
the 400-year-old traditions of the region, seamlessly blending 
Catholicism with local Zapotec culture in their artistic 
endeavors. <123>
 
 Every three or four days, there is a fiesta in Juchitan. 
Most celebrate saints or the day on which an apparition of the 
Virgin Mary appeared to an indigenous nonbeliever. This nonstop 
partying means the muxes' design and decoration businesses are in 
high demand.
 
 "Muxes work harder than men, and we're more curious and 
entrepreneurial than women," says Estrella. "We are known for 
our artistic talent. People seek us out -- they like to have 
their dresses made by muxes."
 
 To kick off a fiesta, some neighborhoods hold an event 
called a regada, a sort of parade to build excitement through the 
town. The day before the party for the Virgin of Juquila, two 
floats glide through the streets of Juchitan carrying young girls 
and boys who toss packets of instant noodles, bright plastic 
balls, and laundry detergent to spectators on the side of the 
road. The floats are mounted on trucks, which have been 
decorated with papier-mache flowers and painted wooden panels, 
all created by muxes. In the center of the float, coordinating 
the seat assignments and the gift-throwing, is a muxe in full 
fiesta regalia.
 
 But muxes do more than fulfill a cultural role; their jobs 
also tend to be more lucrative than the work of either men or 
women. Men in Juchitan generally work as fishermen or campesinos 
(peasant farmers), earning 1000 pesos (about $92) a month. 
Women, by making tortillas or tamales to sell at the market, earn 
slightly more. But a muxe can make as much as 3000 pesos a month 
selling dresses and decorations.
 
 It's not that other women -- or men, for that matter -- 
couldn't dabble in the same profession. But over the years, the 
muxes have come to dominate the design industry. Such salaries 
make them an economic boon to their families. "People see how we 
earn good money making dresses," says Estrella, "and if they only 
have sons, five or six boys, sometimes they ask one -- couldn't 
you be a muxe? We want you to do what the muxes do for a 
living."
 
 "I wouldn't be living if it weren't for my son Felicza," 
says 45-year-old Antonia Regalado Jimenez. "She is my greatest 
supporter. I'm lucky to have her." Jimenez's husband is a 
campesino, and Felicza makes dresses and party decorations. Like 
most muxes, she also helps her mother with the household chores. 
Felicza's five siblings are all married and live on their own, 
but she remains with her mother.
 
 Given the economic advantages and social prominence a muxe 
in the family brings, it is not unreasonable to assume that 
mothers encourage this transgender behavior in their children. 
But it's not something most are comfortable admitting. "Other 
women say to me, 'You are so lucky to have a muxe. I wish I had 
one,'" says 40-year-old Antonia Guerra Aquina.  Two of Aquina's 
eight children, including Vidal Aquina Guerra (in Mexican 
families, children take their mother's maiden name as their 
last), are muxes. "Sometimes, neighbors will ask my advice: 
'What do you do in order to have a muxe?'" Aquina shrugs and 
smiles smugly. "I tell them it runs in the family." <full-page 
photo on p. 124> <125>
 
 Like many mothers in this town, Aquina says being a muxe is 
genetically predetermined. But when you listen to her describe 
her muxe children's early tendencies -- playing with girls 
instead of boys, playing with dolls instead of trucks, putting on 
their sisters' skirts and swaying their hips to music -- the 
language is nearly identical to that used by other muxe mothers. 
So similar, in fact, that it sounds canned, rehearsed -- it's 
been the party line for generations -- when in fact the mothers 
are subconsciously molding their sons into daughters.
 
 Indeed, other locals believe that muxes are made, not born; 
that their feminine tendencies are nurtured by their mothers in 
the hopes of elevating their family's status. "It's an economic 
thing," says Rosario Fuentes Morales, a local business owner. 
"It's no coincidence that one finds more muxes in poor families. 
People know that a muxe will give them a better life, that they 
will always be cared for."
 
 Felicza herself believes that her muxe lifestyle is a 
product of her mother's encouragement. When she first began 
exhibiting feminine tendencies at age 4, her mother supported 
them. "She treated me like my sisters," says Felicza. "She saw 
that I was drawn to dolls and that I had taken an interest in her 
skirts. She asked me if I wanted her to make me a huipile" which 
is a traditional embroidered blouse.
 
 Then, too, in a town in which women are generally more 
respected than men, it's possible that female role models simply 
have a stronger pull. "The women rule Juchitan," says Silvia 
Dehesa, 36, a restaurant manager in the town. "We are much 
harder-working. The men drink too much and sleep half the day, 
and everyone knows it."
 
 The very fact that muxes are so visible in the culture of 
Juchitan might also help elicit those tendencies in young boys. 
Estrella Vasquez Guerra was 10 when she met Felicza, who, at age 
17, knew the attention and admiration her muxe status drew and 
spent weekends parading around with her muxe friends, proudly 
displaying red lips, gold earrings, and fake eyelashes. Estrella 
used to go to Felicza's house to watch them apply makeup, 
awestruck by their beauty. "I used to say, Why don't you try on 
some makeup, too?'" Felicza recalls. "I could see how much she 
wanted to experiment."
 
 But Estrella was too frightened. Her father, an alcoholic 
with violent tendencies, had caught her dancing in her mother's 
skirt when she was 8 and beat her with an electrical cord. When 
her mother tried to defend her son, Estrella's father beat her as 
well. "It was very sad," Estrella says softly as she recalls the 
story, picking at a tortilla on her plastic dinner plate. "I 
felt responsible." It's a common theme among muxes: Mothers and 
other community members celebrate these <126> third-gender 
breadwinners, but their fathers, dismayed that their sons are 
veering toward femininity in a culture in which men are expected 
to hunt and drink and fight, try to beat the muxe out of them. 
The mothers step in to protect their sons, and a powerful 
mother-muxe bond begins to develop.
 
 With the threat of her father's temper always looming over 
her, Estrella repressed her desire to act on her feminine urges 
publicly until she was 20, although at home, she was still very 
much fulfilling the muxe role as her mother's helper. It took 
Felicza's encouragement for her to make the decision to "show 
herself to the world," as she puts it. "I could see that she was 
suffering," says Felicza, "and I told her that she had to 
liberate herself."
 
 Muxes often choose to celebrate their third-gender lifestyle 
with big parties, announcing to their community that they are 
choosing to accept their futures as domestic helpers and 
dressmakers. Juchitan hosts two annual parties devoted to muxes: 
La Vela de las Autenticas Intrepidas Buscadoras del Peligro, or 
"Festival of the Authentic, Intrepid Danger-Seekers" -- a no-
holds-barred gathering of cross-dressers that draws people from 
around the world -- and Baila Conmigo, which means "Dance with 
Me," a party that is attended by the entire town of Juchitan, 
from toddlers to rough-soled farmers to octogenarians. At that 
time, many muxes also swap their male names for female names, 
usually inspired by famous singers or telenovela stars.
 
 But Estrella had lived in secrecy for too long to share the 
spotlight with the dozens of other muxes coming out at the balls. 
She was compelled to make a strong, solo statement to the world 
-- and she wanted it to be during a quinceanera, the traditional 
party Mexican girls have when they turn 15 to mark the threshold 
of adulthood. Despite the fact that she was five years past the 
proper age for a quinceanera, Estrella announced to her family 
that she planned to throw one for herself. She also told them 
that she was going to wear a dress. "You can't stop me," she 
said to her father, "because I am paying for the party myself." 
The day before the event, Estrella's father told her that he 
planned to come to the party drunk and raise hell. "I said, 'If 
you do that, I will call the police.'"
 
 In the end, her father not only showed up, he behaved 
himself -- although in photographs he looks reluctant and surly 
in his baseball cap, posing beside his glamorous muxe son. 
Estrella, by contrast, looks exultant in her silvery-blue ball 
gown, her layered black locks sprayed into an elaborate hairdo 
worthy of a nighttime soap star from the '80s. The next day, at 
the after-party known as the lavada (or "the washing of the pots 
and pans"), her father made up for the sobriety of the previous 
day by drinking himself into oblivion. As promised, Estrella 
called the police, and her father spent three days in jail. "He 
hasn't said a critical word to me about being a muxe since then," 
she says.
 
 Vidal Aquina Guerra publicly embraced her muxe nature at a 
much younger age: At 8, she was asking to wear a dress to sell 
bread at the market with her mother. By age 12, she was wearing 
miniskirts and heels out on the street. Today, at 17, she stuffs 
her bra and wears smoky purple eyeshadow and fuchsia lipstick, 
and her laugh is high-pitched and melodious, the studied device 
of a coquette. She has even injected hormones from time to time, 
although she says she stopped because they were too expensive -- 
$6 an injection <127> for the cheapest variety. Last year, she 
took the name Mariana. "Vidal is dead," she says emphatically 
when people try to address her now by her former male name.
 
 In 2006, Mariana clinched the most prestigious title 
available on the muxe social scene: She was chosen as the queen 
of the Baila Conmiga. It's flattering, yes, but it also means 
she is expected to spend $500 on a dress and refreshments for the 
pre-party. Mariana's family is desperately poor. Her father is 
an iguana hunter, her mother a tortilla maker, and together they 
earn about 1600 pesos a month. As a muxe, it is incumbent upon 
Mariana to supplement her family's income. The lavish dress 
seems out of her reach, although she is working long hours as a 
waitress ("and occasionally a little more," she says) at Rincon 
del Brujo ("The Wizard's Corner"), a gentlemen's club on the 
outskirts of town.
 
 It's 10 p.m. at the local ranch, and the fiesta for the 
festival of the Virgin of Juquila is still in full swing. Locals 
have been partying hard since the festival's opening ceremonial 
prayer at 5 a.m. (where sugar cookies and beer were served to all 
who attended the before-sunrise gathering), but judging by the 
endless booze flowing and the hips swaying on the dance floor, 
it's going to be quite a long night.
 
 The older women cluster together, dancing in their 
traditional costumes, while husbands and sons look on, nursing 
their cervezas. In another corner, the muxes cut loose to the 
sounds of the salsa band, shimmering in their tight tops and 
clunky high heels. For now, the two groups remain separate. But 
if tonight goes like most festival fiestas, after a few more 
rounds of drinks when everyone is feeling good, some of the muxes 
will cross the room to ask a very special person to dance. As 
fathers and brothers watch stoically from their seats, Estrella, 
Mariana, Felicza, and several others will pair off with the women 
who gave birth to them, raised them, and regard them as domestic 
companions. And as the salsa band slows the tempo to a soft 
serenade, mother and muxe will share a dance that lasts a 
lifetime.