LGBT in Mexico - Tolerance Among Indigenous Peoples

Tolerance Among Indigenous Peoples

Even though Mexico's majority mestizo, racially mixed and assimilated, culture, permeated by machismo, is hostile to male homosexuality, particularly in its more effeminate manifestations, some of its indigenous cultures are a lot more tolerant. Isthmus Zapotecs and Yucatán Mayans are cases in point. Particularly, the Zapotecs developed the concept of a third gender, which they referred to as muxe, as an intermediate between male and female.

"Muxe, persons who appear to be predominantly male but display certain feminine characteristics are highly visible in Isthmus Zapotec populations. They fill a third gender role between men and women, taking some of the characteristics of both. Although they are perceived to be different from the general heterosexual male population, they are neither devalued nor discriminated against in their communities. Isthmus Zapotecs have been dominated by Roman Catholic ideology for more than four centuries. Mestizos, especially mestizo police, occasionally harass and even persecute muxe boys, but Zapotec parents, especially mothers and other women, are quick to defend them and their rights to "be themselves", because, as they put it, "God made them that way." I have never heard an Isthmus Zapotec suggest that a muxe chose to become a muxe. The idea of choosing gender or of choosing sexual orientation, the two of which are not distinguished by the Isthmus Zapotecs, is as ludicrous as suggesting, that one can choose one's skin color."

— Beverly Chiñas.

Somewhat androgynous, they do both women's and men's work, but unlike most males they develop especially close friendships with women. While their apparel can be somewhat flamboyant, they are more masculine than feminine in dress. A muxe status is recognized in childhood, and as Zapotec parents consider the muxes to be the most brightest, most gifted children, they will keep them in school longer than other children. It is widely believed that they are artistically gifted, and do better work than women. Also, the muxe takes the passive role in sex with masculine males who will sometimes take a muxe as an spouse.

More recently, muxes have been able to use their relatively high levels of education to gain important footholds in the more prestigious white-collar jobs in government and business that constitute the social elite in their communities. They have also been getting elected to political office. Benefiting from the public perception that they are intelligent and gifted.

According to Chiñas, "Isthmus Zapotec culture allows both women and men more freedom to express affection in public for persons of the same sex than does Anglo North American culture." In the special case of fiestas, however, heterosexual men are expected to not engage in any bodily contact with either men or women while dancing. Women, on the other hand, are allowed to dance with each other, and muxes may dance with each other or with women. Though not necessarily approving such liaisons, Isthmus Zapotec society is tolerant of persons who publicly form same-sex couples, whether male or female. Both types of couples occur with comparable frequency. Zapotecs are also tolerant of bisexuality and transvestism. Chiñas affirms that she seldom witnessed any instances of ostracism based on sexual orientation or same-sex liaisons.

In his field work in the Yucatán Peninsula, Walter Williams found the Maya people to be very accepting of homosexual behavior between young men and teenagers. Historically, homosexual bonds were considered normal among young men, a pattern which continues to this day.

"After my arrival in Yucatán, I soon learned that the society provides a de facto acceptance of same-sex relations for males. It did not take long to establish contacts, and my informants suggested that a large majority of the male population is at certain times sexually active with other males. This usually occurs in the years between thirteen and thirty, when sexual desire is strongest, but it also involves men older than that. Marriage to a woman does not seem to have much effect on the occurrence and amount of homosexual behavior."

— Walter Williams.

Carter Wilson, who observed the homosexual scene in the Yucatán over a far greater period of time, and has studied it into the 1990s, corroborates many of Walter Williams' findings. Wilson asked Reinaldo Burgos, a man in his fifties who works at a local bank, how the people of Mérida, the state's capital, felt about gays.

"Oh, basically they accept them. The age for boys is the time before they get married, from about fifteen until they're twenty-four. They have their girlfriends, but the families are very careful about their girls, about protecting their virginity, so the boys also have a special friend, another boy they have sex with. Sometimes they give up the special friend when they get married and sometimes they don't. These are the ones who become bisexuals later on. To decide who's going to be the penetrator, they change off. It doesn't matter. They do it to each other, and when they get up from the bed one doesn't feel any less masculine than the other."

— Reinaldo Burgos, a local Maya.

The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), a mostly indigenous and armed revolutionary group, on 1 January 1994, the same day the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect, began a rebellion against the Mexican government in the southern state of Chiapas, the country's poorest. They have included in several proclamations to the nation "the homosexuals" as an oppressed group along with indigenous peoples, women and peasants.

"In the complex equation that turns death into money, there is a group of humans who command a very low price in the global slaughterhouse. We are the indigenous, the young, the women, the children, the elderly, the homosexuals, the migrants, all those who are different. That is to say, the immense majority of humanity."

— Subcomandante Marcos.