beyond gay and straight: mexico's muxe

I thought this article (and the accompanying slideshow) were fascinating.

A Lifestyle Distinct: The Muxe of Mexico
By MARC LACEY
Published: December 6, 2008

Mexico City — Mexico can be intolerant of homosexuality; it can also be quite liberal. Gay-bashing incidents are not uncommon in the countryside, where many Mexicans consider homosexuality a sin. In Mexico City, meanwhile, same-sex domestic partnerships are legally recognized — and often celebrated lavishly in government offices as if they were marriages.

But nowhere are attitudes toward sex and gender quite as elastic as in the far reaches of the southern state of Oaxaca. There, in the indigenous communities around the town of Juchitán, the world is not divided simply into gay and straight. The local Zapotec people have made room for a third category, which they call “muxes” (pronounced MOO-shays) — men who consider themselves women and live in a socially sanctioned netherworld between the two genders.

“Muxe” is a Zapotec word derived from the Spanish “mujer,” or woman; it is reserved for males who, from boyhood, have felt themselves drawn to living as a woman, anticipating roles set out for them by the community.

Anthropologists trace the acceptance of people of mixed gender to pre-Colombian Mexico, pointing to accounts of cross-dressing Aztec priests and Mayan gods who were male and female at the same time. Spanish colonizers wiped out most of those attitudes in the 1500s by forcing conversion to Catholicism. But mixed-gender identities managed to survive in the area around Juchitán, a place so traditional that many people speak ancient Zapotec instead of Spanish.

Not all muxes express their identities the same way. Some dress as women and take hormones to change their bodies. Others favor male clothes. What they share is that the community accepts them; many in it believe that muxes have special intellectual and artistic gifts.

Every November, muxes inundate the town for a grand ball that attracts local men, women and children as well as outsiders. A queen is selected; the mayor crowns her. “I don’t care what people say,” said Sebastian Sarmienta, the boyfriend of a muxe, Ninel Castillejo García. “There are some people who get uncomfortable. I don’t see a problem. What is so bad about it?”

Muxes are found in all walks of life in Juchitán, but most take on traditional female roles — selling in the market, embroidering traditional garments, cooking at home. Some also become sex workers, selling their services to men. .

Acceptance of a child who feels he is a muxe is not unanimous; some parents force such children to fend for themselves. But the far more common sentiment appears to be that of a woman who takes care of her grandson, Carmelo, 13.

“It is how God sent him,” she said.

Katie Orlinsky contributed reporting from Juchitán, Mexico.

can i get an arrrgh?

Scurvy.
Booty.
Planks.
Avast.
Long John Silver.
Salty seadogs.
Dubloons.
The Jolly Roger.
Blackbeard.
Shipwrecks.
Parrots and golden hoop earrings.
Striped shirts.
Peglegs.
Captain Hook.
Somalis.

These are the words that come to mind when someone says "Pirate." Apparently, I'm living under a rock, because "Jack Sparrow" didn't make my list. And it turns out there's a big divide --à la the Jets and the Sharks or the Bloods and the Crips -- in the pirate world. This article, complete with slideshow, explains it all.

Can I Get an Arrgh?
By MICHAEL BRICK
Published: October 24, 2008
THE pretend pirates came at dusk. October storms had buffeted the Georgia Lowcountry, and on the second Friday of the month, a rainbow ascended the Savannah skies.

For all their claims of high-seas escapades, these pirates arrived mostly by land.

In trucks and on motorcycles they came: old and young, black and white, entire families with their children done up in period garb, all following Highway 80 until the willows gave way to palm fronds before the beachfront appeared.

“Arrgh,” one of them cried.

“Arrgh,” sounded the reply, turning infectious like a crowd doing the wave on a boring ballpark afternoon, a guttural chorus of gentle self-mockery rising above the crash of the Atlantic.

“Arrgh.”

Long a sideshow at Renaissance fairs, craft festivals and historical conventions, pirate enthusiasts have become the darlings of seaside towns competing for tourism dollars.

Like Civil War re-enactors, many of these latter-day pirates pursue historical authenticity — down to their home-sewn underwear, pistol ribands and molded tricorn hats. Some have even hired blacksmiths to reproduce halberd axes from photographs. They can discuss their exploits without breaking character.

No Quarter Given, a journal of all things pirate, has counted nearly 130 re-enactment groups nationwide, compared with 9 in 1993, according to its publisher, Christine Lampe.

But there is trouble in the world of the pretend pirates. Just as deadly divisions developed amid pirate cliques deep in filthy, swaying wooden hulls centuries ago, so too are sides taking shape today, though perhaps less violently.

The “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies by Disney starring Johnny Depp not only fostered affection for long-dead seaborne robbers — a favor that does not seem to extend to latter-day counterparts such as the Somali hijackers who recently captured a weapons freighter — but they also gave birth to a new wave of pirate re-enactors. (The movies have collectively grossed more than $1 billion at the box office since 2003.)

Longtime pirate enthusiasts, the 17th-century historical re-enactors who take their hobby seriously, find themselves sharing festival grounds with legions of would-be Captain Jack Sparrows dressed, more or less, in accordance with the big-screen version.

Are they pretend pretend pirates? Traditionalists tend to view this new family-friendly theme thing with a sort of dismissive acceptance.

At the Ojai Pirate Faire in California last month, a crew of pirate history zealots disarmed an unwitting Jack Sparrow, put him in a stockade and demanded a ransom of two harlots (a blonde and a redhead), Ms. Lampe said.

“I know there’s some people who are tired of seeing so many Jack Sparrows out there,” said Ms. Lampe, a retired schoolteacher who prefers to be called Jamaica Rose. (She says Lampe is her “civilian name.”)

Hollywood provided the spark, but some new converts spoke of a deeper restlessness. As Halloween approaches with distant wars unending, the country growing isolated and credit hard to come by, some described feeling as if they were born at the wrong time.

“It’s the idea of being something you’re not, something you can’t be,” said D’Andrea Seabrook, 19, an art student who attended a pirate festival on Tybee Island. “It’s this idea of being able to go out and do whatever you want and be whatever you want and throw all these morals away and not care about the law, when in reality you can’t.”

The costume industry has found no trouble tolerating the newcomers. A survey commissioned by the National Retail Federation predicted that more than 1.7 million American adults would dress as pirates for Halloween this year, beating out zombies, cowboys, devils and French maids combined. Among children, being a pirate ranked fifth. Not bad, considering that more than 1.5 million little Hannah Montanas plan to troll for sugar across this weary land.

To meet the demand, some costumers have torn up their business plans. In Tustin, Calif., the Silhouettes Clothing Company abandoned its trade in 19th-century undergarments, according to promotional materials, to focus on developing “a well-deserved international reputation for clothing the top Jack Sparrow impersonators.”

Among the sewing-machine-owning, library-card-carrying pirate history buffs, a few timbers have been shivered. But wariness of the new mainstream appeal has been tempered with some critical self-appraisal.

“Why do some of them feel like they can wear blank spandex pants and a puffy shirt and be allowed to call themselves pirates?” said John Macek, a member of the Pirate Brethren, a re-enactment group formed in the 1990s in Columbia, Md.

In an e-mail message meditating on the state of his hobby, Mr. Macek added: “Why do others bother to study pirates in minute detail to get it ‘right,’ because after all, these guys were just a bunch of criminals, murderers, etc? Why the animosity between these two groups? What would your grandfather have said about your hobby? Many of these re-enactors claim to be ‘educating the public,’ but just what gives them the notion they are knowledgeable enough?”

For tourism promoters on this wind-swept barrier island, where pirates once found haven among the Savannah River waterways, education has ranked in priority somewhere behind filling barstools. Four years ago, after finding little success with promotions, including a Labor Day Luau, Tybee Island officials announced the pirate festival on a whim.

“It’s done this time of year because business is slow,” said Paul DeVivo, a member of the tourism council, estimating that the festival had injected $2.6 million a year into the local economy. “We just lucked into it and we’re running with it.”

As the festival date approached this year, the Jolly Roger flags began to outnumber Georgia Bulldog banners along the sprawling verandas of the old wooden colonials. The Marshall Tucker Band was booked. A sports bar announced a late-night wench contest, an oyster restaurant advertised $2 grog shots and surf shops sold T-shirts with slogans such as “Surrender the Booty” and “Prepare to Be Boarded.”

Despite the stormy weather, thousands of pirate re-enactors, pirate admirers and pirate-curious onlookers arrived from Macon and Augusta, Ga., the Carolinas and beyond.

“It’s for the kids,” said Chad Carty, 33, who brought his children from Indianapolis. The oldest of the three, Ethan, 7, wore a vest, knee-length britches and an eye patch adorned with a “Pirates of the Caribbean” sticker.

“I like their swords and the guns, and I like tattoos, and they swordfight,” Ethan said. “I like the pirate ship.”

Along the festival grounds, set up in a parking lot, more elaborate costuming was on display.

Don McGowan, 52, a truck driver from Cynthiana, Ky., wore a braided goatee, printed bandanna, ruffled shirt, red sash, baldric, cutlass, parachute pants and sandals, sacrificing some authenticity for comfort as his outfit progressed from head to toe. Relaxing at a table, he offered a dramatic salute to a similarly attired passer-by.

“I’m more into the history part of it,” Mr. McGowan said, recounting childhood trips to Ocracoke Island, N.C., Blackbeard’s hideaway. “The ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ brought it all out. There were 10 or 12 people running through here with the lanterns straight out of ‘Pirates of the Caribbean.’ ”

Indeed, for every finely considered sartorial homage, there seemed to be a child running around swinging a glow-in-the-dark sword. A group of Shriners fired cannon blasts from atop a 1963 Ford school bus refashioned as a glowing Spanish galleon. A band covered Gram Parsons. Vendors hawked jewelry, airbrushed tattoos, beads, packaged eye patches, skull rings and golden teeth (“fits like a cap, matey”). At the Acme Costume stand, a jar of eyeliner pencil was marked “Johnny Depp Eyes, $2.”

Resplendent in long black hair, a talisman of buffalo teeth, a silver ring in the shape of a serpent and a .41-caliber sidearm, Dwight Yanguas, 52, indulged numerous requests for photographs. His teeth were even rotted.

Mr. Yanguas, a vendor of handmade wooden long swords, daggers and cutlasses, stumbled into his trade in the 1990s, seeking to trade his shopping-mall maintenance job for show business.

“I would dress up as a medieval knight,” he said.

But soon, he added, “all the kids would come up to me and the first thing they would say is: ‘Are you a pirate? You look like a pirate.’ I said, ‘No, I’m supposed to be a knight.’ So I decided if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. From there, I went total pirate theme.”

By popular acclaim, the festival prize of $100 in gold coins and gift certificates was awarded to Lindsey Lee Miller, 23, from Marietta, Ga. She credited her sultry red costume to the work of fairies plying woven wolverine fur, Brazilian peacock feathers and ivory.

One of Ms. Miller’s costumed companions, Robert Bean, 45 and known as Pirate Bob, pronounced her triumph a rebuke to the Hollywood imitators.

“I find them dull and boring,” Mr. Bean said. “Everybody can be Captain Jack. Why not strive to be something different, like Lindsey Lee here?”

As the festival neared its finale, spectators gathered along the main beach road to watch the pirates on parade. They unfolded portable chairs, crouched on curbs, leaned from balconies and let their children play. With a patrol car to lead the way, the pirates rode wooden floats towed behind sport utility vehicles. Some threw beads. A marching band pounded out a heavy rhythm. A pet-rescue group, a science fiction club and a group of bicyclists with eye patches, buccaneer caps and beer cozies passed by, all arrghing away.

Behind them a big green garbage truck flying a Jolly Roger balloon followed, its passengers dressed in lace, waving to the crowd, honking the loudest horn of all from the cabin of the good ship Waste Pro, its slogan painted to proclaim: “God Bless America.”

check out the sisters of GRL

Vanoosheh mentioned that the frat boys and sorority girls are out in full effect on campus. (I'm pretty sure it's Rush Week, but no matter how many times I walk past the booths, no one's approaching me to join their organization. Hmm.)

She also mentioned that she did a double-take when she saw the sisters of Gamma Rho Lambda (MySpace site here).

Gamma Rho Lambda is a queer-based social sorority focused on fostering a progressive environment for its members to excel in social academic and community settings. By providing a forum for diversity, expression, and understanding, future leaders will be empowered with the courage to affect social change.

History:
The founding chapter of Gamma Rho Lambda is located at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. Plans to begin a chapter for San Diego State began in the Fall of 2004. In the Spring of 2005 eight women became the first Gamma Rho Lambda pledges at SDSU. In August of 2005 six of these persistent women became sisters to the sorority. The GRL’s of SDSU have become a provisional chapter of the USFC (United Sorority & Fraternity Council) on campus. To date, Gamma Rho Lambda is located at Arizona State University, Georgia Southern and a new colony is forming at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

I still don't get how you fight the system by being in the system, but these GRLs are cool. I especially appreciate their efforts to ensure that LBT individuals are visible and to create a community for individuals of all stripes.

For the record, they are listed as an "Alternative Lifestyle Sorority" by SDSU's Greek Life Office.

And yes, I'm wondering how the brother/ sister organization thing works out. (As far as I can tell, the only gay fraternity types on my campus are the closet cases.)

p.s. Allison let me know that our school doesn't actually allow the brother/sister organization match-ups anymore.

ese ... look it up in the dicho-nary

I stumbled on more niche marketing to Hispanics today ...

Kimberly-Clark is compiling a dicho-nary (a dictionary of Spanish proverbs). On the surface, it seems like a weird concept: Have people submit idioms, in hopes that they'll win toilet paper. They even suggest that parents can feel good because they're sharing their culture and tradition with their kids before they send in that phrase in hopes of winning something.

Digging deeper, I have to say that I take issue with their premise. (And not just because it's evil marketers doing what evil marketers do.)

They are also a deeply rooted tradition common to all Hispanics, which have been handed down by word of mouth through the generations.

(Them's extremely broad strokes that you're using to paint all Hispanics.) Oh, that dicho. Of course ... I know it because my mother's culture is identical to the culture of all other Hispanics, but I only halfway remember it 'cause I'm only half Hispanic.

Kimberly-Clark Compiling 'Dicho-nary' In Hispanic Promo
Tuesday, Aug 28, 2007 5:00 AM ET
KIMBERLY-CLARK'S SCOTT BRAND HAS LAUNCHED an interactive promotional campaign designed to celebrate and validate the common sense and traditions of Latino culture. The campaign, "Comparte tu Dicho" (Share your Dicho), seeks to compile the world's first "dicho-nary," or dictionary of Spanish-language proverbs.

"Dichos" are easily remembered, homespun, common-sensical verbal treasures that punctuate most Latinos' daily conversations. They are also a deeply rooted tradition common to all Hispanics, which have been handed down by word of mouth through the generations.

The initiative, created by Miami-based MASS Hispanic Marketing, will be driven primarily by radio in Los Angeles, Houston and San Antonio, and by Internet and in-store events in the rest of the country. It will ask consumers to share some of their favorite "dichos" for a chance to win daily prizes, as well as a $3,000 grand prize, two $500 first prizes, and a year's supply of Scott bathroom products.

nombres de allá, aquí.

I'm very fortunate to have been born in the time, place, and class I was. All of those factors meant that I didn't have to make the same choices or face the same identity issues that this author did.

My bi-cultural parents ensured that I grew up bilingual and gave me the same name in English (my first name) and Spanish (my middle name). I've never felt embarrassed when speaking my mother's tongue. (Unless you count my embarrassment at my lack of fluency — and my American accent — in Spanish.)

I suppose that's the advantage of growing up on the winning side (if there is such a thing) of a dominant culture. But I've learned far more by being on the losing side of that equation (usually when I'm outside of the U.S.)

Leave Your Name at the Border
By MANUEL MUÑOZ
Dinuba, Calif.

AT the Fresno airport, as I made my way to the gate, I heard a name over the intercom. The way the name was pronounced by the gate agent made me want to see what she looked like. That is, I wanted to see whether she was Mexican. Around Fresno, identity politics rarely deepen into exacting terms, so to say “Mexican” means, essentially, “not white.” The slivered self-identifications Chicano, Hispanic, Mexican-American and Latino are not part of everyday life in the Valley. You’re either Mexican or you’re not. If someone wants to know if you were born in Mexico, they’ll ask. Then you’re From Over There — de allá. And leave it at that.

The gate agent, it turned out, was Mexican. Well-coiffed, in her 30s, she wore foundation that was several shades lighter than the rest of her skin. It was the kind of makeup job I’ve learned to silently identify at the mall when I’m with my mother, who will say nothing about it until we’re back in the car. Then she’ll stretch her neck like an ostrich and point to the darkness of her own skin, wondering aloud why women try to camouflage who they are.

I watched the Mexican gate agent busy herself at the counter, professional and studied. Once again, she picked up the microphone and, with authority, announced the name of the missing customer: “Eugenio Reyes, please come to the front desk.”

You can probably guess how she said it. Her Anglicized pronunciation wouldn’t be unusual in a place like California’s Central Valley. I didn’t have a Mexican name there either: I was an instruction guide.

When people ask me where I’m from, I say Fresno because I don’t expect them to know little Dinuba. Fresno is a booming city of nearly 500,000 these days, with a diversity — white, Mexican, African-American, Armenian, Hmong and Middle Eastern people are all well represented — that shouldn’t surprise anyone. It’s in the small towns like Dinuba that surround Fresno that the awareness of cultural difference is stripped down to the interactions between the only two groups that tend to live there: whites and Mexicans. When you hear a Mexican name spoken in these towns, regardless of the speaker’s background, it’s no wonder that there’s an “English way of pronouncing it.”

I was born in 1972, part of a generation that learned both English and Spanish. Many of my cousins and siblings are bilingual, serving as translators for those in the family whose English is barely functional. Others have no way of following the Spanish banter at family gatherings. You can tell who falls into which group: Estella, Eric, Delia, Dubina, Melanie.

It’s intriguing to watch “American” names begin to dominate among my nieces and nephews and second cousins, as well as with the children of my hometown friends. I am not surprised to meet 5-year-old Brandon or Kaitlyn. Hardly anyone questions the incongruity of matching these names with last names like Trujillo or Zepeda. The English-only way of life partly explains the quiet erasure of cultural difference that assimilation has attempted to accomplish. A name like Kaitlyn Zepeda doesn’t completely obscure her ethnicity, but the half-step of her name, as a gesture, is almost understandable.

Spanish was and still is viewed with suspicion: always the language of the vilified illegal immigrant, it segregated schoolchildren into English-only and bilingual programs; it defined you, above all else, as part of a lower class. Learning English, though, brought its own complications with identity. It was simultaneously the language of the white population and a path toward the richer, expansive identity of “American.” But it took getting out of the Valley for me to understand that “white” and “American” were two very different things.

Something as simple as saying our names “in English” was our unwittingly complicit gesture of trying to blend in. Pronouncing Mexican names correctly was never encouraged. Names like Daniel, Olivia and Marco slipped right into the mutability of the English language.

I remember a school ceremony at which the mathematics teacher, a white man, announced the names of Mexican students correctly and caused some confusion, if not embarrassment. Years later we recognized that he spoke in deference to our Spanish-speaking parents in the audience, caring teacher that he was.

These were difficult names for a non-Spanish speaker: Araceli, Nadira, Luis (a beautiful name when you glide the u and the i as you’re supposed to). We had been accustomed to having our birth names altered for convenience. Concepción was Connie. Ramón was Raymond. My cousin Esperanza was Hope — but her name was pronounced “Hopie” because any Spanish speaker would automatically pronounce the e at the end.

Ours, then, were names that stood as barriers to a complete embrace of an American identity, simply because their pronunciations required a slip into Spanish, the otherness that assimilation was supposed to erase. What to do with names like Amado, Lucio or Élida? There are no English “equivalents,” no answer when white teachers asked, “What does your name mean?” when what they really wanted to know was “What’s the English one?” So what you heard was a name butchered beyond recognition, a pronunciation that pointed the finger at the Spanish language as the source of clunky sound and ugly rhythm.

My stepfather, from Ojos de Agua, Mexico, jokes when I ask him about the names of Mexicans born here. He deliberately stumbles over pronunciations, imitating our elders who have difficulty with Bradley and Madelyn. “Ashley Sánchez. ¿Tú crees?” He wonders aloud what has happened to the “nombres del rancho” — traditional Mexican names that are hardly given anymore to children born in the States: Heraclio, Madaleno, Otilia, Dominga.

My stepfather’s experience with the Anglicization of his name — Antonio to Tony — ties into something bigger than learning English. For him, the erasure of his name was about deference and subservience. Becoming Tony gave him a measure of access as he struggled to learn English and get more fieldwork.

This isn’t to say that my stepfather welcomed the change, only that he could not put up much resistance. Not changing put him at risk of being passed over for work. English was a world of power and decisions, of smooth, uninterrupted negotiation. There was no time to search for the right word while a shop clerk waited for him to come up with the English name of the correct part needed out in the field. Clear communication meant you could go unsupervised, or that you were even able to read instructions directly off a piece of paper. Every gesture made toward convincing an employer that English was on its way to being mastered had the potential to make a season of fieldwork profitable.

It’s curious that many of us growing up in Dinuba adhered to the same rules. Although as children of farm workers we worked in the fields at an early age, we’d also had the opportunity to stay in one town long enough to finish school. Most of us had learned English early and splintered off into a dual existence of English at school, Spanish at home. But instead of recognizing the need for fluency in both languages, we turned it into a peculiar kind of battle. English was for public display. Spanish was for privacy — and privacy quickly turned to shame.

The corrosive effect of assimilation is the displacement of one culture over another, the inability to sustain more than one way of being. It isn’t a code word for racial and ethnic acculturation only. It applies to needing and wanting to belong, of seeing from the outside and wondering how to get in and then, once inside, realizing there are always those still on the fringe.

When I went to college on the East Coast, I was confronted for the first time by people who said my name correctly without prompting; if they stumbled, there was a quick apology and an honest plea to help with the pronunciation. But introducing myself was painful: already shy, I avoided meeting people because I didn’t want to say my name, felt burdened by my own history. I knew that my small-town upbringing and its limitations on Spanish would not have been tolerated by any of the students of color who had grown up in large cities, in places where the sheer force of their native languages made them dominant in their neighborhoods.

It didn’t take long for me to assert the power of code-switching in public, the transferring of words from one language to another, regardless of who might be listening. I was learning that the English language composed new meanings when its constrictions were ignored, crossed over or crossed out. Language is all about manipulation, or not listening to the rules.

When I come back to Dinuba, I have a hard time hearing my name said incorrectly, but I have an even harder time beginning a conversation with others about why the pronunciation of our names matters. Leaving a small town requires an embrace of a larger point of view, but a town like Dinuba remains forever embedded in an either/or way of life. My stepfather still answers to Tony and, as the United States-born children grow older, their Anglicized names begin to signify who does and who does not “belong” — who was born here and who is de allá.

My name is Manuel. To this day, most people cannot say it correctly, the way it was intended to be said. But I can live with that because I love the alliteration of my full name. It wasn’t the name my mother, Esmeralda, was going to give me. At the last minute, my father named me after an uncle I would never meet. My name was to have been Ricardo. Growing up in Dinuba, I’m certain I would have become Ricky or even Richard, and the journey toward the discovery of the English language’s extraordinary power in even the most ordinary of circumstances would probably have gone unlearned.

I count on a collective sense of cultural loss to once again swing the names back to our native language. The Mexican gate agent announced Eugenio Reyes, but I never got a chance to see who appeared. I pictured an older man, cowboy hat in hand, but I made the assumption on his name alone, the clash of privileges I imagined between someone de allá and a Mexican woman with a good job in the United States. Would she speak to him in Spanish? Or would she raise her voice to him as if he were hard of hearing?

But who was I to imagine this man being from anywhere, based on his name alone? At a place of arrivals and departures, it sank into me that the currency of our names is a stroke of luck: because mine was not an easy name, it forced me to consider how language would rule me if I allowed it. Yet I discovered that only by leaving. My stepfather must live in the Valley, a place that does not allow that choice, every day. And Eugenio Reyes — I do not know if he was coming or going.

Manuel Muñoz is the author of “The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue.”