muxe

Mexico quake hit hard at center of Zapotec ‘muxe’ culture

Four days after Mexico’s magnitude 8.1 earthquake destroyed her home and much of her work, a Muxe, Peregrina Vera attended her third funeral.

Two were for friends who died in collapsed buildings. This time it was an elderly neighbor, Hermilio Martinez, whose heart apparently gave out a day after the big quake as the city of Juchitan shivered with repeated, terrifying aftershocks.

She followed the hearse that bore him a mile to the far edge of a cemetery where temporary covers of branches and palm fronds shadowed the graves, a place that has been all too busy these . . .