Oaxaca’s Third Gender: Man, Woman, Muxe

THIS PROGRAM WAS CONDUCTED IN BOTH SPANISH AND ENGLISH.

Anthropologists have traced the Meso-American acceptance of people of mixed gender back to pre-Columbian Mexico accounts of Aztec priests and Mayan gods who cross-dressed and were considered both male and female. In the shifting landscape of gender identity, what might we learn from the indigenous Zapotec people of Oaxaca’s isthmus region, who embrace a third gender—the muxe—within their communities? Zackary Drucker, transgender multimedia artist and producer of the Amazon series Transparent moderates a conversation with Victor Cata, Zapotec historian, writer, and linguist; Bamby Salcedo, founder of the Los Angeles-based TransLatin@Coalition, and Maritza Sanchez, Embajadora de los muxes en el exterior (Ambassador of Muxes in the Exterior.)

This program was produced as part of The Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative.