Latin American

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Sexualities and Genders in Zapotec Oaxaca

Lynn Stephen
Latin American Perspectives 2002 29: 41
DOI: 10.1177/0094582X0202900203
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Sexualities and Genders in Zapotec Oaxaca

by
Lynn Stephen
The southern Mexican state of Oaxaca provides a cross-section of the
multiple gender relations and sexual behaviors and roles that coexist in modern Mexico. Looking at contemporary gender and sexuality in two Zapotec
towns highlights the importance of historical continuities and discontinuities
in systems of gender and their relationship to class, ethnicity (earlier coded as
race), and sexuality. The various sexual roles, relationships, and identities
that characterize contemporary rural Oaxaca suggest that instead of trying to
look historically for the roots of &dquo;homosexuality,&dquo; &dquo;heterosexuality,&dquo; or even
the concept of &dquo;sexuality,&dquo; we should look at how different indigenous systems of gender interacted with shifting discourses of Spanish colonialism,
nationalism, and popular culture to redefine gendered spaces and the sexual
behavior within them. Clear differences between elites and those on the margins of Mexican society underscore the importance of divisions by class and
status.

I begin by presenting ethnographic snapshots of gender and sexuality in

different sites in contemporary Oaxaca that will provide a sense of the
uniqueness of each place and the great variety found within this relatively
small geographic area. Some of the key elements that emerge from these
snapshots are a third gender role for biologically sexed men in Zapotec communities, the muted presence of a gender hierarchy in which womens sexual
activity is controlled before and during marriage, an alternative discourse
among Zapotec migrants that grants both men and women some independent
control over their sexuality within the bounds of serial monogamy, and the
emergence of sexual identities apart from gender, including &dquo;gay,&dquo; &dquo;homosexual,&dquo; joto,&dquo; and &dquo;maric6n&dquo; as imports from elsewhere in Mexico and the
United States. The remainder of the analysis attempts to link these contemporary elements of gender and sexuality to their historical roots.
The descriptions of sexual behavior and its links to gender and sexual
identities that follow are based on both formal anthropological fieldwork,
including extensive interviews, conversations, participant observation, and
discussion groups, and personal participation in the social life of the

two

at the University of Oregon and is the author of

Lives: Histories and Political Culture in Southern Mexico.

Lynn Stephen teaches anthropology

Zapata

41

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42

communities described. Since 1983 I have spent at least a month every year,
and often many more, living in Mexico-primarily in Oaxaca. From 1984 to
1986 I lived continuously in Teotitldn del Valle and frequently visited
Juchitdn de Zarragoza. In the mid-1990s I regularly spent several months a
year in urban Oaxaca, Teotitldn del Valle, and two other communities as well
as visiting Juchitdn several times. Over the past 18 years I have developed
extensive personal friendship networks and relationships of extended family
and compadrazgo (ritual kinship) in Teotitldn del Valle and Juchitdn de
Zarragoza. I have followed the lives of individuals and families in these
places for a long time and engaged in intimate conversations with many.
Drawing the line between &dquo;in the field&dquo; and &dquo;out of the field&dquo; becomes a futile
exercise when ones field of research is also in ones life through time.
Because the topic of sexuality is so deeply personal, much of what I learned
about it from others comes as much from personal relationships as it does
from formal research techniques and structured questioning. What follows is
therefore a composite analysis based on both systematic inquiry and the
daily-life interactions that have been a part of my world for the past 17 years.

ZAPOTEC GENDER AND SEXUALITY 1:

MUXE IN JUCHITAN
Juchitdn de Zarragoza is a sprawling urban/rural area that could be characterized as a large town or a small city. In the early 1990s its population was
estimated to be at least 80,000 (Binford and Campbell, 1993: 4). It sits on the
central plain of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, close to the Pacific Ocean. Its
economy is a mixture of agriculture (corn, cattle, sugarcane, sesame, and
soybeans) and industry (lime, cement, and refined petroleum). Its predominant language is Zapotec, which was spoken by approximately 341,000 people in the state of Oaxaca in 1990 (Consejo Estatal de Poblaci6n de Oaxaca,
1994: 49). A majority of Zapotec-speakers (about 80 percent) also speak

Spanish.
Juchitan is unique in Oaxaca for the daily use of the Zapotec language and
peoples strong sense of local nationalism tied to a history of political
struggles to maintain regional and local autonomy. In 1848 Gregorio
Melendez declared the separation of the Isthmus from the state of Oaxaca,
and for three years he led a resistance campaign against the soldiers of Benito
Judrez (see Tutino, 1993). A later regional rebellion in Juchitdn led by Che
G6mez from 1911 to 1913 is viewed by many as an important part of
Oaxacas participation in the Mexican Revolution (see Campbell, 1990).
Another Zapotec political movement, the Coalition of Workers, Peasants,
the

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43

and Students of the Isthmus (COCEI), has governed Juchitdn since 1989 after
years of confrontation with local police and the Mexican army (see Rubin,
1997). What has remained distinct about Juchitdn through history is the
importance of Zapotec ethnic identity and the use of that identity as a basis for

regional political autonomy.

While it is incorrect to call Juchitdn a &dquo;matriarchy,&dquo; women do participate
in public and ritual life in ways that could be considered unusual in other parts
of the country. They dominate the local market and business scene and spend
time in practically exclusive female company at velas and other fiestas. Velas
are elaborate several-day celebrations involving processions, masses, food
preparation and blessing, drinking, and dancing organized around neighborhoods and families (Rubin, 1997: 39). Hundreds of guests attend, and sponsoring households may expend a year or more of income on the festivities.
Women eat, drink, and dance together at fiestas. They are occasionally
rumored to have sexual liaisons and relationships with one another while
married (see Chinas, 1995, for discussion of marimachas-women who have
sexual relations with other women). Some married women have also had sexual relations with men other than their husbands. At the same time, women
are often victims of domestic abuse, may have to negotiate with their husbands on a variety of issues, and with some notable exceptions have not
assumed political leadership roles in city, state, or grassroots politics (see
Rubin, 1997: 230-233). Younger women may follow traditional patterns of
saving their virginity for marriage (a part of which is the showing of a bloody
sheet on the wedding night) or live with boyfriends in serial monogamy.
Juchitec men also demonstrate an interesting variety of gender relations
and sexualities. While most are either married or dating and not yet married, a
small number of men assume the role of muxe. Chinas (1995: 294) defines
muxe as &dquo;persons who appear to be predominantly male but display certain
female characteristics&dquo; and fill a &dquo;third gender role between men and women,
taking some of the characteristics of each.&dquo; Muxe are perceived as different
from other men. Some marry women and have children; others form longterm partnerships with men. A distinguishing characteristic of many muxe is
that they may do certain kinds of womens work such as embroidery or decorating home altars, but others do the male work of making jewelry. Many now
have white-collar jobs and are involved in politics.
Muxe men are not referred to as &dquo;homosexuals&dquo; but constitute a separate
category based on gender attributes. People perceive them as having the
physical bodies of men but different aesthetic, work, and social skills from
most men. They may have some attributes of women or combine those of
men and women. While muxe do not exhibit all of the characteristics associated with masculinity, neither do they necessarily reject them. As Chinas
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44

(1995: 297) points out, there is no inevitable connection between the way
dress and act and &dquo;homosexuality.&dquo;
Jeffrey Rubin (1997: 233) writes that &dquo;prominent men rumored to be

muxe

homosexual who did not adopt the muxe identity were spoken of pejoratively.&dquo; This observation suggests that the muxe role is institutionalized for
men and therefore socially tolerated. While Chinas maintains that muxe are
not discriminated against in a smaller community where she conducted
research, Howard Campbell (1990) reports having heard disparaging
remarks about muxe from political activists in Juchitdn. In my experience,
women, particularly mothers and sisters, speak fondly of sons and brothers
who are muxe, and young unmarried women often have muxe as part of their
circle of friends. The loyalty and helpfulness of muxe for female relatives is
often contrasted with the laziness and irresponsibility of husbands (both
imaginary and real).
Muxe are differently evaluated by men and women. Because they may not
meet all of the norms of Zapotec masculinity-exhibiting physical strength
in rural labor, socializing with men, maintaining a public face of authority in
their homes and on the street-they may be disparaged by men because they
are a constant reminder of the constructedness of masculinity. Heterosexuality does not seem to be a dominant part of the masculine image. These observations suggest that in Juchitan, it is gender not sexuality that is the major axis
of social and cultural identity.
The presence of the muxe gender role for men and its possible preference
over other identities such as &dquo;homosexual&dquo; for men whose dress, work skills,
aesthetic preferences, and social skills are different from those of others suggest the continued importance of indigenous gender systems that allow for
more flexible models not attached to specific sexual identities. Such models
were documented by the Spaniards and contrast with the two-gender system
of complementarity that many scholars attribute to the Mexica. At the same
time, the coexistence of the muxe role with other masculine roles that put men
in positions of dominance in relation to women suggests the influence of the
Spanish colonial two-gender system, which resulted in gender hierarchy and
often subordinated womens sexuality to that of men.

ZAPOTEC GENDER AND SEXUALITY 2:

MARRIAGE, COHABITING MIGRANTS,
AND BIZAAH IN TEOTITLAN DEL VALLE

The Zapotec community of Teotitlan del Valle is located about 45 kilomefrom the capital city of Oaxaca, on the edges of the Tlacolula arms of the

ters

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45

central Oaxaca Valley a few kilometers off the Pan-American Highway. Traditionally a subsistence agricultural community that also produced textiles,
by the 1990s it depended principally on the production of wool textiles for
export to the United States and Europe (see Stephen, 1991). Like Juchitdn,
Teotitldn has conserved the Zapotec language, and its inhabitants have a
sense of local ethnic pride bound up in language, local religious traditions,
and craft production.
Another important aspect of Teotitlans economy is the export of people.
Since first sending men as workers under the Bracero Program of the 1940s,
Teotitecos have continued to migrate to the United States, primarily to California. Almost six decades of migration experience have resulted in permanent transnational economic, cultural, and family ties that stretch from
Oaxaca to Rosarita, Tijuana, and Santa Ana (south of Los Angeles). Many
Teotitecos have become permanent residents in the United States, and their
children are English-speaking U.S. citizens. Among this population, many
men and women have legalized their immigration status under the 1986
Immigration Reform and Control Act (often called the amnesty law) and,
while they maintain strong contacts with their families, are permanently
rooted in the United States. The experience of these migrants has been important in adding to the ideas about gender and sexuality that permeate the community in Oaxaca.
Like that in Juchitdn, life in Teotitldn is strongly segregated by gender.
Men and women often work separately, coming together to eat in the morning
and evening, and during ritual occasions they remain separate except when
dancing. Traditional ritual dancing involves one man and one woman dancing detached in a three-step jarabe, moving in opposite directions (see Stephen, 1991). At contemporary birthday parties, quinceaneras, and other
more secular occasions men and women dance in close physical contact, in a
light embrace. Except for dancing, women spend all of their time at fiestas
working and socializing with women, often telling sexual jokes, gossiping
about recent sexual affairs and new pairs of novios (young men and women
who have fallen in love), and sometimes making fun of some of the men present in sexually explicit ways.
Womens experience of sexuality tends to vary significantly by age and by
migration status. While I lived and worked in Teotitldn (1984-1986, part of
1987 and 1988, periodically in the 1990s, and in summer 2001) I attended
several traditional engagement parties, in which the young mans family
comes to petition for the bride at four in the morning, bearing large baskets of
chocolate, bread, and giant candles. This ceremony is one of several ceremonies associated with traditional weddings performed over a period of years.
After the official engagement ceremony, a young woman will go to live with
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46

her future husband and will often have one or two children with him before
the church wedding. Even this formal set of ceremonies exhibits an interesting disjuncture between virginity and formal marriage. The other prominent
form of engagement is por robar (by theft), which usually means a carefully
planned voluntary elopement. Most women in the community, whether
young or old, are concerned with protecting their sexual reputations. Many
girls are still strictly watched and not allowed to walk the streets alone after
the age of 10 or 11.
Most older women (over 40) in Teotitldn have been married either by a traditional set of engagement and wedding ceremonies or by elopement and a
smaller wedding ceremony-the former being dependent on access to financial resources. As the number of female migrants increases, more and more
younger women are entering into common-law marriages that follow a pattern of serial monogamy in the places where they live outside of the
community-Tijuana, Rosarita, Los Angeles, Santa Ana. After some years,
a couple may decide to return to Teotitldn and go through the traditional
series of ceremonies culminating in a wedding. These women and many
young men are no longer under the authority of their parents and can choose
their own sexual partners. Even in such situations, however, women are concerned about their sexual reputations. Cohabitation is considered a legitimate
form of sexual expression; having multiple sexual partners is not. Young men
are discouraged from having sexual affairs when married but, in contrast, are
often told to experiment before they settle down.
Teotitldn also has a third gender category for men similar to the muxe.
Called bizaah, this category includes fewer men than that of muxe (one study
estimates that 6 percent of males in one Isthmus Zapotec community in the
early 1970s were muxe [see Rymph, 1974, cited in Chinas, 1995: 300]).
While living in Teotitldn I found about seven men who were publicly
acknowledged as fitting this category. Four of them were married, two lived
with their parents, and one lived alone. They were identified by their speech
and way of walking and the work they engaged in. Several were experts in
making ceremonial candles, a vocation they shared with a few women in the
community. They were not referred to as &dquo;homosexual&dquo; and were not made
fun of in any public context. Some people appreciated their special artisan
skills and sense of aesthetics. One individual was considered unusual more
because he lived alone than because of his gender status but was well-liked by
children and provided a social space for some adolescents in his home. I
never heard anyone label sexuality explicitly as heterosexual, homosexual, or

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47

bisexual. The most prominent public discourses on sexuality were jokes and
rumors, circulated as often by women as by men.
Both married men and married women were often rumored to be having
sexual affairs. While some men jealously guarded their wives (even insisting
on driving them to the marketplace), others allowed their wives and daughters considerable independence. Wealthier merchant men often spent much
of their time in the state capital of Oaxaca or traveling and were presumed to
have sexual affairs, but it was assumed that their wives perhaps did the same.
Gender as an organizing principle continues to be a key aspect of social
life. Sexuality is certainly linked to gender but is not usually a separate aspect
of social identity in public discourses in the community. This has begun to
change significantly among Teotitecos living in the United States, where
sexual-identity terms from the lexicon of popular American culture-gay,
bisexual, homosexual, lesbian, and joto and maric6n (derogatory terms for a
passive homosexual man)-have become part of peoples vocabularies.
These labels have begun to be imported into the community and used by
some there as well.
Migration appears to be a major factor in changing sexual interactions
among young men and women as they move out of their parents sphere of
authority and cohabit outside of marriage. The contrast between this type of
marital and sexual relationship and the notions of preserving virginity, the
&dquo;theft&dquo; of women, and formal petitions for marriage suggest the influence of
Spanish colonial systems of gender, honor, and sexuality and urban Mexican
and U.S. cultures and experiences. The existence of a third gender role for
men that is blended with marriage and fatherhood signals the continued
importance of indigenous systems of gender.

HISTORICAL ROOTS
In both of the above descriptions gender is a basic category of social organization and continues to be of primary importance for the codification and
understanding of sexual behavior. In the sections that follow I would like to
suggest four key historical influences on the contemporary construction of
gender and sexuality in Zapotec Oaxaca: Zapotec indigenous systems of gender organization and others that allow for a third gender role for men, Spanish
colonial systems of gender and appropriate sexual behavior for women,
nationalist constructions of gender that pressured women to emulate the ideal
of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and U.S. and Mexican popular culture.

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48

ZAPOTEC SYSTEMS OF GENDER

COMPLEMENTARITY AND THIRD GENDER ROLES
While there has been some discussion of Nahua concepts of gender (see
Klein, 1997; Cline, 1986; Clendinnen, 1991; Kellogg, 1997), little has been
written about gender among the Zapotec before the arrival of the Spanish.
Both Mexica and Zapotec societies were stratified, and proving lineage was a
prerequisite to social rank, privilege, and political office. The Zapotec political system, like the Mixtec (Spores, 1997), was controlled by a hereditary
elite that was reinforced by alliances built through marriage and military conquest. Guaranteeing the parentage of elite offspring was critical to maintaining these alliances. This no doubt encouraged the supervision of elite
womens sexual interactions; rules regulating the sexual behavior of commoners may have been different.
Lisa Mary Sousa concludes from an analysis of native womens participation in the colonial criminal courts from 1570 to 1750 that &dquo;concepts of
complementarity shaped Mixtec and Zapotec gender roles&dquo; (1997: 200).
Sousa assumes that precolonial Zapotec gender systems were two-gender
systems (male and female), at least among the elite (1997: 201).
Mixtec and Zapotec cosmologies reveal a gendered view of the universe and of
life-sustaining relations underscoring the centrality of the concepts of
complementarity. Both societies conceive of the universe as composed of two
parts; a female earth and a male sky. Rain symbolized sexual exchange in the
center that fertilizes and produces life on earth. Preconquest and sixteenthcentury codices, which provide important clues to indigenous ideology, also
contain evidence of the complementary nature of Mixtec gender relations
both male and female elements were necessary to symbolize Mixtec
social, economic, and political life....
...

This same assumption underlies characterizations of other precolonial state

societies such as the Nahua (Burkhart, 1997). While a two-gender system
may have been important among elites in pre-Hispanic state societies, the
writings of Spanish chroniclers suggest the presence of nondichotomized
gender systems among indigenous peoples in what became New Spain. The
persistence of a third gender role among contemporary Zapotecs for bodies
that are sexed as male suggests that state societies such as the Zapotec and the
Mexica may have had overlapping gender systems that included not only
elite gender complementarity but also other systems that allowed for three or
more genders. Since it is often acknowledged that state societies such as the
Mexica and the Zapotec incorporated other deities and religious ideas into
local and regional cosmologies, it is not inconceivable that more than one

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49

system of structuring gender could have coexisted at the local level in

Zapotec communities-one directed at elites and another more closely associated with commoners.
While the Spanish chroniclers emphasized cannibalism and paganism
among the Nahua, their tales of indigenous customs elsewhere in what
became Mexico emphasized sodomy and gender ambiguity. Spanish mores
focused on ascetic self-control and the limitation of sexual outlets as a point
of honor as well as emphasizing a strongly dichotomous and hierarchical
gender system that valued males and masculinity far more than females and
femininity. Many of the indigenous peoples of the Americas were quite different in their gender system constructs and in their ideas about what constituted appropriate sexual behavior.
The concept of the berdache has been used in anthropology and history to
characterize men and sometimes women recorded as exhibiting social characteristics and sexual behavior that fell outside of their &dquo;appropriate&dquo; gender
roles (male and female, with sexual activity focusing on reproduction). Obviously such readings are highly subjective. Debates have raged among
anthropologists about whether such individuals were (1) gender crossing

(Whitehead,1981: 86), (2) a third gender (Roscoe,1991: 212; Jacobs, 1983),

(3) androgynes (Williams, 1986) or (4) half-man/half-woman (Guti6rrez,
1991: 34-36). As pointed out by Midnight Sun (1988: 34), the word
&dquo;berdache&dquo; is derived from a Persian word meaning &dquo;kept boy&dquo; or &dquo;prostitute&dquo; and was &dquo;first applied by French explorers to designate passive partners

in homosexual

relationships between Native

American

males.&dquo; What

appears to have happened is that a variety of gender, sexual, and social roles
that did not conform to the ideals of a dual male/female gender system were
historically lumped together under the one term, &dquo;berdache.&dquo; This tells us
more about the conquerors system of gender and sexuality than it does about
the indigenous peoples they encountered.
Bernal Diaz del Castillo, in an exploration of the coast of Yucatan in 1517,
discovered clay figures in which &dquo;the Indians seemed to be engaged in sodomy, one with the other&dquo; (Williams, 1986: 135). While accompanying Cort6s
on his conquest of Mexico in 1519, he often commented on the widespread
practice of same-sex relations (Guerra, 1971: 123-124, cited in Williams,
1986: 135). He documented Cortess pausing along the Veracruz coast to tell
his indigenous allies, &dquo;You must not commit sodomy or do the other ugly
things you are accustomed to do&dquo; (Diaz del Castillo, 1956: 202, cited in
Williams, 1986: 137). While some chroniclers may have exaggerated the
prevalence of male-male sexual relations in order to justify Spanish massacres,2 sexual behavior between men labeled by the Spanish as sodomy and of
men dressing and acting like women certainly seem to have been present.
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50

Among the Timucu in what became Florida, observers saw what they
called &dquo;hermaphrodites&dquo; taking care of the sick and working beside women.
Two engravings from 1591 show muscular bodies with long hair carrying the
sick and working with women to carry food. The engravings were produced
from sketches made by Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues during an expedition
to Florida in 1564 (in Williams, 1986: appendix and plates 3 and 4). According to Coreal (1722: 34), the Timucuan men labeled as &dquo;hermaphrodites&dquo; by
the Spanish could be distinguished from both men and women by the color of
the feathers they wore in their hair. Native Floridians allowed marriages
between men according to Torquemada (1943: 427). Such men also participated in sexual activity labeled as sodomy.
As the Spanish explored northern Mexico, which later became the American Southwest, they found same-sex sexual interaction among men and men
who seemed to be dressed like women. Hernando de Alarc6n, who visited
tribes along the Lower Colorado River, reported an old mans showing him
something quite amazing, &dquo;a son of his dressed as woman and used as such&dquo;
(Roscoe, 1991: 172). Pedro de Castaneda, on the Coronado expedition, also
noted the presence &dquo;of berdaches and described various tribes as grandes
someticos, or great sodomites&dquo; (Roscoe, 1991: 172; see Hammond and Rey,
1940).

Among the Zuni, the Spanish encountered the &dquo;half-men/half-women,&dquo; as

the natives knew them, or berdaches, the term used by Europeans (Guti6rrez,
1991: 33). Among the Zuni, the half-man/half-woman was a biological male
who assumed the dress, occupations, mannerisms, and sexual comportment
of females as a result of a sacred vision or selection by the community to fill
the role (1991: 34). A Zuni half-man/half-woman or lhamana was a symbol
of cosmic harmony and controlled the power fields of what was both male
and female: women controlled creation, and men asserted that they controlled all aspects of human life through their control of ritual (1991: 35). The
lhamana were publicly initiated and were often married to Zuni &dquo;men.&dquo; After
initiation they were also sexually available to young bachelors in their communities. As Guti6rrez notes, the Spanish called the young lhamanas
&dquo;whores&dquo; (putos), making them linguistically equivalent to European female
prostitutes (1991: 34). The same linguistic label was given to men engaged in
male-male sexual interactions. L6pez de Gama wrote of men having sex
together under the full moon in Panaco, north of Veracruz, and referred to
them as grandsimos putos (Requena, 1945: 51, cited in Taylor, 1995: 85).
Lancaster (1992: 242) describes male cochones in contemporary Nicaragua as taking a passive position in sexual relations with other men, often married : &dquo;Cochones are therefore feminine men, or more accurately, feminized
men, not fully male men. They are men who are used by other men....
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51

when one uses a coch6n, one acquires masculinity; when

is used as a cochon, one expends it.&dquo; The labeling system of activo and
pasivo found in Central America and in some Mexican male-male sexual
interactions may in part be traced back to early explorers labeling of men
who were having sex with one another as putos-feminizing them by making
them the equivalent of women.3 It also reflects the hierarchical nature of the
Spanish dual gender system, in which masculinity dominated femininity.
While the Zuni and other indigenous ethnic groups integrated the social,
sexual, and cultural roles of lhamana and muxe into their societies, Spanish
observers and interpreters were bound by their own gender and sexuality system to stigmatize sex with lhamanas as equivalent to other &dquo;bad&dquo; sex-sex
outside of marriage and not for procreation.
Because Spanish systems of marriage and inheritance were tied to a hierarchical two-gender system expressed through heterosexual monogamous
marriage, the Spanish chroniclers were unable to envision the possibility of
marriage between two men, just as they were unable to understand the
polygyny practiced by Nahua nobles and other indigenous men. The Spanish
system of gender and appropriate sexual behavior focused on maintaining
family honor through guaranteeing womens chastity and the purity of family
lineages. Such ideas overlapped to a certain degree with the interests of indigenous elites, who wanted to be able to continue to claim a distinctive status
vis-A-vis commoners under Spanish rule. A key difference between elite
indigenous systems of gender and those of the Spanish is the difference
between complementarity and hierarchy. The ideal of gender complementarity
has clearly undergone significant change. The impact of Spanish colonial
ideas about proper gender roles and sexual behavior, particularly for women,
can be seen in the two Zapotec communities profiled above in the more &dquo;traditional&dquo; practices regulating marriage such as formally soliciting the parents permission and guaranteeing a young womans virginity to her future
husband and his family.

Consequently,
one

SPANISH GENDER AND APPROPRIATE SEXUALITY:

HONOR, CHASTITY, AND PURITY OF BLOOD
The concept of honor was significant for those who considered themselves to be among the elite in New Spain. It wove together the doctrine of the
church on sanctified marriages and legitimate births and the notion of purity
of blood by which the upper strata proved that their ancestors had not been
Moors, Jews, or heretics in Spain or Indians or blacks in New Spain. As
summed up by Ann Twinam (1989: 123),
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52

Honor was not only a heritage of racial and religious purity, but a family history
of proper action, as signified by generations of sanctified marriages and of
legitimate births. The three most important documents in a colonists life-the
birth certificate, the marriage certificate, and the will- ... provided the basis
for elaborate family genealogies that colonial elites maintained and treasured
as proof that a chain of religiously confirmed, racially pure marriages and legitimate births bound them to past generations.

While illegitimacy could affect both men and women as children and adults,
the question of family honor was linked most closely to a restricted female
sexuality. Women who engaged in sexual transgressions could not only lose
their own reputations but produce illegitimate children who would break
the chain of family honor. Upholding family honor required the control of
female sexuality through virginity and marital chastity (Twinam, 1989:
124). The combination of the constraints on legitimate sexuality prescribed
by the church and the necessity for defending family honor through restricted
female sexuality provided many possibilities for sexual sin in early and midcolonial Mexico.
The system of racial castes generated in colonial Mexico through the doctrine of purity of blood and its constraints on marriage came to be nominally
important in regulating the sexual practices of all Mexicans. In their zeal to
maintain racial purity, the Spanish officials and the Catholic Church shifted
their focus from policing deviant forms of sexuality and gender to ensuring
racial purity through monogamous marriage. This ideology was reinforced in
rural areas as well as in the cities. While the increasing mixture of the population over time defied the ever-increasing complexity and subjective nature of
the caste system, a shift in focus to monogamy no doubt provided an opening
for the continuation of same-sex sexual relations. Such sexual relations could
bring sexual pleasure but without producing offspring. Moreover, they did
not reveal the racial mixing of those who engaged in them by producing
&dquo;mixed race&dquo; children. For men, this no doubt had a particular advantage;
they could appear to be monogamously married but still enjoy additional sexual outlets. This may account for how men in roles such as muxe and bizaah
sometimes combined them with marriage and having children.
Originally used to refer to the genealogical purity of Christians-purity
from the blood of Jews, Muslims, and heretics-limpieza de sangre was used
in Spain to prevent those with &dquo;stains&dquo; on their ancestry from holding important political and clerical offices or entering universities, religious and military orders, and certain guilds (Martinez, 1997: 749). Blended with the Mediterranean concept of honor associated with noble status, the doctrine was
imported into New Spain. Endogamous marriage and legitimate birth were
critical to maintaining purity, and the ideology of racial purity reinforced
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53

Spanish and Catholic notions about the proper sexual behavior of women. As
summed up by Martinez (1997: 750):
Since it

was primarily the woman who, through adultery, could introduce

&dquo;unclean&dquo; blood into a lineage, reproducing purity of blood necessitated
guarding the chastity and premarital virginity of Old Christian women ... controlling the sexuality of Old Christian women before and after marriage came
to be as much a matter of &dquo;purity&dquo; as it was about &dquo;honor.&dquo;

While

Spanish

elite notions of purity of blood and womens

premarital

chastity were not the primary or the only ideological elements that influenced
life in Zapotec communities during and after colonialism, the continued presence of the Catholic Church, resident priests, and high levels of contact
between local officials from Teotitldn del Valle and Juchitdn and the Oaxacan
state government suggest that such ideas were certainly part of the ideological context structuring gender and sexual behavior in both communities.
Another important mainstream source of ideological influence regarding
female gender and appropriate sexual behavior stems from one of the key
symbolic icons of Mexican nationalism, the Virgin of Guadalupe, and, by
extension, all virgins in local religious pantheons.

THE VIRGIN OF GUADALUPE: NATIONALISM

WRITTEN ON A FEMALE INDIGENOUS BODY

Virgin of Guadalupe is an indigenous virgin who has become the

saint
of Mexico. The apparition of the Virgin was first made known by
patron
a Mexican priest, Miguel Sdnchez, in a book published in 1648 directed at
criollos (those of European descent born in the Americas) (Poole, 1997:
1536). According to Garibay (1967: 821), &dquo;On December 9, 1531, the Indian
Juan Diego saw the Virgin Mary at Tepeyac, a hill northwest of Mexico City.
She instructed him to have the Bishop ZumiiTaga build a church on the site.
Three days later in a second appearance she told Juan Diego to pick flowers
and take them to the bishop. When he presented them as instructed, roses fell
out of his mantle and beneath them was the painted image of the Lady.&dquo; In the
popular image of the brown virgin, her eyes are cast down and her hands
clasped in prayer, and there is an angel at her feet. She is said to be compassionate. Analyses of the original painting point to indications that she is
pregnant, as evidenced by a maternity band and the positioning of a small
flower at her waist, which for the Nahua signified her pregnancy
(Rodriguez, 1994: 29).
The

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54

In this story and national archetype, an indigenous woman assumes the

role of virgin mother who, while compassionate, is not active. The Virgin of
Guadalupe was the first Marian devotion in Mexico that was not strictly local
and was cultivated by the intellectual classes as a symbol of mexicanidad
(Mexicanness) (Poole, 1997: 1536). While the Virgin can represent both passivity and liberation (her image was carried as a banner in the struggle for
independence and during the Mexican Revolution), she also embodies the
fundamental contradiction of all virgin mothers: she is able to reproduce
without losing her virginity-a difficult prospect for most Mexican women
until the advent of recent reproductive technology (see Poole, 1995). While
the emergence of the Virgin of Guadalupe as a major female icon was probably not consolidated in Mexican culture until well after independence and
probably not equally so for all classes, the options she offers for framing
womens sexuality are consistent with the gender ideology of limpieza de
sangre-premarital virginity, sexuality focused on reproduction and monogamy. The importance of the Virgin of Guadalupe as a national symbol also
dovetails with the emphasis on local saints and virgins as important gendered
community icons in Teotitldn and Juchitdn.

MIGRATION, POPULAR CULTURE, AND

THE DEPLOYMENT OF SEXUAL IDENTITIES
While a double standard for womens sexual behavior appears to persist in
such as Juchitdn and Teotitldn del Valle, it is being challenged by
young people who migrate to the city of Oaxaca and create new neighborhoods there, as well as by people migrating to other parts of Mexico or to the
United States. They have redefined legitimate sexuality for women to include
both serial monogamy outside of legal marriage and limited premarital sex if
it leads to marriage or a long-term committed relationship. The widespread
availability of birth control in these destination areas means that most young
women can envision the possibility of engaging in sex for pleasure rather than
for purely reproductive reasons. At the same time, the imperative for women
to have children in order to reach social adulthood also reinforces womens
tie to sexuality through reproduction, as it does in much of the world.
Finally, while sexuality is not a primary category of social identity and
most people do not automatically label themselves accordingly, the proliferation of discourses on sexuality as seen in telenovelas (television dramas similar to American soaps), comic books, movies, and daily life in urban Mexico
and in the United States results in some level of understanding among most
people that there is such a concept. As Gutmann (1996: 129) says of Mexico

places

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55

City, cultural comments about sexuality &dquo;announce a growing lexicon that in

turn points to new understandings on some level that people have sexualities,
that these sexualities are part of what makes someone who he or she is, and
that alternative sexualities are viable, at least for some.&dquo; Discourses about
sexuality and sex for pleasure instead of for reproduction are slowly being
introduced into Zapotec communities through the experiences of migrants.
In the months of December and January, when many migrants from both
inside and outside of Mexico return to Teotitldn and Juchitdn, conversations
are sprinkled with references to peoples experiences outside their communities. From los hombres gay who are described on the streets of California to
los y las homosexuales marching in a demonstration in Mexico City, the presence of different sexualities is being articulated in these Zapotec communities alongside discussions of muxe, passionate (supposedly secret) affairs
between married men and women, traditional weddings, and the latest news
on children bom to young unmarried couples living in Tijuana, Mexico City,
and Los Angeles.

CONCLUSIONS
In both of the Zapotec communities discussed here and in Mexico at large,
gender is a significant factor of social life. While pre-Hispanic stratified societies such as the Mexica, Mixtec, and Zapotec were characterized by dichotomous gender systems for elites that focused on male/female complementarity, other documented indigenous societies had more flexible gender systems that offered third gender roles or the possibility of androgyny. Because
of the persistence of a third gender role for males in Zapotec communities, I
have suggested that before the arrival of the Spanish there may have been
more than one model for gender definitions and relations. The elite model of
male/female complementarity may have been supplemented by another system that included a third gender role, one that clearly clashed with Spanish
definitions of appropriate gender relations and legitimate sexual activity. The
Juchitec male gender role of the muxe remains distinct from the system of
active/passive sexual relations between men documented in urban areas such
as Guadalajara by Carrier (1995) and in Nicaragua by Lancaster (1992). While
an active/passive system of sexual relations suggests inequality and hierarchy, the role of the muxe is defined not in terms of power or its absence in sexual interactions but in terms of the gendered social relations of work, food,
dress, speech, and ritual.
The persistence of such roles alerts us to the importance of understanding
the centrality of gender in relation to discussions of sexuality. The tendency
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56

to separate what is now perceived as homosexuality from heterosexuality in

historical discussions disguises the interrelationships between different
kinds of sexual behavior and the shifting nature of these categories through
time. It is quite certain that the labels &dquo;heterosexual&dquo; and &dquo;homosexual&dquo; were
not in common usage in Mexico until at least the latter part of the nineteenth
century because they were not in use anywhere else. Where gender is the primary organizing category and gender systems vary for people in different
social and economic locations, it makes little sense to talk about hetero- and

homosexuality.
At the same time, in contemporary rural Oaxaca, where many communities are characterized by high rates of migration both within and outside of
Mexico, the notion of sexuality is being employed in public conversations
and through popular culture, including television, videos, comics, books, and
movies (see Foucault, 1980). Sexual-identity labels in the abstract and in specific forms collide with practiced public silence about sex and about who is
doing what with whom and what it is called. Perhaps most notable is the
dawning public recognition of women as sexual beings who, once removed
from their communities of origin, can make autonomous choices of sexual
partners and envision sex for pleasure instead of only as a reproductive activity. The political economy of location and class in Juchitdn and Teotitldn is
also important in determining who may engage in these newer discourses and
practices of sexuality. What a young woman can do while living away from
home in Mexico City or Los Angeles may be quite different from what she
can do at home if she is from a status-seeking family that wants her to pursue a
traditional wedding and return to her community to live and raise a family.
The various sexual behaviors that coexist today in places like Juchitdn and
Teotitldn del Valle in rural Oaxaca, the simultaneous presence and absence of
sexual labeling, and the centrality of gender as an organizing principle in sexual behavior suggest that sexuality and sexual identity have not been evenly
deployed in concepts of social identity and selfhood. Instead of a Oaxacan or
even a Zapotec sexuality, we see multiple historical strands of identity that
have commingled for more than 500 years and continue to be in constant
motion. The simultaneous influence in Zapotec communities of indigenous,
Spanish colonial, and contemporary urban and transnational systems of gender and ideas about sex and sexuality suggests a rich and interesting future.

NOTES
1. The use of the word "homosexual" here is problematic as no such concept existed in native
societies until it did in Western societies.

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57

2. For example, Vasco Nuñez de Balboa who, after seeing men dressed like women in Panand learning they were sodomites, threw the king and 40 others to be eaten by his dogs
(Guerra, 1971: 190).
3. See the work of Carrier (1995) and Alonzo and Koreck (1993) for further comments on the

ama

activo/pasivo labeling system among men.

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