Juchitán, Mexico – Felina Santiago was chopping hair in her salon when she heard that considered one of her oldest pals, Oscar Cazorla, had been stabbed to dying on the age of 62.
“I used to be paralysed with ache,” she recalled. “I knew we had misplaced a pillar of our group that day.”
Santiago and Cazorla each belong to Mexico’s muxe community, pronounced “mu-shay”, made up of people that establish as a 3rd gender, neither male nor feminine.
Historically, in Indigenous Zapotec society, muxes have been revered, even celebrated. However Cazorla’s homicide in 2019 — together with the dying of one other outstanding non-binary determine this month — has left the group shaken, scared of additional violence.
The most recent high-profile incident got here on November 13, when Jesus Ociel Baena, Mexico’s first overtly non-binary Justice of the Peace, was discovered lifeless at house with a number of wounds.
“Hatred is harming our cities, our cities and the individuals in our communities,” Santiago mentioned.
“When one hears about tragic deaths, like that of Jesus, who was well-known — a tutorial, good and really influential — it makes us suppose we want much more safety.”
The information of Baena’s dying broke simply 4 days earlier than the most important muxe occasion of the 12 months, known as the “Vela de las Auténticas Intrépidas Buscadoras del Peligro”. The title loosely interprets to the Vigil for the Genuine and Fearless Seekers of Hazard.
Happening in Juchitán, a city within the southern state of Oaxaca, the three-day pageant brings collectively 1000’s of revellers every year.
However for Santiago, the president of the pageant, the newest celebration was notably poignant. It was an opportunity to point out “no worry” within the face of the violence.
“The unhappiness impacts us all deeply, however we should present our resistance to cease the sensation of worry rising. We stand collectively in solidarity to point out society we’re one and we would like justice.”
Excessive charges of violence
Violence and threats have haunted the muxes and different members of Mexico’s LGBTQ group for years. From 2018 via 2022, murder claimed at the very least 453 LGTBQ individuals within the nation, in accordance with the advocacy group Letra S.
Within the final 12 months alone, the group estimated that, on common, seven LGBTQ individuals had been murdered every month, with transgender and non-binary individuals at explicit danger.
Research counsel the violence is a regional difficulty. Earlier this month, the Trans Homicide Monitoring mission discovered that 74 percent of all documented murders of transgender or gender-diverse individuals occurred in Latin America.
Within the area, Brazil registered the very best variety of murders, however Mexico came in second, with 52 homicides between October 2022 and September 2023.
A part of Zapotec custom, the muxes are their very own distinct group, much like however separate from classes like “transgender”. They’re typically described as representing a “duality” that embodies either side of the gender spectrum.
Many are declared male at beginning however embrace female roles and traits, generally carrying clothes and make-up.
Calling for justice
The annual “vela” festivity was conceived within the mid-Nineteen Seventies as a celebration of muxe identification, filled with dancing, opulent robes and round the clock music. Cazorla, the muxe who was murdered in 2019, was one of some key figures who based the occasion.
However Cazorla’s dying — and that of Baena — solid a shadow over this 12 months’s celebration, the forty eighth version of the “vela”.
Justice stays elusive: No arrests have been made in both case. Authorities have mentioned that Baena’s accomplice Dorian Herrera could have killed him in a murder-suicide.
However that suggestion has sparked outrage amongst LGBTQ leaders, who query how such a conclusion may very well be reached so rapidly after Baena’s and Herrera’s deaths.
“An enormous variety of crimes perpetrated towards our group go unanswered,” mentioned one muxe attendee at this 12 months’s “vela”, Valkis Lopez.
“And that is simply the crimes which can be reported to the authorities within the first place.”
Even at one of many excessive factors of the festivity — the crowning of a victor within the muxe magnificence pageant — cries for justice rang out from the stage.
Elvis Guerra, a muxe poet, accepted the towering, jewel-encrusted tiara with a speech that acknowledged the violence LGBTQ individuals face.
“There are nonetheless those that, from behind the protect of ignorance, proceed to homicide us right now,” Guerra mentioned.
A spot of energy
However the founders of the “vela” have created an area the place muxes can demand respect, Guerra defined within the speech.
“Right now, we are able to exit into the road and look straight forward, bending solely whenever you put the crown on us,” Guerra mentioned.
“Why? Due to social warriors just like the matriarch Felina [Santiago] and the late Oscar Cazorla, whose devious and dastardly homicide stays unpunished to at the present time. We owe freedom to them.”
One other attendee, muxe activist Mistica Sanchez Gomez, mentioned the violence was possible aimed toward suppressing LGBTQ identification. “Hateful murders search to impress worry in us,” she advised Al Jazeera.
However for Santiago, the “vela” stays a second of pleasure at first.
Yearly, the festivity begins with road parades, with muxes crusing via the streets atop wood carts pulled by bulls. Fireworks and seemingly never-ending brass-band music present the soundtrack to the carnivalesque ambiance, whereas native muxes and vacationers dance aspect by aspect till sweat drops from their breathless faces.
Santiago believes this 12 months’s vela introduced extra attendees than ever earlier than, an indication of in style assist and larger consciousness regardless of the high-profile murders.
That reality makes her smile, however her stare stays pensive as she thinks of the pal she misplaced: “Oscar would have been very proud.”