Overview
What muxe means.
Muxe belongs to the Zapotec people of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, in Oaxaca, southern Mexico. Juchitán, Santo Domingo Tehuantepec, Unión Hidalgo, El Espinal, Ixtepec. It is a word in diidxazá, the Zapotec language, spoken by people with neighbours, debts and a church calendar.
A muxe is someone assigned male at birth who lives, in that place, as neither a man nor exactly a woman. Not privately. Not as a stage on the way to something else. As a kind of person the community already has a name and a job for.
This is not a word anyone can pick up. If you are not Zapotec from the Isthmus, it is not yours — not as a translation of your gender, not as a warmer word for non-binary. You can read this page. You cannot take the word.
It is also not one agreed thing. Muxes argue among themselves about who counts: whether a gay man counts, whether a trans woman is still muxe, whether you have to be vestida. Older and younger muxes often do not mean the same thing by it.
Outsiders write Juchitán as a paradise where muxes are adored. Muxes who live there rarely describe it that way. Both things are true at once: a place at the fiesta, and a brother who will not say your name.
People assigned male at birth who take on feminine roles in Zapotec culture of Oaxaca, Mexico.
Muxe in one line
Origin
Where the word comes from
Muxe describes a recognised third-gender role among the Zapotec people of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Oaxaca, Mexico, most closely associated with towns such as Juchitán, Santo Domingo Tehuantepec and Unión Hidalgo. The word is widely believed to derive from the sixteenth-century Spanish 'mujer' (woman), absorbed into Zapotec (diidxazá), though the exact etymology and how continuously the role has been practised since before colonisation are debated among historians and muxes themselves.
The modern public celebration most associated with muxe life, the November vela in Juchitán, dates only to the 1970s, when the gatherings it grew from were still being raided by police; its founder, Óscar Cazorla, was murdered in his own home in 2019, a killing that remains a point of grief and activism in the community. Everyday feminine dress among muxes (muxe vestida) is also a comparatively recent norm, spreading mainly from the mid-twentieth century, distinct from the older muxe pintada style of masculine dress with makeup.
- Where
- Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, Mexico (Zapotec communities)
Signs people describe
Common experiences
None of these is a test. Most people recognise a few and shrug at the rest.
Nobody sat you down and told you what you were.
You were placed. Someone put the embroidery in your hands at seven and the machete in your brother's, and no speech was made about it.
Your grandmother has a word for you in Zapotec and uses it at normal volume.
You are the one who stays.
The others went north. The parents are yours.
You know what a huipil costs — in thread, and in nights.
At the November vela you are not a guest.
You have a task, and it starts two weeks early.
At school you were él on the register, joto in the corridor, and something else entirely at your aunt's house.
You have been told you are good with your hands since before you could reach the stove.
The men who go with you would not call themselves gay, and you stopped arguing about that years ago.
You have had to decide about vestida and pintada — or refuse to decide — and people ask you either way.
A stranger with an expensive camera has asked to photograph you and used the word magical.
The same town that gave you a role at the church fiesta has also thrown something at you from a moving car.
You have organised somebody's funeral.
Possibly several.
Day to day
What it looks like on a normal Tuesday
You are up early because the heat gets serious by ten. Coffee, your mother, a list.
The market first. Every trader knows what to call you. Some use the name your mother gave you. Some say muxe. One says nothing and serves you anyway.
Back at the house, work. A huipil half-embroidered on the frame. Two orders for a November wedding and one that was due last week.
Somewhere in there: your father's tablets, the electricity bill, your niece at two, your brother in Tijuana who sends money some months.
In the evening the phone. Someone you have been seeing for two years texts after eleven and never before. You know exactly why. You answer, or you don't.
None of this looks like the photographs. The flowers and the traje are for the vela, and the vela is three days out of the year.
Across the parts of a life
Open the area you came here for.
Straight answers
What people get wrong
Juchitán is a matriarchy where muxes are worshipped.
That story is written by outsiders and sells well abroad. Acceptance there is house by house, not regional weather. One small survey of muxes on the Isthmus, published in 2022, found most had met discrimination at school, at work or in clinics. Óscar Cazorla, who started the November vela in the 1970s, was murdered in his own home in 2019.
Muxe is just the Zapotec word for gay.
It is a gender category, not a record of who you sleep with. Some muxes marry women. Some have children. Some want nobody. And the men who go with muxes are usually not called muxe or gay by anyone, themselves included.
Muxe means trans woman.
For some muxes, yes, and they will say so plainly. For others the whole point is that they are a third thing and not a woman. Both answers come from muxes — sometimes from two people in the same family.
It is an unbroken pre-Hispanic tradition.
The role is long-standing in Isthmus life. But the word is widely thought to come from the 16th-century Spanish mujer taken into Zapotec, everyday dressing as a muxe vestida spread from around the mid-20th century, and the vela dates to the 1970s. How much continuity to claim is argued over by historians and by muxes.
Every muxe wears the traje and the flowers.
That is November. Most days it is jeans and a work apron. Muxe pintada — men's clothes, make-up — is a whole way of being muxe, not a stalled attempt at being the other kind.
Muxe families always accept.
Many do, and it is not sentimental. Acceptance often arrives with a job attached: you will stay, you will nurse us, you will pay. And some houses still put a fifteen-year-old on the street.
Anyone who feels between genders can be muxe.
No. It is not a feeling you qualify for. It is a position inside one people's language, kinship and fiesta calendar, in a handful of towns.
Take care
On the hard days
The killings. Óscar Cazorla, who founded the November vela in the 1970s, was stabbed to death at home in Juchitán in 2019. Muxes name their dead out loud and are still waiting on most of the cases.
The double life your neighbours run, not you. Adored at the fiesta, silent at your graveside.
The visitors. Someone arrives with a camera every November, photographs you for a magazine in another country, calls your town a paradise, and leaves. Nobody is paid.
The exhaustion of being evidence. Mexico likes to point at you when it wants to look tolerant. That is not a job, a clinic, or a conviction in court.
The 2017 earthquake flattened houses in Juchitán. Muxe groups ran relief while the money went elsewhere.
And the plain days. A body that aches, a mother who needs turning, a man who will not text before eleven, and the strong suspicion that you have given everything to people who will not carry your coffin.
Pronouns
Pronouns
There is no single answer, and asking is normal in the Isthmus.
In Spanish, some muxes use ella, some él, some take both and don't police it. Plenty of families switch by room — one word at the market, another at the table.
Zapotec does not mark gender the way Spanish does. Much of the pressure comes from Spanish and from paperwork, not from the mother tongue. In diidxazá you are more likely to simply be called by your name, or called muxe.
"Muxe" itself is often the noun people use for you. From someone in that town it is a category, not an insult. From a tourist it can be either.
Plural: muxes. Also written muxhe and mushe; people from different towns spell it differently and are not wrong.
Consider another path
This might not be your word if…
- 1You are not Zapotec from the Isthmus. However well the description fits, the word is not on offer. Keep what you recognised and go and find your own name for it.
- 2You want something private that nobody else needs to know. Muxe is a public position: the town, the family and the church all get a vote.
- 3You are from Juchitán, you are a man, you like men, and that is the whole of it. That is a life. It is not this word.
- 4You are a woman from the Isthmus who has said clearly that she is a woman. Some muxes take that road out of the word, and it is a real road.
- 5You want the flowers, the traje and the photographs without the funerals, the debts and thirty years of care work.
- 6You are the partner, the friend or the photographer of a muxe. Being close to it is not being it.
- 7Your interest came from a documentary and has not survived meeting anyone who actually lives there.
Close by
Related identities
Trans woman
Some muxes also call themselves trans women and live as women. Others are angry at the equation. The difference muxes most often name: muxe is a place your community puts you, not only an understanding you arrive at alone.
Gay man
Many muxes are attracted to men, and in Spanish the words get blurred on purpose. But a Juchiteco who is a man and likes men is usually just that, and everyone local can tell the difference.
Non-binary
A self-chosen term available to anyone, anywhere, with no kin attached. Muxe comes with a town, a language, a November and a list of duties.
Two-Spirit
Also Indigenous, also closed to outsiders, and constantly compared to muxe by people who have studied neither. Different nations, different continent, different history. Not interchangeable.
ReadHijra
South Asian, with initiation, gurus, households and a religious frame muxe does not have. The third-gender shelf in a bookshop is not a shared identity.
ReadFa'afafine and Māhū
Pacific roles that outsiders line up beside muxe. The family-care resemblance is real. Almost nothing else transfers.
Travesti
A Latin American term with its own politics — largely urban, strongest in the Southern Cone, bound up with sex work and a specific movement. A few muxes use it. Most do not.
ReadQuestions people ask
Frequently asked questions
Can I identify as muxe if I am not Zapotec?+
No. Not by feeling a connection, not with respect, not with a Zapotec friend's blessing. Muxe is a role inside one people's language, kinship and fiesta calendar, in a small number of towns in Oaxaca. Taking the word out of that removes everything that makes it mean anything. If something here described you, the recognition is yours to keep. The word is not.
Is being muxe the same as being a trans woman?+
Sometimes overlapping, never simply equivalent. Some muxes take hormones, live as women and use both words without any conflict. Others say the point is precisely that they are a third thing and not a woman. The community does not agree with itself on this, and outsiders should not settle it for them.
What is the difference between muxe vestida and muxe pintada?+
Vestida means dressed: women's clothing day to day, from jeans and a blouse to the full traje and huipil at a vela. Pintada means painted: men's clothing with make-up. Most younger muxes are vestidas, but that is recent — everyday dressing spread from around the middle of the twentieth century, long after the role itself. Some muxes reject both labels.
Where does the word muxe come from, and is it pre-Hispanic?+
The role in Zapotec life is old. The word is widely thought to come from the 16th-century Spanish mujer, taken into Zapotec, though the etymology is not settled. Claims of an unbroken pre-colonial institution are argued over by historians and by muxes themselves. What is documented is more recent: the vela in Juchitán dates to the 1970s, when muxe parties were still being raided by police.
The flag
Lgbtqia.wiki and the pride-color-schemes post (fetched, 29 January 2017) both record the designer as anonymous; emblem flag (flowers on black), not stripes; no hex codes.
Sources
- Muxe — Wikipedia General overview and vela/community background; fetched 2026-09-06.
- The Muxes of Juchitán: A Preliminary Look at Transgender Identity and Acceptance — California Western International Law Journal Peer-reviewed background on muxe identity and social acceptance; fetched 2026-09-06.
- muxe — Wiktionary Supports etymological link to Spanish 'mujer' and includes a 1985 documented use ('mushe'); fetched 2026-09-06.
Still figuring things out?
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