Alex Hernandez was born in Oaxaca, Mexico. By age 4, he had immigrated to the United States with his family. By age 12, he had asked his mother if he could sew. She refused, he recalls, saying sewing was for girls.
So he chose a different creative route. By high school, Hernandez was painting; in college, embroidering.
A few years later, Hernandez, now a textile and embroidery artist, returned to Oaxaca for a three-day festival called Vela de Las Intrepidas — or Vigil of the Intrepids. Created in the 1970s, the festival is a celebration of ambiguity and mixed gender identities, and for Hernandez, it was like a rite of passage.
The indigenous Zapotec culture of Oaxaca is not divided by the usual dichotomies: gay or straight, male or female. There’s a commonly accepted third category of mixed gender — people called muxes. (said to derive from mujer — Spanish for “woman”). Some are men who live as women, or who identify beyond a single gender.[source]
