Breaking schemes. The ethnographic portrait of a family of transvestites in urban Oaxaca

Abstract

During the days of the Dead in 1995 we were visiting a nearby cemetery where we lived again. There were many people inside it cleaning the graves of family or friends and celebrating. As we looked around us, we could see a group of "women" dressed casually partying around a tomb. Two of them we shouted: "Hey, white people, come over here and Take a mezcal!" As we approach the group we realized that they were men dressed as women. We sat down and started talking. We quickly learned that they were actually transvestites and they were there to clean and visit the grave of her friend Cristina. They proceeded to tell us that gay men were dressed as liabilities and women who worked as prostitutes in the street. They were organized in a group called Union Group Fight Communicable Disease Prevention HIV-AIDS.