MEXICO QUAKE HIT HARD AT CENTER OF ZAPOTEC 'MUXE' CULTURE
Sep 12, 2:27 PM EDT
BY CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN
ASSOCIATED PRESS
JUCHITAN, Mexico (AP) -- Four days after Mexico's magnitude 8.1 earthquake destroyed her home and much of her work, Peregrina Vera attended her third funeral.
Two were for friends who died in collapsed buildings. This time it was an elderly neighbor, Hermilio Martinez, whose heart apparently gave out a day after the big quake as the city of Juchitan shivered with repeated, terrifying aftershocks.
She followed the hearse that bore him a mile to the far edge of a cemetery where temporary covers of branches and palm fronds shadowed the graves, a place that has been all too busy these past few days.
The quake killed 96 people across Mexico, and it struck hardest here in the heartland of Mexico's Zapotec culture - a region famed for deep-rooted feminism, the flamboyant "Tehuana" dresses often worn by Frida Kahlo and for one of its most noted traditional subcultures: the "muxe," people born male who dress and identify as women and who are accepted, even honored, for their contributions.
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