Estancia de Morelos (Mexico), May 14 (EFE).- The civil marriage of Adrián and Luis Fernando, 28 and 31 years old, respectively, held in Estancia de Morelos, in the southern state of Oaxaca, was the first equal carried out in a community belonging to the mixe or ayuuk community, an indigenous voice that means people of the flowery language who live in the geographic region of the Sierra Norte of the state.
Adrián is originally from Estancia de Morelos, belonging to the municipality of Santiago Atitlán, and Luis, from the town of Jaltepec de Candayoc, San Juan Cotzocón Mixes.
“It is a very important step that must be taken in my region, in my town (…) and in addition to carrying it out, we are giving the visibility that we already have to homosexual people from our indigenous communities in the region. We are seeing how people are changing this social construction and for us this wedding was very important and making it visible so that we can make equal rights known,” Adrián Rojas and Luis Fernando Vargas told EFE.
The ceremony held on the street where the house of Adrián’s father and mother is located, which served as an improvised party room with a canvas roof decorated with balloons of different colors, was presided over by Fabiola Galván, Zacatepec civil registry judge. , who traveled two hours to give legality and happy ending to a seven-year courtship.
He immediately handed the marriage certificate to Adrián and Luis who, dressed in a beige and navy blue suit respectively and a gold ribbon on their heads to symbolize equality, embraced and gave the first kiss within the marriage law that was preceded by the applause of their friends and family, “long live the bride and groom”, the attendees shouted to start the feast.
The judge told EFE that this is the first egalitarian wedding that takes place in the Mixe region of Oaxaca and, contrary to what was thought, numerous civil unions have not taken place in other regions of Oaxaca, for example in the region of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, where the municipality of Juchitán de Zaragoza is located, where the “muxe” community lives, as people of the so-called third gender are called in the Zapotec language.
DISCRIMINATION FROM THE INDIGENOUS WORLDVIEW
Adrián and Luis have degrees in communication sciences and in their communities located almost 200 kilometers from the capital of Oaxaca they have suffered discrimination, even in the Mixe language there is a word to derogatorily refer to homosexuals.
“The issue of homosexuality is still feared, there is a lot of taboo, so being an indigenous community it is even more normal to see couples of a man and a woman and now, the way gays are called here in the language that we talk about that is the ayuuk is ‘Mä’äty’, the root of the word is “Maat” which is decomposed, it is conjugated, it is decomposed, it is twisted, which is not normal”, says Adrián looking at her husband.
To avoid rejection or aggression, he went to other communities, such as Tamazulapam, Mixes, where he currently has an aesthetics.
“I am the only man in the family so my mother had all the expectations about me, the only man who is going to procreate so unfortunately it was not like that, for her, I mean!” He continued.
The fathers and mothers of Adrián and Luis Fernando gradually accepted their children’s sexual preferences.
For example, the retired teacher Anselmo Rojas, who is Adrián’s father, said: “I never said why this happens or why this happens to my only son, I never assumed that attitude, I accepted it with all due respect.” .
The party was only attended by the relatives of both boyfriends and their friends who traveled from Mexico City and Oaxaca to Estancia de Morelos.
The people of the community preferred not to give interviews, but they trusted outside the cameras and recorder that the wedding ceremony held in the town, they did not look down on it and they came out of curiosity to watch a different party.
In Oaxaca, the marriage between people of the same was approved by the Legislative Power on March 28, 2019.
