May 1, 2000

    Possibly the only matriarchy in the world, the city of Juchitan is dominated by powerful women. In more than 800 years of semi-autonomy from the kingdoms of the Aztecs and Spain and the Republic of Mexico, the city of women on Mexico’s west coast has evolved into a singular culture of matriarchal rule unknown anywhere else in modern civilization. Not even the mythical Amazonian women of ancient history approach the complex female character of Juchitan and its sister towns of Tehuantepec and Ixtepec.
    There are three remarkable aspects of this culture which have never been fully explored by English-speaking media, as best as the authors understand.

    1. The women run an economy which literally excludes men from the marketplace.

    2. The women control community cash and therefore have the most elaborate clothing and jewelry of any people in Meso America.

    3. The women are judged for their community standing by the quality of public-service parties they throw and by the authenticity of their muxes, typically the family’s youngest son brought up from infancy as a girl.

    Writer Sean Harris and photographer Sueraya Shaheen will travel to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec to investigate this unknown matriarchy. Their voyage will last at least from May 20 through May 29, when the city of Juchitan celebrates its ‘Tirada de Frutas,’ a traditional festive week which culminates in the throwing of rotten fruit by women on the town’s rooftops onto the men gathered in the narrow streets below. This ‘corrida’ of males emphasizes the domination of the town’s politics and culture by its women citizens.
    Harris and Shaheen will pay special attention to the community of ‘muxes,’ the transvestite phenomena of the region. The muxes are brought up as girls in order to allow the craftsmanship of males into the marketplace. It is these muxes who provide the matriarchs with their stellar costumes, headresses and fine jewelry. Harris and Shaheen will also examine the effects of a proposed ‘dry canal’ which would cut across the narrow isthmus from Veracruz in the Caribbean to Salia Cruz on the Pacific. The literal bulldozing of this project would have as its final destination Juchitan and its sister cities of Tehuantepec and Ixtepec. The project -- to be funded by the world’s largest financial institutions -- will run smack into a culture which has long awed the rest of Mexico. Typically, Mexican males are warned not to fall for the tall, confident Istmenas, because in the house of a woman from the isthmus, “es ella quien manda.” Translated literally: “It is she who mandates.”

    Harris and Shaheen intend to produce a photo-essay for the popular press, an exhibition of photography and other multimedia, and a catalogue or publication for worldwide distribution.

Why is a small city on the west coast of Mexico proud of its public murals, which decorate almost every wall and each of which shows how dependent the town is upon its leaders, all of whom are women? How did these murals evolve from collective art to a moral presence which astonishes visitors to the city of Tehuantepec?

Filmmaker Sean Harris has visited Tehuantepec twice, and was struck by the city’s firm leadership and matriarchal strength. Most impressive were the large murals which seemed to attack the vices and immoralities of men. On one mural, for example, a woman is shaking her finger at a man who sits drunk on the sidewalk while a young girl looks on the scene. The woman is saying, “Listen, young man, give up your bad habits and let’s unite our energies fort the sake of progress in Tehuantepec.” The young girl, with her hands on her hips, says, “Do it for us,” while the man sits dazed by alcohol with a cigarette in one hand and a bottle marked “peligro” in the other. This particular mural is signed by the Casa de Cultura de Tehuantepec.

Now Mr. Harris is traveling back to Tehuantepec in January to record all the murals in the town as well as to conduct interviews with civic leaders and artists about the evolution and the impact of the town’s mural artwork. He will be accompanied by photographer and writer Deborah Rowe, filmmaker Eddie Becker, and writer Nicole Casas, who has also visited Tehuantepec on several occasions. The team expects to rely heavily on artists, civic leaders, and sociologists in its effort to make a comprehensive record of Tehuantepec’s murals on both video and 35mm photographs. All intellectual property gathered in Tehuantepec will be shared by the city and its residents, either through a civic group or through local art collectives.

Tehuantepec is a small city on the west coast of Mexico, situated at the westernmost end of the narrow isthmus also named Tehuantepec. The city is a neighbor to the oil-rich port of Salina Cruz, and is also located squarely at the mouth of an industrial corridor being planned by Mexico to compete with the Panama Canal.

Mr. Harris has won considerable renown in Washington and New York for a series of movies made on video from 1992 to the present. He has been published in newspapers worldwide, on subjects such as marine science, travel in Africa and Asia, and on pop and television culture. Ms. Rowe has a master’s in linguistics and is currently at work on a book. Mr. Becker’s work has been nationally broadcast on PBS. Ms, Casas has been published in the U.S. and Mexico (the Daily News) on a variety of subjects, such as science and Mexican religious culture.