Men in Skirts

Monday during the annual Fiesta of Games in the Maya community of Chenalhó, Chiapas, sees a sudden explosion of men dressed as women. Characters central to the drama, actors like the Mother of Mother, the Abductress, and the Jungle Woman parade along in the procession of saints brought from the church, provide parody blessings or "cleansings" for the town's religious officials. For a decade early in this century poet Ámbar Past took writer Carter Wilson along to get to know her friends among the holy clowns in drag. The actors prompted them to photograph a variety of events and eventually assigned them small parts in a bawdy little play about reciprocity in sex which comes toward the end of the day. "Men in Skirts" offers a prose and picture version of Wilson and Past's experience and what the extraordinary events of Monday might mean. --Wilson, Carter