Merino’s story begins in San Pedro Jicayán, a southern Mexican Indigenous community where, she said, men are largely barred from becoming weavers. Xaneri Merino told The Associated Press that she was identified at birth as a boy, expected instead to tend cattle or work in the fields. She said her grandmother, however, kept weaving instruction alive by teaching her secretly—beginning when Merino was 13 and learning the backstrap loom that depends on a strap secured around the weaver’s waist.
In Merino’s account, the loom is not just a technique but an inheritance tied to place and ceremony. She said her maternal lineage traces to the Mixtec people and their origin stories rooted in sacred landscapes, while her paternal ancestry is Zapotec, where religious life is interwoven with everyday moments “from harvest to marriage and death.” Merino also said she learned a practical and environmental ethic from her grandmother: weavers should return to the land whatever they take. “To care for nature is part of our worldview,” she said, adding that nature provides what people need “to walk this world.”
That cultural framework now overlaps with Merino’s gender identity and the Indigenous term she uses for herself. Merino said she is a trans woman and identifies as a “muxe,” a word rooted in Zapotec culture that refers to Indigenous people identified at birth as male who take on women’s roles, and that it can also be regarded as a third gender. She said she makes a living as a weaver and instructor, hosting workshops that invite LGBTQ+ participants to learn on the backstrap loom and treat the craft as more than a finished object.
Merino said her path was not always welcome. She described being punished for weaving around age 15, after neighbors spotted her kneeling with threads in her hands while on her way to a patron saint feast. Merino said that same afternoon passed without incident, but the next morning the community’s loudspeakers summoned “all men” to gather and address what she described as an urgent matter: “There was a boy who dared to weave.” In her telling, she was ordered to stand in the middle while men sat in a circle with her mother and her grandmother.
Merino said one of the men challenged her grandmother’s choice, asking why she would allow him to weave when, in his view, it was not something boys were supposed to do. Merino said her grandmother answered by framing the lesson as creativity and cultural survival—teaching a child how to find a path to keep the culture alive through clothing. Merino said the punishment she received was sweeping the local church and that she sometimes wove in hiding after that. She said the cost of that defiance lingered and led her to nearly abandon the loom.
Merino described how the experience shaped her relationship to textiles. “I developed a deep resentment toward textiles and the customs around them,” she said, describing a sense of loss when she could create but was not allowed to use that ability. “Having the ability to create and not being allowed to use it was like having eyes and having them taken away — I could no longer see,” she said.
She said reconciliation came after she moved from her hometown to Mexico City for college. Merino said she majored in communications and took coursework that included cultural management, textile studies and postcolonial perspectives on Indigenous resistance. She said that academic framing helped her see how her reality could serve “a greater good,” and she described her loom as “a means to healing.”
In Mexico City, Merino’s workshops now focus on creating a space where LGBTQ+ people can be seen and learn without fear. Merino said one student told the group that a loom mirrors oneself: its calmness and joy—and, she said, the anger and stress—move into the threads. “I love Xan’s way of teaching because she is very human and patient,” Emilia Freire, a trans woman who participated, told The Associated Press. Freire said Merino’s instruction helped her understand that once she had her weaving set up and began working, “everything I carried with me through the week would come out.”
Another student, Kristhian Cravioto, said it was his first backstrap loom workshop. He told the Associated Press he had found a safe space for LGBTQ+ people interested in crafts, and he highlighted Merino’s defiance of the preconception that men shouldn’t weave. “This is very important for us dissidents,” Cravioto said, adding that it matters “no matter whether you are a man or a woman” and that what someone does counts.
Merino also described the work required to keep the craft alive. She said a traditional backstrap loom is made from cords, threads and wooden rods assembled into a portable frame, with women often working seated on the ground, one end of the loom tied to a tree or post and the other secured around the waist. Merino said she weaves for about a month, eight hours a day, to finish a short “huipil,” a tunic traditionally worn by Indigenous women in Mexico. She said she travels back home to procure raw materials, including a purple dye from a sea snail found along the coast—an ingredient she said has become harder to gather as the species declines.
Still, Merino said the loom is changing what people expect inside her community. She said younger LGBTQ+ people have followed her example in San Pedro Jicayán, and she cited a small but visible group: “At least five trans women and two men are weaving.” She said the fight, for her, is tied to visibility—“We have gained visibility through the loom and that’s what this fight has been about.”