Once punished for weaving, this Mexican artisan uses her loom for LGBTQ+ resistance

Mexico Indigenous Weaving - (Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Xaneri Merino wasn't meant to follow in her grandmother’s footsteps.

Now a transgender woman, she was identified at birth as a boy in San Pedro Jicayán, an Indigenous community in southern Mexico where men are largely barred from becoming weavers.