A new short documentary follows a group of women in Hondzonot, Mexico, a small Indigenous community in the Yucatán Peninsula, who challenged their town’s restrictive gender norms by forming a softball team. Watch here.
At first, the women were insulted and told that they would bring bad luck to the community. It was at their first tournament out of town that they came up with their name, which is a nod to their rebellion.
Juana Ay Ay, the captain of Las Diablillas softball team, gently cracks an egg against the side of a table and mixes it with greens cooking over an open fire. Chickens cluck in the background. She prepares breakfast for her family each morning, patting tortillas made with corn from nearby fields and warming them on a griddle. Ay Ay was born and raised in Hondzonot, Mexico, a small Indigenous community in the Yucatán Peninsula.
Until a few years ago, her life was like that of any married woman in her community: long days of housework, child rearing, and sewing. But, “over time, you realize that your role might be bigger,” Ay Ay, who is thirty-eight, says. At that moment, she plucks a red cap emblazoned with “Diablillas” from a post and fastens it under her ponytail. She expertly palms softballs and selects which bats to bring to practice, then yells her goodbyes back into the house.
Las Diablillas practice twice a week and travel around the region to compete in “friendlies” with other women’s teams. Many husbands and fathers who once criticized them now come out to support the team. “The men are gradually accepting it,” Ay Ay told me. Watching the women is a joy. They run with huge smiles on their faces to catch a ball or tag one another out.
Las Diablillas don’t just play—they let loose, spinning, laughing, dancing, singing, and whistling. “Those are the only three or four hours when we are all there, chirping like birds, saying what we want, things like ‘Catch this!,’ ‘Do this!,’ ‘Do that!,’ and ‘Hit it hard!,’ ” the team’s shortstop, Mirna May Tuyub, told the filmmaker. When a game is over, Ay Ay heads home and returns her red cap to its place. She sets about doing the dishwashing, with her daughter Claudia by her side.