For The New York Times An Indigenous Women’s Softball Team Beats Opponents, and Machismo by Adam Williams

HONDZONOT, Mexico — Playing barefoot and wearing traditional Mayan dresses known as huipiles, the Little Devils softball team smashes hits, snags line drives and dashes around the bases in the sweltering heat of a Yucatán Peninsula jungle town.

The team recently delivered a 22-2 thumping to its opponents, the Felines, for another triumph in a season that has made the Little Devils a national sensation, for not only their style of play but also who they are: a group of Indigenous women from a traditional community that once discouraged women from pursuing sports, which were seen as the province of men.

And the Little Devils now have company, the Yaxunah Amazonas, who also play shoeless and in traditional attire and have helped upend sports culture in the Yucatán.