Regulating Traditional Mexican Midwifery: Practices of Control, Strategies of Resistance (original) (raw)
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A Tale of Three Midwives: Inconsistent Policies and the Marginalization of Midwifery in Mexico
The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 2018
ResumenEste artículo utiliza la investigación etnográfica colectiva para proporcionar una comprensión multifacética y multilocal de cómo los problemas actuales que enfrentan la partería y la salud de las mujeres en México reflejan una relación históricamente tensa entre las poblaciones marginadas y el Estado. Sostenemos que las parteras han sido obstaculizadas en su capacidad de mejorar sistemáticamente la salud materna como resultado de su relación desigual y cambiante con el estado Mexicano. Presentamos estudios de casos de tres parteras Mexicanas con diferentes antecedentes, acceso a capacitación y certificación, y relaciones con los sistemas de salud locales que estructuran cómo interpretan y negocian sus relaciones con las instituciones y políticas estatales. A medida que examinamos estas negociaciones, no perdemos de vista las formas en que las oportunidades, experiencias y desafíos de las parteras se entrelazan con las de las mujeres a las que sirven. Ambos existen en los már...
Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 1996
Physiological and anatomical concepts about reproduction held by traditional midwives in Southern Oaxaca differ considerably from those of biomedicine. Government training courses for traditional midwives disregard these deep-seated differences, and also the underlying conceptual rationale of ethno-obstetrics. These courses constantly reinforce and actively promote the biomedical model of care. But rural midwives, despite these training courses, do not substantially change their obstetrical vision and ways. The strength of their own authoritative knowledge, fully shared by the women and men of their communities, allows them to continue their traditional style of care, despite pressures to conform to biomedical values, beliefs, and practices. Suggestions for a mutual accommodation of biomedical and midwifery approaches to prenatal care include training medical personnel in ethno-obstetric techniques and rationales, teaching midwives basic medical interventions, addressing in intervention programs all social actors participating in reproductive decision making, and adopting an interdisciplinary approach that includes nonmedical aspects of maternal care. [authoritative knowledge, ethno-obstetrics, traditional midwives, prenatal care, maternal health, Mexico] n the state of Oaxaca, as in many other Mesoamerican regions, traditional and empirical parteras (midwives) continue to attend the great majority of births (
Midwives in Mexico: Situated Politics and Politically Situated
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This book presents the contemporary history and dynamics of Mexican midwifery - professional, (post)modern or autonomous, traditional and Indigenous - as profoundly political and embedded in differing societal stratifications. By situated politics, the authors refer to various networks, spaces and territories, which are also constructed by the midwives. By politically situated, the authors refer to various intersections, unsettled relations and contexts in which Mexican midwives are positioned. Examining Mexican midwiferies in depth, the volume sharpens the focus on the worlds in which midwives are profoundly immersed as agents in generating and participating in movements, alliances, health professions, communities, homes, territories and knowledges. The chapters provide a complex panorama of midwives in Mexico with an array of insights into their professional and political autonomy, (post)coloniality, body-territoriality, the challenges of defining midwifery, and above all, into the ways in which contemporary Mexican midwiferies relate to a complex set of human rights. The book will be of interest to a range of scholars from anthropology, sociology, politics, global health, gender studies, development studies, and Latin American studies, as well as to midwives and other professionals involved in childbirth policy and practice.
The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 2020
Rosalynn A. Vega's No Alternative: Childbirth, Citizenship, and Indigenous Culture in Mexico is a deeply theoretical and richly ethnographic critique of the relationship between traditional midwifery and the humanized birth movement in Mexico. It is important to note that my own research overlaps geographically and temporally with Vega's, although our specific interests and conclusions diverged in significant ways. A central strength of Vega's work is the breadth of her data and the range of her field sites and informants. Her commitment to multi-sited ethnography is evident throughout each of her chapters, as she weaves together cases from across Mexico and from varying kinds of practitioners and advocates. She spent 28 months in the field, during which time she clearly formed deep connections with many of her key informants. She also followed leads to track down practitioners and attend events across Mexico and beyond. She describes visiting an upscale
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This article builds on the recent debates on human rights and development to discuss the case of reproductive rights and midwifery activism as part of the broader mobilisation for the humanisation of birth and against obstetric violence in Latin America and Mexico. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the analysis shows how human rights continue to form a significant contentious and constructed terrain among women in the global South. The mobilisation for the humanisation of birth and against obstetric violence indicates how the clinical developmental view of reproductive rights is challenged by these activists as not necessarily safeguarding the rights of women during birth. In Mexico this campaign is essentially linked to the struggle to bring back and strengthen midwifery as a way of ensuring improved human rights in birth. The article concludes, however, that this campaign might be challenged by Indigenous rights in the near future.
Fighting for respect: Midwives and the medicalization of childbirth in Guatemala
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Although birth is considered one of the few universals of the human experience, Sheila Cosminsky illustrates through its rituals and traditions how childbirth is culturally informed. Drawing on decades of fieldwork in a Guatemalan finca (plantation) and close connections with the two main comadronas (midwives) on that plantation, Cosminsky provides vivid examples of how pregnancy, childbirth, and to some extent motherhood are experienced by those who call the finca home. A central theme of the book is how the medicalization of childbirth-the promotion of hospital deliveries and medical intervention-has left both comadronas and mothers disempowered.
This article offers a case study of the politics of reproduction present between development programs, medical practitioners, and population policies in Mexico. It particularly explores how these policies have shaped indigenous women’s family planning choices. It analyzes the unintended consequences that emerge from the interaction between indigenous women, medicine, and an economic development program Oportunidades. The study was based on participant observation and in-depth interviews carried out between 2004 and 2007 with 53 women, as well as doctors and nurses, in northern Veracruz. Results show that the close association of government policies with medical practitioners serves to constrain women’s reproductive decisions. Medical practitioners use this association to promote the state’s concern for family planning, unintentionally disempowering their target population. This article uses a political economy of fertility framework to look at broader processes affecting women’s choices beyond the personal or domestic level. Such a framework allows us to analyze these connections and place women’s reproductive rights within a larger struggle for human rights and dignity.