Conflict and Reproductive Health in Urban Chiapas: Disappearing the Partera Empίrica

Abstract

This article looks at how the unresolved internal armed conflict in Chiapas intersects with existing structural violence manifest in the everyday forms of harassment, abuse, and violence, all of them shaping the fabric of women’s existence. This includes both the way they are treated by professionals in the healthcare system and unintended consequences of health policy and initiatives to reduce maternal mortality. I argue it is useful to examine these two factors jointly in order to identify a relationship between armed conflict in rural areas and its indirect costs on the nearby urban environment. I will focus on one main point of discussion: the way a health-policy emphasis on decreasing maternal mortality (as an indirect consequence of the armed conflict) is changing how and where urban women give birth, effectively disappearing the role of the urban ‘partera empírica’.

Maintaining the Flow: Medical Challenges to Breastfeeding and “Risky” Bodies in Mexico

“…This study also contributes to anthropological work on the temporality of pollution and intersecting meanings of mothers’ milk as a danger to health (Bandyopadhyay ; Douglas [1966]; Farmer ; Gottlieb ; Scheper‐Hughes , ; Valeri ) and connects this phenomenon to the growing body of work on gendered morality, reproductive health, and risky bodies in Mexico (Bringas et al. ; Carrillo and Bliss ; Castro ; Gutmann ; Murray de López , ; Santiago et al. ; Singer ; Smith‐Oka ).…”

“…; Dixon ; Murray de López and Alonso ). The registering and monitoring of traditional midwives in Chiapas is haphazard at best and does not represent the variation of maternal health care–seeking behaviors prevalent among urban households (Murray de López ). These ambiguities matter when it comes to relationships between families, midwives, and bio–medical professionals.…”