Traditional midwifery in central Mexico; conflict between bodies, medicines and practices

Abstract

This paper looks into the ecology of practices and knowledges around childbirth, pregnancy and puerperium care. More specifically, from the perspective of a group of traditional midwives in the state of Morelos, how traditional and modern childbirth attention conflict each other due to an asymmetry of power in place. Further, in this paper I pick up narratives about problems traditional midwives face when trying to continue the role they consider natural in the sexual and reproductive health care, which, despite an official discourse on the recognition and support of their practice, in reality their work is played down and condemned. Additionally, in this paper I make a brief historical summary on how the work of midwives was assimilated to a state system of capitalist production from where their practices are coopted following a cientistic epistemology on the body, what it produces and how it is produced. Finally, it is proposed that traditional midwives are depositaries of a knowledge that is appropriated and restricted, this takes place through institutional and/or legal devices (illegalization of the practice) that end up being internalized or incorporated through fear causing self-control.