Tensions and resistances: the Tseltal community midwifery and Mexican health system

Abstract

This article reflects on the gap between the traditional health care paradigm and the global biomedical paradigm, regarding traditional indigenous midwifery in Mexico. It aims to identify the context in which community midwifery is currently practiced, as well as the tensions that come from its encounter with the hegemonic medical model. It has an exploratory scope that examines a problem that has not been studied in depth: the resistance of the Tseltal midwives who keep their reproductive health care practices alive. It is an ethnographic research, of qualitative type, that is built with the tools existing in anthropology and social sciences, to analyze different dimensions of a complex problem, of great relevance for collective health. We found that a large part of the traditional practices of the Tseltal midwives of Amatenango del Valle have remained active despite the multiple control mechanisms and systemic violence to which they are subjected, largely due to cultural resistance between the indigenous communities of Chiapas.