Delivering Health: Midwifery and Development in Mexico

243 Pages·2020·1.899 MB·English

by  Lydia Z. Dixon

Delivering HealtH
SerieS eDitorS: Svea Closser, Emily Mendenhall, Judith Justice, & Peter J. Brown
Policy to Practice: Ethnographic Perspectives on Global Health Systems illustrates and pro-
vides critical perspectives on how global health policy becomes practice, and how critical
scholarship can itself inform global public health policy. Policy to Practice provides a venue
for relevant work from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, history,
political science, and critical public health.
Delivering Health
Midwifery and Development
in Mexico
Lydia Z. dixon
Vanderbilt UniVersity Press
Nashville, Tennessee
© 2020 by Vanderbilt University Press
Nashville, Tennessee 37235
All rights reserved
First printing 2020
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Dixon, Lydia Zacher, 1980– author.
Title: Delivering health : midwifery and development in Mexico / Lydia
Z. Dixon.
Description: Nashville : Vanderbilt University Press, [2020] | Series:
Policy to practice | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: lCCn 2020015428 (print) | lCCn 2020015429 (ebook) | isbn
9780826501134 (paperback) | isbn 9780826501141 (hardcover) | isbn
9780826501158 (epub) | isbn 9780826501165 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Midwifery—Mexico. | Midwives—Training of—Mexico.
| Midwifery—Study and teaching—Mexico.
Classification: lCC rG963.M6 d59 2020 (print) | lCC rG963.M6
(ebook) | ddC 618.200972—dc23
lC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020015428
lC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020015429
To my daughter Juno, and to all the midwives and the mothers

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Prologue xiii
introdUCtion 1
1. Midwifery in Mexico and Beyond 35
2. Breaking Out of the “Uterus Box” 65
3. Maternal Conditions 92
4. Obstetrics in a Time of Violence 118
5. Modern Tradition 144
ConClUsion: Creating Demand and
Demanding Change 175
Notes 193
References 199
Index 213

ACkno wledgments
If the body of this book has not made it clear enough, I want to sincerely
acknowledge the incredibly hard work done by the midwives, students,
doctors, nurses, school administrators, public health workers, and activ-
ists whose struggles and achievements I have tried to make sense of here.
Along the way, I met many people working in the world of women’s health in
Mexico with starkly divergent ideas about how to improve health outcomes
and experiences; yet, despite their differences, they all reflected a passion
for the women, families, and communities they were trying to help. The
level of trust and openness extended to me was humbling, and I hope that
I have done well by these diverse actors to represent their work.
While the research for this book took years, the final writing phases
of it went relatively quickly. I want to thank the whole team at Vanderbilt
University Press, but especially my editor, Zack Gresham, for his kindness,
encouragement, and humor. His positivity kept me going during this pro-
cess. I thank my reviewers, too, who made this book stronger through their
careful readings and suggestions.
This book and the research that went into it could not have been com-
pleted without the following generous sources of funding: The Fletcher
Jones Foundation Fellowship, Dr. Dard Magnus Rossell Memorial Award,
UC Irvine Associate Dean’s Fellowship, Inter-American Foundation Disser-
tation Research Fellowship, UC Irvine Center for Organizational Research,
UC Irvine Global Health Framework Research and Travel Fellowship, UC
MEXUS, and the UC Irvine Department of Anthropology. My initial intro-
duction to professional midwifery in Mexico was funded through a Univer-
sity of Chicago Human Rights Internship Program. This book probably
would not have been finished at all without the amazingly productive UC
Irvine Steele/Burnand Anza-Borrego Desert Research Station writing retreat,
where many feverish revisions were completed, and without the support
of the Faculty Success Program (through the National Center for Faculty
[ ix ]