Structural Violence: An Important Factor of Maternal Mortality Among Indigenous Women in Chiapas, Mexico

Introduction: The Cultural Politics of Reproduction in Latin America

“…In the last few decades, staggered privatisation of healthcare provision in general has resulted in uneven access to reproductive healthcare in many Latin American countries, stratifying birth outcomes along the lines of race, class, geography and citizenship. Whereas birth outcomes have improved across populations as a whole, studies in countries such as Mexico show that indigenous women are twice as likely to die in childbirth than the national average (El Kotni, 2018). Human rights violations in the region, such as those enacted through programmes of systematic coerced sterilisation, have contributed to the transformation of healthcare centres into sites of gendered and racialised violence and meant that some communities – often indigenous – seek alternative practices that fall outside of the Clinic (Foucault, 2003) and are exposed to a higher risk of disease and death (Rose, 2007).…”