Reconquista: Obstetric Violence and Underreporting of Obstetric Complications in Yucatán and Quintana Roo

Abstract

By providing ethnographic examples of some of the ways that obstetric violence is manifested during labor, birth, and the postpartum period, this chapter explores the context and practice of obstetric violence in Quintana Roo and Yucatán and its relationship to racism and broader patterns of violence and marginalization of women. It investigates the effect of medical interventions during birth and postpartum within the context of rural and urban Maya life and highlights the ways in which routinized high-intervention births may lead to increased complications and postpartum infections, given the realities of life for many in Quintana Roo and Yucatán. This chapter also examines the role of documentation and record-keeping as a means of obscuring the practice of obstetric violence and how this may contribute to skewed and inaccurate maternal and infant mortality rates.