Temixihuiliztli, la obstetricia nahua durante el primer siglo novohispano

Identifier:  TDX:4180

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX4180

Authors:  Ravelo Rodríguez, Irina Adalberta

Abstract:
During the 16th century, ancient Mexico experienced a historical process of colonization, with the result that women from three different cultural roots converged in this territory: Mesoamerican, Iberian and African. In this context, Nahua or temixihuiliztli midwifery underwent a process of incorporation of other ways of conceiving and caring for human birth due to interaction with other cultures and conditioned by the imposition of a new social, political and cultural order by the Spanish invaders. The subject of Obstetrics in Mexico has been approached from different disciplines, such as the history of medicine, medical anthropology, gender studies and cultural history. The vast majority of studies have agreed that during pre-Hispanic times the art of midwives enjoyed wide social recognition and after the Spanish conquest it was left 'abandoned' in the hands of 'ignorant' and 'superstitious' women. In addition, most studies agree on the idea that during the New Spain period there were no significant changes in the practice of midwifery until medical progress came on the scene, driven by “educated” men, starting in the second half of the 18th century. The issue of social recognition of indigenous obstretrics has occupied a privileged place in the attention of scholars. In contrast, the theoretical and cosmogonic knowledge of Nahua origin, as well as the techniques they possessed, have been kept under a veil of ignorance or misunderstanding, which is due, in part, to the process of colonization itself, but also to the emergence of the argument of the 'modernization' of obstetrics in the discourse of enlightened doctors of the eighteenth century, and repeated to this day. (Ravelo, 2016) This trend contributed to the loss of the historical notion of midwifery in New Spain, carried out by women of different ethnic origins, by enclosing three hundred years in a supposed 'state of degradation and abandonment' in order to cancel any type of recognition of the knowledge and practices developed by them to attend childbirth, and thus legitimize those “enlightened doctors” themselves as the new protagonists of the 'modernization of Obstetrics'. (Ravelo, 2019)