Racial i(nter)dentification: The racialization of maternal health through the Oportunidades program and in government clinics in México

https://doi.org/10.18294/sc.2017.1114

Published 10 October 2017 Open Access


Rosalynn Adeline Vega PhD in Medical Anthropology. Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Texas Río Grande Valley, USA. image/svg+xml



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Keywords:

Race, Indigenous Health Services, Maternal Health, Traditional Birth Attendant, Mexico

Abstract


Using an ethnographic approach, this article examines the role of racialization in health-disease-care processes specifically within the realm of maternal health. It considers the experiences of health care administrators and providers, indigenous midwives and mothers, and recipients of conditional cash transfers through the Oportunidades program in Mexico. By detailing the delivery of trainings of the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) [Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social] for indigenous midwives and Oportunidades workshops to indigenous stipend recipients, the article critiques the deployment of “interculturality” in ways that inadvertently re-inscribe inequality. The concept of racial i(nter)dentification is offered as a way of understanding processes of racialization that reinforce discrimination without explicitly referencing race. Racial i(nter)dentification is a tool for analyzing the multiple variables contributing to the immediate mental calculus that occurs during quotidian encounters of difference, which in turn structures how individuals interact during medical encounters. The article demonstrates how unequal sociohistorical and political conditions and differential access to economic resources become determinants of health.

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