Pregnancy, Magic, and Medicine: The Many Roles of Midwives in Eighteenth-Century Mexico

Despite the vast research by historians of 18th-century Mexico on women’s and gender history, New World medical cultures, and witchcraft, little is known about the lives and practices of late colonial parteras (midwives). From this literature, parteras often marginally appear as superstitious and dangerous, or as bystanders in larger historical processes. Their practices are often dismissed as popular folk medicine. Parteras important relationships to community and the broader colonial world is often overlooked, contributing to a lack of analysis into their arts and identity. This study improves our understanding of midwives in 18th-century Mexico through qualitative archival research and analysis of five Mexican Inquisition cases where parteras appear on trial, in the cities of Zacatecas, Veracruz, Tecomatlan, Merida, and Mexico City. An examination of these cases yields crucial insight into parteras belief systems and healing traditions while complicating three assumptions about parteras power and experiences in late colonial Mexican society: 1) that they were ignorant; 2) that their main practice was assistance in childbirth; and 3) that they were treated leniently by the Inquisition. These stories of midwives, while revealing their importance, add nuance to our knowledge of how women participated in the public sphere of 18th century colonial Mexico, as parteras occupied a liminal position in society. Both respected and feared, representing a variety of social classes, races, and ethnicities, parteras performed multiple roles in their community, while simultaneously circulating and protecting women’s sacred knowledge. This study is part of a growing body of research on reproductive history in Latin America. By entreating Inquisition cases of midwives with critical race analysis and decolonial theory this project reveals alternative dynamics of power and knowledge and aids in the understanding of the development of modernity