Magic, Midwives, and the Grapevine: Negotiating Women\u27s Healthcare in 18th-Century Colonial Mexico

This paper relies on careful analysis of four denunciations lodged against midwives to elucidate the various layers of conflict—be they social, ethical, or personal—shaping the relationships between midwives and their patients and midwives and their communities, as well as the ways in which the complainants negotiated women’s healthcare through these conflicts. In contrast to the modern definition of healthcare, in this context the term refers not strictly to medical treatment of patients, but also to the appropriateness of the midwife’s behavior toward her patient given their respective social statuses, and to the fluctuating balance between supernatural and scientific healing. Ultimately, this paper will argue that women in eighteenth-century Mexico were active participants in policing their own standards of healthcare through a combination of gossip, civil suits, and in desperate cases, denunciations to the Inquisition, rather than passively falling victim to the sad state of midwifery and the failure of the medical authority to regulate i