Guardianas: Dispatches from the Association of Midwives Rosa Andrade

Doula and Fulbright fellow Delgado sheds light on changing childbirth conditions in rural El Salvador in this powerful debut report. In 1994, 30 midwives, many of whom delivered children in precarious and dangerous conditions without formal medical training during El Salvador’s 12-year-long civil war, banded together to form the Asociación de Parteras Rosa Andrade, which provided free care for pregnant women in rural communities. Seventeen years later, in response to a UN declaration on development that mandates certain goals be met in order for the country to receive international aid, El Salvador implemented a plan mandating all births take place in a hospital. This led to a crackdown on midwives, despite the fact that their practices look after women in rural towns who can’t afford a trip to the hospital. Delgado collects testimonies from generations of the group’s midwives, whose accounts paint a poignant picture: they criticize conditions in the country’s hospitals as rife with unnecessary procedures, describe the intricacies of their care and their deep devotion to local communities, express fear over the threat of jail if they continue to attend births, and bemoan the lack of education they have access to because of their criminalization. This raises thought-provoking questions about reproductive justice at the margins of society. (June)