Brianna Vargas

The US and Mexico have significantly higher maternal mortality than other high- and upper-middle income countries, in part due to obstetric violence. Obstetric violence is a pervasive issue encompassing medical neglect, intervention misuse, unintentional harm, and abuse that disproportionately affects women of color. Drawing on psychological, medical anthropology and feminist theory, this project investigates a subset of mothers in the US-Mexico borderlands engaging in la cuarentena, embodied cultural postpartum healing practices and rituals grounded in Mesoamerican medicine, as a response to obstetric violence in biomedical settings. 1) How does ethnographic attention to la cuarentena reconfigure or challenge theories of reproductive governance in the borderlands? 2) How are notions of “biomedical” and “traditional healing” operationalized, combined or transfigured in Mexican(-American) mothers’ hybrid postpartum experiences? This comparative, bi-national ethnographic study explores these questions in San Diego, California and Tijuana, Baja California. As a practicing doula and anthropologist, I will conduct participant observation during postpartum care visits in homes and birthing centers, interviews, and participant diary methods. Thematic data analysis will trace mothers’ practices, perspectives, and psychological and affective experiences over time. By exploring these embodied practices, my project centers women’s narratives around bodily autonomy, paradigms of care, and meaning-making in postpartum.