Injustice in Paradise by Stephanie Barrera

My first impression of Puerto Escondido was the heat. Next was the beautiful beaches. Then the warm water of the ocean that felt like I was entering a heated jacuzzi. We stayed at the Hotel Quinta Carizalillo which was a nice air conditioned hotel where most rooms were occupied by the UC Davis students. We immediately fled to the beach upon arrival and walked around the town to the center to check out stores and the mercado. On the way we found a fresh coconut for 15 pesos, less than 1USD! They cut it open and put a straw in do we can drink the coconut water. It was the best coconut water I have ever had! I felt like I was in paradise, I wondered why anyone wouldn’t want to stay here for longer than their vacation time.

Little did I know that the paradise I have quickly learned to love is a place where social injustice thrives. After our one day of paradise we received a lecture by Dra. Isabel, a local doctor from Puerto Escondido. She explained to us that the rate of maternal mortality and teenage pregnancy is very high in the Coastal region of Oaxaca. Unfortunately, most of the women living in the Coastal region of Oaxaca live in poverty and lack access to medical facilities. This is one of the primary reasons while maternal mortality is so high! Dra. Isabel mentions that there is only one hospital in the state of Oaxaca that can treat low-income communities and that hospital is in the capital city, Oaxaca de Juarez. Oaxaca de Juarez is about  a 7 hour drive from Puerto Escondido and most families do not own a car or do not have reliable transportation in getting to the medical facilities. By the time the expecting mother and the person caring for her pregnancy, whether it be a partera or a medical professional, realize their is a medical emergency that needs care from a hospital, the condition is fatal without immediate attention.

In order to try and reduce the numbers of maternal deaths in Puerto Escondido, my peers and eye went into public middle schools and gave a talk on sex education, focusing on consent, condom use, contraceptives and the risk of teenage pregnancy. I think many times, sexually active youths do not think that pregnancy can occur in someone who is so young, or on the first time. I don’t think that they know how much of a risk it is for a women under the age of 20 to be pregnant. Hopefully, through our skits, we were able to demystify so of these beliefs and explain to young women that their safety is at risk when they become pregnant at an age when the body is not ready to handle such an extraneous process.

Before we went into the middle schools, the primary nurse Teresa gave us a partera mock training. I learned a number of important things in this training. I learned most pregnant women in the Coastal region of Oaxaca seek the care of a partera instead of a health care professional for a couple of reasons. One of them is being that parteras are leaders in their communities and often give more moral and spiritual support to an expecting mother than a healthcare professional. Another reason is that although expecting mothers have to still travel a ways to see a partera, it is often closer to visit a partera than a medical facility. 

Upon getting a new mother seeking care, a partera will preform an interview where the partera, or partero, will asses whether or not the pregnancy posed any risks. The interview consisted of the following questions: name, age, where are they traveling from, education level, single or still with the father, how many previous pregnancies, if any complications arose if previous pregnancies, cesarian or natural birth and how long along has it been since her last pregnancies. If the woman is younger than 20 years old or older than 35 years old, has low education, is a single mother, had complications in her last pregnancy or has a cesarian birth, than the mother is considered to have a high risk pregnancy and the partera is not allowed to care for her pregnancy and will send them off to the nearest medical unit. This is an effort to reduce maternal deaths. However there has been cases were a woman seeking care from a partera is healthy throughout the pregnancy  but develops complications during the birth and because the partera can not perform surgery or put injections of any sort, the woman is likely to lose her life.

After the mock training, we went onto the field to learn first hand from parteras on what it is that they do and what types of herbs and teas they use and for what conditions. We saw two parteras. The first is the oldest parteras in town who is passing down her wisdom to her daughter who gave us the talk. The second was a women who was caring for a pregnant women first visit to her. The pregnant women also brought her a couple month old baby which I took care of while she was getting treated by the partera.  Through this interaction, we saw first hand how questions are asked and how an examination is performed.