“Traditional Mexican Midwifery” tourism excludes indigenous “others” and threatens sustainability

Abstract

Drawn by the allure of “ancient cultures,” tourists inadvertently consume deauthenticated indigenous practices, including ethnomedical traditions such as midwifery. This is especially true in the case of “Traditional Mexican Midwifery” since stark differences exist between how midwifery practices unfold in indigenous contexts and how they are represented to global tourists. “Traditional Mexican Midwifery” tourism is a unique lens for examining some of the underlying, intersectional issues threatening “sustainability” in ethnomedical tourism. When nonindigenous individuals position themselves as representatives of “Traditional Mexican Midwifery” and indigenous midwives are excluded from profit chains, this type of tourism not only fails to meet the needs of the indigenous people it fetishizes, it actually excludes them from the equation entirely. While overt prejudice and racial discrimination of the colonial era no longer exist, neocolonial tourism in the form of “Traditional Mexican Midwifery” tourism subtly reinforces romanticized stereotypes of the indigenous “Other.” Ethnographic examples, gleaned from multi-sited research in Mexico and Brazil, demonstrate the usefulness of “Traditional Mexican Midwifery” for critiquing existing misapplications of responsible tourism and proposing more sustainable futures. Tourism can be an indigenous process (in which local residents both motivate and reap the benefits of tourism), or it can serve a neocolonial agenda (in which tourism development and profits unequitably favor transnational elites). Current forms of “Traditional Mexican Midwifery” tourism are unsustainable due to intersectional exclusion of indigenous women based on race, class, and gender. To dismantle intersectional inequality in “Traditional Mexican Midwifery,” coordinated efforts by Mexican Secretary of Health’s Traditional Medicine and Intercultural Development (TMID), Mexican Midwifery Association, and critical tourism scholars and activists are required.