Experiences of indigenous women about their birth process: giving birth outside their territory

Abstract

In this paper we address the following question-problem: Where do the indigenous women of the Calchaquí Valley in the province of Tucumán, Argentina, stop? The response to this was the absence of a public service specialized in deliveries and births, therefore, women give birth outside their territory. This means for them outside of their socio-affective and community networks. This article is constituted as a first approach to the issue and seeks to problematize the fact from recovering testimonies of births from the women themselves. The methodology used was qualitative, using the in-depth interview as a data collection technique. We appeal to the intersectional perspective as an analysis of this problematic situation, since it is not enough with a gender reading, but also, it is necessary to attend to conditions of social class and ethnicity. We bet on a cross between decolonial thought and the gender perspective as a way of understanding the multiple oppressions that indigenous women experience in their bodies-territories. This is how this work addressed the reality of indigenous women in the process of childbirth from their own narratives and manifested the different types of violence that they experience at the time of giving birth outside their territory.