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Mayan Women and the Politics of Health.
In this article I examine the relation between the politics of reproduction and Mayan women within the social structure of the Guatemalan nation-state. In particular, the focus is on the abortion debate as engaged in the Church, Guatemalan ladina feminists, and a popular organization of Mayan women. (While the term "ladino" refers to the mixed-blood Guatemalan population, the term "Maya" designate the indigenous people who, in Guatemala, constitute a numerical majority. It is necessary to clarify that in spite of the unifying term "Maya," indigenous people of Guatemala should not be identified as a homogeneous entity, but rather as the representatives of a plurality of traditions, languages, and cultures of Mayan origin.) In 1993, the proposed law entitled, "Population and Development," was rejected because it was perceived as legalizing abortion. The misreading of this law, mistakenly referred to at the time as "the abortion law," was in part a reaction to the acceptance by the Guatemalan government in January 1993 of $7.5 million from the US Agency of International Development (USAID) in support of the Guatemalan Association of Surgical Voluntary Birth Control program. This episode triggered many anxieties among those who feared that the decree would implement the legal practice of abortion.
The political positions different groups took towards the use of the female body during this debate is revealing of Guatemalan power relations. Advocating the sacred values of the family, the Catholic Church, as the more conservative sector of public opinion, opposed the law. Rosalina Tuyuc, Director of the National Council of Guatemalan Widows (CONAVIGUA), representing indigenous women's rights, opposed the law's threat to Mayan identity as maintained through free procreation. Ladina feminists advocated the attitudes of the health discourse which included the reshaping of traditional Mayan concepts of reproduction and patterns of infant care. The perception of ladino feminist idegoloy claims a Guatemalan women's identity through the distance taken from native women and their bodies. The main appeal to Mayan women to change their practices of procreation lies in the rationale that family planning empowers women, thus integrating them into the politics of the Guatemalan nation-state as subjects. The core of this ideology is that the dominant sector of society perceives the practices of indigenous women...