Abstract
The purpose of A National Portrait is to present the elements needed to explore the overarching question this book addresses: How did the Mexican system of assisted reproduction emerge and develop? This chapter begins with an outline of the Mexican system of assisted reproduction; it then situates the system’s emergence within a particular historical context where puericulture was the regime of reproduction, and within the Mexican healthcare system. This chapter also situates the book within the dual context of science and technology studies and reproduction studies and offers an overview of the methodology employed during this ten-year research project. All these elements help contextualise the stories in this book.
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Notes
- 1.
However, his was not the only sort of portrait that inspired this work. I would also like to acknowledge and recommend the work of Chris Jordan (Portraits of global mass culture), Gina Glover (Art in ART), and Helen Chadwick. Their work has been a point of departure, a source of reflection, and interlocutor throughout my years as a professor and a researcher.
- 2.
Appendix has a list and description of each procedure.
- 3.
These are a few books that have brought together the work of a group of scholars involved in the study of reproduction in many different geographies. This list does not aim at being exhaustive; it is simply inspirational: McNeil, Varcoe, and Yearly (1990), Faye, Ginsburg, and Rapp (1995), Inhorn and Balen (2002), Unnithan-Kumar (2004), Lock and Kaufert (2006), and Straw, Vargas, Viera Cherro, and Taminini (2016).
- 4.
It is worth reflecting on how reading these national portraits within a global contexts illuminates the biases of how the notion of “the global” is made. Take for example the global rankings of the number of clinics, cycles, or babies born as a result of IVF. These rankings are constructed using data generated either nationally or regionally; however, the logic behind these registries is not the same everywhere. For example, the Latin American Registry (RedLARA), in 2018 it evaluated Mexico’s performance based on the information given by 32 of the approximately 100 active clinics. Locally, it has been only recently that a governmental body (COFEPRIS) began certifying laboratories (not clinics as a whole). Hence, the numbers used to locate Mexico within a global ranking are very limited; they do not take into account all the clinics, cycles, procedures, or children born as a result of assisted reproduction practices.
- 5.
My interest in the system’s infrastructure was sparked by several ethnographic moments. For example, when I heard a team of AR specialists wondering if the low success rates they were having during that particular cycle could be due to problems with the handling of the culture medium at the customs agency. Then, when at a conference, I listened to physicians talking about how the differences in healthcare systems, cultures, and medical practices between the USA, Europe, and Mexico, explained the different ways in which assisted reproduction was practised in each context, and then again when I saw patients sharing experiences and suggestions about how and where to get hold of certain drugs that were difficult to access. My interest in the historical development of the community came from wanting to explore how the founders of the medical association that today gathers the physicians practising assisted reproduction, who were actually against artificial insemination, changed their minds to accept all sorts of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs)?
- 6.
Having a non-Mexican and non-Spanish speaking audience in mind meant I had to make particular decisions in terms of the narrative and structure of this book. How often did I have to remind the reader that what I was saying pertained to Mexico? Having to do so was something I felt was necessary very often, but then wondered how often other authors do this, particularly when their research site is the USA. Likewise, where should the original (i.e. in Spanish) name of a book, journal, association, institution, organisation, or governmental body go and where the translation (into English)? Should I say, for example, Secretaría de Salud (Ministry of Health) or the other way around, Ministry of Health (Secretaría de Salud)? Should I carry out the entire narrative doing this or just introduce the name in Spanish once and then use the English version? What about translations of quotes, should I offer the original version as well as the translation? Does any of this matter? I believe it does matter, both in political and aesthetic terms, but I am not sure which is the answer or solution to these questions or problems. I decided, not entirely convinced though, that I was going to place the reader as the priority, thus make the narrative and structure as friendly as possible. So, this is how the book is written: I introduce the name in Spanish first (and offer the English translation in parenthesis, with the Spanish acronym when given the case) but then use the English name or Spanish acronym throughout the book. I have translated all quotes that were originally in Spanish myself and only offer the original quotes upon request or downloadable from the electronic version. As I said, I am not entirely sure if this is the best option this is why I wanted to offer this reflection as a way to contribute to the discussion regarding the politics of knowledge production (see, e.g., Pérez-Bustos, 2017; Rodriguez Medina, 2019).
- 7.
Known as Twilight sleep.
- 8.
This contrasts with the projects held by the Church and the civil organisations which were doing charity work prior to the Revolution. Those had mostly focused on the homeless, the mentally ill, and the orphans. However, these ideals also fed other sorts of policies and projects put forth during this period, some of which received money from abroad. For example, President Álvaro Obregón (1920–1924) implemented a series of campaigns to improve the sanitation and hygiene of the major cities and ports, some of these were sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation.
- 9.
This law, written by the Congreso Constituyente (the group of people who wrote the constitution lead by President Venustiano Carranza), sought to disentangle marriage from religion and, by establishing the possibility of divorce, they hoped that more people would marry. This in turn would help reduce the number of illegitimate children and it would help protect women from abusive situations, since it granted them more rights (e.g. the husband is no longer the wife’s legal guardian and representative although he still needs to grant her permission to work, study, or establish her own business) (Adame Goddard, 2004). It is worth noting that Benito Juarez had already passed the Ley de Matrimonio Civil (the Civil Marriage Act) in 1859, which stipulated that marriage was a civil contract making religious marriages not legal.
- 10.
One way to promote this “conscious maternity” was through a book specifically targeted to women, called Doña Eugenesia y Otros Personajes. It was a compilation of stories, short dialogues, and poems, created by students (physicians and nurses) of the School of Health and Hygiene, based on their fieldwork experience, and edited by their professor Dr. Manuel González Riviera. Among the conditions addressed in this compilation were: gonorrhea, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, and malaria (O’Hara, 1944). This book can be considered as a precursor of the telenovelas (soap operas) which, as I will detail in further chapters, were used during the family planning campaigns in the 1970s and 1980s, and then in the 2000s as a way of making assisted reproduction usable.
- 11.
This Hygiene Centre was established where the Casa de Salud del Periodista was located, a charity healthcare facility founded, in 1921, by Félix Flugencio Palavicini, a topographic engineer, a professor, a journalist, and a politician. Flugencio Palavicini participated in the writing of the 1917 Constitution (rumours say he promoted the divorce law since he himself wanted to divorce), he supported women’s right to vote, he founded two newspapers (El Precursor and El Universal), and, as an active eugenicists with a particular interest in puericulture, he organised, financed, and promoted, the First National Conference on Children (2–9 January 1921). At this event, Isidro Espinosa de los Reyes presented his paper “Apuntes sobre puericultura intrauterina” (Notes on in-uterus puericulture). In 1952, after Espinosa de los Reyes had passed away, this Hygiene Centre was renamed to honour its founder, becoming the Casa de Maternidad de las Lomas de Chapultepec Isidro Espinosa de los Reyes.
- 12.
Due to problems with one of their gods, Malinalxochitl, the Mexica-Aztecs people had to leave their original land and head south. Some of their other gods assured them they would find a fertile land where they would be able to build a great city. For years, they travelled in search of such a place, until they arrived to a beautiful valley surrounded by mountains and two volcanos, a lake dotted with islands, and an extremely fertile land which gave up to four crops a year. The sign they had been waiting for made its appearance: a majestic eagle sitting on top a tenochtli (a green plant with red flowers and a sweet watery fruit, the Nopal), eating a serpent. That would be their new home; that would be the great city of Tenochtitlán.
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González-Santos, S.P. (2020). A National Portrait. In: A Portrait of Assisted Reproduction in Mexico. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23041-8_1
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