Abstract
In this chapter, the authors analyze the relevant socio-demographic aspects of the indigenous population in Mexico and examine young women's access to sexual and reproductive health information and education in rural areas, as well as the context of discrimination and violence they face throughout their lives for being young, female, indigenous and from a low socio-economic class. The authors discuss the case of the binnizá women of Juchitán, Oaxaca, to show how they experience multiple forms of violence within their communities and resist the violence of the hegemonic medical system, which undermines indigenous knowledge and weakens the traditional medical systems that are part of the cultural and social survival of the communities.
TopBackground
In order to explore the situation of multiple and intertwined violences of indigenous women through the case of the binnizá women in Juchitán, we first approached the theoretical and methodological foundations of both the intersectional and decolonial perspectives, which allow for an understanding of the different inequalities and structural violences of indigenous women in a way that is intertwined with gender, class, sexuality, and the processes of racialization as manifestations of power and oppression, focused from the Global South.
We use an intersectional and decolonial qualitative methodology to understand the sexual education of the indigenous population in Mexico, and especially of indigenous women in Oaxaca, as a problem that requires an understanding of the situation of the historical complexity of the indigenous population in Mexico, but also of some socio-demographic data.
In this order of ideas, the article is based on the intersectional and decolonial analysis of the health system that is linked to the case study: binnizá women in Juchitán. We privilege some secondary sources, but also some interviews, to demonstrate the urgent need for the design and implementation of public policies, educational programs based on popular education more than institutional ones, and community health promotion work, with documented evidence, to enable indigenous women to reorient their sexual and reproductive health in terms of intersectional and decolonial qualitative methodology.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Hegemonic Medical Model: It is a system with a scientific, bureaucratic, undemocratic, and uniform perspective that contrasts health with illness and focuses on identifying symptoms and possible treatments. It is an ethnocentric model, claiming that only Western medical knowledge is valid; it is also androcentric and lacks a gender perspective.
Intersectionality: This is an approach that explains the phenomenon whereby two or more social categories interact, multiplying disadvantage and discrimination.
Binnizá: It is the name the Zapotecs use for themselves. It means people who come from the clouds.
Zapotec: They are the indigenous people who settled in the state of Oaxaca before the Spanish conquest and colonization.
Muxes: People who were born biologically male and do not fully identify with masculine or feminine roles.
Intercultural Approach: Recognizes the coexistence of different cultures and facilitates communication, exchange, and connection, respecting identities and defending their interrelationship.
Decoloniality: It is a perspective that analyses the origin of race as a category that emerges at a particular historical and social moment to classify the population in the Americas and to configure relations of domination on a global scale.
Velas: Community festival of the Zapotecs of the Isthmus. They are nighttime celebrations that are carried out by the mayordomías during the month of May and in Juchitán they are dedicated to the patron saint of San Vicente.