In Mexico these days, the majority of babies are born in hospitals. That hasn't helped reduce the number of maternal deaths, though. So health officials are re-making the centuries-old tradition of midwifery. They are betting a new kind of midwife, one trained in a clinical setting, can offer a solution.
At a newly opened school in southern Mexico, young women sit up straight in tiny desks and answer their teacher's questions in chorus. Their round brown faces and thick black hair are typical of this mostly indigenous region in the state of Guerrero. Many are the daughters, granddaughters or nieces of traditional midwives.
They are also the freshman class of the country's first public midwifery school.
America Madrid Simon is a slightly shy 21-year-old who sits near the back of the class. "When I first told people I was studying midwifery, they laughed at me," she says. "They said, 'That's for grandmothers.' "
As Mexico's public health system has pushed more and more women to give birth in hospitals, it has created a stigma that midwifery is old-fashioned and has no place in modern medicine. Traditional midwives attend fewer and fewer births. But that strategy hasn't necessarily worked out for the best.
Madrid Simon says her village is an hour and a half by foot from the nearest road. There's a small clinic, she says, but no nurse or doctor.
The village of Tlaquiltzingo is tucked in the mountains of Guerrero. Here, bony mutts, goats and piglets freely roam the dirt paths. People work in the fields and speak Nahuatl, their native tongue.
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