Graduation Year

2025

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Reader 1

Lako Tongun

Reader 2

Jih-Fei Cheng

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Rights Information

Danielle E Jordan

Abstract

The Guatemalan Civil War was three-decades of genocide defined by terror and violence inflicted onto the Indigenous Maya of the country through murder, sexual violence, displacement, and cultural massacre. The impact and aftermath of this period is particularly apparent within the reproductive and maternal care of Indigenous Maya women and the effort to control their ability to reproduce and build community. This thesis examines the aftermath of the war on women’s reproduction choice. Even with the restructuring of healthcare systems coming with the signing of the peace accords, neoliberal health policies have lacked cultural regard for Mayan birth practices and the continued trauma rooted in years of genocidal violence. The result has been care which has become neither accessible nor beneficial for Indigenous communities. Reproductive justice and access to reproductive and maternal care must be understood from a culturally aware and interdisciplinary lens that examines not only what western health practices are actually accessible to Mayan women, but the cultural, political, and social implications embedded in reproduction and medicine. Better care will require medical personnel and global health programming with an understanding of the historical violence perpetrated against Mayan bodies, the ways in which that violence continues today, the importance of cultural practices, midwifery, and community in Mayan birth practices, and the impact of the movement of Mayan bodies through internal and external migration all whilst centering the voices of Indigenous peoples.

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