User:Adamw/Drafts/Mujeres Bachué

Mujeres Bachué is a traditional midwifery school in Bogotá, Columbia. It was founded in 2008 and its midwives have accompanied over a thousand families.

Women's health in Columbia
A 2015 study by the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that Columbia had a 43% Cesarean-section rate, higher than the Latin American average of 38.9% and much higher than the WHO's recommended 10-15% target rate. The Cesarean operation comes with risks eight times higher to mother and baby.

In 2016, Afro-Columbian traditional midwives from Columbia's Pacific region, and their ancestral methods, were named a national cultural heritage.

Beliefs
The umbilical cord should be cut at the moment it stops beating, "In this way a much calmer transit is achieved for the mother and the newborn."

Against invasive methods.

Pregnant people are free to decide how they will give birth.

Not routinely, manually checking cervical dilation.

Each component and fluid of the female body has a specific meaning.

The placenta and umbilical cord are not waste, the mother plants them in the earth to return them to their origin, in a ceremony including songs and dancing. "A being who is born and who knows where his placenta and navel are planted, knows where he belongs and will feel tied, forever, to that land."

"Science has proven that from the gestation to the first year of life it is determined how a child's health will be and his ability to deal with the world."

Obstetric violence (reported to affect women at rates as high as 70% in Argentina, for example) is linked to specific practices and systems of health care.

The feminine has power to transform and heal, believe and create, and has an important position in the structure of society.

Mujeres Bachué is working to assimilate ancestral knowledge.

Midwifery is a bridge towards women's knowledge, towards the re-empowerment of women capacity to give birth.

Orgasm and pleasure are our antennas to god.

"The Mother Bachué is abundance, generosity, education and medicine that teaches how to touch, how to dance, how to awaken the 9 orifices, to sense the physical and the spiritual body."

Members
Bitalia Romero, known as Madre Naco, is a traditional doctor and midwife of the Muisca people in Columbia, from a family of midwives. She learned from her grandmothers and has been a practicing midwife for over 50 years.

Naco caught her first baby at fifteen, and called it "my graduation".

Naco has four children, all born at home, attended by her grandmothers, mother, and sisters-in-law. She says of the births, that each time "it was five contractions, and out".

Naco decided not to retire in the early 2010s, and instead to "go out with honors".

Ramiro Romero Romero is a traditional doctor and midwife of the Muisca people in Columbia, from a family of midwives including his grandmothers, his mother Madre Naco, and his sisters-in-law.

Born c. 1980, the youngest of four brothers. Romero was introduced to midwifery and traditional medicine since the age of 8, and at 15 was requested by mothers to attend their births.

Romero worked as a doctor and midwife in the Andes, for various insurgent groups. He found his ancestral community in Cota-Cundinamarca at the age of 24, where he deepened his study of traditional medicine.

Member of:


 * Board of Directors of Mujeres Bachué
 * Red Nacional de Parteras Tradicionales
 * Una Partería Network
 * Council of Muisqua Elders
 * Columbian Observatory against Obstetric Violence

Romero believes that masculine and feminine roles are societal constructs, and in reconciling the two it becomes clear that there is not a binary division.

Romero would like to see indigenous and Afro-Columbian midwives should be included in the Humanized Birth Law project taking place in his country.

Sara Milena Alayón is a geographer and the legal representative of Mujeres Bachué.

Elisa Terren is the communications and international pedagogy coordinator at Mujeres Bachué.

Cristina Serra is the media and platform coordinator at Mujeres Bachué.