Mbya grandmothers, mothers and granddaughters

Abstract

The information in this chapter is the result of a research carried out between 2001 and 2005 on Mbya Guarani communities in the province of Misiones (Argentina) focused on the study of health – illness processes in the first stages of the life cycle (Remorini, 2008). Based on that, the aim of this chapter is to analyse both the discourse and practices of women of different ages about experiences such as pregnancy, delivery, post-partum and child rearing. In order to do so, our study will be based on the material resulting from the combined and complemented application of different qualitative techniques: observation of the “day by day” (Lewis, 1985), genealogies and semistructured interviews. The use of observational and discoursive sources allowed information triangulation an enabled us to contrast the hypotheses emerging throughout the research. Working with women belonging to different generations allowed us to gain access to the way they speak about changes in their knowledge and practices related to pregnancy and delivery, as well as health- illness processes during these stages of their life cycle, within the context of transformations in the Mbya way of life. In this article, we consider three cases, based on the information obtained from interviewing three women of different ages as well as the observation of their everyday activities. By means of this selection we are attempting to show the diversity of life courses inside the Mbya society, where the different perspectives, customs, projects and decision making criteria can be seen. This allows us to transcend the homogeneous and static way of seeing Mbya women which appeared in classical literature about this ethnic group, so as to perform analyses focused on these women’s everyday life, taking into account the numerous contexts they take part in at present. We will particularly focus on health conditions, their oportunities to accessing services for health, and also on women’s views on them. This paper aims at contributing with a different outlook on everyday life and expectations of these indigenous women about both their children’s and their own health care, within a context of deep ecological, economic, political and cultural changes.