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Full-Text Articles in Anthropology
Mexican Money Laundering In The United States: Analysis And Proposals For Reform, Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, Charles Lewis, William R. Yaworsky
Mexican Money Laundering In The United States: Analysis And Proposals For Reform, Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, Charles Lewis, William R. Yaworsky
Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations
This article explains some of the mechanisms through which corruption by high-level Mexican politicians and other organized crime members is facilitated in the United States through money laundering operations. The analysis is based on information contained in court records related to key money laundering cases, as well as in news articles and reports from law enforcement agencies. These materials highlight the interrelationships among U.S. drug use, cartel activities in Mexico, human rights abuses, Mexican political corruption, and money laundering in the United States. This work demonstrates the pervasive use of legitimate businesses and fronts in the United States as a …
Operating At The Edge Of Il/Legality: Systemic Corruption In Mexican Health Care, Rosalynn A. Vega, A. Paulo Maya
Operating At The Edge Of Il/Legality: Systemic Corruption In Mexican Health Care, Rosalynn A. Vega, A. Paulo Maya
Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations
Through a series of ethnographic vignettes, this article examines how providers contribute to corruption in Mexican health care, how providers are themselves subjected to logics of corruption, and the relationship between patients’ and providers’ vulnerability within contexts of resource scarcity. Doctors, faced with insecure salaries due to nonpayment of wages by the government, collude with hospital staff to sell state drugs on the black market. Meanwhile, vulnerable patients are used as teaching opportunities for private school students—with horrifying, and fatal, effects. Palancas (“favors” granted by colleagues and higher-ups to individuals with less authority) and exclusive treatment of recomendados (patients given …
“Traditional Mexican Midwifery” Tourism Excludes Indigenous “Others” And Threatens Sustainability, Rosalynn A. Vega
“Traditional Mexican Midwifery” Tourism Excludes Indigenous “Others” And Threatens Sustainability, Rosalynn A. Vega
Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations
Drawn by the allure of “ancient cultures,” tourists inadvertently consume deauthenticated indigenous practices, including ethnomedical traditions such as midwifery. This is especially true in the case of “Traditional Mexican Midwifery” since stark differences exist between how midwifery practices unfold in indigenous contexts and how they are represented to global tourists. “Traditional Mexican Midwifery” tourism is a unique lens for examining some of the underlying, intersectional issues threatening “sustainability” in ethnomedical tourism. When nonindigenous individuals position themselves as representatives of “Traditional Mexican Midwifery” and indigenous midwives are excluded from profit chains, this type of tourism not only fails to meet the …
Converging Space And Producing Place: Social Inequalities And Birth Across Mexico, Rosalynn A. Vega
Converging Space And Producing Place: Social Inequalities And Birth Across Mexico, Rosalynn A. Vega
Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations
I combine ethnographic research of the professional midwifery model in Mexico with concepts gleaned from an interdisciplinary literature in order to illustrate how different types of spaces converge in the process of place-making. From October 2010 to November 2013, I conducted twenty-eight months of research, interviewing employees of government bureaus and public health programs, observing how the professional midwifery model unfolds in distinct contexts, performing interviews and participant-observation with casa midwifery students/alumni, and “shadowing” professional midwives and obstetricians as they engage with pregnant women in a hospital setting. Drawing from ethnographic examples, this article points to five different types of …
Racial I(Nter)Dentification: The Racialization Of Maternal Health Through The Oportunidades Program And In Government Clinics In México, Rosalynn A. Vega
Racial I(Nter)Dentification: The Racialization Of Maternal Health Through The Oportunidades Program And In Government Clinics In México, Rosalynn A. Vega
Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations
Using an ethnographic approach, this article examines the role of racialization in health-disease-care processes specifically within the realm of maternal health. It considers the experiences of health care administrators and providers, indigenous midwives and mothers, and recipients of conditional cash transfers through the Oportunidades program in Mexico. By detailing the delivery of trainings of the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) [Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social ] for indigenous midwives and Oportunidades workshops to indigenous stipend recipients, the article critiques the deployment of “interculturality” in ways that inadvertently re-inscribe inequality. The concept of racial i(nter)dentification is offered as a way of …
Commodifying Indigeneity: How The Humanization Of Birth Reinforces Racialized Inequality In Mexico, Rosalynn A. Vega
Commodifying Indigeneity: How The Humanization Of Birth Reinforces Racialized Inequality In Mexico, Rosalynn A. Vega
Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations
This article examines the humanized birth movement in Mexico and analyzes how the remaking of tradition—the return to traditional birthing arts (home birth, midwife‐assisted birth, natural birth)—inadvertently reinscribes racial hierarchies. The great irony of the humanized birth movement lies in parents’ perspective of themselves as critics of late capitalism. All the while, their very rejection of consumerism bolsters ongoing commodification of indigenous culture and collapses indigeneity, nature, and tradition onto one another. While the movement is quickly spreading across Mexico, indigenous women and their traditional midwives are largely excluded from the emerging humanized birth community. Through ethnographic examples, the article …
Hacia La Justicia Sociocomunicativa: Trabajo De Campo Multi-Situado, Teoría Transnacional E Hiper-Auto-Reflexividad, Rosalynn A. Vega
Hacia La Justicia Sociocomunicativa: Trabajo De Campo Multi-Situado, Teoría Transnacional E Hiper-Auto-Reflexividad, Rosalynn A. Vega
Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations
En este escrito, reconozco que las narrativas del padecer se despliegan dentro de ámbitos discursivos y ofrezco varios métodos para avanzar hacia la justicia sociocomunicativa. Primero, sugiero llevar a cabo el trabajo de campo “multi-situado” y que este método etnográfico sea respaldado por teoría multisituada. Enfatizo la importancia de la hiper-autoreflexividad al intentar disminuir las inequidades estructurales que puedan influir al antropólogo en su obtención de narrativas del padecer y su interpretación semiótica de ellas. Analizo unas narrativas breves que surgieron de mi trabajo de campo sobre el parto humanizado en México para demostrar cómo el biopoder condiciona lo que …
Mexican Justice: Codified Law, Patronage, And The Regulation Of Social Affairs In Guerrero, Mexico, Chris Kyle, William Yaworsky
Mexican Justice: Codified Law, Patronage, And The Regulation Of Social Affairs In Guerrero, Mexico, Chris Kyle, William Yaworsky
Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations
Social life in Mexico has long been regulated not by codified jural rules and the institutions of the state but by means of hierarchically structured patronage networks. This article illustrates the pervasiveness of patronage relationships by looking at the activities of a human rights advocacy organization operating in Chilapa, Guerrero. Though ostensibly committed to working through the jural rules and the institutions of the state, practical reality commonly intrudes and forces the organization to activate patronage ties in order to assist their clients. The article also explores the implications of patronage relationships for ongoing debates about the presumed irreconcilability of …