Guardianas

“Guardianas documents the efforts and struggles that midwives in El Salvador have been making to help women to be in control of birth-giving and refuse hospitalization. Built through the memories of women who lived and worked through the ‘counterinsurgency’ war, Guardianas is a powerful, inspiring testimony of communal solidarity and resistance. It is a book we need to read, as across the world we face a relentless war against the main conditions of our reproduction.”

– Silvia Federici, author of Caliban and the Witch and Wages Against Housework

“With no running water, in the rain, in the dark, under gunfire, by a mango tree, next to a wood fire . . . the midwives or parteras of El Salvador have persisted since before the brutal civil war, safely assisting birthing mothers. Yet since then, despite doctors and hospitals being unable to replace the parteras' compassionate community service, partería has been pushed aside by the healthcare system. This passionate project is the tribute the parteras deserve and a call to reforms that will far better serve both midwives and mothers.”

– Deirdre English, coauthor of Witches, Midwives, & Nurses: A History of Women Healers

“Guardianas is a beautiful homage to the pivotal role parteras have played throughout Central American history. Midwives are the engines of communities, engines that run on love and trust. No government or medicine school should ever think that midwives are the problem to child mortality. I hope those opposed to parteras read this book, I know they will forever change their perspectives. I needed this book to exist, I'm a different person after reading these important testimonies rooted in Indigenous wisdom.”

– Javier Zamora, New York Times bestselling author of SOLITO

“For survivors and descendants of colonial violence, what is more miraculous than the birth of a child, whose first breath holds the possibility of a future that is free? This powerful, poignant collection of testimonies by El Salvador’s midwives, who have lived through the grave horror of war, document their courageous work of ushering in new life, in a land where the people have known mass death. Their words defy the patramyths of power built on the erasure of Indigenous people. Their truth, their knowledge, and their immense love for their people comes alive in Guardianas.”

– Tanaïs, author of the Kirkus Prize-winning In Sensorium: Notes for My People

“Guardianas offers us back the listening that has been stolen from us by medicalized birth systems and alienated healthcare. In this book we get to listen to elders, warriors, guides whose love, care and support for the autonomy of people giving birth models the world we deserve.”

– Alexis Pauline Gumbs, author of Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde and M Archive: After the End of the World

“This is a book about cultural preservation and feminist labor, about safety and access, about whose histories get celebrated and whose get suppressed. These testimonies show the Salvadoran Civil War from an angle that is not often discussed. It is an homage to the women who have stepped up to serve their communities when nobody else would.”

– Christopher Soto, author of Diaries of a Terrorist and editor of Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color

“The parteras of the Asociación de Parteras Rosa Andrade are part of a fierce midwifery legacy based on defense of their peoples and the collective good of their community. This collection of dispatches and testimonios from the frontlines of war, pandemics, violences, and colonialism reminds us that traditional midwifery should be accessible to the people. It is not based on ego or a title, but on the love and care midwives hold for their peoples. My Macehual elders say that those who are designated by elders and communities as guardianas, or as guardians and protectors, carry the special charge of protecting the ancestral knowledge that has protected and guided our peoples. Like much of Indigenous midwifery throughout the Americas, this effective framework that guides APRA is eclipsed, threatened, and disciplined by the medical model that denies the wisdom of midwifery care. Much as it emerged and re-emerged out of necessity, this ancestral knowledge must be protected and respected as a presiding and useful intelligence for these times.”

– —Dr. Patrisia Gonzales, author of Red Medicine: Indigenous Rites of Birthing and Healing and Traditional Indian Medicine: American Indian Wellness