“Como Si Nada”: Enduring Violence and Diabetes among Rural Women in Southern Mexico

ABSTRACT

Rural women in Southern Mexico link their diabetes to distressful life experiences rooted in ordinary violence. While much has been written on the use that diabetes sufferers make of their morbid condition as an idiom of distress, I investigate the personal and social effects that such an idiom has on women. As I illustrate, diabetes reflects an ambivalence that helps women to speak about the unspeakable and, at the same time, reinforces their ideas of culpability, namely that they are to blame for both the gendered violence that they endure and the diabetes from which they suffer.

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SPANISH ABSTRACT

Las mujeres en el sur rural de México relacionan su diabetes a experiencias de vida estresantes, enraizadas en la violencia ordinaria. Mientras que mucho se ha escrito acerca del uso que las personas que padecen diabetes hacen de su condición mórbida cómo una expresión de sufrimiento, aquí investigo los efectos que dicha expresión tiene entre las mujeres a nivel personal y social. Como muestro en el artículo, la diabetes refleja una ambivalencia, ya que de un lado ayuda a las mujeres a hablar del innombrable y, del otro, refuerza sus ideas de culpabilidad, haciéndolas sentir responsables de la violencia de género que padecen y de su propia enfermedad.

KEYWORDS:

• Mexico
• diabetes mellitus
• embodiment
• emotions
• enduring violence
• gendered violence

PALABRAS CLAVE:

• México
• diabetes mellitus
• corporización
• emociones
• aguantar
• violencia de género

Acknowledgments

This research was done as part of my PhD in Social Anthropology. I would like to thank my PhD supervisors, Dr. Anna Waldstein and Dr. Mike Poltorak and my proof-reader Christine Streit Guerrini. Gratitude goes to Dr. Hansjörg Dilger and the Medical Anthropology Research Group at Freie Universität Berlin, who shared valuable comments on an earlier draft of this article. I also greatly appreciate the comments of the anonymous reviewers. All errors in this article are my own responsibility.

Funding

The fieldwork on which this article is based was enabled by a PhD studentship from the University of Kent, a scholarship from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Mexican Government, and a Dissertation Fieldwork Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. Writing-up of thesis material was aided by an RAI/Sutasoma Award. Time for writing this article was funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). All procedures performed in this study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the School of Anthropology Research Ethics Committee of the University of Kent and with the Ethical Guidelines for good research practice of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and the Commonwealth (ASA).

Additional information

Funding

The fieldwork on which this article is based was enabled by a PhD studentship from the University of Kent, a scholarship from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Mexican Government, and a Dissertation Fieldwork Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. Writing-up of thesis material was aided by an RAI/Sutasoma Award. Time for writing this article was funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). All procedures performed in this study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the School of Anthropology Research Ethics Committee of the University of Kent and with the Ethical Guidelines for good research practice of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and the Commonwealth (ASA).

Notes on contributors

Laura Montesi

Laura Montesi is a social anthropologist (PhD, University of Kent) specialized in the anthropology of health, illness, and medicine. She has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in rural, indigenous Mexico among peasant farmers and fishermen affected by deteriorating health conditions. Her current research interests include diabetes mellitus and chronic diseases more generally, epistemologies of healing, vulnerability and embodiment.