By Ricardo Ibarra

GUADALAJARA, Mexico – Bertha Martinez Sebastian, 16, combines going to school with her work as a traditional midwife in an isolated village in the southeastern Mexican state of Oaxaca, where she has assisted at more than 40 births.

A Mixe Indian, Bertha Martinez told Efe in an interview that her career as a midwife began at the age of 14 in her native town of Santa Maria Alotepec, which is four hours by road from the nearest public hospital.

Bertha said that her youth has made some women not completely trust her, but added that more and more are putting their deliveries in her hands, in particular women “between 19 and 32.”

“The first time I assisted at a birth, when I was 14, I delivered a baby boy. Since it was my first delivery I felt afraid at first, but when the baby was born it was very beautiful,” the young midwife said.

In Mexico, the number of traditional midwives is declining, though there are places, particularly in the country’s Indian and rural areas, where women to this day practice the techniques of natural medicine with the aid of a herbolarium, as Bertha Martinez does.

Normally it is the mother or grandmother who passes this practice on to her descendants, but there are some who “dream” that they will be midwives and say they have learned how to do it through their dreams, she said.

In her case, she acquired the necessary skills through organizations that promote natural methods such as Nueve Lunas, which has a training program for midwives called “Luna Llena” (Full Moon).

Bertha is a member of Mexico’s Sexual and Reproductive Rights Network, and since becoming a midwife has also attended international conferences and training courses in the neighboring states of Morelos and Chiapas.

Here in the western metropolis of Guadalajara she recently learned acupuncture techniques.

Bertha combines her work as a midwife with high school studies and plans to continue until she becomes a professional doctor, though her immediate goal is to study natural medicine and the complete functions of the human body.

Up to now, one of her priorities has been to use and promote medicinal plants as a means of healing the sick.

“I like to say that it’s always better with medicinal plants because they don’t contain all those chemical compounds, they’re something natural that our ancestors knew about and they’re an inheritance we ought to make use of,” she said.

Bertha’s house is also her office. There she gives advice and administers treatments to those who come because they are pregnant or for some ailment.

She also makes house calls for her patients, since a pregnant woman in an Indian settlement prefers to give birth at home surrounded by her family.

For Bertha Martinez, being a teenage midwife isn’t easy, especially since she is trying to recover the knowledge of herbolaria that the natives of this land knew in detail, but which to a great extent has been lost. EFE