Wet Nursing of Jocotenango in Late 18th Century: Production of Indian

Women’s Bodies

Marco Chivalán Carrillo

Abstract

It is widely accepted that wet nursing practice is associated with waged

breastfeeding; however, this practice could be more complex when it takes

place in a colonial space; for instance, in the town of Jocotenango, Guatemala.

In order to show this complexity, this study revised historical source that

ratifies Indian women was extracted and forcibly used as wet nurses. A

feminist approach of power relationship was useful to understand the bodies’

uses in a colonial order. It revealed that the production of Indian women bodies

could also connect to gendered bodies’ production. In addition, it showed that

the use of Indian women as wet nurses does not fit into waged breastfeeding

studies. It also determined that the source used is not enough to arrive at a

complete understanding of this phenomenon. Expanding the vision of the

production of bodies in the Guatemalan colonial space and expanding the

search for historical sources are recommended.

Keywords: waged breastfeeding; Indian women; wet nurses; feminism;

power’s relationship.
Introduction

Wet nursing has historical importance in children’s survival. The history has

been documented in that of abandoned infants, women’s labor and/or waged

breastfeeding studies (Foldes, 1998). Researchers have crafted a variety of

approaches in Europe, the United States and Latin America. The case of wet

nursing in the United States was studied by Golden (1996) through a social

history method. Other studies done in Spain, in addition to the above

approaches, were associated with social mobility and milk kinship (Chacón,

2014; Bolufer, 1992; Soler, 2011).

In Guatemala, the country where this current study takes place, historians have

lectured the case of wet nursing of Jocotenango with a historical approach, the

method used in works developed by Webre (2001) and by Álvarez (1996). The

importance of Webre’s study lies in addressing this case from a gendered

perspective, but also gives importance to medical science. In contrast,

Álvarez’s study describes only the role played by each agent involved in the

controversy of using wet nursing in Guatemala. Thus, these studies followed

more a historical method rather than a bodies’ production one.

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The author of this study revised two files of documents found in the Archivo

General de Centroamérica (AGCA). These files have proven essential for the

study as they contain the controversy about Indian women used as wet nurses.

It has been assumed that these sources have not been enough to face the

complex phenomenon of using Indian women; however, they have been

important in developing an initial approach –as an entrance in an ethnographic

way– to the wet nursing phenomenon.

Equipped with this panorama, the importance of the present study and its

approach has consisted in focusing on the political administration of women's

bodies and their production and distribution as servants. This approach has

been nurtured by Foucault’s biopolitical concept (Foucault, 1995). According

to Hunt, biopolitics has been understood as “a form of politics that addresses

‘life’ as its most basic concern (2016: 231)”. Foucault has argued that there is

a particular moment where the power of give dead –in a sovereign way– is

displaced by an administration of bodies’ power, shifting attention onto life,

population and health of humans as species (1995: 169). From this perspective,

the importance of wet nursing in Creole Guatemalan families has lied in the

reproduction of life and the accumulation of it in affective work, where Indian

women have developed an important accumulation not only in production, but

3
also, and more broadly, in reproduction. Therefore, this study focusses on

rewriting the history of wet nursing from a biopolitical lens.

The aim of this study is to show that Indians women from Guatemala

developed an interesting role in care and affective labor (Federici: 2010; 2011),

according to bodies’ administration and distribution. It has put attention on the

experience of Indian women facing the experience of being used as wet nurses.

To address this problem, the following question was useful: Why did the

practice of using Indian women continue until 1797 if it was forbid to use

them? Here, it is propitious reminding that King Felipe III emitted a Royal

Decree in 1609 stipulating that Indian women should not leave their village to

bring up a Spanish child while having their own alive1

This paper summarizes a general review of studies done in Europe, U. S. and

Guatemala. It describes problems with the method, a discussion of the

phenomenon’s gap, and it arrives at a conclusion and recommendation.

Ultimately, it suggests that it’s important to develop a study to address the

problem in a broad and profound way. It recommends collecting additional

1
See Law 13, Title 17, Vol. 6. Recopilación de las leyes de los reynos de las indias. Madrid:
Julián de Paredes, 1681.

4
sources, including searching for private archives to problematize the issue of

body production in the late colonial period in Guatemalan society.

Material and Method

It has been impossible to find another case of this kind registered in the

archives on colonial Guatemala; thus, this is a case study. The sources revised

consist of two files of edicts that constitute a controversy registered from 1797

to 1799 about the use of 21 Indian women used as wet nurses. These files are

located in AGCA in Guatemala City.

The method used was a mixed one. It combined social and gender history, but

also analytic of power and feminist methodology. Foucault’s biopolitical

concept was basic to understand the production and distribution bodies.

Meanwhile, feminist methodology was a way to address power relationship

that performed women bodies. It approached the experience of Indian women

analyzing the normative way their bodies were produced. Normative was

assumed, in Butler's words, as a type of gender ideals (2007: 25). However, it

has followed a feminist method in which the selection of data centered on

women and the method of analyzing data came from analytical power,

subjectivity and the production and administration of bodies, especially that of

5
women's bodies. It used perspectivism as a feminist epistemology to theorize

the experience of Indian women, which stresses permanence of a partial vision

and situated knowledge as a form of strong objectivity (Haraway, 1995;

Harding, 1987). Thus, it expected recreating a history of Indian women,

particularly focused on the importance of life production and reproduction, and

using their bodies as a resource.

The use of feminist methodology invites reflection on the researcher's

subjectivity. As Harding argued, the selection of the object has an ethic and

political importance; it’s not neutral. At the same time, the theorization of the

object invites one to consider the ethical and political position of the researcher.

Both method and analysis must transform a researcher’s life. This relationship

between the method and the author also must transform and became another.

Thus, it could be possible to establish, as Haraway has done so: “to be one is

always to become with many” (2008: 4). A comparative history approach was

also necessary to analyze the same phenomenon in a variety of times and

spaces. Likewise, it took care to deal with extrapolation and anachronism

problems.

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Results and discussion

The first result discovered was that of Indian women extraction. This is

elemental to analyze the production of bodies in the colonial period. Indians

were treated like slaves, although they did not have slave’s condition. They

were treated as a resource of creole families. Therefore, Indian women

extraction revealed an historical appropriation of Indian women’s bodies.

The source cited a study about women used as wet nurses in Nueva Guatemala

de la Asunción, crafted by Diego de Casanga, Jocotenango’s governor. In the

study, one can observe that there were 21 Indian women used as wet nurses in

some Creole families. These women forcibly left 28 children in their town.

Eight of the children died while their mothers were breastfeeding Creole

children2. This observation is important in revealing that the administration of

Creole children's lives implies slowly consenting to Indian children’s death.

Indeed, the source showed the role of physicians in confirming the importance

of using wet nurses for feeding Creole children. They recommended the use of

wet nurses for the sake of the health of the Creole children. Physicians did not

2
AGCA, A1, leg. 254, exp. 3060, p. 13. Report crafted by Diego Casanga about Indian women
used as wet nurses in Guatemala City. Jocotenango, Guatemala, September 30, 1797.

7
care about the Indian children’s health because Indian bodies did not matter.

Medical authority was important in the health of the Creole populations3.

According to the sources, this study found that the Decree about Indian women

was not obeyed. They have shown than some Indian women’s children died.

Therefore, it could be possible to argue that the administration of Indians’ milk

played a double role: life for Creole children and death for Indian children.

This fact comes into contrast with Agamben's point of view of Foucault’s

biopolitics. Agamben argues that there are moments in which decision about

life becomes a decision about death; when the biopolitical becomes death

politics (2010: 155-56).

Additionally, this life-death politics contrasts with a Christian practice and

discourse because it put in question the protection of vassals in the Monarchic-

Cristian order. Finally, this study also revealed two social functions of

femininity. Creole women fulfilled the role as producer uterus and the Indian

women acted in the role of mammalian nutrition.

3
AGCA, A1, leg. 154, exp. 3063, p. 25. Don José Antonio de Córdoba: support for the
recommendations of the prosecutor Don José Domás y Valle. Nueva Guatemala, October, 06,
1797.

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It could be important to remember here that Scriebinger (2004) made a critical

genealogy of mammals reviewing the Linnaeus’ Natural System. The

importance of her study could consist in reading Natural System with a

political lens. She argued that Linnaeus focused his attention on the mammals

in a political time, when physicians and politicians began to extol the virtues

of mother’s milk over wet nurse’s milk. The current study considered this fact

important because it happened in the late eighteenth century, while at the same

time in Guatemala, the nurse’s milk was regarded more virtuous than of the

mother.

The controversy apparently ended with the emission of a Royal Decree by

King Carlos IV. The Decree simply reminded the population about the

prohibition of using Indians according to the Royal Decree emitted by King

Felipe III in 16094. However, this data hasn’t proven important in confirming

the abolition of using wet nurses to attend infant-feeding. The emission of a

Decree does not guarantee the practice was finished. It has thus not been

4
AGCA, A1, leg. 162, exp. 4884, p. 30. Royal Decree emitted by King Carlos IV. San
Lorenzo, December 1, 1798.

9
possible to be sure when wet nursing was no longer used in infant-feeding. No

sources truthfully indicate the decline of wet nursing in Guatemala.

Analysis done in previous studies, like Webre's own, focused on a gendered

history to retell the history. This is interesting because it places the attention of

the controversy on the agents of the practice. Nevertheless, he did not focus on

bodies' production. Webre’s analysis therefore did not attest that gender is

related to social functions of the femininity, nor that gender is not natural.

Gender is performativity, according to Butler (2007). The bodies' production

also invents gender, or gender comes out of technology that produces it (De

Lauretis, 2000). Here, it is possible to observe that gender did not exist outside

a variety of technologies like cinema, medical discourse, laws, and norms, and

so on. Thus, the exploitation of femininity by Creoles’ social reproduction also

attended to a gendered bodies’ production. It’s also important to focus in the

extraction on Indian women as extraction of life, corresponding to an original

accumulation in Federici’s reading (2010). The extraction of women could also

be interpreted according to Haraway. According to her, extraction is a

vampirism’s act of accumulation. In the sources reviewed, it was determined

that this practice of using Indian women as wet nurses related to the practices

of extraction and exploitation.

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It's important to mention that this case study has shown that wet nursing of

Jocotenango did not fit in a history of waged breast feeding, nor women's labor,

nor abandoned children, nor milk parents, nor social mobility. Indian mothers

never wanted to be wet nurses. In this sense, this experience resembles more

the experience of slave women used as wet nurses in the United States, as

shown by Golden. In addition, it's interesting that the medical discourse about

racial degeneration by milk did was not done in Guatemalan case. The source

also noted than the wet nurses from Jocotenango interrupts the normal way to

analyzing breastfeeding’s practice because this history could not be registered

in the history of women's labor nor in waged feeding.

Conclusion

In this study, the author suggests that the case of wet nursing from Jocotenango

interrupts the form of addressing wet nursing in Women’s History and can offer

a particular form of analyzing bodies’ production in a colonial time and space.

The author, at this time, can develop this study not only by concentrating on

infant-feeding and wet nursing in colonial Guatemala, but also, on the variety

of bodies’ production related to power relations. It recommends expanding the

aim of the study in order to formulate a complete vision on bodies’ production

11
in a colonial period. It also suggests searching for a variety of historical sources

as new papers, photography, private archives and medical discourses.

Acknowledgements

It thanks the support received from Cruz del Sur Project, Universidad de

Murcia and AVANCSO-Guatemala. Without this support this study would not

have been possible.

Sources

Archivo General de Centroamérica (AGCA). A.1.12 leg 162

expediente 4883. 1797-99. Pp. 34
Archivo General de Centroamérica (AGCA). A.1.12 leg 154
expediente 3063. 1797-99. Pp. 77.

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