The Right to Live in Health by Daniel A. Rodríguez

Author:Daniel A. Rodríguez [Rodríguez, Daniel A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Ethnic Studies, General, Medical, Health Policy, History, Caribbean & West Indies, Cuba
ISBN: 9781469659749
Google: tMbaDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Published: 2020-07-21T02:47:03+00:00

Figure 4.1 Advertisement for Maltina malted beer, which promised lactating mothers “abundant milk” and “strong and healthy babies.” (El Mundo, January 4, 1915)

The National Motherhood Competitions reinforced the idea that mothers had a natural, moral, and even patriotic duty to nurse their young: indeed, as the mothers in attendance were told during the 1918 competition, “The future of the Nation depends, in large part, on the results of your endeavors.”74 But in elevating poor mothers who were nevertheless able to nurse their young and presenting them as “models of maternity” for all Cuban women, the health officials downplayed economic barriers to breastfeeding.75 Sometimes they were explicit that there were no economic barriers at all. For José Antonio López del Valle, the director of Havana’s local Department of Health, “the concursos present[ed] the spectacular example of mothers who, despite the difficult economic situations in which they find themselves, of the privations and heartbreaking struggles they experience due to their lack of resources, have nevertheless nursed their children at their own breast and complied with the health regulations, proving in this way that poverty does not prevent these practices.” For López del Valle, proper health education and a nationalist embrace of “their most sacred duties” as mothers were all that was required to ensure the health of Cuban children. But poverty was most certainly a barrier to breastfeeding, as reports published by the Ministry of Health made clear. Indeed, in his 1917 study on infant mortality, Mario Lebredo admitted that poor urban women, forced by economic necessity to work in factories or in domestic labor, “cannot nurse their children with their own milk.”76 What was needed more than anything, he argued, was “the creation of crèches and shelters to care for young children” while their mothers “worked to earn a living.”77 By 1917, several crèches, or free daycare centers, did exist in the capital, providing an important source of free childcare for working women. But, as we will see, a lack of government support stymied this institution, leaving it out of reach for all but those mothers lucky enough to secure one of the limited spots.

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