The University of Arizona Press
Planning Quechua Families
Indigenous Reproduction and the Peruvian State
Planning Quechua Families: Indigenous Reproduction and the Peruvian State examines how reproductive health is shaped by a history of colonial power, state intervention, and social upheaval. This ethnography is centered on the experiences of Indigenous women in the Andes. The book situates contemporary family planning within the legacy of forced sterilizations and political violence during the era of Shining Path terrorism. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, Rebecca Irons brings together the perspectives of both Quechua women and the health-care workers who serve them, offering a nuanced account of how reproductive services are experienced, negotiated, and contested in rural clinics.
The book explores how reproductive health is embedded within broader processes of social change, including “Incanization,” shifting ideas of citizenship, and efforts to integrate marginalized communities into the Peruvian nation. Irons demonstrates how Indigenous understandings of kinship, health, and identity intersect with state policies and biomedical practices, revealing forms of violence that are often less visible but deeply consequential.
By placing Indigenous reproductive experiences within a wider cultural and political context, Planning Quechua Families provides a critical perspective on how power operates through intimate aspects of life in the contemporary Andes.
“This book encourages us to understand sterilizations as a metaphor for a broader biomedical approach that interrupts bodies and lifeways to perform Peruvian modernity. Through the notion of cosmocorpus, the author points at the collective impact of western medical practices—and the profound distrust they generate.”—Manuela Lavinas Picq, author of Vernacular Sovereignties: Indigenous Women Challenging World Politics
“An interesting discussion of family planning and the ways that the framework of family planning intersects uneasily with women’s choices and health-care workers’ surveillance of women.”—Krista Van Vleet, author of Hierarchies of Care: Girls, Motherhood, and Inequality in Peru
