Mayan Abdominal Massage

Elsa Gonzalez Ayala is a traditional midwife in the small town of Chunhuhub in Quintana Roo, Mexico. She performs monthly prenatal massages for her patients, delivers babies in hammocks, and massages women in the weeks following birth to help their uteri contract. She recently adopted a baby, Juan Diego, who was born at seven months to a substance-abusing woman who disappeared soon afterward.

Although she practices traditional Mayan medicine, Doña Elsa is a devout Catholic who brought her son to be baptized, and she visits the local clinic for Western medicine. She showed the students from CASA Midwifery School how to perform abdominal massages, using this pregnant photographer as a demonstration model.