Indigenous Identification by Health Professionals in a Mexican Hospital Setting

In this article, we describe and analyze the identification of people as Indigenous by health-care professionals in a hospital in Mexico City. This socially constructed identification is based on a "contrasting identity" of essentialist and stereotyped categories (language, place of origin, cultural practices, and poverty) that promote the normalization of inequity, marginality, and racism. The ambivalence of the invisibility of the indigenous in the health-care context also marginalizes and generates inequity when it comes to the access to healthcare.