Body, territory and memory: midwifery in Afro-descendant communities. Colombia

This article analyzes the meanings and practices of traditional Afro-descendant midwives in Nuquí, Chocó, from a critical social and decolonial feminist perspective.

To recognize their practices, knowledge, and challenges they face in relation to their territory, bodies, and community.

A qualitative study was conducted using a critical ethnographic approach, participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and "circles of the word" (talking circles), prioritizing horizontal dialogue and epistemological reciprocity.

The findings were organized into three analytical categories. Practice and situated knowledge showed that midwives develop their knowledge through experience, ancestral heritage, and everyday observation, integrating care with community ties and intergenerational knowledge transmission. The legitimization of knowledge and grassroots power revealed tensions with the biomedical system, characterized by its institutional failure to recognize these practices. Finally, free bodies and knowledges of the land highlighted a profound connection among body, territory, and spirituality, in which the body is understood as a sacred territory, and health is linked to the use of medicinal plants, harmony with nature, and collective rituals.

Midwives' knowledge represents forms of care rooted in non-hegemonic worldviews, whose marginalization reflects epistemic injustice sustained by colonial and patriarchal logics.

It is urgent to recognize and support midwives and ensure their role receives dignified recognition through intercultural public policies that guarantee training, support, and fair compensation, as a pathway toward epistemic and cultural justice.