Bom Jesus

Nancy Scheper-Hughes conducted her anthropological research in Alto do Cruzeiro, Bom Jesus, a shantytown located in the poorest region of Brazil. Poor economic standing, lack of familial support and desperate working conditions in this community have contributed to the normalization of infant death and selective motherhood.
Alto do Cruziero suffers economically in the aftermath of a deleterious military coup in 1965. This Northeast region of Brazil represents the Third World while other areas of Brazil flourish as a swiftly developing nation. Due to extreme poverty, the life expectancy is a short forty years. Children born in these shantytowns suffer greater risks of death due to a lack of caretakers, healthcare and safe living conditions.
For example, the local river cannot be used to bathe the children as a result of parasitic infestations. The Alto do Cruziero community also severely lacks sufficient food and water to feed both adults and their many children.
Alto women traditionally face motherhood independently, without a stable marriage and without a strong familial support system. Single parent households are the norm, so finding childcare during work hours proves to be highly difficult. Mothers are unable to bring their sick children out of the home in fear of contaminating the environment of healthy children. Low wages prevent mothers from paying for babysitters. Oftentimes, women must resort to leaving their children at home alone for extended amounts of time in order to work.
Employment for Alto women often involves performing domestic work for wealthy families or serving as laborers on nearby sugar plantations. These employment opportunities offer very low wages, sometimes only amounting to less than a dollar per day. All of these economic, social and work related factors contribute to the low quality of life in Bom Jesus which calls for a necessary detachment of motherly love.
The long lasting exposure to infant death has made it culturally acceptable for mothers to commit passive infanticide by neglecting their children with a lower probability of survival.
This cultural practice has become normalized, so the expected grieving emotions of intense sadness, guilt, regret and resentment are not present at the death of a young child. As seen in Scheper-Hughes’ anecdote about Zezinho and his mother Lourdes, selective neglect is an understood and permissible concept. Lourdes left a young, malnourished Zezinho for dead at the birth of her second, more healthy child. Scheper-Hughes took over as caretaker for Ze and saved his life. Upon returning to Alto do Cruziero, Scheper-Hughes found, to her surprise, there were no feelings of guilt, regret or resentment between Ze and his mother. Similar emotions are also culturally unacceptable during funerals. It is regular Alto practice to give condolences to grieving mothers by saying it is a shame the infant was weak and Jesus had to take them. This expression of condolences places blame for death at the hands of God, not the mother. It is culturally inappropriate to grieve or cry at the death of a child for it shows symptoms of madness or a lack of faith.
The culturally passed tradition of selective neglect further perpetuates the issue of high infant death rate. Children who survive are exposed to many infant deaths and quickly learn to model their mother’s reactions to infant death. However, children in Bom Jesus admitted to Scheper-Hughes in secret, that they were aware infants die from malnourishment, however their mothers have taught them not to acknowledge this
understanding.
Infant death is commonly discussed in cultural terms of cause of death. Mothers categorize infant deaths by natural, supernatural or inevitable forces. The cultural term for these cases is “child sickness” or “child attack”. Instead of addressing their own role in the child’s survival potential, mothers attribute their child’s death as an act of God, magic or sorcery. Days after birth, it is cultural practice to assess the child’s will to live. The mothers look for a sense of resistance or fight for life within the infant. This assessment aides in deciding whether or to show love to their child or to commit passive infanticide.
Various institutions, such as local government, the medical community and the Catholic church contribute to and reinforce the systematic normalization of motherly neglect and selective emotional detachment from their children.
Local government fails to recognize infant death as an issue in the Alto do Cruziero community. Mothers and other community members must take certain steps involving the local government in the case of an infant death, however these steps are not well documented nor taken seriously. The registry office registers all deaths and births, however the procedure of doing so is vague. To register the death of an infant, documentation and witnesses are not necessary. No questions are asked concerning the nature of the death. After registering the infant’s death, the mayor distributes vouchers for a free baby coffin.
Additionally, the city-employed doctors at the two local free clinics often fail to recognize malnutrition. They simply advise the mothers to obtain free vitamins and health “tonic” from the municipal chambers. Alternatively, some doctors provide sleeping pills and tranquilizers to silence the cries of dying infants. Rather than helping solve the problem of infant death rates, these medical workers perpetuate the problem by ignoring it.
Midwives, the medical and spiritual advisors to many mothers, often tell mothers to set their child aside and wait for their death if they were not exceptionally strong at birth. Although these midwives are devout Catholics, they see passive infanticide as adhering to God’s plan rather than committing sin.
The church excuses the prevalence of infant death as the workings of God’s will. Dead infants are said to be chosen as a servant to a particular saint. The church treats infant deaths as a necessary passage of life, therefore there are no religious ceremonies or marking of the graves. However, more recently the church has made steps to discourage the neglect of sick infants, according to Padre Marcos. They promote the idea that Jesus does not want all of the babies sent to him from Bom Jesus. They also refuse to baptize sick children because baptism is for the living and anointing of the dead is for the dying. The beliefs of the Catholic church contradict one another at the disadvantage of women and children. Women are not allowed to use methods of birth control in the eyes of the church, however the church bypasses responsibility for the plethora of sick and neglected babies. This systematic oppression of female choice sustains the issue of high infant death rates.
Scheper-Hughes’ study supports the argument that motherly love is a culturally learned construct. Frequent child death in Bom Jesus has conditioned mothers to make a conscious decision to love their child or neglect them based on their potential for survival. The presence of unconditional motherly love is a luxury bred by opportunity to resources. The mothers in Bom Jesus do not have access to the resources that make survival likely, such as clean water, sufficient amount of nutritious food, adequate medical services, alternative child care and government support. In order to ensure any survival at all, mothers must compartmentalize their motherly love and gear their efforts to their children most likely to survive. This idea gets at the concept of survival of the fittest. Mothers living in these desperate conditions with such harsh limitations, must invest the little resources they do have to their healthier children.
From reading Scheper-Hughes’ report, I believe making this conscious decision of maternal love is a defense mechanism to help the mothers cope with the death of their children. Denying love and care to sick children has become a social and psychological adaptation for mothers in Bom Jesus to be able to provide their surviving children with emotional stability. Within this community, a common knowledge of short life expectancies for infants has primed mothers to selectively love and intently care for potential survivors, while neglecting seemingly at risk children.