Abstract

GOMEZ-RODRIGUEZ, Eliana; MARQUEZ-VALDERRAMA, Jorge  and  ESTRADA-ORREGO, Victoria. From Neglect and Abandonment to Surrogate Motherhood: The Case of "Amas de Oriente" in Bogotá (1918-1936). Historelo.rev.hist.reg.local [online]. 2023, vol.15, n.32, pp.60-93.  Epub Dec 15, 2022. ISSN 2145-132X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/historelo.v15n32.101168.

This article examines the practices as well as the medical and administrative discourses focused on abandoned and orphaned children under the care of the Amas de Oriente section of the Bogotá Hospice between 1918 and 1936. A corpus from the Beneficencia de Cundinamarca Archive was analyzed through a critical documentation process. This process shed some light on how public assistance programs-and particularly the Hospice-used to operate. In addition, it helped to study the care, surveillance, and control strategies directed to early childhood and nursemaids. This latter aspect contributed to identify an official system of wet nurses for abandoned children. To gain understanding of it, the historical context of poverty, inequality, female labor, nutrition, and health economics was reconstructed. The youngest children were cared for by waged wet nurses-poorly paid peasant women exploited by the authorities and branded as ignorant, dirty, and sick. It was a long-lasting child-rearing system, maybe because it was more feasible and affordable than the intramural care system of the Bogotá Hospice. Paradoxically, this system, originated as an institution specialized in wet nursing, ended up as an institution for surrogate motherhood.

Keywords : wet nurses; motherhood; infant mortality; poverty; charity; Colombia.

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