Mexican Social Development Secretary’s Racist Soundbite Scolding Women for Reproductive Choices
It’s not accident that Robles’ words — “Small families live better” (La familia pequeña vive mejor) — is the slogan verbatim of the 1970s family planning programs in Mexico. Though less well-known than the cases of Peru and Puerto Rico, Mexico adopted problematic population policies. During the Cold War, the United States feared that population growth would increase poverty, which would in turn increase the likelihood of revolutions and reformist government, which had been cropping up throughout Latin America (and often overthrown or destabilized by the United States). As wikileaks reveals, Marshall Green, Coordinator of Population Affairs for the State Department, stated in 1976, “The continuing population increases in Mexico have very grave implications for the United States.” The United States responded to these potential “implications” by pressuring Mexico to contain population growth beginning in the 1970s. In 1974, Mexico passed the General Population Law which set up The National Population Council of Mexico (CONAPO), and oversaw family planning services. These policies were aided by media propaganda: Televisa, the main Mexican TV station, distributed films and telenovelas with the “familia pequeña” message to increase contraceptive use and decrease population growth.
To be fair, access to contraceptives, an important aspect of reproductive health, improved during this era. But rather than support good-quality, voluntary reproductive health services for the entire population, the Mexican government disproportionately targeted indigenous and rural populations, perpetuating stereotypes of “indios” as uneducated, irresponsible, and deleterious to national culture. Contraceptives were pushed to meet national quotas, not in the best interest of women and families. Sadly, these policies remain. International funders and national elites continue to exert population control, with forced sterilizations documented as recently as 2008. And they are so blatant in their targeting of certain groups that, when, in 2006, a representative of the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination spoke about the persistence of forced sterilizations, he classified them as “genocide” due to their racial character.
27 complaints of “forced contraception” were registered by The Mexican Human Rights Commission between 2000 and 2006 in twelve states. And The National Population Council of Mexico (CONAPO), set up by the General Population Law, created national quotas for participants in family planning programs, even threatening doctors and health workers with loss of payment or employment if they failed to fulfill them. State programs tend to use monetary and material offers to entice women and men to be sterilized, in violation of “informed consent.” Again, it’s important to note the international support for and pressure applied to CONAPO, which gets funding from both USAID and the U.N. Population Fund.