MEXICAN SURROGATES: AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF REPRODUCTIVE LABOR

Mexico's surrogacy circuit - that reached its zenith between 2013 and 2015 - allowed hundreds of Mexican women to participate in the global surrogacy network by providing gestation capacities to aspiring parents of every nationality, age and sexual orientation. Based on ethnography carried out in Mexico City, Tijuana (Baja California) and Villahermosa (Tabasco) from 2015-17, the article presents and analyzes assisted-reproduction workers' perspectives, particularly those of surrogates. Using that lens, it seeks to reconstruct the moments just before and immediately after restrictive 2016 regulations. We discuss a particular aspect of the legal initiative Mexico's senate approved, specifically, the requirement for surrogacy to be practiced for unpaid, "altruistic" reasons which puts surrogates at risk and imposes asymmetrical, unequal conditions that make the stratified reproduction system all the more evident.