In the O’Horán Hospital, Doña Margarita received erroneous information about the situation. For example, a doctor told her that only her daughter had died and that the twins were in an incubator. From that point on, everything was unclear. Despite Doña Margarita handing over the order for a cesarean from the Peto Community Hospital, María Ligia went through a vaginal delivery. Eutiquio asked to see his twins in the incubator and was informed at that moment that they had not survived. Then, when he asked to see the bodies, his request was denied, and the hospital claimed they were under no obligation to show them to him.
Nobody clearly informed him what the doctors had written in the medical report which was subsequently delivered to the National Human Rights Commission: that on Monday at 17:15 hours María Ligia had vaginally expelled two non-viable fetuses; that at 19:45 hours she went into septic shock; that at 20:00 she was admitted to the operating room for uterine curettage; that at 21:00 her condition was serious with respiratory distress and that she died at 21:30 hours.
A Eutiquio le entregaron el cuerpo de María Ligia la tarde del martes 28 de enero; y tras varias vueltas al Hospital O’Horán para rectificar errores en las actas de nacimiento, logró que le entregaran los restos de sus hijos hasta la madrugada del jueves 6 de febrero, es decir nueve días después.
María Ligia’s body was delivered to Eutiquio on the afternoon of Tuesday, January 28. After several trips to the O’Horán Hospital to rectify errors on the birth certificates, he managed to acquire the remains of his children on the morning of Thursday, February 6 –nine days later.
At present, Eutiquio continues to work in Cancun, with his income being the only means of economic support for the family. For almost two years, his children have not received any governmental benefits from social security programs such as Progresa and the universal health program, because María Ligia had taken care of those procedures.
In Chacsinkín, it is the grandmother who now takes care of her grandchildren, at least for the six days of the week when Eutiquio is working in Cancun.
“The higher the level of marginalization, the higher the risk of maternal mortality. There is almost six times more possibility of dying in highly marginalized communities than there is in less marginalized ones”, wrote Doctor Elsa María Rodríguez-Angulo in 2006. She is a researcher at the Department of Social Medicine and Public Health of the Autonomous University of the Yucatan, an investigator of this phenomenon in her state. Almost a decade later, nothing has changed.
