This article examines the role that vernacular notions of racialized-regional difference play in the constitution and stabilization of DNA populations in Colombian forensic science, in what we frame as a process of public science. In public science, the imaginations of the scientific world and common-sense public knowledge are integral to the production and circulation of science itself. We explore the origins and circulation of a scientific object – ‘La Tabla’, published in Paredes et al. and used in genetic forensic identification procedures – among genetic research institutes, forensic genetics laboratories and courtrooms in Bogotá. We unveil the double life of this central object of forensic genetics. On the one hand, La Tabla enjoys an indisputable public place in the processing of forensic genetic evidence in Colombia (paternity cases, identification of bodies, etc.). On the other hand, the relations it establishes between ‘race’, geography and genetics are questioned among population geneticists in Colombia. Although forensic technicians are aware of the disputes among population geneticists, they use and endorse the relations established between genetics, ‘race’ and geography because these fit with common-sense notions of visible bodily difference and the regionalization of race in the Colombian nation.

The article will present the findings of ethnographic research into the Colombian and Mexican forensic systems, introducing the first citizen-led exhumation project made possible through the cooperation of scholars, forensic specialists and interested citizens in Mexico. The coupling evolution and mutual re-constitution of forensic science will be explored, including new forms of citizenship and nation building projects – all approached as lived experience – in two of Latin America‘s most complex contexts: organised crime and mass death.

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La tragedia de Antígona ha sido apropiada estética y políticamente por artistas y activistas en México para discutir la búsqueda de personas desaparecidas. Refexionando sobre las relaciones entre la futilidad, las tecnologías forenses y la noción de un sujeto político-victima, este ensayo aborda las historias de las familias e individuos que constituyeron el órgano de gobierno del proyecto 'Ciencia Forense Ciudadana'. Este proyecto diseñó la primera base de datos forense de ADN creada y administrada por familiares de desaparecidos en México. Esta investigación es producto de años de trabajo etnográfco y de investigación participativa realizada en la Ciudad de México. A través de este acercamiento teórico/metodológico, argumentamos que es sólo cuando las tecnologías forenses no están gobernadas por principios de efciencia, lógicas del mercado o pericia exclusiva, que se pueden transgredir los viejos tropos del humanitarismo forense, y por lo tanto abrir nuevas relaciones entre ciencia, justicia y verdad.

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