This article explores the relationship between genetic research, nationalism and the construction of collective social identities in Latin America. It makes a comparative analysis of two research projects – the ‘Genoma Mexicano’ and the ‘Homo Brasilis’ – both of which sought to establish national and genetic profiles. Both have reproduced and strengthened the idea of their respective nations of focus, incorporating biological elements into debates on social identities. Also, both have placed the unifying figure of the mestizo/mestiço at the heart of national identity constructions, and in so doing have displaced alternative identity categories, such as those based on race. However, having been developed in different national contexts, these projects have had distinct scientific and social trajectories: in Mexico, the genomic mestizo is mobilized mainly in relation to health, while in Brazil the key arena is that of race. We show the importance of the nation as a frame for mobilizing genetic data in public policy debates, and demonstrate how race comes in and out of focus in different Latin American national contexts of genomic research, while never completely disappearing.

Translated by Catherine Jagoe.LÓPEZ-BELTRÁN, Carlos; GARCÍA DEISTER, Vivette. Scientific approaches to the Mexican mestizo. História, Ciências, Saúde -Manguinhos, Rio de Janeiro. Disponível em http://www. scielo.br/hcsm. AbstractThe colonial category of mestizo was an ideological tool that shaped national identity in the post-revolutionary period in Mexico. The Indian-mestizo axis functioned to organize the ethnic and political interactions of the state. Doctors and anthropologists reinforced this dual taxonomy in studies of human populations, using biomedical markers to produce differentiated descriptions of the Indian and the mestizo. Genomic descriptions have contributed both to the construction of the scientistic notion of the mestizo based on the percentage of Indian, European and African ancestry, and also to the rise of two technoscientific objects that we call the molecular mestizo and the bioinformatic mestizo. Here we describe the interactions between the ideological and scientific incarnations of the mestizo.Keywords: mestizaje, biomedicine, Mexico, population genetics, genomics.Carlos López-Beltrán, Vivette García Deister 2 História, Ciências, Saúde -Manguinhos, Rio de Janeiro I n biopolitical terms, the Spanish word mestizaje (meaning a racial-cultural mixture between Europeans, indigenous Americans and/or Africans) defines both a type of biocultural process and also its result: a fusion (or confusion) of different lineages (Schmidt 2003; Ventura 2010). The fusion of mestizaje is peculiar because it is mediated by sex and kinship (it is reproductive) and because in it two human groups, usually described racially and of different origins, converge through both their germinal fluid and their habits. The difference between one type of convergence and the other is founded on the different mechanisms of intergenerational inheritance involved. Usually, we tend to distinguish between biological and cultural inheritance; the former is responsible for the stability (and variation) of the phenotype and the latter for the ethnic identity of groups. Biological inheritance is likewise associated with the racial ramifications of humanity, while cultural inheritance is linked to ethnic diversification. At different times and in different contexts, common usage of the notion of mestizaje tends to distinguish or conflate these categories, but in the modern period the ubiquitous dichotomy between culture and biology has favored a split between the two. Scientific understanding of (racial) biological mestizaje has therefore been the province both of physical anthropology and of human biology (Fortney, 1977;López-Beltrán, 2004;Wade, 1997).A comprehensive reconstruction of the historical and cultural trajectories of Mexican mestizaje does not yet exist, although many episodes are well mapped. The colonial period is characterized by the arrival on the social and political scene of primary 'racial' mixtures (the mestizo, the mulatto and the lobo) and many other intermediate, unstable ones, both in terms of whitening and ...

This article provides a comparison between genomic medicine and forensic genetics in Mexico, in light of recent depictions of the nation as a ‘país de gordos’ (country of the fat) and a ‘país de muertos’ (country of the dead). We examine the continuities and ruptures in the public image of genetics in these two areas of attention, health and security, focusing especially on how the relevant publics of genetic science are assembled in each case. Publics of biomedical and forensic genetics are assembled through processes of recruitment and interpellation, in ways that modulate current theorizations of co-production. The comparison also provides a vista onto discussions regarding the involvement of genetics in regimes of governance and citizenship and about the relationship between the state and biopower in a context of perceived health crisis and war-like violence.

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The articles in this issue highlight contributions that studies of Latin America can make to wider debates about the effects of genomic science on public ideas about race and nation. We argue that current ideas about the power of genomics to transfigure and transform existing ways of thinking about human diversity are often overstated. If a range of social contexts are examined, the effects are uneven. Our data show that genomic knowledge can unsettle and reinforce ideas of nation and race; it can be both banal and highly politicized. In this introduction, we outline concepts of genetic knowledge in society; theories of genetics, nation and race; approaches to public understandings of science; and the Latin American contexts of transnational ideas of nation and race.