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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 ...

and extending the analysis and referring to relevant literature would have addressed this.Overall, Oudshoorn paints a rich picture of technology in practice. For example, Oudshoorn provides a colorful and vivid account of the use of sound to alert the patient that the device (designed specifically for outdoor use) is working properly, yet the ease of accidental activation and the subsequent emission of loud unexpected beeps leaves patients embarrassed and reluctant to use it in public. This story is memorable, poignant and illustrative of Oudshoorn's attention to detail in the examination of technology and its challenges. It is these instances that are the strength of this book, and make it worthy of note.

Experts have widely promoted developing country investment in national genome projects in order to ensure their inclusion in medical genomic advances, to protect their genomes from foreign exploitation, and to foster their participation in a future genomics-based bioeconomy.  In this context, the Mexican federal government’s investments to establish the National Institute of Genomic Medicine in 2004, that institute’s subsequent efforts to map the “Mexican genome” between 2004 and 2009, and the passage of legislation in 2008 to protect Mexico’s “genomic sovereignty” drew attention as the most comprehensive national genomics program among the world’s emerging economies. Given the prominence of Mexico’s decision to pursue its “national genome” and to understand how this approach to science policy has unfolded with time, we track major developments in the field of genomic medicine in Mexico and the trajectory of the “Mexican genome” over the last decade.  Rather than the nation-state bound “Mexican genome,” we show that flexibility and ambiguity with regard to genomic identity has been instrumental amid the increasingly transnational and public-private nature of this scientific field. Over the last decade, Mexican samples have frequently been re-branded as the source of flexible, panethnic “Latino” or “Latin American” DNA.

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This article is an English translation of the original version in Spanish. The English text may contain expressions that are not totally translatable from the original article, which is the one that prevails in case of discrepancies between both versions.

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