Aproximaciones cientificas al mestizo mexicano

Abstract

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 ...

Liberalism and Its Contradictions: Democracy and Hierarchy in Mestizaje and Genomics in Latin America

“…For example, graphs showed Zapotec samples as clearly separate, in genetic terms, from mestizos (Silva-Zolezzi et al 2009). In short, the spatial boundary between indigenous and mestizo was forcefully reiterated (García Deister 2011;López-Beltrán and García Deister 2013;Wade et al 2014). In Mexico, African ancestry received little attention in genomic studies because of its low contribution, but studies tended to reinforce the links of Costa Chica and Veracruz to African ancestry (Martinez-Cortes et al 2012).…”

Aplanar y exhibir la variación: dos estrategias de investigación de la genética humana en México

“…Los tres casos que se analizan -el trabajo de Rubén Lisker en la década de 1960, el mapeo de la diversidad genómica mexicana realizado por el Instituto Nacional de Medicina Genómica de México (Inmegen) entre 2004 y 2009, y el reciente análisis de la variación nativa americana llevado a cabo por Andrés Moreno y sus colegas de la Universidad de Stanford-, revelan, asimismo, diferentes significados de los conceptos de mestizaje y nación en México, y tienen distintas implicaciones para las políticas locales de salud pública. El trabajo de Lisker y los esfuerzos del Inmegen han sido analizados desde una perspectiva histórica y desde los estudios de la ciencia en la literatura reciente, donde se muestra cómo los supuestos acerca de México como una nación mestiza se incorporan en las prácticas de los científicos, ya sea al generar representaciones relativamente disruptivas acerca de las poblaciones mexicanas (como en el caso de Lisker) o corroborando narrativas nacionalistas (como en el caso del Inmegen) (1)(2)(3)(4). Si bien, este texto dialoga con estos trabajos previos, el objetivo de este artículo es antes que nada metodológico.…”

“…A este contexto favorable se sumaban el acelerado desarrollo de la biología molecular y de la biomedicina, disciplinas que dependían en buena medida del acceso a nuevas técnicas de laboratorio, especialmente aquellas que analizaban las moléculas de la sangre involucradas en distintas enfermedades (11)(12)(13)(14)(15). Las poblaciones indígenas, que tradicionalmente se habían caracterizado como aisladas y altamente consanguíneas 3 , fueron particularmente útiles por brindar el escenario ideal para los estudios sobre genética de poblaciones humanas en el periodo de la segunda posguerra (9,16,17). Un segundo tipo de preguntas le requirió incorporar el uso de la electroforesis en gel para localizar la presencia de hemoglobinas anormales y deficiencias del tipo g6pd en las poblaciones mexicanas.…”

Flattening and Unpacking Human Genetic Variation in Mexico, Postwar to the Present

“…In Silva-Zolezzi et al reported the results of a country-wide survey exploring the genetic diversity of the Mexican mestizo and arguing for the existence of "private alleles" and their possible relations to diseases catalogued as public health concerns [1]. A number of papers have been published since then, some of them including criticisms on the methodology used, the results presented, as well as the research's implications [2][3][4][5][6][7][8].…”