Ernesto Schwartz-Marín

Biocoloniality, Governance, and the Protection of ‘Genetic Identities’ in Mexico and Colombia

In this article two case studies are compared, Mexico and Colombia, in which the protection of ‘genetic identities’ has generated political and legal systems designed to avoid the unlawful appropriation of biological material and/or DNA in Latin America. The very idea that genetic patrimonies belong to nation-states or ethno-racial groups – framed as genomic sovereignty or the protection of a disappearing indigenous genetic heritage – is the product of a genetically reified understanding of human diversity, which we identify as ‘biocoloniality’. By exploring the common tropes and imaginations with which biocoloniality has been articulated, we argue that governance mechanisms built around ‘genetic identities’ are ineffective in addressing the unequal power relations inherent in contemporary scientific and regulatory practice.

Building the genomic nation: ‘Homo Brasilis’ and the ‘Genoma Mexicano’ in comparative cultural perspective

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.

Colombian forensic genetics as a form of public science: The role of race, nation and common sense in the stabilization of DNA populations

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.

Bioprophecy and the politics of the present: Notes on the establishment of Mexico's national genomics institute (INMEGEN)

In 1999, a small group of genomic entrepreneurs and local politicians started mobilizing the idea of founding a national genomics institute in Mexico. Approximately four years later, and after 18 months of congressional debate, the Mexican National Institute of Genomic Medicine (INMEGEN) was established by presidential decree. As scholars, we are interested in how the call for a high-tech, high-cost genomics institute was able to gain political traction in a country, where many people struggle to secure access to even the most basic level of health care. Those behind the establishment of the INMEGEN used what we call technologies of bioprophecy to present it as a modernizing institution that would move the nation into the “new world order” by bringing not only biological and economic health, but also scientific prestige to Mexico.

Explaining the visible and the invisible: public knowledge of genetics, ancestry, physical appearance and race in Colombia

Using data from focus groups conducted in Colombia, we explore how educated lay audiences faced with scenarios about ancestry and genetics draw on widespread and dominant notions of nation, race and belonging in Colombia to ascribe ancestry to collectivities and to themselves as individuals. People from a life sciences background tend to deploy idioms of race and genetics more readily than people from a humanities and race-critical background. When they considered individuals, people tempered or domesticated the more mechanistic explanations about racialized physical appearance, ancestry and genetics that were apparent at the collective level. Ideas of the latency and manifestation of invisible traits were an aspect of this domestication. People ceded ultimate authority to genetic science, but deployed it to work alongside what they already knew. Notions of genetic essentialism co-exist with the strategic use of genetic ancestry in ways that both fix and unfix race. Our data indicate the importance of attending to the different epistemological stances through which people define authoritative knowledge and to the importance of distinguishing the scale of resolution at which the question of diversity is being posed.

Forensic civism: articulating science, DNA and kinship in contemporary Mexico and Colombia

We would like to thank Gobernanza Forense Ciudadana, A.C. and its members for their invaluable help. The article arises from a scholarship granted by the Mexican Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT) to Arely Cruz-Santiago and a COFUND International Junior Research Fellowship to Ernesto Schwartz-Marin at Durham University. The ESRC ‘Citizen-led Forensics’ (ES/M00063X/1) and ‘Public Engagement with Genomics and Race in Latin America’ [Leverhulme RPG- 044: directed by Peter Wade] projects allowed the authors to conduct fieldwork. Last but not least, we thank all the relatives of the disappeared in both countries and the forensic specialists who gave us their time.

Antígona y su biobanco de ADN : desaparecidos, búsqueda y tecnologías forenses en México. = Antigone's forensic DNA database : forensic technologies and the search for the disappeared in Mexico.

La tragedia de Antigona ha sido apropiada estetica y politicamente por artistas y activistas en Mexico para discutir la busqueda de personas desaparecidas. Reflexionando sobre las relaciones entre la futilidad, las tecnologias forenses y la nocion de un sujeto politico-victima, este ensayo aborda las historias de las familias e individuos que constituyeron el organo de gobierno del proyecto ‘Ciencia Forense Ciudadana’. Este proyecto diseno la primera base de datos forense de ADN creada y administrada por familiares de desaparecidos en Mexico. Esta investigacion es producto de anos de trabajo etnografico y de investigacion participativa realizada en la Ciudad de Mexico. A traves de este acercamiento teorico/metodologico, argumentamos que es solo cuando las tecnologias forenses no estan gobernadas por principios de eficiencia, logicas 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. = Antigone’s tragedy and the search for the disappeared has been aesthetically and politically appropriated by artists and activists in Mexico. Refecting about the relationship between futility, forensic technologies and the notion of a victim-political subject, this paper engages with the narratives of the families that constituted the governance body of a project known as ‘Citizen-Led Forensics’ which brought to the world the frst forensic DNA database created, managed and designed by relatives of the disappeared in Mexico. Our fndings are the product of years of ethnography and one year of intense participatory research. We argue that it is only once technologies are not bound by principles of efciency, market logics, or exclusive expertise, that the unexamined state-centric notions of forensic humanitarianism can be transgressed, and thus help us build new relationships between science, justice and truth.