Nation and the Absent Presence of Race in Latin American Genomics

Author(s): Peter Wade, Vivette García Deister, Michael Kent, María Fernanda Olarte Sierra
and Adriana Díaz del Castillo Hernández
Source: Current Anthropology , Vol. 55, No. 5 (October 2014), pp. 497-522
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for
Anthropological Research
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Current Anthropology Volume 55, Number 5, October 2014 497

Nation and the Absent Presence of Race in

Latin American Genomics
by Peter Wade, Vivette Garcı́a Deister, Michael Kent,
Marı́a Fernanda Olarte Sierra, and Adriana Dı́az del Castillo Hernández

CA⫹ Online-Only Material: Supplement A

Recent work on genomics and race makes the argument that concepts and categories of race are subtly reproduced
in the practice of genomic science, despite the explicit rejection of race as meaningful biological reality by many
geneticists. Our argument in this paper is that racialized meanings in genomics, rather than standing alone, are very
often wrapped up in ideas about nation. This seems to us a rather neglected aspect in the literature about genomics
and race. More specifically, we characterize race as an absent presence in Latin America and argue that genomics
in the region finds a particular expression of race through concepts of nation, because this vehicle suits the deep-rooted
ambiguity of race in the region. To make this argument we use data from an ethnographic project with genetics
labs in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico.

Much recent work on genomics and race makes the argument and public discourse than in the United States, even after
that concepts and categories of race are subtly reproduced in some two decades of multiculturalist reform that have given
the practice of genomic science, despite the explicit rejection recognition to black and indigenous “ethnic” minorities. Even
of race as a meaningful biological reality by many geneticists. in Brazil, where categories of “color”—and, since 1991,
Often this conclusion emerges from studies done in the “color/race”—have been used for many decades in the census,
United States, where standardized social categories of race are where race has long been an academic topic, and where it is
already part of public discourse, policy, and research practice accepted by many that racism and racial inequality are prob-
in medicine, including medical genomics.1 In this paper, we lems, there is a heated debate about whether racial categories
use Latin American data to develop and diversify this argu- are an appropriate tool for policy making in a country that
ment by bringing the concept of nation strongly into the is very mixed (Carvalho 2005; Fry et al. 2007; Guimarães
picture. In most countries in the region, the categories and 1999; Htun 2004). In many Latin American countries, race
language of race are a much less accepted feature of policy is an absent presence—both erased and denied, and yet pre-
sent in an everyday sense and in some official domains. The
way race appears—and disappears—in genomic science in
Peter Wade is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of
Latin America reflects this deep-rooted ambiguity.
Manchester (School of Social Sciences, Arthur Lewis Building,
Our data indicate that race-like or racialized categories are
University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom
[[email protected]]). Vivette Garcı́a Deister is Associate visible in genomic science in the region, while the same science
Professor at the Social Studies of Science Laboratory, in the Faculty acts as a forum for the denial of race, as a biological reality,
of Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Av. and, in some cases, as a relevant social category. Racialized
Universidad 3000, Circuito Exterior S/N, Delegación Coyoacán, C. categories are implied in the use of concepts of genetic an-
P. 04510 Ciudad Universitaria, México D.F., México). Michael Kent cestry—usually talked of in terms of African, European, and
is an Honorary Research Fellow in Social Anthropology in the School Amerindian components. For the geneticists, genetic ancestry
of Social Sciences at the University of Manchester (Arthur Lewis (understood as very specific sets of genetic markers) is distinct
Building, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom). Marı́a Fernanda from race (which they understood as a set of coherent bio-
Olarte Sierra is Assistant Professor at the Department of Design, logical-bodily types). But the constant reference to African,
University of the Andes (Cra 1 Nº 18A-12, Bogotá, Colombia).
Adriana Dı́az del Castillo Hernández is an independent researcher 1. For overviews, see Abu El-Haj (2007), Duster (2003), Kahn (2013),
with the consultancy firm Consultorı́a en estudios sociales sobre Koenig, Lee, and Richardson (2008), Krimsky and Sloan (2011), Marks
educación, salud, ciencia y tecnologı́a (CESTA; Carrera 6 No. 48 A (2013), Palsson (2007), Roberts (2011), Rose (2007:155–186), Whitmarsh
77, Bogotá, Colombia). This paper was submitted 8 VII 13, accepted and Jones (2010). See also, among many others, Bliss (2009, 2011, 2012),
17 X 13, and electronically published 8 IX 14. Fullwiley (2007a, 2007b, 2008), Montoya (2011).

䉷 2014 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2014/5505-0001$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/677945

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 498 Current Anthropology Volume 55, Number 5, October 2014

European, and Amerindian ancestries evokes familiar racial more prominently, it tends to be for contexts outside the
meanings. This is a process of implicit racialization, insofar United States (e.g., Benjamin 2009 on Mexico and India;
as the concept of genetic ancestry does not speak of “race” Kohli-Laven 2012 on French Canada; Nash 2012 on Britain).
in explicit terms, but it nevertheless evokes meanings that are More generally, the nation tends to figure as the nation-state,
recognizably linked to a discourse of race, seen in all its his- with the focus on citizenship, inclusion, and exclusion, rather
torical variety. We define racialized discourses as those that— than on the nation as an imagined community or identity.3
even if the word “race” is absent—interweave notions of phys- Yet in Latin America and elsewhere, the intersections of
ical appearance, heredity, nature-culture, and essences to- race and nation are well known, particularly in relation to
gether with the classic historical categories of race produced national identities. This paper explores the way race and na-
by colonial and postcolonial domination (e.g. black/African, tion interweave in genomic science in Brazil, Colombia, and
Indian/Amerindian/indigenous, white/European, Asian, etc.).2 Mexico. The aim is to show how the evocation and discussion
Race thus combines (a) certain ways of categorizing human of the nation, in genomic science, provides an arena for the
difference, which link bodies and behavior in a naturalizing deep-seated ambiguity of race as an absent presence that is
discourse—bearing in mind that what counts as “nature” var- articulated and rearticulated.
ies by cultural and historical context; and (b) certain cate-
gories of difference that have their roots in a “modern” history Race in Genomic Science
of oppression. Race is thus a biosocial or natural/cultural fact
(Hartigan 2013a; Marks 2013; Wade 2002).
Since the 1980s, the era of “genomics,” enabled by huge ad-
It is important that race is usually not explicitly mentioned
vances in DNA sequencing, has allowed the study of whole
in this Latin American genetic science and in some cases is
genomes as well as complex gene-environment interactions.
vehemently denied as a biological reality. It is thus an absent
Geneticists have long been interested in the genetic dimen-
presence. This is both because race is a contested concept in sions of human variation, and genomic-era tools have allowed
genomics generally and because the particular instances of them to map genetic diversity in ever-greater detail, providing
genomics science we are exploring here are located in Latin data that can help in exploring human evolutionary diver-
American nations, where race has long been an absent pres- sification and global migration histories, and in the search for
ence in society. This does not mean Latin American geneticists genetic variants that may be linked, in as yet undetermined
are compartmentalized into purely national or regional do- ways, to disorders such as diabetes and heart disease. The
mains of knowledge production—on the contrary, they are conceptualization and categorization of human diversity is
part of a transnational scientific community—but the nation thus of perennial interest to geneticists and to others con-
(and sometimes the supranational region) plays an important cerned with their work. The question of “race” has been one
role in shaping the approaches of these scientists, as we show area of discussion in these debates, especially as many ge-
below. neticists reject the concept of race as a biologically meaningful
Our argument in this paper is that racialized meanings in category (Cooper, Kaufman, and Ward 2003), while others
genomics, rather than standing alone, are very often wrapped suggest that it has some biological validity in medical geno-
up in ideas about nation. This seems to us a rather neglected mics (Burchard et al. 2003), indicating a lack of consensus.4
aspect in the literature about genomics and race. More spe- Studies, based in the United States, show us what can hap-
cifically, the absent presence of race in Latin American ge- pen to racial categories in genomic practice. Fullwiley con-
nomics finds a particular expression in concepts of nation, tends that use of “ancestry informative markers” (AIMs,
because this vehicle suits the deep-rooted ambiguity of race which are specific genetic markers that help to indicate where
in the region. a person’s distant ancestors came from) by US geneticists
The nation figures in critical commentaries on genomic brings about “a correspondence of familiar ideas of race and
patrimony and sovereignty (Benjamin 2009; Rabinow 1999). supposed socially neutral DNA.” Thus populations of Afri-
Nation is also important in studies of biobanks and national cans, Europeans, and Native Americans are sampled and then
databases (Fortun 2008; Hinterberger 2012b; Pálsson 2007; used as “putatively pure reference populations” to define the
Pálsson and Rabinow 1999) and in concepts of biological- genetic ancestry of what geneticists call “admixed” popula-
genetic citizenship (Heath, Rapp, and Taussig 2007; Rose tions, such as African Americans, Mexicans, or Puerto Ricans
2007; Rose and Novas 2005). The nation does not, however, (Fullwiley 2008:695). The simple use of social taxonomies in
figure much in studies—many of them focusing on the United genomic research risks conflating social and genetic defini-
States—of the way racialized meanings are reproduced and tions of populations (Bliss 2009, 2011). Even in nominally
transformed in genomic science. When the nation does figure
3. Rose (2007:155–186) and Roberts (2010) address race and bioci-
2. The erasure or sublimation of explicit reference to race is what tizenship—focusing on the United States—in terms of biosocial com-
Goldberg (2008) calls race being “buried alive” and others have called munities and processes of inclusion and exclusion, but without exploring
neo-racism (Balibar 1991a), new racism (Winant 2002), or cultural racism the nation in terms of identity and belonging.
(Hale 2006:144; Taguieff 1990). 4. See also the references cited in note 1.

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Wade et al. Race and Nation in Latin American Genomics 499

“race-free” software, used by geneticists to detect how samples teenth century onward, the emerging concept of the nation
cluster together in terms of their genetic similarity, concepts and its people depended on ideas of blood and breeding,
about the biogeographical origins of populations constantly kinship and genealogy, (im)purity and sexual (im)propriety—
filter into the analysis, as standard population samples rep- all key features of contemporary ideas about race—have been
resenting African, European, and Asian ancestry are routinely explored in detail. The ways racism can thus be an expression
used as reference points to organize and compare the data. of nationalism, and vice versa, have also been analyzed
This “genome geography” can approximate to familiar no- (Alonso 1994; Balibar 1991b; Foucault 1979; Gilroy 1987;
tions of race, even if the geneticists themselves are careful to Mosse 1985; Povinelli 2002; Stoler 1995; Wade 2002).
avoid this language (Fujimura and Rajagopalan 2011). In Latin America, race and nation intersected in ways that
Our ethnographic research in genetics labs in Brazil, Co- were similar to, but also different from, those in Europe (Ap-
lombia, and Mexico revealed some of the same processes at pelbaum, Macpherson, and Rosemblatt 2003; Basave Benı́tez
work. Geneticists by now had generally rejected the language 1992; Gotkowitz 2011b; Graham 1990; Wade 2001, 2009b).
of race (Gómez Gutiérrez, Briceño Balcázar, and Bernal Vil- European and North American ideas about race were influ-
legas 2011; Pena 2008)—although some had made occasional ential in the ways elites thought about building their new
reference to “the three races” (African, European, and Am- nations, which were internally diverse. Colombia and Brazil,
erindian) 20 years before (Gómez Gutiérrez 1991), and talk for example, had important black populations, with slavery
of “racial mixture” as a biological process had been common in place until 1851 in Colombia and 1888 in Brazil, and
up until the 1980s (Franco, Weimer, and Salzano 1982). In Colombia and especially Mexico had significant indigenous
Brazil, in particular, geneticist Sergio Pena was very vocal in populations. In all three countries, racial hierarchy was—and
the rejection of race as a valid concept, genetically and med- remains—very marked, with black and indigenous popula-
ically (Pena 2005, 2008). Still, it was very common practice tions at the bottom of the social scale.
to analyze the genetic make-up of sample populations in terms In this context, the fact of mestizaje (mestiçagem in Brazil),
of the contributions of African, European, and Amerindian understood as the physical and cultural blending of “the three
genetic ancestry: there was a clear “genome geography” at races” of Africans/blacks, Europeans/whites, and indigenous
work. This practice was not seen by the geneticists as involving people, was a key point of reflection: in Brazil, Colombia, and
a biological concept of race, because it made use of specific Mexico, mestizos were the majority population. The mixture
sets of genetic markers, often unrelated to phenotype. This of races was held to be a degenerative process by European
was not a question of dividing up people into clear “races,” racial science, and this posed problems for Latin American
much less assigning them relative value. But the practice in- elites and their mainly mixed citizens. Elites varied in their
evitably evoked the possibility—especially among those less reactions. On the one hand, they generally saw black and
versed in genetic science—to think about Africans, Europeans, indigenous peoples as inferior and refractory inputs into the
and Amerindians as biologically distinct populations. developing nation; mestizos might also be seen as degenerate
We also found that, using social criteria, geneticists rou- and difficult. The way forward was to encourage large-scale
tinely separated their samples into three sets of populations European immigration, which would “whiten” the popula-
labeled as “African-derived” (or a variant thereof), “Amer- tion. On the other hand, mixedness was embraced by some
indian” or “indigenous,” and “mestizo” (people popularly and as a different way forward that was not entirely beholden to
scientifically understood to have a mixture of European, Af- European—especially Anglo-Saxon—definitions of racial hi-
rican, and Amerindian ancestry). Genetic data on these cat- erarchy, which condemned Latin American nations to a bi-
egories would frequently be collected and presented sepa- ologically determined inferiority. These thinkers hoped there
rately, even if the data also showed that these populations could be a “constructive miscegenation” (Stepan 1991) which,
were, genetically speaking, often mixed and thus not biolog- in their view, would actually enhance liberal democracy by
ically separable (Garcı́a Deister 2011; Wade 2013). This could erasing divides based on race—and which might, into the
create the impression that the populations were not only so- bargain, lead to a “whitened” society, as “white” traits were
cially but biologically different (Wade et al. 2014). believed to prevail over black and indigenous traits.
So far, so similar to studies of genomics and race in other The Colombian politician José Marı́a Samper talked of “this
regions. But we want to push the analysis further by ap- marvellous work of the mixture of races,” which he considered
proaching the relations between genomics and race from the could “produce a wholly democratic society, a race of repub-
perspective of the nation. Before we do this, it is helpful to licans” and would give “the New World its particular char-
look briefly at the relationship between race and nation in acter” (Samper 1861:299). Later exemplars of the positive
Latin America in more general terms. assessment of mestizaje included the Mexican politician José
Vasconcelos, who described the Latin American mestizo as
Race and Nation in Latin America the founder of a future universal and superior “cosmic race”
(1997 [1925]); and the Brazilian writer Gilberto Freyre, who
The links between the concepts of race and nation have been painted a favorable picture of a tropical Brazilian society, in
well established. The way in which, in Europe from the eigh- which mixture was a solution rather than a problem (Freyre

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 500 Current Anthropology Volume 55, Number 5, October 2014

1946 [1933]). These are indications of a postcolonial concern Genomics, Public Health, and the Nation
with defining and defending a Latin American specificity,
In line with the fact that health improvement is a major driver
based on the image of mixture, in the context of global hi-
for much genomic research, the Mexican state in 2004 set up
erarchies of value, based on whiteness. At the same time, these
and funded a new Instituto Nacional de Medicina Genómica,
global hierarchies retained their power, insofar as whiteness
INMEGEN. Its first major project, starting in 2005, was the
remained a highly valued trait in Latin American societies, Mexican Populations Genomic Diversity Project, popularly
linked to economic and political dominance. known as the Map of the Genome of Mexican Populations
From about the 1920s in Latin America, a public discourse (the title of a public dissemination booklet on the project).5
explicitly about raza (race) tended to decline, with more em- Already a slippage is evident in the move from the scientific
phasis given to “culture” (or terms such as “soul” and “spirit”) “genomic diversity” to the popular “genome” of Mexicans,
to refer to a people or a nation, although “culture” could as if there were one specific genome.
retain many of the essentialist and embodied meanings often From the beginning, the project had strongly nationalist
associated with the concept of race and the term “race” did overtones, seeking to put Mexico on the international ge-
not disappear (De la Cadena 2000; Gotkowitz 2011a; Restrepo nomic science map (cf. Bustamante, De La Vega, and Bur-
2007; Wade 2010). Everyday reference to, for example, la raza chard 2011) and basing itself on the idea that the “genomic
negra (the black race) remained and remains a possibility— sovereignty” of the nation was at stake (Benjamin 2009; López
although it is more common to hear references to los negros. Beltrán and Vergara Silva 2011). This idea, imbued with post-
In Mexico and among Mexican Americans, one can find pub- colonial sensibilities, implied that the nation should exercise
lic use of la raza to refer to a national collectivity, but one custodianship over the genetic resources of its people (parallel
which imagines “a culture of mixedness, one in which biology to the way it has control over the animals and plant life in
[is] specifically downplayed” (Hartigan 2013c:32). In the last its territory) and that foreign use of these resources should
two decades, multiculturalist reforms in many Latin American be strictly regulated. But the notion also depended on the
nations have given differentiated legal rights to black and idea that, in the words of the institute’s director, Gerardo
indigenous minorities and, while public discourse around Jiménez Sánchez, “Mexico has a population of unique ge-
these reforms has generally used a language of ethnicity and nomic makeup as a result of its history” (Schwartz-Marı́n and
culture, there has been renewed attention to the problem of Silva-Zolezzi 2010:495). Project participants were reported to
racism—especially in Colombia and Brazil (Htun 2004; Meer- agree that “there are unique patterns of variation that might
exist in sub-populations that have implications for the de-
tens 2009; Restrepo 2012:180; Wade 2009a)—which in turn
velopment of genomic diagnostics and therapeutics in Mex-
has placed the concept of race onto the table, quite explicitly
ico” (Seguı́n et al. 2008:S5). The underlying idea was that
in the case of Brazil.
Mexico was characterized by being mestizo, but also that its
This brief outline gives an indication of the ways race and
mestizaje was unique, because of a “unique history [that]
nation have been woven together in Latin American contexts.
resulted in a population that derives from more than 60 local
Race has been quite explicit at some points, as in the 1920 Amerindian groups, Europeans, and, to a lesser extent, Af-
book Los problemas de la raza en Colombia (Jiménez López ricans” (Jimenez-Sanchez et al. 2008:1192). This meant that
et al. 1920); or in the use of raza to refer to collective groups, “genomic medicine in Mexico needs to be based on the ge-
united by history and culture, but also common descent; or netic structure and health demands of the Mexican popula-
in the use of raza to refer to categories seen as phenotypically tion, rather than importing applications developed for other
distinct—and especially subordinate (e.g., la raza negra). At populations” (Jimenez-Sanchez 2003:295–296).
other points, race has been quite implicit, for example, when The sampling methods of the project reinforced the stan-
it is only suggested by references to categories such as los dard geography of the nation: samples were taken during
blancos (the whites), los indios (the Indians), which do not highly publicized trips to a number of cities and the data were
use the word “race” but evoke racialized concepts. At yet other organized and presented by the Mexican state, showing the
points, race has been denied, seen as a concept relevant to proportions of African, European, and Amerindian ancestry
the United States or South Africa, but not Latin America; or for each state (Silva-Zolezzi et al. 2009). The very idea of a
seen as an outmoded concept redolent of racism and threat- “map” of the Mexican genome was made concrete in a map
ening to divide a basically nonracialized society. of the nation (Haraway 1997:131–172).6
The ambiguity of ideas about race, which has long roots In effect, the nation was being geneticized and presented
in Latin America, is reflected in the way racialized meanings as a biological unit, with its own particular characteristics that
are at once present and absent in Latin American genomic
science, an absent presence that is enabled by the invocation 5. See http://www.inmegen.gob.mx/tema/cms_page_media/430/libro
_ilustrado.pdf.
of the nation as a relevant, and often taken-for-granted, unit
6. For this and subsequent examples, the reader is encouraged to view
of analysis and concern. In what follows, we explore concrete the maps and charts that form part of key scientific papers. Internet links
examples of these entanglements. are given in supplement A.

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Wade et al. Race and Nation in Latin American Genomics 501

apparently differentiated it from other mestizo countries. The having been systematically marginalized in Mexico, despite
word “race” was barely mentioned in all this: it was not ex- some recent moves to correct this).
plicitly denied; it was simply almost completely absent.7 Yet Genomic studies in Brazil show the key role played by the
the categories of Europeans and Amerindians (and Afri- idea of the nation as a space in which racial meanings are
cans)—geographical and social categories given genetic di- made both present and absent. One geneticist working on
mensions and racialized in the sense defined at the start of pharmacogenetics has affirmed that studies done elsewhere
this article—were constantly deployed to give meaning to the to link genetic profiles to drug response for “well-defined
concept of mestizo (López Beltrán 2011:22–25; see also sup- ethnic groups” are not easily applicable to Brazil where there
plement A, sec. 1a, available online). The mestizo is a figure is a “poor correlation between Color [the Brazilian census
in which, as in the concept of la raza, biology might be term] and [genetic] ancestry” (Suarez-Kurtz 2011:122, 132).
downplayed in favor of history and culture but is still present The argument is that Brazilian geneticists should preferably
as a trace. For the geneticists, what they were doing was far use measures of genetic biogeographical ancestry (proportions
removed from race, because they were dealing with particular of European, African, and Amerindian ancestry) rather than
sets of genetic markers, which indicated certain ancestral or- color/race self-identifications (Suarez-Kurtz 2011:123). Phar-
igins in particular parts of the world where such markers were macogenetic research in Brazil has “the potential to contribute
common; they were not defining populations as the racial relevant information toward personalized drug prescription
types of late nineteenth-century racial science. Yet the way worldwide,” by offering a focus on diverse and more admixed
the data were presented often showed European, Amerindian, populations (Suarez-Kurtz 2011:132). The issue of race is
and African reference populations as separate clusters or broached in explicit terms, with the Brazilian census term cor
points on a chart, apparently biologically distinct entities (color) being taken as “equivalent to the English term ‘race,’”
(Silva-Zolezzi et al. 2009; see also supplement A, sec. 1b). and simultaneously its relevance is denied because color/race
Claims about genomic sovereignty also suggested the genetic terms are seen as inadequate to medically handle the variety
separateness of the national population. The way the data of mixed ancestries in Brazil and indeed more generally, as
were collected and presented also reinforced a clear distinction “many populations” are admixed (Suarez-Kurtz 2005:196).
between indı́genas and mestizos as the key categories that Then, a racialized concept hovers in the background, as mix-
constitute the Mexican nation. Even though the indigenous ture is conceived in terms of differing proportions of Euro-
populations might be, from a genetic point of view, mestizos, pean, African, and Amerindian ancestries. Throughout, it is
they were still presented as distinct category (Garcı́a Deister the Brazilian nation that acts as the commonsense forum both
2014). for the denial of race and for reference to race or to racialized
The Mexican Genomic Diversity Project (MGDP) is a clear ancestries.
example of a discourse that is primarily about the nation, in There is a similar pattern in the work of prominent pop-
a postcolonial context, in which ideas about race do not figure ulation geneticist Sérgio Pena. He is explicit about the need
explicitly at all. It is evident, however, that racialized meanings to deracialize medicine (Pena 2005). He believes that “the
only way of dealing scientifically with the genetic variability
are immanent in the use of concepts of biogeographical ge-
of Brazilians is individually, as singular and unique human
netic ancestry, which can escape the particular definitions
beings in their mosaic genomes and in their life histories”
geneticists give to them and can evoke familiar ideas of la
(Birchal and Pena 2011:93). Pena maintains that race is not
raza negra or la raza india. The key point for our argument,
valid biologically and particularly makes no sense for the
however, is that these racialized meanings gain particular trac-
highly diverse Brazilian population.8
tion from their articulation within the imaginative space of
Alongside Pena’s antirace stance, the nation continues to
the “mestizo nation”; this is above and beyond the raciali-
play a key role and, as in Mexico, is a space in which race
zation that may result from the way in which genomic science
both disappears and reappears. In the popular science text
deploys its concept of genetic ancestry or from the way this
“Retrato Molecular do Brasil,” or Molecular Portrait of Brazil
may be interpreted by nongeneticists in relation to existing
(Pena et al. 2000; see also supplement A, sec. 2a), Pena ex-
popular concepts of race. It is the concept of the mestizo or
plains the nonexistence of biological races, but also gives an
Mexican nation that allows these racialized meanings to be
analysis of the mitochondrial DNA of samples of Brazilians
both absent and present, in a characteristically Mexican way.
that apportions matrilineal ancestry into African, Amerindian,
The mestizo nation is a natural-cultural construct built on and European components. Pena takes the trouble of ex-
the idea of simultaneous biological and cultural mixture and plaining mitochondrial DNA matrilineages and haplogroups,
rooted in the foundational mixture of distinct continental but the apportionment of ancestry in terms of biogeographical
populations—Europeans and Amerindians (with Africans categories of continental dimensions still suggests the exis-
tence of three biologically distinct populations, which com-
7. In fact, an early account of the project, by two journalists for the
international audience of Nature Biotechnology, did describe it as a “race-
based genome project” (Guerrero Mothelet and Herrera 2005), but this 8. See the video by Pena to illustrate the “We R No Race” campaign,
is the only occurrence we found. http://wearenorace.com/ (see also supplement A, sec. 2c).

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 502 Current Anthropology Volume 55, Number 5, October 2014

bine to create a biologically defined national population (see, not always important. In that sense, genomics did not nec-
e.g., Pena et al. 2009; and also supplement A, sec. 2b). Al- essarily reproduce the nation as a foundational concept.
though there are no claims made about national uniqueness, However, second, the data always reflect mixture, analyzed
the nation forms the taken-for-granted unit of analysis, and in terms of European, African, and Amerindian ancestries; in
the article title recalls Prado’s classic essay on Brazilian na- that sense the larger and smaller scales reproduce the dynam-
tional characteristics, Retrato do Brasil (1931). ics that can be observed for nations. Race is not explicitly
The idea of the Brazilian nation thus encompasses both a mentioned in the way it may be in publications more firmly
vehement denial of biological racial difference, highlighted as located in the US science academy (Burchard et al. 2005), but
a national characteristic as well as a universal truth, and a it is evoked by the very concept of mestizo and mixture. In
portrait of the country based on the mixture of biogeograph- that sense, race as an absent presence works to articulate these
ical populations that seem to be biologically distinctive—and different scales together.
correspond to familiar ideas about colors/races in Brazil— In sum, the absent presence of racialized concepts could
and that, when mixed, produce a distinctive genetic national circulate with or without the idea of the nation as a powerful
profile. The nation creates a space in which it is common organizer, but they drew particular force from their articu-
knowledge that Brazil is both a place where race might not lation with the nation, because in Latin America the national
really be relevant and a place founded by three biogeograph- frame has traditionally been and remains today the space for
ically distinctive ancestral populations. discourses about both the natural-cultural process of mixture
In grasping the role of the nation in articulating the absent- and its originary populations, and the way in which mixture
presence of racial meanings, it is important to appreciate that is thought to generate the possibilities for the transcendence
shifting scales of analysis can operate. For some purposes, it and invisibility of race. The nation is a frame that permits
make sense for geneticists to present data and findings samples both the idea (or rather ideal) of a “racial democracy” sup-
framed as “Mexican” or “Brazilian,” as we have shown, and posedly born of endless mixtures and the idea of racial dif-
this can be for national and international audiences. In other ference, originary and persisting, which generates the possi-
cases, the relevant unit of analysis is supranational—“Latin bility of mixture in the first place, but a mixture that produces
American mestizos,” “Hispanics,” “South America,” the anything but a racial democracy.
“Americas,” or “trihybrid populations of the Americas” (Be-
doya et al. 2006; Bortolini et al. 1995; Galanter et al. 2012; Multiculturalism, Affirmative Action,
Suarez-Kurtz 2005; Wang et al. 2008). Or the focus may be and the Nation
on a particular region within the nation, such as northwest
Colombia or southern Brazil (Carvajal-Carmona et al. 2000; Since about 1990, multiculturalist political, legal, and consti-
Marrero et al. 2007). These scalar shifts show two character- tutional reforms have been under way—unevenly—in much
istics. of Latin America, giving greater recognition and rights to in-
First, the articles emphasize heterogeneity, pointing out that digenous and black or “Afro-descendant” minorities (Van
the supranational categories are very diverse in terms of their Cott 2000; Wade 2010; Yashar 2005). These reforms are the
mixtures. Thus the argument that Suarez-Kurtz makes for cause and result of a contested and publicly debated process
Brazil, described above, he also makes for “admixed popu- of reimagining the nation to be more inclusive of “ethnic”
lations” in general, with the “trihybrid populations of the minorities, moving away from the a singular image of the
Americas” as exemplars. Pharmacogenomics needs to address (often lighter-skinned) mestizo as the unquestioned citizen.
increasing global patterns of admixture, which increases het- Typically, the debates are phrased in terms of culture and
erogeneity and leads in his view to greater “fluidity of racial history, but race is always absently present, because the dis-
and/or ethnic labels”; researchers are limited by a focus on cussions concern the relative places of blackness and indi-
“well-defined ethnic groups” (Suarez-Kurtz 2005:196). geneity in the nation (and, to a lesser extent, mixedness and
Heterogeneity also occurs within nations: subnational whiteness, which tend to function as unmarked categories of
regions may be quite varied (on Colombia, see Olarte Sierra normality). Meanwhile, the atmosphere of reform—plus the
and Dı́az del Castillo H. 2013). For example, referring to impact of the 2001 Durban conference on racism—has re-
admixture mapping techniques, which study admixed pop- sulted in more public attention to questions of racism, in-
ulations in the search for disease-linked genetic variants, one creasing the public presence of “race” in some instances.
study commented that “optimal application of this approach For example, in Colombia in 2009, the vice president’s
[of admixture mapping] in Hispanics will require that the office supported the first National Campaign against Racism,
strategy used is adjusted to the specific admixture history of as part of a government remit to combat racism, and in 2011
the population from where patients are being ascertained” there was a state-sponsored local antiracism campaign in Bo-
(Bedoya et al. 2006:7238). That is, “Hispanics”—a category gotá. On February 14, 2011, a Colombian state TV channel
used by some North American researchers—were not all the aired a program about race and racism in Colombia, which
same, but varied massively according to regional histories. asked people on the streets of Bogotá if they thought races
What emerges is that the national origin of populations was existed. Many people said they did and some were happy to

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Wade et al. Race and Nation in Latin American Genomics 503

say to which one they belonged.9 In Brazil, race has been of phenotype (Parra et al. 2003:177). Criteria might also be
more explicit as a term of reference. The census has long had based on self-identification: in the Mexican MGDP, volunteers
a “color” question, asking people to identify as white, brown, were said to be “self-defined” as mestizos (Silva-Zolezzi et al.
black, yellow (meaning of Asian origin), or indigenous. In 2009:8616), and some Brazilian studies asked people to iden-
the 1991 census, as result of lobbying by black activists, the tify themselves, using census categories (Pimenta et al. 2006).
question changed to ask about “color or race” (Nobles 2000: Frequently, genealogical criteria were added to ensure vol-
121). In 1995, the president publicly acknowledged that rac- unteers that were good ancestral representatives of a given
ism was a problem, which deserved redress through affir- locality or group: individuals were asked to confirm that their
mative action policies, targeting the “black” population in the four grandparents had lived in the same locality (or spoke an
areas of higher education, employment, and health (Htun indigenous language).
2004). This culminated in the passing of the Statute on Racial Thus, using criteria of place of birth and/or descent and/
Equality in 2010, followed on August 29, 2012, by the Law or appearance and/or self-identity, the nation’s population
of Social Quotas, consolidating the cotas raciais (racial quotas) was broken up into categories of people who were, effectively,
that had begun in 2004 in some public university admissions. black, indigenous, mixed or, in Brazil, white. As the criteria
The way the nation and its internal diversity appear in for differentiation were ones used in everyday social life, it is
genomic science is contradictory in this context and highlights to be expected that this kind of categorization reproduced
clearly how, in genomics, the nation acts as a vehicle for rather faithfully the image of the multicultural nation, with
articulating race as an ambiguous absent presence. On the its separate “cultures,” which, in the Latin American case, are
one hand, some aspects of genomic science reinforce the mul- usually defined as either Afro-descendant, or indigenous, or
ticulturalist version of the nation, highlighting racial differ- neither of the above. The internal diversity of the nation was
ence. It was common practice in population genomics studies not defined in simple genetic terms—and race itself was either
to distinguish samples along ethnic-racial lines. Thus mesti- not mentioned or actively denied. Yet the way the samples
zos, indigenous/Amerindian people, and black people (usually were defined and the fact that the samples were then profiled
labeled, in English, “African-derived,” “Afro-descendant,” genetically meant that a racializing slippage between culture
“Afro-Colombian” or, occasionally, “black”)—and, in Brazil, and nature was immanent, opening the possibility, especially
“white” people—were routinely treated as separate categories, for nongeneticists, of thinking about difference in biological
giving rise to separate samples and presented separately in mode. This way of using cultural categories makes them “ap-
many publications. One overview Colombian study, for ex- pear to be genetic units; indeed it would make them genetic
ample, divided its various sample populations into categories units” (Marks 2003:203).
labeled mestizo, Native American, and African Colombian; But this is not the whole story, because, at the same time,
of the 24 samples, just one was African Colombian, apparently other aspects of genomic science challenge this multicultur-
representing this entire category (Rojas et al. 2010; see also alist perspective of a nation structured in terms of familiar
supplement A, sec. 3c and figs. A2, A3, available online). cultural-racial categories. These aspects instead produce a sec-
The criteria for identifying populations were diverse—and ond genomic version of the nation that emphasizes overall
not always very clear—but were generally social ones. They national mixedness and is thus orthogonal to the recently
might be based on where people lived. For example, when minted image of the multicultural nation, with its emphasis
Colombian researchers wanted a population that was “mainly on black and indigenous ethnic minorities. Much of the over-
Caucasian,” they went to highland Antioquia (Builes et al. all thrust of genomic science in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico
2004), an area reputed in Colombia to be quite “white” and emphasized the category that has tended to go unmarked in
which previous studies had shown to be “a Caucasoid group multiculturalism—the mestizo majority.
with very low Amerindian or Negroid contributions” (Bravo, The mestizo—especially the light-skinned version—as the
Valenzuela, and Arcos-Burgos 1996). When the same re- normal, unquestioned, majority and unmarked citizen, has
searchers did a study of “African descent” Colombians, they long underpinned the national identities of Brazil, Colombia,
did not specify how the sample was chosen but simply selected and Mexico. The mestizo is a deeply racialized character, be-
people resident in Chocó province (Builes et al. 2008), the cause it is seen as the outcome of racial mixture, yet it appears
so-called black province of Colombia (Wade 1993). raceless because that mixture is said to have blurred racial
Criteria could also be perceptions of appearance: some Bra- identities and boundaries. The mestizo’s apparent racelessness
zilian studies used “morphological classification,” “taking into allows a blindness to racial difference and inequality, per-
consideration skin color and characteristics such as hair type mitting these to be evaded (on color blindness, see Bonilla-
and nose and lip shape” (Bortolini et al. 1999:552), and an- Silva 2003; Frankenberg 1993; Reardon and TallBear 2012).
other “clinically classified” the samples using measurements Genomic science explicitly pointed to these countries as
quintessentially mestizo nations—an image that is back-
9. See http://www.canalcapital.gov.co/defensor-del-televidente/3976- grounded in multiculturalist discourse. In doing so, genomics
televidente-capital-14-de-febrero-de-2011 and http://www.youtube.com both marks the mestizo category and racializes it by constantly
/watch?vpLDHXls8wdu0&pp292C776DB8B3121B. referring to its ancestral make-up in terms of European, Af-

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 504 Current Anthropology Volume 55, Number 5, October 2014

rican, and Amerindian genetic contributions. Studies of Bra- that has been self-consciously developed by some Brazilian
zilian whites revealed that they had appreciable amounts of intellectuals over many decades in a dialogue with the United
Amerindian and African ancestry, while blacks and pardos States (Seigel 2009). Some Brazilians fear that race-based af-
(browns) had significant European ancestry (Alves-Silva et al. firmative actions threaten to crystallize and heighten racial
2000; Pena and Bortolini 2004; Pena et al. 2000). Mexican divisions in a country where, although racism and racial in-
populations were routinely labeled mestizo (Silva-Zolezzi et equality are undeniable, some believe that they are best com-
al. 2009). Many Colombian researchers described their sam- bated by an attack on class inequality, not by emphasizing
ples as mestizo or detailed their mixed ancestries (Bedoya et racial identities (Fry et al. 2007). Pena was by no means alone
al. 2006; Carvajal-Carmona et al. 2000; Rojas et al. 2010; see in criticizing race-based affirmative action policies, but what
also supplement A, sec. 3a). Overview studies traced variation is notable is the use of a genetically validated emphasis on
among Latin American mestizos (Wang et al. 2008). Other the mixed nature of Brazilian society to undermine multi-
studies in Brazil and Colombia, while they might categorically culturalist priorities about the way the nation should be con-
separate black and indigenous populations from others, also ceived and built, with special attention given to underprivi-
showed that the former, especially the black populations, were leged ethnic and racial minorities.
often actually quite mixed in terms of genetic ancestry (Bor- In Colombia, the predominant emphasis on the mestizo as
tolini et al. 1999; Rojas et al. 2010). the typical member of the national population was combined
The emphasis on mixture was partly a reflection of the with a highly flexible and varied definitions of mestizo by
priorities of international genomic science, from whose per- different geneticists. This allowed a number of different read-
spective Latin America had two things going for it: indigenous ings, which slipped between the genomic reiteration of the
populations, which could help researchers find out about the multiculturally diverse nation and the genomic insistence on
past and might give clues about disease-causing variants mixture. Everyone was seen as mestizo, but some were seen
among contemporary mestizo populations; and mestizos as more mestizo than others, whether in terms of the relative
themselves, who could be useful genomic objects in the search proportions of biogeographical ancestries or their location in
for these same genetic variants. Yet the image of genetic mix- a racialized geography of the country (see below). This ge-
ture also fed back into taken-for-granted ideas of the character ography meant that, according to some geneticists, cities were
of Latin American nations as the products of mestizaje. more mestizo than rural areas or specific regions were more
The emphasis on mixture in Brazil was reflected in the way genetically indigenous or more African than others. In short,
some geneticists lobbied against the affirmative action policies the emphasis on the mestizo coexisted with the possibility of
that allocated racial quotas for some university admissions. defining Afro-Colombian and indigenous peoples or regions
Sérgio Pena, for example, criticized these policies on the basis as different and other (Olarte Sierra and Dı́az del Castillo H.
that they had no foundation in biology—it was impossible 2013).
to biologically define a category that could be the recipient In Latin American multiculturalism, the nation acts as an
of quota places for “blacks.” He acknowledged that social important frame for the way racialized meanings both appear
policy had to take into account social realities but insisted and disappear in genomic science, paralleling the way they
that policy makers should also be aware of the scientific evi- are absently present in the political domain. As race has be-
dence (Pena and Bortolini 2004)—and in 2010 the Supreme come increasingly publicly present, especially in Brazil, in
Court called him to give evidence in hearings on the consti- terms of political and social identities, often marked by phe-
tutionality of the quotas. notype within the nation, genomics is playing an interesting
Pena also made more general statements against what he role. It denies the biological validity of race in general and
saw as the tendency of racial quotas to heighten racial division: highlights the mixedness of Latin American national popu-
“We strongly believe we should avoid this effect in Brazilian lations; yet it also routinely uses familiar categorical distinc-
society. Biology contributes effectively to a nonracialist con- tions to define both populations and their mixture—Africans,
ception of mankind. And in Brazil, the consciousness of the Europeans, Amerindians, Afrodescendants, mestizos, and so
weak correlation between colour and ancestry meets the uto- forth. Genomics racializes the mestizo and marks it—the usu-
pian wish of a nonracialist society” (Birchal and Pena 2011: ally unmarked category—as the center of the nation, thus
93). Pena also criticized public health policies aimed at the potentially drawing the mestizo into a politics of identity that
“black” population on the grounds that this social category is generally reserved for racial and ethnic “minorities.” Yet
did not define a medically and biologically meaningful pop- genomics still retains the apparent racelessness of the mestizo,
ulation (Pena 2005; Santos et al. 2009). In these controversies, because it denies biological race in general and in particular
“it is not just social policy that is at stake, but the country’s in a nation of mestizos.
understanding and portrayal of itself” (Htun 2004:61). At On the social level, the implications of these contradictory
issue is the image of Brazil seen as a country where “race” practices—implications only sometimes made explicit by ge-
has not had, and should not acquire, a strong grip on the neticists—are likewise twofold: the irrelevance of the increased
public imagination. This is an image built in part on an political salience of race as a point of identification and the
implicit comparison with the United States—a comparison inadequacy of categorical distinctions based on racial iden-

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Wade et al. Race and Nation in Latin American Genomics 505

tities; and yet also increasing possibilities, especially among Andrés, (b) “Mestizo” populations from the Colombian
nongeneticists, for imagining a genetic basis for social cate- mountain range of Los Andes and populations settled in
gories that may, or may not, be named as “racial.” In a context the Amazonian region and Oriental flats (Orinoquian re-
in which race is becoming socially more present, genomics gion), (c) populations from the Southwest Andean region
acts to make its presence more absent, without actually erasing (with an important Amerindian component), and (d) Af-
it and indeed providing the conceptual wherewithal to biol- rican-descendant populations inhabiting the Colombian Ca-
ogize it in the public domain. Thus when BBC Brazil asked ribbean coast.12
Sérgio Pena to do ancestry tests on nine Brazilian celebrities
The regional framing of the paper is rooted in commonplace
and the famous black musician Neguinho da Beija Flor (little
descriptions of Colombia as a “country of regions” (Centro
black man of the Beija Flor samba school) was revealed to
de Investigación y Educación Popular 1998; Zambrano and
have 60% European ancestry, some commentators ironically
Bernard 1993). For example, the state’s Instituto Geográfico
renamed him Branquinho da Beija Flor (little white man
Agustı́n Codazzi (IGAC) divides the country into five “natural
. . .).10 These genomic facts were used as authenticators of
regions.” These or very similar regions are frequently used by
racialized social identities, despite the fact that Sérgio Pena is
scholars to describe the country’s cultural zones (Abadı́a Mo-
a keen exponent of the invalidity of race as biology.
rales 1983; Ocampo López 1988), and they are common cur-
rency in tourist descriptions.13
Regionalization, Race, and the Nation Although regional differences are generally phrased in the
A final example of the entanglements of race and nation in language of culture, they are often given racialized dimen-
genomic science comes from the way Colombian geneticists sions: the Pacific coastal region is seen as the “black region”
dealt with the country’s regional diversity (Olarte Sierra and of the nation; the Caribbean coastal region is very mixed, but
Dı́az del Castillo H. 2013). In 2003, a team of Colombian with a strong black presence; the central region of mountain
and Spanish forensic geneticists, based in institutes of legal cordilleras and valleys is generally seen as lighter-skinned mes-
medicine, published a paper with tables of allelic frequencies, tizo, with a more obvious indigenous presence in the south-
defining four regional populations that could be used as ref- west; the Amazon and Orinoco basins are, in their more
erence points for Colombian forensic experts trying to match remote reaches, populated by indigenous peoples (Centro de
DNA samples (Paredes et al. 2003).11 The Colombian Institute Investigación y Educación Popular 1998; Wade 1993, 2000).
of Family Welfare and the public prosecutor’s office then Gutiérrez de Pineda (1975), for example, referred to regional
adopted these tables as the standard tool for DNA matching “cultural complexes” labeled as “negroid,” “American,” “neo-
in paternity suits and the identification of living individuals Hispanic,” and “Antioqueño,” thus creating hybrid natural-
and corpses. Like initiatives in Mexico and Brazil, this obeyed cultural categories in which race both appears (especially in
an underlying rationale of creating databases tailored to the relation to black populations) and recedes. The IGAC’s 2012
character of national populations, rather than using imported map of cultural regions shows 11 regions, which are then
ones. grouped into three bigger categories by “anthropological or-
The regional populations in question were established by igin”: Hispano-American, Amerindian, and Afro-American.14
Paredes et al. using a combination of two methods. First, Thus the nation acts as a frame in which racial difference
secondary sources were used to define four regions, rooted may not always be named but can be evoked through a dis-
in historical demographic patterns said to have followed a course of “cultural regions.”
“model of fragmented settlement and later unification” Other genetics papers took a more nuanced approach than
(Paredes et al. 2003:67). Second, genetic data from 1,429 in- Paredes et al. One article started with a classic regional de-
dividuals were classified by department (administrative-ter- scription (Rojas et al. 2010:13):
ritorial unit) of origin and the departments were grouped into The population of mixed ancestry concentrates mainly in
clusters, according to genetic similarity, using a simple sta- urban areas, particularly on the Andes. African-Colombians
tistical technique. The clustering “showed a complete corre- live predominantly on the Caribbean and Pacific coasts and
lation of the genetic data with the historical classification.” islands. Native American populations concentrate mainly in
The resulting map (see fig. A1, available online) shows four the East (on the vast Orinoco and Amazon river basins)
regions (Paredes et al. 2003:68; see also supplement A, sec.
3b): 12. In fact, there are no statistically significant differences in the allelic
frequencies of the regions profiled in the paper, which makes the or-
(a) African-descendants population inhabiting the North ganization of the data into regional groups all the more striking. We are
Colombian Pacific coast and the Caribbean island of San indebted to our colleague Ernesto Schwartz-Marı́n for this insight.
13. See the 2002 map at http://geoportal.igac.gov.co/mapas_de
10. http://www.bbc.co.uk/portuguese/reporterbbc/story/2007/05/ _colombia/IGAC/Tematicos/34813.jpg. For a tourist description, see http:
070424_dna_neguinho_cg.shtml; see also http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ //encolombia.about.com/od/ViajaraColombia/tp/Regiones-Colombianas
6284806.stm. .htm.
11. For an example of how race/ethnicity enters into the definition of 14. See the map at http://geoportal.igac.gov.co/mapas_de_colombia/
reference populations, see M’charek (2005, chap. 2). IGAC/Tematicos2012/RegionesCulturales.pdf.

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 506 Current Anthropology Volume 55, Number 5, October 2014

and in rural areas of the SouthWest and North of the coun- derstanding the way racialized concepts get reiterated and
try. reworked in genomic science, in ways that make race both
disappear and reappear. Public health, multiculturalism, and
But Rojas et al. did not geneticize four simple regions in the
forensics are all political and policy domains that directly
way Paredes et al. did. In fact they divided up their 24 samples
invoke the biopolitical nation and its people in terms of their
into nine regional categories, and they made no attempt to
well-being, their diversity and unity, and their biological re-
describe each of these in genetic terms, emphasizing instead
latedness in procreation, violence, and death. The governance
overall diversity. But they did reinforce the idea of a basic
of these domains is of central interest to the state. Genomics
regional/racial structure by locating all their eight indigenous
also intervenes in these domains, with the promise of better
samples in “typical” indigenous peripheral regions, their single
health for the nation’s people, representations of both diver-
African Colombian sample in the Pacific coastal region, while
sity and unity, and techniques for connecting bodies in ways
the 15 mestizo samples came from the rest of the country.
that, it is hoped, will lead to reconciliations and peace.15 The
They also suggested that there is a “geographic structure in
idea of race, in previous times, figured explicitly in the way
the patterns of genetic variation in mestizo populations,” not-
all these domains were conceptualized in all three countries—
ing, for example, high levels of African ancestry in the mtDNA
los problemas de la raza, to recall the title of the 1920 Colom-
and Y-chromosome DNA for the Caribbean and Pacific
bian book cited earlier on, concerned precisely health, pro-
regions—but also “an important maternal African contri-
gress, unity, diversity, and conflict in the nation. Race was of
bution” in North Santander, a province not usually associated
course not the only factor to be considered—violent conflict,
with blackness.
for example, also followed cleavages of class, region, religion,
For the geneticist Emilio Yunis Turbay, regional diversity,
or political faction—but it was an important way of thinking
with its deep historical and cultural roots, is a problem for
about difference and the problems it might cause within the
Colombia and is related to the political fragmentation of the
nation. The demise of race as an explicit discourse for talking
country and its problems of violence. Yunis’s popular book
about these matters did not mean that racialized concepts
title asks plaintively, “Why are we like this? What happened
disappeared. Geneticists and medics continued to be inter-
in Colombia?” and he seeks the answer in “an analysis of
ested in the racial mixture of their national populations in
mestizaje” (Yunis Turbay 2009). Interestingly, he explicitly—
relation to public health, cultural commentators continued
and unusually—uses the language of race: he identifies the to reflect on diversity in terms of black, indigenous, and mes-
“regionalization of race” and the “regionalization of genes” tizo cultural traits, and indeed forensic scientists continued
in Colombia as a profound problem, dividing the country to classify bodies in more or less explicitly racial terms.16
and causing social exclusion and inequality (2009:19). He Genomics, characterized by its very detailed examination of
identifies the “black,” “Caucasian,” and “indigenous” com- the structure of DNA sequences, generally rejects a language
ponents of Colombia’s mestizaje, and his maps of Colombia of race, both biologically and, in Latin America, socially. Bra-
reiterate the classic racialized regionalization that locates zil, where color/race labels operate in some domains, is a
“black Colombia” in the Pacific and Caribbean, the “indig- partial exception, while also being the country where the most
enous contribution” in the far southwest and the Amazon/ vocal rejection of race is to be found. Yet, as we have seen,
Orinoco regions, while central regions have mestizos with a racialized concepts continue to appear implicitly (and occa-
strong “Caucasian contribution” (Yunis Turbay 2009:349– sionally more explicitly) in genomic analysis and are fre-
372). quently harnessed to the idea of the nation.
All these maps reproduce the regionalized nation, now in But genomics does not simply reproduce either nation or
molecular idiom. Unlike Yunis, other researchers do not use racialized versions of the nation in unaltered form. First, as
the term “race,” yet Paredes et al. manage to make the ra- we have seen, international genomic science may not be con-
cialized dimensions of region particularly explicit and effec- cerned with national framings: the interesting genomic object
tively divide the country into mestizo, black, and indigenous is often “the mestizo,” or different populations of mestizos,
regions, while even the more nuanced approach of Rojas et not necessarily organized by national borders. To the extent
al. ends up underlining, in genetic terms, basic features of that Brazilian, Colombian, or Mexican geneticists address
the regional/racial structure of the nation. The nation and its themselves to this international scientific community—and
regions are the taken-for-granted vehicle for affirming the they certainly do this, as well as publishing in journals of
significance of racial difference, while race itself remains an more national scope and in popular outlets that are generally
absent presence, explicit at some moments and hidden at national in orientation—they undermine the significance of
others.
15. On the promissory character of genomics, see Fortun (2008).
16. On public health, see Barragán (2011), López Beltrán, Garcı́a De-
Conclusion ister, and Rios Sandoval (2014), Restrepo, Schwartz-Marı́n, and Cárdenas
(2014), and Santos, Kent, and Gaspar Neto (2014). On cultural com-
The analysis of these examples from Brazil, Colombia, and mentary see, e.g., Lomnitz-Adler (1992), Vianna (1999), and Wade
Mexico reveals how crucial the nation is as a frame for un- (2000).

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Wade et al. Race and Nation in Latin American Genomics 507

the nation, even if concepts of African, European, and Am- Olarte Sierra, and Sandra González; and Research Assistants
erindian genetic ancestries continue to evoke race-like im- Adriana Dı́az del Castillo H., Verlan Valle Gaspar Neto, Mar-
agery. Second, the analysis of genomics and multiculturalism iana Rios Sandoval, and Roosbelinda Cárdenas. See http://
shows that geneticists may produce versions of the nation that www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/subjects/social-
are orthogonal to multiculturalist priorities in the sense that anthropology/our-research/projects/race-genomics-and-mes-
the genomic analyses highlight mestizos, thus marking the tizaje//. The ideas expressed here are indebted to the con-
category that generally remains unmarked. Genomics pro- versations and exchanges of ideas with project team members.
duces the nation in another way, in which the mestizo is given Ethnographic research was conducted in several labs, includ-
a new and more explicit role in the molecular portrait of the ing ones located in the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande
nation. do Sul in Porto Alegre, Universidade Federal do Pará in Be-
Third, and most important, genomics operates in a space lém, the Universidad de Antioquia in Medellı́n, and the In-
of contradiction that is common in the post–World War II stituto Nacional de Medicina Genómica in Mexico City. This
world. On the one hand, a global consensus has emerged, article draws on these ethnographic data and on the scientists’
driven by factors as varied as decolonization and genetic sci- published papers.
ence, around the idea that race, a concept that had been
hegemonic as a way of thinking about human diversity for
over 200 years, is no longer acceptable or valid. On the other
hand, racial inequality and racism continue as potent and
even growing realities. Genomics participates in this contra- Comments
diction. On the one hand, it puts the last nail in the coffin
of the biological validity of race, although this has been an Maria Cátira Bortolini and Caio Cesar Silva de Cer-
uneven and slow process (Reardon 2005). On the other hand, queira
Department of Genetics, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do
as we have seen, a minority of geneticists contend that ge- Sul, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil ([email protected])/School of
netically race has some degree of validity, many geneticists in Medicine, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande, Rio Grande, RS,
the United States at least continue to explicitly use the social Brazil. 12 II 14
category of race to organize aspects of their data, and genet-
icists more widely deploy concepts of genetic ancestry that, Based on a study of blood group, serum protein, and red
although biologically speaking are far removed from the race blood cell enzyme loci, geneticist Richard Lewontin (1972)
of early twentieth-century racial science, nevertheless seem to estimated the fraction of genetic diversity within and between
evoke racial categories and ground them in a molecular reality. the seven human “races” (Caucasians, Black Africans, Mon-
If a geneticist such as Sérgio Pena in Brazil reiterates familiar goloids, South Asian Aborigines, Amerinds, Oceanians, and
notions of Africans, Amerindians, and Europeans and their Australian Aborigines). Note that Lewontin already used the
mixed offspring, we also have to contend with the fact that word “race” with quotation marks. He concluded that these
he is the most vocal and explicit debunker of the very idea human “races” are remarkably similar to each other since
of race. In this sense, genomics is not simply reproducing more variation is found between individuals within a “race.”
race or the racialized nation in a seamless continuity with the This pioneering investigation was followed by others, includ-
past. It is participating in the ongoing re-figuring of race as ing those using DNA markers. These studies corroborated the
an absent presence, a presence that can be known through fact that the genetic diversity pattern of Homo sapiens was
the quite precise measurements and calibrations of genetic molded by a demographic expansion from Africa, where mi-
ancestry, precisions that simultaneously indicate an absence grants carried only subsets of the variation found in their
of race. In all this, the nation remains as a key frame in which parental populations. New population or geographical-spe-
these contradictions are enacted, a frame in which the con- cific alleles that emerged after this initial dispersion are rare,
current presence and absence of race can be apprehended. but they exist. Some of these variants code for visible phe-
notypes (often associated with “race” categories), such as blue
eyes, blond hair, and lighter skin color, as observed in
Northern Europeans. At least one of these traits—lighter skin
Acknowledgments color—is also found in East Asia, probably due to distinct
This article draws on a collaborative project, “Race, genomics alleles, and is associated with adaptation to diverse environ-
and mestizaje (mixture) in Latin America: a comparative ap- ments after the initial dispersal of Homo sapiens from Africa
proach,” funded by the Economic and Social Research Coun- (see Cerqueira et al. 2011; Jablonski and Chaplin 2010;
cil (ESRC) of the United Kingdom (grant RES-062-23-1914) McEvoy, Beleza, and Shriver 2006; Norton et al. 2007; for
and the Leverhulme Foundation (grant RPG-044). It was di- extensive reviews). Numerous other examples of biological
rected by Peter Wade, with codirectors Carlos López Beltrán, particularities could be cited.
Eduardo Restrepo, and Ricardo Ventura Santos; Research As- Summarizing and returning to the central question: pairs
sociates Vivette Garcı́a Deister, Michael Kent, Marı́a Fernanda of individuals from different geographical regions tend to be

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 508 Current Anthropology Volume 55, Number 5, October 2014

only slightly more genetically different than pairs of individ- Acknowledgments

uals from the same region. But, the accumulation of small
We thank Professor Francisco M. Salzano for a critical dis-
differences across large numbers of genetic loci makes it pos-
cussion and final review of this text and Rosanna Dent for
sible to infer geographic (or continental) ancestries. In many
English editing.
cases, it is also possible to estimate a geographical origin at
the more restricted population level (Rosenberg 2011). For
instance, using 40,000–130,000 single nucleotide polymor-
phism loci and a new biogeographical algorithm identified
the country of origin of 83% of individuals from a worldwide Duana Fullwiley
sample. When applied to over 200 Sardinian villagers, this Stanford University; 450 Serra Mall, Building 50; Main Quad;
method placed a quarter of them in their villages and most Stanford; CA 94305-2034; U.S.A. ([email protected]). 4 III 14
of the remaining within 50 km of their villages (Elhaik et al.
2014). In other words, everything depends on the selection
and number of genetic markers, the methodological design, Race Never Stands Alone: Genomic Science in
and the goals of a given study, which can further be enriched Latin America and Beyond
with geographic information and normal or pathological phe- Peter Wade et al.’s “Nation and the Absent Presence of Race
notypic data. The immense number of studies that describe in Latin American Genomics” reports on the place of race in
human genetic diversity is not surprising, because beyond genomic science in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico. With many
obvious medical and forensic uses, they have revealed details caveats and exceptions they argue that in Latin America
about our evolutionary and demographic history. In conclu-
racialized meanings in genomics, rather than standing alone,
sion, independent of the nomenclature used to define pop-
are very often wrapped up in ideas about nation. This seems
ulations or any worldwide human groups, they exist with their
to us a rather neglected aspect in the literature about ge-
particular biological identities.
nomics and race. More specifically, the absent presence of
Peter Wade and colleagues’ major conclusion that “the way
race in Latin American genomics finds a particular expres-
race appears—and disappears—in genomic science in Latin
sion in concepts of nation, because this vehicle suits the
America reflects [a] deep-rooted ambiguity” is essentially cor-
deep-rooted ambiguity of race in the region.
rect. As mentioned above, biological diversity exists, and iden-
tifying it at individual, population, or continental levels is One can appreciate the authors’ effort to present regional
relevant in many academic and applied contexts. For instance, nuance, their global reach, and their aim to push the literature
our ancestry studies with Latin American populations refer further. Yet, at times, Wade et al. approach the goal we all
to African, Amerindian, and European ancestries. Yes, it is have for scholarship with a superficial engagement of the
possible to identify genetic particularities in these major hu- relevant literature. This is coupled with an unnecessary at-
man continental groups, independent of the level of genetic tempt to narrowly define what counts as “nation” and “race.”
diversity inside them. However, under certain circumstances, On the first issue, they aim to set themselves apart from
reporting data has become very complicated. The choice of others by defining nation as “an imagined community or
nomenclature to identify groups of research interest, for ex- identity.” Even if we limit ourselves to this frame, they over-
ample, is an almost impossible task. Thus, the mentioned look these issues in my work on Mexican-American geneticists
ambiguity is expected. It is noteworthy that one of the reasons who advance admixture genetics to resolve asthma disparities
for this ambiguity was not mentioned in the Wade et al. paper: in Hispanics. Here imagined community and identity surface
the systematic attempts to criminalize biological diversity, as multiple times. To convey this imaginary, I present the reader
well as to criminalize all who insist on investigating it. Unlike with several reproduced images of Diego Rivera’s art that
cultural diversity, which is celebrated in the academic socio- adorned these scientists’ walls, including a reproduction of
cultural environment, biological diversity has become a taboo The Great City of Tenochitlàn at the National Palace in Mexico
for some influential scholars. Our clear impression is that City (Fullwiley 2008:709). My ethnography with this team
biological diversity per se is considered “the problem.” Has detailed how the principal investigator explicitly wanted to
it become a crime to speak of African ancestry? This is un- include Latinos in what he saw to be “the genomic revolution”
acceptable. We must remember that intolerance to difference, broadly (Fullwiley 2008:726). As a Mexican-American him-
rather than to biological (or cultural) differences per se, is self, he articulated his efforts within US racial discourses of
the major reason for conflict and discrimination. civil rights, that is, political inclusion and census represen-
While cultural differences make our existence more stim- tation (Fullwiley 2008:710). In my view these articulations of
ulating, biological differences constantly remind us that we “nation” in no way run counter to the imagined community
belong to a species with a rich demographic and evolutionary of Latino geneticists that my key informant actively fosters
history, which deserves to be revealed. Both cultural and bi- in California. (These aspects of nation are strangely parsed
ological diversities must be celebrated and any intolerance in Wade et al.’s introduction.) It is within this community
toward them rejected. that the scientists I studied openly embraced “ancestry” as

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Wade et al. Race and Nation in Latin American Genomics 509

the genetic component to race for their Latino-focused ad- burgeoning interest in examining the paradoxical ways that
mixture genetics. Thus race framings for genetic admixture race is reproduced and transformed in diverse domains of
in the United States cannot be said to “stand alone” (Wade genomic research. The focus on contrasting examples within
et al., first mention). Wade et al. correctly cite my emphasis the neglected Latin American region and the attention to
on the ways that social categories of race and genomic ancestry contestation and contradiction in how concepts of nation
tools conceptually resource and reiterate each other. But one facilitate and enable ambiguous and ambivalent expressions
cannot stop there. When reading further one can see certain of race and genomics bring a much-needed comparative per-
US-based Latino geneticists carving out a scientific enterprise, spective to these recent discussions. This raises vital questions
creating large databases for their universities, and amassing about the extent to which the kind of “categorical alignment”
resources in order to “care” for their “own communities” (Epstein 2007) that has witnessed a worrying conflation of
(Fullwiley 2008:720). This has much as much to do with their social and natural categories of biological difference in the
hope to bolster their Latino-focused science as it has to do United States, is applicable elsewhere. As Hinterberger usefully
with their feelings of neglect by the larger American polity. points out, “a process of molecularization may hold little
Another anthropologist who explores the coarticulation of meaning with regard to human difference outside of the spe-
nation and racialized admixture genetics is Michael Montoya cific technologies, histories and populations it is used to de-
whom, surprisingly, Wade et al. do not textually engage. This scribe and analyze” (2012b:86).
is strange since Making the Mexican Diabetic is an exemplary For the authors the concept of nation in this region pro-
case of how genetic science on admixture in some regions is vides a vehicle for the expression of race through genomics
structured by race and nation specifically around concepts of where it is constituted as an absent presence, denied and
hybridity and politically divided geography. Montoya lays out silenced, yet also implicitly reproduced through the “imagi-
many instances of historical dispossession on the US/Mexico native space of the ‘mestizo nation.’” While we see how these
border to argue that American national interests have made dynamics emerge in subtly different ways in Brazil, Colombia,
people who live there more susceptible to this illness. He and Mexico the authors also usefully point out the extent to
shows how the social history of Anglo-Mexican-Native Amer- which the nation is not always the ground for the figuring of
ican relations makes its way not only into the bodies of di- race through genomic research, showing how regional dif-
abetics but also into scientists’ conceptions of DNA-based ferences, as in the case in Colombia, or the supranational can
diabetes risk (Montoya 2011:99–100). One key finding for supersede the focus on the nation. While acknowledged the
Montoya was that scientists combined logics of borderland transnational also seems an important and somewhat ne-
geopolitics and racial admixture in their discovery of a “poly- glected dimension given that, as the authors mention, many
gene” that put Mexican Americans at a higher risk for dia- of the leading scientists cited collaborate with international
betes. He writes: “One very important aspect of the polygene partners or publish in leading international journals. It would
discovery that is implied rather than stated . . . is that the be useful to hear more about how the contradictions of race
genetic material that confers susceptibility is allegedly ac- and genomics enacted through the nation in Latin America
quired through admixture—one bit from European ancestors travel. How is the effort to valorize mixture and mark the
and another from Indian ancestors” (Montoya 2011:106). In “unmarked category” of mestizo on the part of South Amer-
Montoya’s work, race never stands alone either. ican researchers received, rejected, or transformed in the
Last, on the issue of race and ancestry, it is unclear why transnational research setting? Are such findings transmuted
the authors go to such lengths ultimately to say that although within a broader political economy of publications? How are
Latin American genomic scientists do not usually explicitly they incorporated or rejected as the need and desire for diverse
use the word “race,” they nonetheless use racialized terms, population data gains momentum in the context of a push
racial logics, racial history, racial ideologies, and racialized toward “Big Data”?
territory. The use of race goes beyond an explicit linguistic I wonder then if the notion of race and racialization
embrace. It is a practice—a practice of racially binning sam- through genomics research as an “absent presence” does jus-
ples, a practice of racially apportioning the global population, tice to the complex dynamics that constitute the practices that
and a practice of racially envisioning the nation. It is these are currently unfolding within and beyond these national bor-
practices that are present (not convincingly absent) that we ders. Embedded in their discussion and specifically in relation
see here time and again. to this orientating concept there is perhaps an implication of
“passivity” on the part of South American researchers. I sug-
gest that this does not fully reflect the active desire, particularly
evident in the case of Brazil and pharmacogenetic research,
to radically challenge notions of population difference as de-
Sahra Gibbon fined by genetic ancestry, race, and color categories. It must
Anthropology Department, University College London, 14 Taviton
be remembered that this is a critique which is importantly
Street, London, WC1E 6BT, U.K. ([email protected]). 3 III 14
emerging from inside Brazilian genomic science. As other
The article provides a welcome and useful addition to the colleagues and I have highlighted, the necessary initial re-

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 510 Current Anthropology Volume 55, Number 5, October 2014

course to use of racially classified samples or biogeographically Wade et al. demonstrate the importance of “shifting scales of
classified genetic ancestry reference populations in Brazilian analysis” for understanding race, in attending not just to how
pharmacogenetic research, itself a product in part of the trans- its meanings may vary across regions but also to the differ-
national domain of such research, must be understood as part ential assumptions evident in international geneticists’ inter-
of a strategy of “racializing to de-racialize” (see Santos, Silva, ests in indigeneity and “mestizos.” Their central finding or
and Gibbon 2014). The second move is evident and notable claim—that “in many Latin American countries, race is an
in the explicit emphasis by Brazilian geneticists on genetic absent presence”—is a generative means for extending and
admixture as “a continuous variable” characterized by “clinal” elaborating this approach to race in genetics.
understandings of inherent individual genetic mixture. The An immediate question is how this rendering of race relates
argument that there is an “implicit” racialization in the use outside of Latin America. As the authors register, there may
of tri-hybrid classifications of genetic ancestry does not fully be strong similarities with the “color-blind” discourses in the
illuminate the concerted effort by certain Brazilian geneticists United States, which similarly erase and deny an attention to
to challenge moves toward standardizing and universalizing race, at a political moment when racial inequalities are press-
algorithms for drug use in pharmacogenetic research. ing. There may, too, be commonalities with the ways white-
The research presented refers mostly to interviews with ness operates in Anglo spheres as “unmarked” and “nor-
scientists and the discourses (both public and scientific) sur- mative”—an identity regarded as absent of or without race
rounding their publications. This raises many questions about in racially stratified societies. This raises another comparative
how, as the authors also note, those “less versed” in genomic question: how do we think about these similarities while also
science respond to these developments. As recent emerging being cognizant that “whites” in the United States, for in-
research with different patient and public communities illus- stance, would view “mestizos” as racially marked or at best
trates, it seems likely that contestation and contradiction are as only provisionally white, since they are depicted—in ge-
going to be a defining feature where nation as both imagined netics and political discourse—as “admixed” or “Hispanic”
community and nation as citizenship, rights, or inclusion are populations? The comparative frame, shifting scale and scope,
central to a highly dynamic contemporary politics of health presents the need to characterize not just “racial meanings”
and education (see, e.g., Biehl and Petryna 2011). Yet given or objects but racial thinking broadly as it operates in various
the diverse histories of social medicine in Latin America and settings, historically and contemporarily.
the ways that early twentieth-century neo-Lamarckian ideas Does racial thinking, though, inform genomics, or does
of inheritance have historically informed public health inter- genetics alternately affirm or challenge tenets of racial
ventions across the region it seems likely that these under- thought? Wade et al. characterize “the imaginative space of
standings will continue to exceed and complexify race as an the ‘mestizo nation’: as “above and beyond the racialization
absent presence. In this case it will be important to monitor that may result from the way in which genomic science de-
how local understandings of the biological and the body in ploys its concept of genetic ancestry.” This is an important
the region as inherently malleable and plastic (Edmonds 2011; formulation because it construes racial thinking in overlap-
Gibbon 2013; Roberts 2010), intersect with and are informed ping but not entirely equivalent domains. But this again leads
by scientific awareness of the deep entanglements between to more questions. My own ethnographic work at INMEGEN
genes and environments as part of a growing field of epige- showed that researchers there construed the “Mexican ge-
netic understanding (Lock 2013). nome” as a cultural, historical artifact, one that reflected dis-
tinct processes of colonization and settlement across the coun-
try. This is in stark contrast to geneticists in the United States
who consider racial genomes largely as pure types, fixed in a
distant past, and only recently subject to distorting, contam-
John Hartigan inating “admixture.” How can racial thinking render genetics
Américo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies and Department of and genomes in such contrasting manners in neighboring
Anthropology; University of Texas, Austin; 2201 Speedway, C3200; countries?
Austin; TX 78712-0303; U.S.A. ([email protected]).
4 III 14 One answer lies in the concept of raza—a term that likely
originated in Italian (circa 1400) and made its way into En-
Wade et al. develop a powerful model for comparatively fram- glish, as “race,” via French. The authors address its various
ing the role of race in genomics research. They account for connotations and the particular “ambiguity of ideas about
“the entanglements of race and nation in genomic science” race.” But raza also usefully highlights an important blind
across Latin America and in relation to international practices spot in anthropological approaches to race: we assume racial
and institutions. Wade et al. construe the nation as a framing thinking is singularly about humans. But it is not, as raza
device, by which forms of genetic science (where “race is makes clear: in common Spanish parlance, there are races of
usually not explicitly mentioned”) can be shown to be sat- dogs, horses, bulls, sheep, and importantly, maize. These uses
urated with racial meanings and ideas. In applying and con- considerably preceded the application of race to human be-
firming this basic observation in several national contexts, ings—the Enlightenment’s scientific “idea of race”—and they

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Wade et al. Race and Nation in Latin American Genomics 511

continue to be just as widespread or perhaps even more com- tivate precision and care of data, yet the exactitude of these
mon today. Racial thinking, in this regard, is not just about approaches never seems to fulfill their promise of being de-
ancestry; it is about breeding, the rendering of species as coupled from histories of race.
malleable and plastic. This might confuse at first, since there In taking us through biologies of the global south in a
remains a tendency among anthropologists to equate race with variety of domains (the forensic, the biomedical) Wade et al.
typological thinking. But it has just as commonly been applied open up the question of the global postcolonial. When so
to elastic rather than fixed forms. Perhaps we struggle so to much of the history of science, as well as contemporary an-
identify race in discourses and practices—where it does not thropologies of bioscience, engage with the nation it is pe-
seem to be mentioned, at least not explicitly—because we culiar that this sometimes evades what might be called the
have too narrow a view of what constitutes racial thinking; “race and genomics” debate. This may be a reflection of the
its focus is not just on humans, nor is it uniquely typological. global and transnational biosciences themselves, in which
The same, of course, is true of genetics, which is arguably far North American models, measures, and standards come to
more widely applied to agricultural breeds than to humans; occupy a kind of absent presence—only coming into relief
it also serves up constant reminders that species are hardly once they are brought into tension with other kinds of local
fixed types (Hartigan 2013b). Cultural anthropologists ap- practices. The comparisons offered by the authors (both
proaching genetics today as a means to critique or challenge within Latin America and between Latin America and other
racialization need to be cognizant that the forms of racial regions) demonstrate that the political narratives drawn on
thinking they encounter may be far stranger and more com- to develop conceptual tools to understand genome science
plicated than they initially imagined. If racial thinking seems require expansion. They require a more worldly outlook. This
to remain elusive in such discourses and practices—its “absent includes questioning any unexamined exportation of US racial
presence”—this is partly because we have yet to grasp fully politics and technologies, which can sometimes pose cate-
it scope and depth as it ranges across genetic, biological, and gories and experiences as universal, rather than as part of
cultural domains and objects. specific historical or contextual developments. The case being
made here then is not just for more accounts of genome
science from outside Euro-American empirical situations, but
that through these ethnographic comparisons we find theo-
retical substance.
Amy Hinterberger Wade et al. point to some of the paradoxical mutations in
University of Warwick, Department of Sociology, Ramphal Build- the politics of multiculture and biomedicine where geneticists
ing, Coventry CV4 7AL, United Kingdom (A.Hinterberger@
warwick.ac.uk). 18 III 14
“produce versions of the nation that are orthogonal to mul-
ticulturalist priorities” by marking unmarked categories, such
This essay masterfully explores significant recent develop- as “mestizo.” These comparisons draw our attention to the
ments in genome science in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico. diversity of both racial formations and scientific practice.
Having synthesized recent social science commentary on pro- More broadly they illuminate how multicultural discourses
cesses of racialization in genomics, Wade et al. turn to national are increasingly being absorbed into the spheres of biomed-
case studies in order to understand both the persistent pres- icine and health care, thus rendering untraceable the histories
ence and absence of processes of racialization in science. They of demography, epidemiology, and population statistics upon
show us how shifts in biology to the molecular level have which state polices have been built. These emerging “molec-
gone hand in hand with the nationalization of genome re- ular multiculturalisms” (Hinterberger 2012a) open up into
search and the conflation of group identities within the nation the world of “big data” and “big biology” where the ever-
as biological. While the desire to utilize the tools and knowl- increasing capabilities of computers and analytic software are
edge of genomics has offered opportunities for recalibrating used to move and process data derived from DNA sequencing,
the politics of race, Wade et al. show that understandings of biological samples, and molecular diagnostics. The argument
race gain force not from the fixity of their essentialisms but in the paper, that genomics is not reproducing racialized cat-
from the ambiguity and malleability of their essences. egories congruent with the past, but rather “participat[es] in
This brings us to a finer understanding of how the emer- [its] ongoing re-figuring,” take on specific import in the con-
gence and consolidation of “-omics” biologies are embedded text of postcolonial technoscience. In relation to the global
within different national manners and styles that give shape postcolonial, the late Stuart Hall (1993) explained so elo-
and substance to the populations and publics of the contem- quently that absence signifies as much as presence. In this
porary life sciences. One of the central issues under investi- vein, the authors of this piece demonstrate how the epistemic
gation here is how social divisions are no longer made through potentiality of the life sciences is not in opposition to what
the stable enforcement of nationally constructed racial taxa, can sometimes be framed as old “dry” notions like the nation.
but rather through their instability. The more timely notions One way to take this point further is to consider it within
of human difference offered through genetic biogeographical the domain of the political economies of biology. While much
ancestry, mosaic genomes, and individual life histories cul- has been made about the privatization of the biosciences, the

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 512 Current Anthropology Volume 55, Number 5, October 2014

majority of investment and projects examined here (e.g., In- or racism elsewhere. Due to this specific situation, debates
stituto Nacional de Medicina Genomica) have a high degree about genetic diversity prompt a strong public unease in Ger-
of public funding. The promises of downstream revenues and many.
commercialization are mixed with a number of charismatic Of particular significance is the authors’ focus on incon-
national figures who hold attachments to both the public and sistencies and slippages of sampling and classification pro-
private domains. Within these systems, new markets and in- cedures, and on contradictions between antiracist proposals
ternational revenue streams figure as both a force and at- and the empirical usage of racial categories. Regrettably, they
tachment to forms of racialization that bring with them both do not discuss possible reasons for these inconsistencies. Also,
new possibilities and dilemmas. it would be interesting to learn how geneticists respond to
these observations. The authors are careful to avoid any tone
of accusation and often emphasize that particularly lay au-
diences could easily “misread” the publications and state-
ments of geneticists, against the will of geneticists.
Veronika Lipphardt However, it is the scientists who use labels like “Europeans,”
Max Planck Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte; Boltzmannstr. 22; “Africans,” and “Asians,” and thus one might ask whether all
D-14195 Berlin; Germany ([email protected]). 3
IV 14
of them would understand what makes a slippage a slippage.
I argue that many scientists, just like laymen, would not agree
This paper provides a strong and convincing contribution to that “Europeans,” “Africans,” and “Asians” are racial cate-
recent critiques of sampling and classification in human pop- gories. They would understand these categories to be geo-
ulation genetics. The main argument, namely, that national graphical or historical. But as the authors imply, they are in
frameworks and identities shape the scope and approaches of perfect concordance with commonsense racial classifications.
population genetics, develops great convincing power in the Asking why some can see slippages here, while others can-
course of the text. Human population genetics has recently not, one might turn to the continuities between classificatory
been covered by many Science and Technology studies (STS) systems. Population geneticists seem to be most interested in
in the United States. Curiously, both geneticists and STS patterns of diversity, expressed by episodes of “isolation,”
scholars claim that US study designs cannot simply be trans- “mixing,” and “migration” of groups. These concepts must
ferred to Latin America—the latter on the basis of different be read against the backdrop of widespread biohistorical nar-
discourses on diversity and mixture, the former on the basis ratives about the history of humankind. Biohistorical nar-
of different patterns of genetic diversity. ratives, for example, about the peopling of the Americas, seem
Scientific endeavors to map Latin American populations to belong to the background beliefs of population geneticists.
have been in the focus of many historical studies. This paper, They are deeply rooted in society, school curricula, and na-
however, aims at a history of the present, by pointing to tional discourse. They have been used in population genetics
historical discourses formative for today’s population genetics and other depictions of the history of humankind with great
approaches, specific to each single country. By comparing the continuity, in spite of all breaks with racial thinking, termi-
framing of genetic studies in Colombia, Brazil, and Mexico, nology, typology, classification, and hierarchy. Biohistorical
the authors demonstrate that each national scientific com- narratives lend categories temporal depths, credibility, and
munity holds on to a specific version of the Latin American historical plausibility. However, biohistorical narratives are
mestizo-natives-European-narrative. Transnational minorities not good proxies for group categories, especially if they echo
could serve as a test case for the constraints of this expla- older racial narratives.
nation: how do geneticists tackle the challenge posed by these It seems that the categories geneticists choose to use are
border-crossing populations? often the most convenient and harmless ones, in spite of their
The significance of this paper goes beyond the Latin Amer- vagueness and ambiguity. Convenient are those with the
ican version of how race is both absent and present. The strongest backing in society: narratives about the categorized
authors state, for one, that “in most countries in the region, groups circulate easily between science and the public; they
the categories and language of race are a much less accepted make categories sound meaningful to both sides. For example,
feature of policy and public discourse than in the United on the level of narratives, the transformation of “Aryans,”
States.” Race is, for two, “present in an everyday sense and “Europids,” or “Nordics” into “Whites” and “Europeans” was
in some official domains.” This should stimulate comparisons but a small step to take. Hence, as this paper helps to un-
with other national contexts. In Germany, only the first part derstand, the categories’ denominations come with a historical
of this argument holds: categories and language of race are baggage that undermines the claim of geneticists to work
tabooed. Furthermore, human diversity is not so present in against notions of race.
everyday life in Germany—for reasons dating back to colonial Tellingly, the geneticists’ willingness to avoid slippages
times—hence, the absence of race is not as paradoxicalized seems stronger in the case of Latin American populations and
as in Latin America. “Race” is doubly absent in Germany and less so with regard to reference populations. In order to avoid
only present in condemnations of National Socialist racism, slippages, population geneticists should make an extra effort

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Wade et al. Race and Nation in Latin American Genomics 513

to be precise: namely, explaining how a category, say, “Eu- Colombia. This begs for questions about race. Wade et al.
ropeans,” is defined in their studies. By sampling location— argue that even if race is not talked about explicitly or in
that is, Europe? If so, where is “Europe”? Or by test subjects’ cases vehemently denied by geneticists, it is refigured in the
EU passports? By self-ascribed identities? Or by expert opin- ways the nation is narrated in genomics research. This is a
ion? If so, by what criteria? Complexion? Genealogical infor- tantalizing argument, especially since neither race nor the
mation? Does the fact that not all EU states’ census register nation are pre-givens and require further specification. Al-
ethnicity play any role here? As long as geneticists are not though I think that anthropologists can deal quite well with
explicit and precise about these issues, they cannot claim that two unknown variables at the same time, this is exactly where
slippages happen only on the side of the lay audience. I find the paper falls short.
The paper provides rich data on genetics research and how
that is specific to the three countries studied, making it pos-
sible to see that different notions of the nation are at stake.
Yet the paper’s narrative does not explain the different ver-
Amade M’charek
Anthropology of Health, Care and the Body; Faculteit der Maat- sions and even less how they relate to what race is made to
schappij- en Gedragswetenschappen; Universiteit van Amsterdam; be. This leads to the risk of naturalizing the nation and es-
Ouderzijds Achterburgwal 185; 1012 DK Amsterdam; the Nether- sentializing race. Let me dwell a bit longer on race because
lands ([email protected]). 26 III 14 one of the major challenges in race studies is the danger of
our reifying race. Our very research helps to produce it as an
object. This is a sine qua non. The question is how can we
Race as an Absent Presence and the Politics
simultaneously denature race. The problem I see is that even
of Slippery Objects
in social sciences research, situated in the heart of social con-
In the past two decades, as an effect of the increasing presence structionism, race is ultimately located in the biological body:
of the life sciences, race has become a growing concern in in phenotypes, the skull, the brains, the genes, and so forth.
many societies. Yet, as an object of research in the social The assumption seems to be that when biologists do race they
sciences, it is proving difficult to grasp. In the United States, simply do biology. However, a glance at the history of (phys-
race and racism issues tend to resonate with the legacy of ical) anthropology gives us pause. For example, Karl Ernst
slavery and the problem of color, whereas in many other von Bär’s famous tables of major racial types (fig. 1) show
societies, histories interfere with one another in describing that individual differences do not come by themselves. Faces
the ways race differences come about. For example, the history come with ornaments, clothing, hairdos, tattoos, and so on.
of slavery is less present in Europe, whereas the colonial past, It is the mixture of faces and ornaments that makes racial
World War II, and postwar migration are far more salient for types. Instead of reducing race to one or other biological
the ways similarities and differences are done. One most trou- marker, we should keep our eyes on these mixtures and un-
bling, challenging, but fascinating aspect of race is its shad- cover their specificities and processes of making. We need
owiness, its tendency to slip through our fingers whenever thus to raise the question, What is race made to be in this
we try to grasp it. How to attend to its slipperiness without context?
trivializing it or subsuming all kinds of differences under the Unfortunately, rather than using the potential of the absent
race banner? What is the politics of slippery objects and how presence concept to open up what race is, Wade et al. apply
to account for it? Here I think the notion of absent presence the notion in its most colloquial understanding, namely, as
(Law 2004; Law and Singleton 2005) is extremely valuable. describing something that exists but is hidden from view.
The notion helps us study objects that tend to shift and change Despite the broad definition given at the beginning of the
across time and space. Absent presence suggests that an object paper, race is dealt with as a matter of fact, at issue because
is a pattern of things that are made present and absent, both. geneticists work on genetic differences. Their goal is to un-
It implies that an object is not a singular, centered entity. It mask geneticists and the way they hide race under politically
is relational, an assemblage produced from different elements correct or socially accepted categories. Although the hiding
(see M’charek 2013, 2014; M’charek, Schramm, and Skinner might well be true, the paper does not examine what versions
2014a, 2014b). of race are hidden or wrapped up in concepts of the nation.
With this in mind I welcome the paper by Wade et al. that Race is a slippery object, yet the force of the concept of absent
analyzes race as an absent presence in Latin America and presence is that it helps us attend to processes of making and
examines the ways it is wrapped up in ideas of the nation. unmaking. Here, in these processes, we can begin to under-
As Wade et al. indicate, race is taboo in Latin America and stand the contemporary politics of slippery objects, the con-
therefore not part of the explicit discourse in science and temporary politics of race.
society. Yet as an effect of genomic research, there is a tension
between a homogenizing discourse of the Mestizaje and a
politics of difference produced both by genetics and by certain
groups in society, such as black communities in Brazil and

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 514 Current Anthropology Volume 55, Number 5, October 2014

Figure 1. “Types Principaux des Differents Race Humaines” by Karl Ernst von Bär. A color version of this figure is available online.

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Wade et al. Race and Nation in Latin American Genomics 515

absence and presence of race is expressed by way of analogy:

Katharina Schramm “race-like” categories become visible in genomic concepts of
Institute for Social Anthropology, Martin-Luther-University Halle-
genetic ancestry that “[evoke] familiar racial meanings”; or
Wittenberg, D-06099 Halle (Saale), Germany (katharina
[email protected]). 4 III 14 genomic practice “could create the impression that the pop-
ulations were not only socially but biologically different.” But
In recent years there has been a worldwide proliferation of what is it exactly that creates this impression? And for whom?
large-scale genomic projects that operate on a national scope. Why do the geneticists who are involved in these studies not
This goes along with new debates on genomic sovereignty, see these things? What makes them insist that their work is
the circulation (or confinement) of samples, data, and class- not about race? The authors initially define race as a com-
ificatory categories as well as legal and ethical issues connected bination of, first, a naturalizing discourse on bodies and be-
to that. These new developments also call for a reconsider- haviors that is assigned to groups and, second, categories of
ation of the troubled relationship of genomics and race that difference that are rooted in a long-standing history of op-
has been the focus of substantial critical scholarship by social pression. In the course of the article, however, race in genomic
and medical anthropologists and other social scientists. As practice is mainly reduced to the reference to biogeographic
Wade et al. rightly state, a large bulk of this work has taken ancestry, that is, to the definition of sampling populations—
the United States as a more or less implicit starting point for I assume that geneticists would vehemently object to the equa-
thinking about “race in a genomic age” (the title of one of
tion of ancestry with race. And rightly so—because in order
the key contributions to this debate by Koenig, Lee, and Rich-
to understand how race is performed as a biosocial fact one
ardson 2008). If, however, the aim is to analyze the specific
needs to go beyond just one dimension. This is what absent
articulations of race in and through genomic practices and
presence would have allowed for. Regrettably, this article does
to understand how race is brought about as a “biosocial or
not quite take us there.
natural/cultural fact” (2008:4), this perspective certainly needs
to be expanded, as we have also attempted in our own volume
on identity politics and the new genetics (Schramm, Skinner,
and Rottenburg 2011).
Wade et al.’s collaborative project on “race, genomics and
mestizaje (mixture) in Latin America,” on which the article
is based, is another highly welcome step in that direction.
Edna Suárez-Dı́az
The authors argue that in Latin American genomics, racialized
Science and Technology Studies, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad
meanings are intrinsically wrapped up in ideas about nation— Nacional Autónoma de México, Circuito Exterior, Cd. Universi-
and that these circle around the figure of mestizaje. This mir- taria, Coyoacán, 04510, México D. F. México (ednasuarez@ciencias
rors the “deep-rooted ambiguity” of race in the region: in .unam.mx). 14 II 14
political as well as scientific discourse, the emphasis on mix-
ture serves to deny the existence of race, and yet race is an For decades after World War II, historians and scientists sang
ongoing reality. It is “absently present” in the very concep- the same tune: race was not a biologically meaningful category
tualization of mixture that apparently relies on conventional
any more; populations defined by genetic frequencies substi-
racial stereotypes.
tuted the notion of typological races, thus dismissing state-
“Absent presence” is the leitmotif that guides the reader
run eugenics (Barkan 1992; Dobzhansky 1951; Kevles 1995).
through this article. If fully developed as an analytical frame-
Although this depiction exaggerates the postwar consensus
work (see Law 2004) it could indeed help to account for the
on biological races, and its blindness to racist manifestations
underlying complexities of race by showing how it is rela-
rooted in biological distinctions, it still holds true for many
tionally performed through a combination of elements—for
scientific accounts of current developments in human ge-
example, of histories of knowledge production, the dynamics
of purity and admixture, the unmarked normativity of mes- nomics and pharmacogenomics. Supported by its huge ca-
tizaje in relation to its various reference points of otherness, pabilities for data collection and analysis, genomics reinforced
current sampling strategies, and so on. It could thus help us the narrative of human genetically diverse populations and
to grasp how it is possible that race comes to the fore in the the inexistence of human races. But, paradoxically, cluster
very act of disproving it. Surely, there must be more to it than analysis and the use of genetic ancestries as reified categories
a reluctance on part of geneticists to acknowledge the obvious? associated with races (Amerindian, African, Caucasian . . .),
Unfortunately, however, the article does not explore the an- brought biological race back to the fore (Dupré 2004; Gannet
alytical potential of the notion of absent presence to the full. 2001).
Instead, the authors largely employ it metaphorically, as a way In our post–Cold War, postcolonial, globalized world, nu-
to describe resonances of race in contemporary genomic prac- merous studies—some of them focused on places outside the
tice. Race itself is not called into question or brought forth usual centers of knowledge production—have helped produce
as an object of analysis. The argument about the simultaneous a more complex historical view of postwar human genetics

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 516 Current Anthropology Volume 55, Number 5, October 2014

and race.17 The paper I am commenting on is one of the best countries of the region were targeted for development pro-
examples of what critical research on recent science means grams (see below); more recently, they are seen and treated
for our most cherished narratives. as potential markets of globalized pharmacogenomics. The
The main argument in Wade et al.’s collaborative paper North-South asymmetries continue to set the framework for
(resulting from a transnational research project) is that in “Hispanic” tailored drugs (for the US market) and the re-
Latin American countries ideas of biological race are wrapped action of nationalized pharmacogenomics in Brazil, Mexico,
up in ideas of nation. Although the argument has been ex- and Colombia.
posed before, the authors give it a detailed meaning, ad- 3. This brings us to the last point: before pharmacogen-
vancing the idea that the absent presence of race, that is, the omics there was pharmacogenetics. Starting in the 1950s in
ambiguity of denying race while incorporating it in the official Brazil, and the 1960s in Mexico, genetic studies of human
domain and the discourse of national identity, characterizes populations were propelled by an intersection of factors: Cold
the countries in the region. This conclusion is supported by War anxieties (measurement of the level of natural radiation
ethnographic research performed in laboratories in Colombia, in Brazilian indigenous populations), international health
Mexico, and Brazil. Here, I want to raise three interconnected agendas (studies on the propensities of Third World popu-
issues that I see as relevant for advancing our reflection on lations to certain maladies, or health international programs),
the “absent presence” of race in Latin America. and research on the biology of human populations (exem-
1. The nation as an “imaginative space”: The nation has plified by the International Biological Program of the
been labeled the “ether of the social sciences”: it explains WHO).19 The three were linked by the need to rationalize
everything, but it escapes attempts to define its explanatory resources for development programs. In a sort of historical
power (Pyenson 2002). Here enters the notion of nation-state. boomerang, recent critical work on the role of race in ge-
Adopting Patrick Carroll’s (2006) suggestive idea of the “tri- nomics (such as the one exemplified in the essay I am com-
angulating” state, the study and grouping of human popu- menting on) has made historians aware of the continuities
lations could be seen as part of the state-idea (the discourse and historical reconstructions of the concept of race.
of sovereignty and identity), the state-system (the practices
and institutions created around it), and the state-country (the
ways in which population—and territory—are created, clas-
sified, and intervened). The main idea here is that the in-
struments and interventions of the nation-state on its pop-
ulation are inseparable from its discourse on identity. Indeed, Reply
the commented essay forcefully supports this “triangulating”
view. We would like to thank all the commentators for their
2. The postcolonial world: the countries of the region are thoughtful and helpful engagement with our paper and for
doubly postcolonial and this fact should be at the forefront their stimulating comments. We found these very useful in
of critical analysis. Their discourse on identity took shape in reminding us of (a) things we had overlooked in this article:
the midst of European and US colonial domination of the Fullwiley reminds us of the way nation figures in her work
hemisphere during the nineteenth century.18 Citizenships and that of Montoya; in this respect, we also should have
made up of “admixed” (mestizo), African, and indigenous acknowledged more the work on race, nation, and genomics
populations were seen as problematic in a context that as- related to Europe (Heinemann and Lemke 2014; M’charek
sociated white supremacy with progress. As the authors of the 2005, 2013; M’charek, Schramm, and Skinner 2014a, 2014b;
essay remind us, the Latin American political elites reacted Sommer 2012; Taussig 2009); (b) things we had not really
by praising the superiority of the admixed race, whether the considered: Hartigan points out the way raza figures in dis-
dreamed “racial democracy” of Brazil, or the Mexican “cosmic cussions about animal and vegetable biodiversity, which may
race,” while in fact this national discourse reinforced and take on national(ist) dimensions too (although it is worth
obscured the inequalities of Latin American societies. The adding that razas of maize may also be strongly associated
absent presence was thus born. But postcolonialism also with indigenous peoples, who may cultivate them for explic-
means being part of the Third World. After World War II the itly biopolitical reasons); and (c) things we were aware of but
did not discuss: Suárez-Dı́az reminds us of the need to see
recent genomics in the longer histories of biology, genetics,
17. For critical accounts to the traditional narrative, see Gannet 2004;
Gannet and Griesemer 2004; and the papers collected in the special issue race, and nation (see also Lindee and Santos 2012). We will
of Studies in the History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical organize our reply under two main subheadings.
Sciences, vol. 39 (2008). Particularly useful to deconstruct this narrative
is Snait B. Gissis’s contribution (Gissis 2008). 19. Ventura-Santos (2002) has written on Brazil’s studies during the
18. On US imperialism and colonialism, with an attention to territorial 1960s, and Suárez-Dı́az on Mexico in the upcoming issue on populations
and economic expansion in Latin America, the classical work by William and postwar health policies in Studies in the History and Philosophy of
Appleman Williams remains a mandatory reference (Williams 2009 Biological and Biomedical Sciences, edited by Soraya de Chadarevian and
[1959]). Jenny Bangham.

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Wade et al. Race and Nation in Latin American Genomics 517

Race, Genetics, Relationality, and Slippages more explicit than in Colombia or Mexico—alongside a more
overt public discourse about race. Thus, the common image
We very much hope that our text did not convey the im- of racial mixture and ideas about racial difference have taken
pression that we think that biological diversity is a problem, on distinctive meanings in each nation, shaped by particular
much less a crime, or that people who investigate it are crim- histories.
inals (comment by Bortolini and Cequeira). Nothing could In each nation, too, geneticists are “doing biology,” but
be further from our intentions. We are interested in the effects they are not therefore doing race. From their point of view,
that certain practices of investigation can have. To speak of they are not doing race, because generally they do not see
“African ancestry” is not a crime, but it can have certain, race as a valid biological category; genetic ancestry is not the
perhaps unintended, effects depending on what the category same as race, in their view. The geneticists we worked with
is taken to mean by different people, which also depends to generally dismissed the idea that their work was relevant to
some extent on how it is deployed by geneticists. This is best our project on “race, genomics, and mestizaje” (for a similar
explained by responding to the critiques raised by M’charek experience, see Hinterberger 2012c:537). From our point of
and Schramm. view, it is not the case that “when biologists do race they
There is no doubt that the idea of absent presence is more simply do biology” (comment by M’charek), because biology
fully developed in their recent work, drawing on the ideas of is not on its own enough to constitute race (Schramm, Skin-
John Law (M’charek, Schramm, and Skinner 2014a) than it ner, and Rottenburg 2012a; Wade 2002). In effect “to un-
is in our article. The concept of race as a relational assemblage derstand how race is performed as a biosocial fact one needs
(M’charek 2013) certainly provides a useful way of empha- to go beyond just one dimension” (comment by Schramm).
sizing that ideas and practices around race never stand alone But this is precisely what we do when we show how concepts
and are always embedded in and entangled with other do- of genetic ancestry, which at one level use a common language
mains. We believe our article actually demonstrates this in of global genetic science, become entangled in specific his-
specific ways and thus does not essentialize race or naturalize tories and social contexts. Thus data on genetic ancestry get
nation. In effect, we show that race is constituted in relation entwined with ideas about the health of the Mexican mestizo
to (a) varying constructs of the nation and (b) genomic con- nation, or in proposals to design drug treatments that cater
cepts of genetic ancestry. In all three nations race is under- to mestizo populations, or in debates about whether in Brazil
stood as linked to histories of gendered race mixture, usually a black category “really” exists that could be the legitimate
depicted in foundational narratives as rooted in early colonial object of affirmative action policies, or in the production of
encounters between European men and indigenous and/or tables of allelic frequencies, differentiated by racialized region,
African women: the way temporal narratives underwrite con- which are a standard tool in forensic identifications in Co-
temporary categories (comment by Lipphardt) was particu- lombia. We also show how race is performed as a biosocial
larly evident here (Wade 2013). However, in each country fact when we show that geneticists routinely use social criteria
that understanding of race takes a specific form. to define sample populations—social criteria derived from
In Colombia, race—above all blackness—is constituted specific histories that have, for example, constituted “indig-
strongly in relation to regional difference and to ideas of the enous peoples” in Mexico, “black regions” in Colombia, and
country as fragmented and divided by history and by civil “black villages” in Brazil, categories that are then used to
conflict; racial difference is located firmly in a cultural and define samples. Indeed, these social categories are themselves
moral topography, structured powerfully by ideas about heat biosocial facts, as they have been constituted not only by
and cold, highland and lowland, mountain and tropics. In demographic, economic, and political processes but also by
Mexico, race has some regional associations (the north is seen scientific practices and discourses, dating from colonial times,
as whiter, the south as more indigenous), but the key mean- which classified, differentiated, and diagnosed people. In
ings of race are structured more centrally around the mestizo short, race is indeed a highly flexible concept and a good deal
as the universal citizen who emerges after the Mexican Rev- of that flexibility is given by the way race assembles both
olution. The Mexican mestizo is not exactly raceless, as mes- natural and cultural components (comment by Hartigan).
tizo is itself a strongly racialized category, but in the mestizo These entanglements do not mean that geneticists are
all races have merged and she or he thus represents an ideal “criminals” because they talk about African ancestry; nor is
or “cosmic” universality—not necessarily yet attained (Vas- it criminal to study the genetic biology of a socially defined
concelos 1997 [1925])—which would render reference to race population. For the geneticists, the “matters of concern” (La-
superfluous. Meanwhile, Mexico’s indigenous populations tour 2004) are advances in knowledge for medicine, popu-
stand in a mutually defining relation to mestizos, above all lation history, forensics, and so on. The categories deployed
as representatives of the nation’s roots. In Brazil, the image pragmatically in the pursuit of these objectives are subordi-
of the nation has been constructed also around an indigenous nated to them. In addition, biogeographical genetic ancestry
past, but above all in relation to the more recent assimilation refers to small sets of very specific markers, not to biogeo-
of blackness and the driving role played by whiteness. This graphical genetic types that could be seen as “races.” But
has led to claims about a national racial democracy—much certain “slippages” can result (comment by Lipphardt). We

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 518 Current Anthropology Volume 55, Number 5, October 2014

know that in genetic science, there is caution about these populations of mixed ancestry. It is a matter of judgment how
slippages: many geneticists are aware of possible dangers and temporary the “initial” racialization in this project will be
seek to avoid them (comment by Schramm, but also by Full- (comment by Gibbon). But our point is more that the nation
wiley who wonders why we spend so much time showing how figures as a taken-for-granted frame within which some ele-
Latin American geneticists racialize). The HapMap consor- ments of a complex assemblage of racialized meanings and
tium insists that reference samples taken from, say, Yoruba practices remain present during a project of de-racialization
in Ibadan, should not be used to stand in for “Africans” that erases other elements (M’charek, Schramm, and Skinner
(International HapMap Consortium 2005). 2014b).
But for social scientists, matters of concern are different
and include the possible reifications that are entrained by the Postcolonial, Comparative, and Transnational
categories used by geneticists. Such reifications may occur Genomics
when a HapMap reference sample is used to identify African
genetic ancestry in Mexican mestizo populations (Silva-Zo- Several commentators focus on the transnational, postcolo-
lezzi et al. 2009): the potential for slippage is there, even nial, and more “worldly” aspects of genomics and the need
though the scientists are careful to name the HapMap samples. to place genomic practices in a broad comparative frame (e.g.,
The potential is more obvious when Pena et al. (2011) plot Gibbon, Hartigan, Hinterberger, Lipphardt, Suárez-Dı́az).
the genetic ancestry of population samples in a triangle with This is an aspect that, in our focus on the nation, did not
vertices simply labeled Africa, America, and Europe, even if receive much attention in this article, but that we deal with
the vertices actually represent specific reference samples; or in more depth in the book that arises from our project (Wade
when Paredes et al. (2003) divide Colombia into four clearly et al. 2014).
racialized regions and list allelic frequencies in four separate One dimension here is the comparisons and transnational
tables. The potential for slippage is also there when Pena says practices of the geneticists. We have examined them mainly
that genetics cannot define social policy in relation to affir- in relation to their national contexts, but all of them publish
mative action for black Brazilians—because, like a good La- in international, mainly English-language journals and they
tourian modern, for him science is one thing and society is all use international data sets. Many engage in international
another (Latour 1993)—but then also says that policy makers collaborations with North American, Asian, and European
should take account of the genetic fact that race does not labs, and their data from their Latin American samples are
exist biologically (Pena and Bortolini 2004). Like a good La- used internationally. As we mentioned in the article, in re-
tourian modern, he mixes science and society together again, lation to INMEGEN, one of their objectives, shared with La-
suggesting that the former should at least guide the latter. tino geneticists based outside the region (Burchard et al. 2005;
The slippage is from genetic ancestry to biosocial racial mean- Bustamante, De La Vega, and Burchard 2011), is to put Latin
ings and from genetic categories to social categories. American populations on the genomic map (Suarez-Kurtz
For whom do these constitute slippages (comment by Lipp- 2011), correcting the perceived bias toward data sets from
hardt)? In one sense, it happens when people do not really North American and European populations. There are post-
know what “African ancestry” means in genetic science, in colonial sensibilities at work here, too, related to establishing
which case the concept is easily assimilated to categories such Latin American genomic science as a global contender and
as “Africans,” “blacks,” and on on. (For example, the BBC to contesting globalized medical protocols and standards,
story about Neguinho de Beija Flor reported in our article which may be thought to be unsuitable for Latin American
said that “67% of his genes are European”—a clear misun- populations (comment by Suárez-Dı́az). The role of public
derstanding of the nature of genetic ancestry testing.) Rather and private funding in promoting such endeavors needs fur-
than an ignorant “public” versus knowledgeable experts (cf. ther research (comment by Hinterberger).
comment by Gibbon), this is a matter of different forms of An associated aim is to unpack categories such as Hispanic
knowledge, which overlap in some places, disconnect in oth- or Latin American, showing their internal diversity. A single
ers, and each of which has its blind spots. But in another study can figure in different ways in different contexts. Re-
sense, the slippage is immanent in the basic practice of de- search on a provincial population in Colombia was used for
fining sample populations in social terms and then charac- an argument, aimed at an international audience in medical
terizing them in genetic terms: the potential for the conflation genomics, about the historical differences in processes of ad-
of social and genetic identities is always there and may be mixture across South America (Bedoya et al. 2006). Within
realized among geneticists too, as when Pena argues that the Colombia, the same research spoke to national and indeed
nonexistence of biological race is relevant information for local interests in this particular population, reputed to be
policy makers considering affirmative action for black Bra- rather white and economically dynamic—known in the nine-
zilians. teenth century as the Yankees of South America. The way
We are very aware that Brazilian geneticists such as Pena research can face in two directions at once and be part of
are intent on a project of “de-racialization” and challenging diverse assemblages helps us to see how race is flexibly con-
some global standards in drug prescription that marginalize structed in a relational way: the high levels of European ge-

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Wade et al. Race and Nation in Latin American Genomics 519

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A second dimension is the comparisons we want to make Barragán, Carlos Andrés. 2011. Molecular vignettes of the Colombian nation:
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as social scientists. Despite a long-standing tendency to see tities, genetic ancestry, and health in South America: Argentina, Brazil, Co-
Latin America as something of an exception, the absent pres- lombia, and Uruguay. Sahra Gibbon, Ricardo Ventura Santos, and Mónica
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Basave Benı́tez, Agustı́n Francisco. 1992. México mestizo: análisis del nacion-
plenty of comparison with the United States, Canada, and alismo mexicano en torno a la mestizofilia de Andrés Molina Enrı́quez. México
Europe (Hartigan 2013a; Hinterberger 2012b; M’charek, DF: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Schramm, and Skinner 2014a, 2014b; Nash 2014, forthcom- Bedoya, Gabriel, Patricia Montoya, Jenny Garcı́a, Ivan Soto, Stephane Bour-
geois, Luis Carvajal, Damian Labuda, et al. 2006. Admixture dynamics in
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Wailoo, Nelson, and Lee 2012). This is partly because of a population isolate. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the
global post–World War II trend toward antiracism, in which United States of America 103(19):7234–7239.
Benjamin, Ruha. 2009. A lab of their own: genomic sovereignty as postcolonial
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racist concept or is retained as a necessary term with which Biehl, J., and A. Petryna. 2011. Bodies of rights and therapeutic markets. Social
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Birchal, Telma S., and Sérgio D. J. Pena. 2011. The biological nonexistence
of “inclusion” (Epstein 2007). The partial displacement of versus the social existence of human races: can science instruct the social
race by color blindness, race-evasive discourses, raceless rac- ethos? In Racial identities, genetic ancestry, and health in South America:
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Santos, and Mónica Sans, eds. Pp. 69–99. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
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in a word, the absent presence of race—is thus part of a very Foucault for the 21st century: governmentality, biopolitics and discipline in the
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Boston: Cambridge Scholars.
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Bortolini, Maria Cátira, Wilson Araújo Da Silva, Dinorah Castro De Guerra,
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