País de gordos/país de muertos: Obesity, death and nation in biomedical and forensic genetics in Mexico

Abstract

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

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

“…INMEGEN’s medically oriented Mexican Genome Diversity Project (MGDP) was, like biomedical projects of the previous century, accompanied by anthropo-historical questions. The GM, which encompassed this project and its resulting ‘Map of the Mexican Genome’, aspired to become both a biomedical research tool for the genetic basis of diseases specific to the Mexican population, and a molecular portrait of the Mexican mestizo (see, in the current issue, García-Deister and López-Beltrán, 2015 ).…”

“…In the first decade of the 2000s, much of the country’s political discourse emphasized rising rates of obesity and diabetes as signals of a national medical crisis. The GM project was presented as a no-nonsense, radical, high-tech solution, one that could cut straight to genetic causes, located deep in the mestizo body: science and technology could help cure the ailing medical body of the nation (see García-Deister and López-Beltrán, 2015 , in this issue). Thus, in Mexico, genomic research promised a better nation in the future ( Schwartz Marín, 2011 ), and INMEGEN geneticists, the wider medical community and the state as whole agreed on what a better nation would look like – mestizo, of course, but a good deal leaner of body and generally more healthy.…”

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

“…This assertion is as double-edged as it always has been. In Mexico, for example, being mestizo is potentially associated with major public health issues, such as soaring rates of obesity and diabetes (García Deister and López-Beltrán 2015;López Beltrán, García Deister, and Rios Sandoval 2014).…”

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

“…Este enfoque se ha usado para dar un mapa básico de la subestructura poblacional que pueda ayudar a diferenciar entre ancestría y asociación gen-enfermedad en estudios futuros. Los estudios genéticos recientes que han explorado las correlaciones entre la ancestría nativo-americana y la diabetes, por ejemplo, son extensiones de este acercamiento y dan soporte a la idea de los mexicanos como una población enferma debido a la herencia de la mezcla (40,41). Esta estrategia permite releer el mito fundador de la nación mexicana a través de la lente de la genómica, vía la cuantificación de la ancestría nativo-americana y europea, en la cual se realza la simbólica presencia del hombre conquistador y la mujer indígena receptiva.…”