Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-03T05:55:59.597Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Blackness, Indigeneity, Multiculturalism and Genomics in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2013

Abstract

Genomic research in Latin America has looked into the African, Amerindian and European ancestry of local populations. This article explores how indigeneity and blackness figure in genomic science in the light of previous and current representations of indigenous and Afro-descendent people. These categories have been cast as ‘other’ in Latin America, but they have occupied different locations in ‘structures of alterity’. I look briefly at these similarities and differences in the colonial and republican periods and in recent multiculturalist reforms. I look at the gendered sexual imagery surrounding each concept, before examining in detail how blackness and indigeneity figure in gendered ways in genomic science research on admixture and ancestry in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. I conclude that, in the context of multiculturalism, genomics works to re-centre imaginaries of the nation around the mestizo and mixture, while casting blackness and indigeneity, in sexualised and gendered ways, as different kinds of others.

Spanish abstract

La genómica en Latinoamérica ha investigado la ‘ancestría’ africana, amerindia y europea de las poblaciones locales. Este artículo explora cómo la indigeneidad y la negritud figuran en la ciencia genómica a la luz de representaciones previas y actuales de los y las indígenas y afrodescendientes. Tales categorías han sido ubicadas como ‘los otros’ en América Latina, aunque han ocupado lugares diferentes en las ‘estructuras de alteridad’. Examino brevemente estas similitudes y diferencias en los periodos colonial y republicano y en las recientes reformas multiculturales. También exploro la imaginería generizada y sexualizada que rodea a cada concepto, antes de examinar en detalle cómo la negritud y la indigeneidad aparecen en forma generizada dentro de la investigación genómica relacionada con los mestizajes y la ancestría en Brasil, Colombia y México. Concluyo que, en el contexto del multiculturalismo, la genómica trabaja para recentrar los imaginarios de la nación alrededor del mestizaje y la mezcla, al mismo tiempo que ubica a la negritud e indigeneidad, en formas sexualizadas y generizadas, como maneras diferentes de otredad.

Portuguese abstract

Pesquisas genômicas na América Latina investigam a ‘ancestralidade’ africana, ameríndia e européia das populações locais. O artigo explora como a indianidade e a negritude figuram na ciência genômica sob a ótica de representações prévias e atuais de pessoas afrodescendentes e indígenas. Estas categorias foram retratadas como ‘outras’ na América Latina, porém, têm ocupado posições diferentes nas ‘estruturas da alteridade’. Analiso brevemente essas semelhanças e diferenças durante os períodos colonial e republicano e durante reformas multiculturalistas recentes. Considero a imagética sexualizada e basada em estereótipos de gênero que envolve cada conceito, antes de examinar detalhadamente como a negritude e a indianidade figuram em formas relacionadas ao gênero em pesquisas científicas de genômica acerca da miscigenação da descendência no Brasil, Colômbia e México. Concluo que, no contexto do multiculturalismo, a genômica trabalha para mais uma vez centrar os imaginários sobre as nações em torno da mestiçagem e mistura, enquanto a negritude e a indianidade são representados de formas sexualizadas e relacionadas ao gênero, como diferentes tipos de outros.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

3 Turbay, Emilio Yunis, ¿Por qué somos así? ¿Qué pasó en Colombia? Análisis del mestizaje (Bogotá: Editorial Temis, 2003), p. 117Google Scholar. See also Carvajal-Carmona, Luis G. et al. , ‘Strong Amerind/White Sex Bias and a Possible Sephardic Contribution among the Founders of a Population in Northwest Colombia’, American Journal of Human Genetics, 67: 5 (2000), pp. 1287–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 In genetics, ‘admixture’ has long been used to refer to interbreeding between populations previously relatively isolated from each other. Sans, Monica, ‘Admixture Studies in Latin America: From the 20th to the 21st Century’, Human Biology, 72: 1 (2000), pp. 155–77Google ScholarPubMed.

5 Genomics is a term used to describe genetic science after the advent of technologies that allow the whole genome to be analyzed and interactions between different parts of the genome to be studied as well as gene-environment interactions. ‘White’ was a category we found mainly in Brazilian genetics; branco is a census category in Brazil.

6 Gonçalves, Vanessa F., Prosdocimi, Francisco, Santos, Lucas S., Ortega, José Miguel and Pena, Sérgio D. J., ‘Sex-Biased Gene Flow in African Americans but Not in American Caucasians’, Genetics and Molecular Research, 6: 2 (2007), pp. 156–61Google ScholarPubMed; Carvajal-Carmona et al., ‘Strong Amerind/White Sex Bias’; Bortolini, Maria Cátira et al. , ‘African-Derived South American Populations: A History of Symmetrical and Asymmetrical Matings According to Sex Revealed by Bi- and Uni-Parental Genetic Markers’, American Journal of Human Biology, 11: 4 (1999), pp. 551–633.0.CO;2-Z>CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Alves-Silva, Juliana et al. , ‘The Ancestry of Brazilian MtDNA Lineages’, American Journal of Human Genetics, 67: 2 (2000), pp. 444–61CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Carvalho-Silva, Denise R., Santos, Fabrício R., Rocha, Jorge and Pena, Sérgio D. J., ‘The Phylogeography of Brazilian Y-Chromosome Lineages’, American Journal of Human Genetics, 68: 1 (2001), pp. 281–6CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Marrero, A. R. et al. , ‘Pre- and Post-Columbian Gene and Cultural Continuity: The Case of the Gaucho from Southern Brazil’, Human Heredity, 64: 3 (2007), pp. 160–71CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Wang, Sijia et al. , ‘Geographic Patterns of Genome Admixture in Latin American Mestizos’, PLoS Genetics, 4: 3 (2008), p. e1000037CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Bedoya, Gabriel et al. , ‘Admixture Dynamics in Hispanics: A Shift in the Nuclear Genetic Ancestry of a South American Population Isolate’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 103: 19 (2006), pp. 7234–9CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Salzano, Francisco M. and Bortolini, Maria Cátira, The Evolution and Genetics of Latin American Populations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 309Google Scholar.

7 The terminology used to refer to ‘black’ and ‘indigenous’ people in Latin America is shifting and often politicised. Here I use the terms that geneticists tend to use to describe the populations they sample.

8 Koenig, Barbara A., Lee, Sandra Soo-Jin and Richardson, Sarah S. (eds.), Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Whitmarsh, Ian and Jones, David S. (eds.), What's the Use of Race? Modern Governance and the Biology of Difference (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

9 Reardon, Jenny, Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Helena, M.Franco, L. P., Weimer, Tania A. and Salzano, Francisco M., ‘Blood Polymorphisms and Racial Admixture in Two Brazilian Populations’, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 58: 2 (1982), pp. 127–32Google Scholar.

10 Serre, David and Pääbo, Svante, ‘Evidence for Gradients of Human Genetic Diversity within and among Continents’, Genome Research, 14: 9 (2004), pp. 1679–85CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

11 Fujimura, Joan H. and Rajagopalan, Ramya, ‘Different Differences: The Use of “Genetic Ancestry” Versus Race in Biomedical Human Genetic Research’, Social Studies of Science, 41: 1 (2011), pp. 530CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Reardon, Jenny, ‘Race without Salvation: Beyond the Science/Society Divide in Genomic Studies of Human Diversity’, in Koenig, , Lee, and Richardson, (eds.), Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age, pp. 304–19Google Scholar; Bliss, Catherine, ‘Genome Sampling and the Biopolitics of Race’, in Binkley, Samuel and Capetillo, Jorge (eds.), A Foucault for the 21st Century: Governmentality, Biopolitics and Discipline in the New Millennium (Boston, MA: Cambridge Scholars, 2009), pp. 322–39Google Scholar; Fullwiley, Duana, ‘The Biologistical Construction of Race: “Admixture” Technology and the New Genetic Medicine’, Social Studies of Science, 38: 5 (2008), pp. 695735CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

12 Montoya, Michael J., Making the Mexican Diabetic: Race, Science, and the Genetics of Inequality (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Bolnick, Deborah A., ‘Individual Ancestry Inference and the Reification of Race as a Biological Phenomenon’, in Koenig, Lee and Richardson (eds.), Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age, pp. 7085Google Scholar; Pálsson, Gísli, Anthropology and the New Genetics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 176206Google Scholar.

14 Pena, Sérgio D. J., Humanidade sem raças? (São Paulo: Publifolha, 2008)Google Scholar.

15 The national frame is not always predominant, as some studies may focus on ‘Latin American mestizos’ generally in the search for genetic variants linked to complex disorders such as diabetes. See Wang et al., ‘Geographic Patterns’.

16 Appelbaum, Nancy P., Macpherson, Anne S. and Rosemblatt, Karin A. (eds.), Race and Nation in Modern Latin America (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Stepan, Nancy Leys, ‘The Hour of Eugenics’: Race, Gender and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Wade, Peter, Race and Ethnicity in Latin America (2nd edition, London: Pluto Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Beltrán, Carlos López (ed.), Genes (&) mestizos: genómica y raza en la biomedicina mexicana (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and Ficticia, 2011)Google Scholar.

17 There is a large literature on this topic. See, for example, Haraway, Donna J., Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium.Femaleman©_Meets_Oncomouse™ (London: Routledge, 1997);Google ScholarGibbon, Sahra and Novas, Carlos (eds.), Biosocialities, Genetics and the Social Sciences: Making Biologies and Identities (London: Routledge, 2007)Google Scholar; Rabinow, Paul, ‘Artificiality and the Enlightenment: From Sociobiology to Biosociality’, in Crary, Jonathan and Kwinter, Sanford (eds.), Incorporations (New York: Zone, 1992), pp. 234–52Google Scholar; Nelkin, Dorothy and Lindee, Susan, The DNA Mystique: The Gene as Cultural Icon (New York: Freeman, 1995)Google Scholar; Pálsson, Anthropology and the New Genetics; Wade, Peter (ed.), Race, Ethnicity and Nation: Perspectives from Kinship and Genetics (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2007)Google Scholar; Rose, Nikolas and Novas, Carlos, ‘Biological Citizenship’, in Ong, Aihwa and Collier, Stephen J. (eds.), Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 439–63Google Scholar; Franklin, Sarah, ‘Biologization Revisited: Kinship Theory in the Context of the New Biologies’, in Franklin, Sarah and McKinnon, Susan (eds.), Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), pp. 303–25Google Scholar; Heath, Deborah, Rapp, Rayna and Taussig, Karen-Sue, ‘Genetic Citizenship’, in Nugent, David and Vincent, Joan (eds.), A Companion to the Anthropology of Politics (New York: Blackwell, 2007), pp. 152–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Darvasi, Ariel and Shifman, Sagiv, ‘The Beauty of Admixture’, Nature Genetics, 37: 2 (2005), pp. 118–9CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

19 Bustamante, Carlos D., De La Vega, Francisco M. and Burchard, Esteban G., ‘Genomics for the World’, Nature, 475: 7355 (2011), pp. 163–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Burchard, Esteban Gonzalez et al. , ‘Latino Populations: A Unique Opportunity for the Study of Race, Genetics, and Social Environment in Epidemiological Research’, American Journal of Public Health, 95: 12 (2005), pp. 2161–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 For a guide to relevant sources, see Wade, Race and Ethnicity in Latin America.

22 Appelbaum, Macpherson and Rosemblatt (eds.), Race and Nation in Modern Latin America.

23 Stepan, ‘The Hour of Eugenics’.

24 Peru recognised the indigenous community in 1925; national days for the indígena were established in Bolivia (1937), Brazil (1943), Peru (1930) and Uruguay (2000); institutes were set up in Ecuador (1943), Mexico (1940), Guatemala (1945) and Brazil (1910).

25 See Wade, Peter, Music, Race and Nation: Música Tropical in Colombia (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Jackson, Richard L., Black Literature and Humanism in Latin America (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Andrews, George Reid, Blacks and Whites in São Paulo, Brazil, 1888–1988 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Moore, Robin, Nationalizing Blackness: Afrocubanismo and Artistic Revolution in Havana, 1920–1940 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Vianna, Hermano, The Mystery of Samba: Popular Music and National Identity in Brazil (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Feldman, Heidi Carolyn, Black Rhythms of Peru: Reviving African Musical Heritage in the Black Pacific (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

26 In Colombia, the respective dates are 1960 (although a non-state academic indigenous institute dates back to 1942) and 1993.

27 Van Cott, Donna Lee, The Friendly Liquidation of the Past: The Politics of Diversity in Latin America (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Yashar, Deborah, Contesting Citizenship in Latin America: The Rise of Indigenous Movements and the Postliberal Challenge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sieder, Rachel (ed.), Multiculturalism in Latin America: Indigenous Rights, Diversity and Democracy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Wade, Peter, ‘The Colombian Pacific in Perspective’, Journal of Latin American Anthropology, 7: 2 (2002), pp. 233CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Anderson, Mark, Black and Indigenous: Garifuna Activism and Consumer Culture in Honduras (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2009)Google Scholar; French, Jan Hoffman, Legalizing Identities: Becoming Black or Indian in Brazil's Northeast (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Wade, Peter, ‘Defining Blackness in Colombia’, Journal de la Société des Américanistes, 95: 1 (2009), pp. 165–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hanchard, Michael (ed.), Racial Politics in Contemporary Brazil (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Postero, Nancy Grey, Now We Are Citizens: Indigenous Politics in Postmulticultural Bolivia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Lazar, Sian, El Alto, Rebel City: Self and Citizenship in Andean Bolivia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

31 Nelson, Diane M., A Finger in the Wound: Body Politics in Quincentennial Guatemala (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

32 Wade, Peter, Race and Sex in Latin America (London: Pluto, 2009)Google Scholar.

33 See Moutinho, Laura, Razão, ‘cor’ e desejo: uma análise comparativa sobre relacionamentos afetivo-sexuais ‘inter-raciais’ no Brasil e África do Sul (São Paulo: UNESP, 2004)Google Scholar; Vigoya, Mara Viveros, ‘Dionysian Blacks: Sexuality, Body, and Racial Order in Colombia’, Latin American Perspectives, 29: 2 (2002), pp. 6077CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wade, Race and Sex; Wade, Peter, Giraldo, Fernando Urrea and Vigoya, Mara Viveros (eds.), Raza, etnicidad y sexualidades: ciudadanía y multiculturalismo en América Latina (Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2008)Google Scholar.

34 Kutzinski, Vera, Sugar's Secrets: Race and the Erotics of Cuban Nationalism (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1993)Google Scholar; Pravaz, Natasha, ‘Brazilian Mulatice: Performing Race, Gender, and the Nation’, Journal of Latin American Anthropology, 8: 1 (2003), pp. 116–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Black and brown men and women respond to these images in complex ways. See Moutinho, Razão, ‘cor’ e desejo; Vigoya, Mara Viveros, De quebradores y cumplidores: sobre hombres, masculinidades y relaciones de genero en Colombia (Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2002)Google Scholar; Rahier, Jean, ‘Racist Stereotypes and the Embodiment of Blackness: Some Narratives of Female Sexuality in Quito, Ecuador’, in Whitten, Norman (ed.), Millennial Ecuador: Critical Essays on Cultural Transformations and Social Dynamics (Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, 2003), pp. 296324CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Canessa, Andrew, ‘Sex and the Citizen: Barbies and Beauty Queens in the Age of Evo Morales’, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 17: 1 (2008), p. 53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Nelson, A Finger in the Wound.

37 Nelson, A Finger in the Wound, p. 219; Hale, Charles R., Más que un indio (More than an Indian): Racial Ambivalence and Neoliberal Multiculturalism in Guatemala (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 2006), p. 159Google Scholar.

38 Clark, David Anthony Tyeeme and Nagel, Joane, ‘White Men, Red Masks: Appropriations of ‘Indian’ Manhood in Imagined Wests, 1876–1934’, in Basso, Matthew, McCall, Laura and Garceau, Dee (eds.), Across the Great Divide: Cultures of Manhood in the American West (New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 109–30Google Scholar.

39 Rahier, ‘Racist Stereotypes’, p. 301.

40 Hale, Más que un indio; Nelson, A Finger in the Wound.

41 Guzmán, Tracy L. Devine, ‘“Diacuí Killed Iracema”: Indigenism, Nationalism and the Struggle for Brazilianness’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 24: 1 (2005), p. 101Google Scholar.

42 Weismantel, Mary, Cholas and Pishtacos: Stories of Race and Sex in the Andes (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Boesten, Jelke, ‘Narrativas de sexo, violencia y disponibilidad: raza, género y jerarquías de la violación en Perú’, in Wade, Giraldo, Urrea and Vigoya, Viveros (eds.), Raza, etnicidad y sexualidades, pp. 199220Google Scholar.

43 Vigoya, Mara Viveros, ‘Políticas de sexualidad juvenil y diferencias étnico-raciales en Colombia’, Revista Estudos Feministas, 14: 1 (2006), p. 160Google Scholar.

44 Salzano, Francisco M. and Callegari-Jacques, Sídia Maria, South American Indians: A Case Study in Evolution (Oxford and New York: Clarendon and Oxford University Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

45 Sans, ‘Admixture Studies’; Salzano and Bortolini, The Evolution and Genetics of Latin American Populations.

46 Although the majority of the admixture was deemed to have occurred in the Americas, it was recognised that some European-African admixture would have occurred pre-conquest in the Iberian Peninsula. Also, while geneticists tend to focus above all on Amerindian, African and European ancestry, there is some interest (usually in medical genetics) in other genetic contributions – for example, in Japanese and Middle Eastern ancestries in Brazil.

47 Silva-Zolezzi, Irma et al. , ‘Analysis of Genomic Diversity in Mexican Mestizo Populations to Develop Genomic Medicine in Mexico’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106: 21 (2009), pp. 8611–6CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Wang et al., ‘Geographic Patterns’.

48 Pena, Sérgio D. J., Bastos-Rodrigues, L., Pimenta, J. R. and Bydlowski, S. P., ‘DNA Tests Probe the Genomic Ancestry of Brazilians’, Brazilian Journal of Medical and Biological Research, 42: 10 (2009), pp. 870–6CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Pena, Sérgio D. J., Carvalho-Silva, Denise R., Alves-Silva, Juliana, Prado, Vânia F. and Santos, Fabrício R., ‘Retrato molecular do Brasil’, Ciência Hoje, 159 (2000), pp. 1625Google Scholar.

49 Bortolini, Maria Cátira, Weimer, Tania De Azevedo, Salzano, Francisco M. and Freitas, Loreta B., ‘Evolutionary Relationships between Black South American and African Populations’, Human Biology, 67 (1995), p. 547Google ScholarPubMed; Bortolini et al., ‘African-Derived South American Populations’; Rojas, Winston et al. , ‘Genetic Make Up and Structure of Colombian Populations by Means of Uniparental and Biparental DNA Markers’, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 143: 1 (2010), pp. 1320CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

50 See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6284806.stm. This project explored many dimensions of Afro-Brazilian roots, but with a marked emphasis on genetics (see www.bbc.co.uk/portuguese/noticias/cluster/2007/05/070427_raizesafrobrasileiras.shtml). This reflects not only the public debates in Brazil about raced-based affirmative actions, but also the public dissemination of genetic research, such as Pena et al., ‘Retrato molecular do Brasil’.

51 Interview with Michael Kent, 2010.

52 Yunis, Juan J., Yunis, Emilio J., Acevedo, Luis E. and Campo, David S., ‘Population Data of Y-STR Minimal Haplotypes in a Sample of Caucasian-Mestizo and African Descent Individuals of Colombia’, Forensic Science International, 151: 2–3 (2005), pp. 307–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 Salzano and Bortolini, The Evolution and Genetics of Latin American Populations.

54 Silva-Zolezzi et al., ‘Analysis of Genomic Diversity’. INMEGEN was created as one of Mexico's state medical institutes in order to develop the idea of public health policy and medical practice tailored to the genetic profile of the Mexican population, and to address growing health problems such as obesity and diabetes; see López Beltrán (ed.), Genes (&) mestizos.

55 Other methods of acquiring markers of Amerindian ancestry are by using ancient DNA samples recovered from archaeological sites, or by inferring ancient Amerindian genetic markers from the DNA of mestizo populations.

56 A number of critiques of projects such as the Human Genome Diversity Project and the Genographic Project highlight that the sampling of present-day populations, seen as ‘isolated’, tends to erase historical change: see Nash, Catherine, ‘Genetics, Race and Relatedness: Human Mobility and Difference in the Genographic Project’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 102 (2012), pp. 118CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Marks, Jonathan, ‘“We're Going to Tell These People Who They Really Are”: Science and Relatedness’, in Franklin, Sarah and McKinnon, Susan (eds.), Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), pp. 355–83Google Scholar.

57 Mexican data from fieldwork by Vivette García Deister.

58 Bortolini et al., ‘Evolutionary Relationships’; Builes, Juan José et al. , ‘Analysis of 16 Y-Chromosomal STRs in an African Descent Sample Population of Chocó (Colombia)’, Forensic Science International: Genetics Supplement Series, 1: 1 (2008), pp. 184–6Google Scholar; Yunis et al., ‘Population Data of Y-STR Minimal Haplotypes’; Bortolini et al., ‘African-Derived South American Populations’; Pimenta, Juliana R. et al. , ‘Color and Genomic Ancestry in Brazilians: A Study with Forensic Microsatellites’, Human Heredity, 62: 4 (2006), pp. 190–5CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Palha, Teresinha de Jesus Brabo Ferreira et al. , ‘Male Ancestry Structure and Interethnic Admixture in African-Descent Communities from the Amazon as Revealed by Y-Chromosome STRs’, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 144: 3 (2011), pp. 471–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 Telles, Edward E., Race in Another America: The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 87Google Scholar.

60 Pimenta et al., ‘Color and Genomic Ancestry in Brazilians’; Pena, Sérgio D. J. et al. , ‘The Genomic Ancestry of Individuals from Different Geographical Regions of Brazil Is More Uniform than Expected’, PLoS ONE, 6: 2 (2011), p. e17063CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Pena et al., ‘DNA Tests’.

61 Rojas et al., ‘Genetic Make Up and Structure of Colombian Populations’.

62 Lewis, Laura A., Chocolate and Corn Flour: History, Race and Place in the Making of ‘Black’ Mexico (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 Maio, Marcos Chor and Monteiro, Simone, ‘Política social com recorte racial no Brasil: o caso da saúde da população negra’, in Maio, Marcos Chor and Santos, Ricardo Ventura (eds.), Raça como questão: história, ciência e identidades no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Editora FIOCRUZ, 2010), pp. 285314CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64 Pena, Sérgio D. J. and Bortolini, Maria Cátira, ‘Pode a genética definir quem deve se beneficiar das cotas universitárias e demais ações afirmativas?’, Estudos Avanzados, 18: 50 (2004), pp. 3150CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Santos, Ricardo Ventura et al. , ‘Color, Race and Genomic Ancestry in Brazil: Dialogues between Anthropology and Genetics’, Current Anthropology, 50: 6 (2009), pp. 787819CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Suarez-Kurtz, Guilherme, ‘Pharmacogenetics in the Brazilian Population’, in Gibbon, Sahra, Santos, Ricardo Ventura and Sans, Mónica (eds.), Racial Identities, Genetic Ancestry, and Health in South America: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Uruguay (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 121–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 Wade, Peter, Blackness and Race Mixture: The Dynamics of Racial Identity in Colombia (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Wade, ‘Defining Blackness in Colombia’.

66 Salzano and Bortolini, The Evolution and Genetics of Latin American Populations, p. 309.

67 Shriver, Mark D. and Kittles, Rick A., ‘Genetic Ancestry and the Search for Personalized Genetic Histories’, in Koenig, Lee and Richardson (eds.), Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age, pp. 201–14Google Scholar.

68 Carvajal-Carmona et al., ‘Strong Amerind/White Sex Bias’; Bedoya et al., ‘Admixture Dynamics in Hispanics’.

69 TallBear, Kim, ‘Narratives of Race and Indigeneity in the Genographic Project’, Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 35: 3 (2007), pp. 412–24CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; El-Haj, Nadia Abu, The Genealogical Science: The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of Epistemology (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 M'charek, Amade, The Human Genome Diversity Project: An Ethnography of Scientific Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 120–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nash, Catherine, ‘Gendered Geographies of Genetic Variation: Sex, Gender and Mobility in Human Population Genetics’, Gender, Place and Culture, 19: 4 (2012), pp. 409–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 Bortolini, Maria Cátira et al. , ‘Ribeiro's Typology, Genomes, and Spanish Colonialism, as Viewed from Gran Canaria and Colombia’, Genetics and Molecular Biology, 27 (2004), pp. 12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

72 Santos, Ricardo Ventura and Maio, Marcos Chor, ‘Race, Genomics, Identities and Politics in Contemporary Brazil’, Critique of Anthropology, 24: 4 (2004), p. 365CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73 The study by Rojas et al. included 15 Colombian urban populations classified as mestizo: mtDNA analysis showed an average of 6 per cent African and 83 per cent Amerindian ancestry. See Rojas et al., ‘Genetic Make Up and Structure of Colombian Populations’. The study by Wang et al. sampled ‘mestizos’ in 13 locations spread across Latin America: see Wang et al., ‘Geographic Patterns’. These data also appear in an overview by Andrés Ruiz Linares, ‘Human Genetic Variation: Americas’, in Aravinda Chakravarti (ed.), Who Are We? Human Diversity and Race from a Contemporary Genetics Perspective (forthcoming). The mtDNA analysis reported in this overview shows a greater proportion of Amerindian than African ancestry for all samples, although this is only marginally so for the sample from southern Brazil (Rio Grande do Sul). (These precise percentage measurements of ancestry are estimates and are influenced by the nature of the sample taken and the kind of genetic markers and reference populations that are used for the analysis.)

74 Martínez-Cruzado, Juan C. et al. , ‘Reconstructing the Population History of Puerto Rico by Means of MtDNA Phylogeographic Analysis’, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 128: 1 (2005), pp. 131–55CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

75 Alves-Silva et al., ‘The Ancestry of Brazilian MtDNA Lineages’. The criteria for ‘white’ in this study are not defined, but many Brazilian studies rely on self-classification, making reference to the standard census categories.

76 Bortolini et al., ‘African-Derived South American Populations’.

77 Rojas et al., ‘Genetic Make Up and Structure of Colombian Populations’.

78 This is suggested by X-chromosome analysis, which highlights female contributions as mothers contribute two X-chromosomes to offspring while men only contribute one. X-chromosome data for some mestizo samples indicate the significance of African ancestry; see Wang et al., ‘Geographic Patterns’.

79 Marrero et al., ‘Pre- and Post-Columbian Gene and Cultural Continuity’, p. 168.

80 Carvalho-Silva et al., ‘The Phylogeography of Brazilian Y-Chromosome Lineages’.

81 Bedoya et al., ‘Admixture Dynamics in Hispanics’.

82 Rojas et al., ‘Genetic Make Up and Structure of Colombian Populations’.

83 On Chile, see Ruiz Linares, ‘Human Genetic Variation’.

84 Rojas et al., ‘Genetic Make Up and Structure of Colombian Populations’.

85 Quilombos are notionally settlements founded by fugitive slaves, but nowadays the term may include settlements that have little historical relation to escaped slaves.

86 Palha et al., ‘Male Ancestry Structure’, p. 477; Ribeiro, Guilherme Galvarros Bueno Lobo et al. , ‘Afro-Derived Brazilian Populations: Male Genetic Constitution Estimated by Y-Chromosomes STRs and AluYAP Element Polymorphisms’, American Journal of Human Biology, 21: 3 (2009), p. 355CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

87 Bortolini et al., ‘African-Derived South American Populations’, p. 552. These are imposed criteria which obey the researchers’ perceptions of appearance and ancestry and which may be different from others’ perceptions in a country in which such classifications are quite varied. Not all studies use such objectivist criteria; see Santos et al., ‘Color, Race and Genomic Ancestry’.

88 Bortolini et al., ‘African-Derived South American Populations’, pp. 558–60.

90 Moutinho, Razão, ‘cor’ e desejo. See also Pinho, Osmundo de Araújo, ‘Etnografias do brau: corpo, masculinidade e raça na reafricanização em Salvador’, Revista Estudos Feministas, 13: 1 (2005), pp. 127–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Viveros Vigoya, ‘Dionysian Blacks’; and Nagel, Joane, Race, Ethnicity, and Sexuality: Intimate Intersections, Forbidden Frontiers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

91 See the literature cited in note 19.

92 Franklin, ‘Biologization Revisited’; Nelson, Alondra, ‘The Factness of Diaspora: The Social Sources of Genetic Genealogy’, in Koenig, Lee and Richardson (eds.), Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age, pp. 253–68Google Scholar; Wade (ed.), Race, Ethnicity and Nation; Condit, Celeste M., Parrott, Roxanne L., Harris, Tina M., Lynch, John and Dubriwny, Tasha, ‘The Role of “Genetics” in Popular Understandings of Race in the United States’, Public Understanding of Science, 13: 3 (2004), pp. 249–72CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

93 Fry, Peter, Yvonne Maggie, Simone Monteiro and Ricardo Ventura Santos (eds.), Divisões perigosas: políticas raciais no Brasil contemporâneo (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2007)Google Scholar.

94 Pena et al., ‘Retrato molecular do Brasil’.

95 Neto, Verlan Valle Gaspar and Santos, Ricardo Ventura, ‘Biorrevelações: testes de ancestralidade genética em perspectiva antropológica comparada’, Horizontes Antropológicos, 35 (2011), pp. 227–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

97 Barragán, Carlos Andrés, ‘Molecular Vignettes of the Colombian Nation: The Place(S) of Race and Ethnicity in Networks of Biocapital’, in Gibbon, Ventura Santos and Sans (eds.), Racial Identities, Genetic Ancestry, and Health in South America, pp. 4168Google Scholar. See also www.javeriana.edu.co/Humana/humana.html.