Mestizo Genomics: Race Mixture, Nation, and Science in Latin America - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822356597 ISBN 13: 9780822356592

Verlag: Duke University Press, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

In genetics laboratories in Latin America, scientists have been mapping the genomes of local populations, seeking to locate the genetic basis of complex diseases and to trace population histories. As part of their work, geneticists often calculate the European, African, and Amerindian genetic ancestry of populations. Some researchers explicitly connect their findings to questions of national identity and racial and ethnic difference, bringing their research to bear on issues of politics and identity.

Drawing on ethnographic research in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, the contributors to Mestizo Genomics explore how the concepts of race, ethnicity, nation, and gender enter into and are affected by genomic research. In Latin America, national identities are often based on ideas about mestizaje (race mixture), rather than racial division. Since mestizaje is said to involve relations between European men and indigenous or African women, gender is a key factor in Latin American genomics and in the analyses in this book. Also important are links between contemporary genomics and recent moves toward official multiculturalism in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico. One of the first studies of its kind, Mestizo Genomics sheds new light on the interrelations between "race," identity, and genomics in Latin America.

Contributors. Adriana Díaz del Castillo H., Roosbelinda Cárdenas, Vivette García Deister, Verlan Valle Gaspar Neto, Michael Kent, Carlos López Beltrán, María Fernanda Olarte Sierra, Eduardo Restrepo, Mariana Rios Sandoval, Ernesto Schwartz-Marín, Ricardo Ventura Santos, Peter Wade

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Peter Wade is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester.

Carlos LÓpez BeltrÁn is a historian of science and senior researcher in the Instituto de Investigaciones FilosÓficas, Universidad Nacional AutÓnoma de MÉxico.

Eduardo Restrepo is a social anthropologist working in the Department of Cultural Studies at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in BogotÁ.

Ricardo Ventura Santos is an anthropologist and senior researcher at the National School of Public Health of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Rio de Janeiro and Associate Professor of Anthropology with the National Museum at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

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Mestizo Genomics

Race Mixture, Nation, and Science in Latin America

By Peter Wade, Carlos López Beltrán, Eduardo Restrepo, Ricardo Ventura Santos

Duke University Press

Copyright © 2014 Duke University Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8223-5659-2

Contents

Preface, vii, 
Acknowledgments, xi, 
INTRODUCTION: Genomics, Race Mixture, and Nation in Latin America Peter Wade, Carlos López Beltrán, Eduardo Restrepo, and Ricardo Ventura Santos, 1, 
part I. history and context, 
1 From Degeneration to Meeting Point: Historical Views on Race, Mixture, and the Biological Diversity of the Brazilian Population Ricardo Ventura Santos, Michael Kent, and Verlan Valle Gaspar Neto, 33, 
2 Nation and Difference in the Genetic Imagination of Colombia Eduardo Restrepo, Ernesto Schwartz-Marín, and Roosbelinda Cárdenas, 55, 
3 Negotiating the Mexican Mestizo: On the Possibility of a National Genomics Carlos López Beltrán, Vivette García Deister, and Mariana Rios Sandoval, 85, 
part II. laboratory case studies, 
4 "The Charrua Are Alive": The Genetic Resurrection of an Extinct Indigenous Population in Southern Brazil Michael Kent and Ricardo Ventura Santos, 109, 
5 The Travels of Humans, Categories, and Other Genetic Products: A Case Study of the Practice of Population Genetics in Colombia María Fernanda Olarte Sierra and Adriana Díaz del Castillo H., 135, 
6 Laboratory Life of the Mexican Mestizo Vivette García Deister, 161, 
7 Social Categories and Laboratory Practices in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico: A Comparative Overview Peter Wade, Vivette García Deister, Michael Kent, and María Fernanda Olarte Sierra, 183, 
CONCLUSION: Race, Multiculturalism, and Genomics in Latin America Peter Wade, 211, 
Appendix: Methods and Context, 241, 
References, 249, 
Contributors, 283, 
Index, 287, 

CHAPTER 1

From Degeneration to Meeting Point

Historical Views on Race, Mixture, and the Biological Diversity of the Brazilian Population

Ricardo Ventura Santos, Michael Kent, and Verlan Valle Gaspar Neto

Let any one who doubts the evil of the mixture of races, and is inclined, from a mistaken philanthropy, to break down all barriers between them, come to Brazil. He cannot deny the deterioration consequent upon an amalgamation of races, more widespread here than in any other country in the world, and which is rapidly effacing the best qualities of the white man, the negro, and the Indian, leaving a mongrel nondescript type, deficient in physical and mental energy.

–Louis Agassiz and Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz, A Journey in Brazil

None of the different types within the Brazilian population presents any stigma of anthropological degeneration. To the contrary, characteristics from all of them are the best that could be desired.

–Edgard Roquette-Pinto, "Nota sobre os typos anthropologicos do Brasil"

If ... we contemplate the structure of our population, we can see that Brazil represents a true MEETING POINT.... Brazilians probably constitute the most genetically diverse group of human beings on our planet and are far beyond any attempt at synthesis. What we intend is simply to describe and celebrate diversity.

–Sérgio D. J. Pena, Homo brasilis

The three epigraph quotations, written during different periods over the last 150 years, reveal the long road traveled by physical anthropologists and geneticists in their interpretations of race, mixture, and biological diversity in Brazil: from an outright rejection of mixture as a source of degeneration to its effusive celebration. In consonance with dominant racial thinking of the time, Swiss naturalist and Harvard University professor Louis Agassiz drew on his travels to Brazil in 1865–1866 to offer an extremely negative view of the racial-biological composition of this country, as well as of its consequences for the future viability of its population. These views strongly influenced Brazilian intellectuals and politicians of the time. The second citation, from Brazilian physician and anthropologist Edgard Roquette-Pinto, represents the biological diversity resulting from the process of racial mixture in rather more positive terms. It stems from the 1920s, a period of marked nationalism in Brazil, during which physical anthropologists contributed significantly to the development of more positive interpretations of the Brazilian population that strongly opposed the earlier thesis of degeneration. Finally, the third and most recent citation, by molecular geneticist Sérgio Pena, celebrates the biological diversity of the Brazilian population as unique within a global context. Genetic arguments developed by Pena on the nonexistence of race and the inherently mixed character of all Brazilians have in the past decade played a prominent role in the heated public debates on affirmative action policies targeted at the mixed and black population in Brazil.

The main objective of this chapter is to analyze from a historical-anthropological perspective the trajectory of studies in the fields of physical anthropology and human population genetics on race, mixture, and human biological diversity in Brazil from the second half of the nineteenth century to the present. It does so by focusing on three key periods in the development of scientific thought about race and mixture in Brazil, as well as its articulation with debates about national identity: approximately 1870–1915, 1910–1930, and 2000–present. In particular, we analyze the work of three key scientists that are representative of each respective period: João Baptista de Lacerda, Edgard Roquette-Pinto (both affiliated with the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro), and Sérgio Pena (Federal University of Minas Gerais). We consider these scholars representative both through their central position within academia and national debates, and through the alignment of their ideas with dominant thinking in their scientific fields at the time. Although this chapter reveals profound differences between these authors in terms of the methodology they employed, the content of their ideas, and the values attached to mixture, it also brings to the fore a number of continuities that run across the different historical periods analyzed here. These shared elements concern, in particular, the centrality of the question of racial mixture in defining the research agenda of physical anthropology and/or human population genetics in Brazil, as well as the often important role of knowledge generated by these scientific fields in the dynamics of the construction of a Brazilian national identity.

As argued throughout this book, the development of scientific thought on race and mixture does not stand on its own. It is intimately articulated with wider social processes, as well as public debates on race and national identity, both at a national level and within Latin America as a whole. Thus, an additional objective of this chapter is to place such scientific thought within this wider context. It does so, in particular, by exploring the significant correlations between the different periods identified here and the timeline of elite discourses on race in Latin America established by Appelbaum, Macpherson, and Rosemblatt (2003a).

Racial Degeneration and Whitening: João Baptista de Lacerda, 1870–1915

The first period analyzed here covers a moment when many Latin American countries were young republics and had recently abolished slavery. Economies were dominated by the agricultural sector, and one of the main challenges was to find a substitute for slave labor. In Brazil, as elsewhere, intellectuals perceived their respective nations as racially heterogeneous, while interpreting racial differences as the natural basis of social hierarchy. In addition, far-reaching processes of racial mixture were interpreted negatively as a form of degeneration, damaging the fitness and productive potential of the nations' populations. Such ideas were strongly influenced by European racialist theories that conceptualized Brazil as the prime example of the degeneration resulting from race mixture (Stepan 1991). In this context, policies aimed at the "whitening" of the population were increasingly understood as an antidote. Therefore, encouraging European immigration was seen as a possible solution, not only for labor purposes but also to stimulate what was imagined as the possibility of sociocultural and economic progress through Europeanization. Between the second half of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century, approximately six million European immigrants found their way to Brazil, mostly to its southern region (Appelbaum, Macpherson, and Rosemblatt 2003a; Maio and Santos 2010; Schwarcz 1993; Skidmore 1974; Stepan 1991).

The career of physician and anthropologist João Baptista de Lacerda is closely connected to the development of research on physical anthropology at the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro from the 1870s onward. At the time, Rio de Janeiro was the capital of Brazil and one of the main centers of research and intellectual reflection on race and the identity of the Brazilian population. Lacerda was initially coordinator of research in anthropology and became director of the National Museum in 1895 (until 1915).

Lacerda's early research focused on the indigenous races of Brazil. In the first volume of the Archivos do Museu Nacional, he published studies of indigenous craniology (Lacerda and Peixoto 1876) and dental characteristics (Lacerda 1876). Lacerda considered the school of French scientist Paul Broca (Lacerda and Peixoto 1876: 48) as the primary theoretical-methodological reference for anthropological research conducted at the National Museum. During this period, physical anthropology in Europe—and in France in particular—experienced intense growth, with the publication of a wide body of literature and the development of a plethora of instruments for morphological characterization of the human body (Blanckaert 1989; Gould 1996; Harvey 1983; Massin 1996; Stocking 1968). The research of Lacerda and colleagues was based on detailed descriptions of bone morphology and measurements with the aim of constructing "a history of the Brazilian fossil man" (Lacerda 1875). Central research questions included the number of indigenous races, their age, their specific anatomical characteristics, and whether they were indigenous New World populations.

As was common in the anthropological tradition of the second half of the nineteenth century, it was considered possible to infer the intellectual and moral attributes of individuals from their physical characteristics (see Gould 1996; Stocking 1968; Blanckaert 1989). Following this tradition, during a period of intense debates about the Brazilian workforce because of the imminent abolition of slavery (which occurred in 1888), Lacerda's analyses led him to deliver an unfavorable judgment on the position of the Indians in the racial hierarchy of Brazil, as well as on their potential to participate effectively in the construction of the nation. Cranial measurements provided, in his eyes, evidence of intrinsic biological conditions of inferiority: "the portion of the thinking organ amounted to miniature proportions" (Lacerda 1882c: 23). As Lacerda concluded on the basis of the study of three Xerente and two Botocudo men: "They are savage, do not have any type of art, and do not have an inclination toward progress and civilization.... The Indian is unquestionably inferior to the Negro with regard to physical labor.... We measured the muscular force of adult individuals with the dynamometer ... and the instrument detected a force that is lower than that generally observed in white or black individuals" (Lacerda 1905: 100–101). The relatively unknown indigenous populations and questions about how to integrate them into the nation were a constant presence in Brazilian intellectual thought in the second half of the nineteenth century. Scientific research at the time offered highly pessimistic views of such populations, establishing a "contrast between the historic Indian, womb of nationality, Tupi par excellence, extinct by preference, and the contemporary Indian, member of 'savage hordes' that wandered through the uncultured backlands" (Monteiro 1996: 15). Research by physical anthropologists of the National Museum in the second half of the nineteenth century mixed racial analyses with evolutionary notions. By situating the Indians at the lowest levels of racial hierarchy, they echoed popular theses of racialist determinism promoted by influential European intellectuals such as Henry Buckle, Arthur de Gobineau, and Louis Agassiz (Skidmore 1974). During the same period, other Brazilian scholars, drawing on notions of race, evolutionary schemes, and criminal anthropology, conducted research on the black segment of the population, most notably the physician and anthropologist Raimundo Nina Rodrigues with his research on the population of the state of Bahia (Corrêa 1982). As such, they generated interpretative schemes that affirmed the inferiority of the indigenous and black races, well in line with contemporary scientific thought.

In the later stages of his scientific career, Lacerda shifted his attention toward the question of racial mixture and the mestizo population of Brazil. In 1911, he participated in the First Universal Races Congress in London (see Fletcher 2005) as Brazil's official representative. There, he presented his memoir Sur les métis au Brésil (On the Mestizos of Brazil; Lacerda 1911). This work became known for advocating a process of whitening, as Lacerda argued that Brazil was a racially viable nation because its population was on its way to becoming a white race.

According to Lacerda, in order to achieve the whitening of the Brazilian population, it was necessary to overcome a number of obstacles. The first one regarded the fate of the Indians and black people and, in particular, those whose vices "were inoculated into the white and mixed-races" (Lacerda 1911: 12). According to Lacerda, because of their inherent racial inferiority, these groups were destined to progressively disappear by the process of "ethnic reduction": as white racial traits were stronger than black or Indian ones, mixture would inevitably lead to the whitening of the population. The second obstacle concerned the enormous contingent of people of mixed race—the most difficult barrier, according to Lacerda. He described mixed-race Brazilians as physically inferior to blacks as well as morally unstable; intellectually, however, they were described as comparable to whites. According to Lacerda, by the process of "intellectual selection," the "generous slave owners" had encouraged those with a more intellectual propensity to participate in social life, generating a differentiated mixed-race population.

The primary point defended by Lacerda in his memoir is that Brazil would follow the path toward whitening because the mixed-race populations, in spite of not constituting a "stable race," tended to have children with white people through "sexual selection." This process was especially common in Brazil, where "procreation [did] not obey precise social rules, where mixed-race people [had] all the liberty to blend with whites" (Lacerda 1911: 8). In addition to this internal dynamic of racial transformation, Lacerda called attention to the role of immigration as a factor that accelerated the process of whitening by infusing populations with "European/Aryan blood."

Lacerda's memoir may be seen as an exercise in reconciliation between a Brazilian social reality of mixed races and scientific theories that disqualified mixed races. Whitening represented a path toward the redemption of the Brazilian population. During the congress in London, Lacerda predicted that within a century the black population would have entirely disappeared in Brazil. As Seyferth (1985: 96) points out, "the whitening thesis reflects the Republican elite's concern at the beginning of the century with regard to the problem of mixture and its implications within the larger context of Brazilian history" (see also Cunha 2002: 271–275; Schwarcz 1993; Skidmore 1974: 64–65).

The concept that whitening the nation's population was possible—which might have seemed unlikely to some European theorists, for whom racial mixture was by definition degenerative—is linked to the fact that the idea of whiteness in Brazil had—and still has in the present—different meanings from those circulating in Europe or the United States. Racial belonging in Brazil has traditionally been based much more on an individual's appearance than on descent. Although whiteness is often equated with Europeanness, light skin color is a more central criterion. Additional criteria such as culture, level of education, and social and financial standing all contribute to making racial affiliation relatively contextual; marrying a whiter partner has often been used as a means of social ascension for one's offspring in Brazil. A corollary of this approach to racial belonging is the assumption that there are no absolute borders between different races. At the time of Lacerda's writing, dominant thinking invariably constructed the white race as superior, both biologically and culturally and, while whiteness today continues to be contextually defined, it is still accorded a high cultural and aesthetic value.

(Continues...)

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Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Duke University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0822356597
• ISBN 13: 9780822356592
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Anzahl der Seiten: 316
• Herausgeber: Wade
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• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar