Degrees of Mixture, Degrees of Freedom: Genomics, Multiculturalism, and Race in Latin America.

• Author: Keane-Dawes, Antony W.
• Position: LATIN AMERICA - Book review

Wade, Peter. Degrees of Mixture, Degrees of Freedom: Genomics, Multiculturalism, and Race in Latin America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017.

Peter Wade brings together case studies in genomics and multiculturalism in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico to look at how these nations drew ideas about genetic mixture into the larger struggle between democracy and inequality. Wade argues that scientific research on and public debates about genomic data in these Latin American nations became another way to discuss, use, and act on issues related to ethnic terminology and racial mixing because of their importance in underpinning MESTIZAJE discourses from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Discussions of Amerindian, African, and European contributions to nation building and nationalism shrouded the ways the ruling elite used genetics and science to support racial and ethnic categories that marginalized indigenous groups and people of color. At the same time, this MESTIZAJE rhetoric celebrated these nations' commitments to democracy. This process was made possible by scientists' use of social racial categories to debunk the validity of race even as they pointed to the idealized mixed type or mestizo.

Wade brings together the literature on scientific racism, nation building, and racial mixing in this study of MESTIZAJE in contemporary times. In some ways, DEGREES OF MIXTURE builds on MESTIZO GENOMICS, edited by Wade, Carlos Lopez Beltran, Eduardo Restrepo, and Ricardo Ventura Santos, which focused on the study of genomes and their use in society. Wade's monograph takes this perspective one step further by historicizing and situating those who developed genomics in the region within an older tradition of the science of legitimizing MESTIZAJE discourses that sought to uplift diverse Latin American nations in response to European and North American critiques of the region's diversity. DEGREES OF MIXTURE highlights how the use of idealized pure racial and ethnic categories of genomics and science in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico allowed for the perpetuation of stereotypes and attacks against multicultural endeavors that attempted to acknowledge and value Amerindian and African contributions.

Wade relies on the writings of intellectuals and scientists and on journals, pamphlets, and essays to highlight the role of science in perpetuating racial categories. Particularly of interest are...