Eugenics, Epigenetics, and Obesity Predisposition among Mexican Mestizos

ABSTRACT

We compare the discourses on obesity found in early- and mid-twentieth century Mexican public discourse with those of Mexican geneticists and doctors today. We argue that postgenomic shifts towards non-determinism, apparently contained in current openness to epigenetics, need to be considered alongside the persistence of racialized genetic determinisms, and alongside the potential for epigenetic environmental determinisms. By exploring the environmentalist explanations of earlier eugenic thinking about obesity, we trace continuities in the gendered and racialized framings of obesity, which risk stigmatizing indigenous ancestry and attributing blame to individual mothers.

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KEYWORDS:

• Mexico
• epigenetics
• eugenics
• genomics
• indigenous ancestry
• mestizos
• obesity

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Newton Fund [AF140103]; British Academy [AF140103].

Notes on contributors

Abril Saldaña-Tejeda

Abril Saldaña-Tejeda is a lecturer at the University of Guanajuato, Mexico. She holds honorary research fellowship at the University of Manchester and is a member of INTEGRA, a Mexican research network for the study of racism and xenophobia. She has published on mestizaje and domestic work in Mexico and has recently published a book on motherhood in Mexico.

Peter Wade

Peter Wade is professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester. He has published widely on race and ethnicity in Latin America. His most recent book is Degrees of Mixture, Degrees of Freedom: Genomics, Multiculturalism and Race in Latin America (2017).