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The Face of the Mexican: Race, Nation, and Criminal Identification in Mexico
Author(s) -
Nieves Delgado Abigail
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
american anthropologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.51
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1548-1433
pISSN - 0002-7294
DOI - 10.1111/aman.13383
Subject(s) - identification (biology) , race (biology) , construct (python library) , face (sociological concept) , contest , ideology , latin americans , population , sociology , politics , criminology , database , history , gender studies , computer science , political science , law , social science , demography , botany , biology , programming language
Various scientific techniques are used worldwide in contemporary criminal identification. Caramex, called the “Face of the Mexican,” is a face‐recall system for criminal identification specifically developed for the Mexican population. It is a photographic database composed of Mexican facial traits to generate composite sketches. In this article, I examine Caramex and show that it works according to specific ideas of nation, mixture ( mestizaje ), and race ( mestizo ). In contrast to racial ideologies in which purity is the assumed and desired condition of races, Caramex highlights hybridity. This specific framework—drawing on what I call “Mexicanness”—guides the construction of the database and thus the production of portraits. The analysis historically situates the development of Caramex and provides insights into the daily use of this technology. It shows that Caramex not only reproduces old views of nation and race but also generates new ideas on these issues, as users can alter the photographic database and contest the ideas that shaped the technology. Thus, more generally, this case shows how technologies of identification incorporate and construct ideas of nationhood and human variation in Latin America. [ face‐recall system, mestizo, race, Caramex, Mexicanness, Mexico ]