What Happened to Mexican Eugenics?: Racism and the Reproduction of the Nation

正如墨西哥的人口控制政策和做法以及对残疾人的侵犯所表明的那样，优生做法和观念仍然反映在土著、非洲裔墨西哥人社区的社会不平等中。我的论文从历史社会学的角度探讨了优生学在墨西哥的实施方式。特别是，它分析了优生措施和思想在墨西哥的历史延续，以及它们在二十一世纪的影响和反响。这反过来又使我能够采取跨部门的方法，处理性别、“种族”、性、科学和技术、风险和疾病管理等问题。全文共分五章。前三章是历史性的，在他们的方法和解决建设的国家后，墨西哥革命（1910-1920年）和方式，这一事件变得交织在一起的崛起，排他性的想法巩固在优生学的科学。这种方法使在墨西哥优生学的探索从不同的角度，包括优生学的墨西哥社会（MSE）的成员对家庭在个人和国家层面的影响，以及哪些机构和人口的定义不属于墨西哥民族。最后两章集中在20世纪末和21世纪初，在科学种族主义的撤退和MSE的衰落之后。我的研究的一个关键发现是，优生学并没有简单地消失，而是继续出现在个人管理自己身体的过程中，以及关于艾滋病毒流行等公共卫生危机的国家措施中，以及人口控制问题。总的来说，这项工作引入了“滑优生学”的概念，以解释墨西哥优生思想的持续发展和影响，我认为，这将继续塑造国家的繁衍到现在。到目前为止，墨西哥优生学的学术报道一直将其视为一个在第二次世界大战后消失的领域。相反，我的干预最具创新性的方面是展示优生实践和意识形态如何继续塑造当代社会政策、对科学的文化理解、民族主义概念和生物科学。我对墨西哥优生学的探索作为更广泛的国际网络的一部分，为展示全球优生思想的相互联系及其对个人日常生活的影响提供了一个框架。我承认，在墨西哥，优生思想和“种族优越”和“异常”的语言--在二战前很常见，被“残疾人”之类的术语所净化和取代--允许建立一个国家机构，反过来，这又有助于将群体病态化，在优生学家看来，没有能力“改善”民族传统-通过使用没有明显种族主义色彩的隐晦和编码语言继续存在的思想。因此，我提供的工具来认识优生的做法和想法，以揭示他们的延续，即使在语言的优生学下降，从接受。然而，优生的做法，如绝育，继续给予原住民。我的研究被英国和美国的研究所引用，指出了墨西哥优生学与其他国家的相似之处，但也指出了其内部矛盾和悖论如何使其成为解释优生知识生产背后的动力的一个值得注意的案例，不仅在拉丁美洲，而且与世界各地的优生学社会和优生学家的联系。

As manifest in population control policies and practices as well as violations against people with disabilities eugenic practices and ideas in Mexico are still reflected in social inequalities among Indigenous, Afro-Mexican communities. My thesis explores the ways in which eugenics was carried out in Mexico from a historical sociological perspective. Particularly, it analyses the historical continuations of eugenic measures and ideas in Mexico and the ways in which they impact and echo in the twenty-first century. This, in turn, has allowed me to carry out an intersectional approach that engages with issues of gender, "race", sexuality, science and technology, risk, and the management of disease. The work is divided into five chapters. The first three chapters are historical in their approach and tackle the construction of the nation after the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) and the ways in which this event became intertwined with the rise of exclusionary ideas cemented in the science of eugenics. This approach enables an exploration of eugenics in Mexico from different angles, including the impact of the members of the Mexican Society of Eugenics (MSE) on the making of the family at an individual and national level, and the definition of which bodies and populations do not belong to the Mexican nation. The final two chapters focus on the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, following the retreat of scientific racism and the decline of the MSE. A key finding of my research is that eugenics did not simply disappear but continues to be seen in the processes in which individuals manage their own bodies, as well as in-state measures concerning public health crises such as the HIV epidemic, and issues of population control. Overall, this work introduces the concept of "slippery eugenics" to account for the ongoing development and impact of eugenic ideas in Mexico, which, I argue, continue to shape the reproduction of the nation into the present. Scholarly accounts of eugenics in Mexico have so far treated it as a field that became defunct after the Second World War. The most innovative aspect of my intervention is to show, on the contrary, how eugenic practices and ideologies continue to shape contemporary social policy, cultural understandings of science, conceptions of nationalism, and biological science. My exploration of Mexican eugenics as part of a broader international network offers a framework for demonstrating the interconnectedness of eugenic ideas globally and their impact on the every-day lives of individuals. I posit that eugenic ideas and the language of "racial superiority" and "abnormality"-common before WWII and sanitized and replaced by terms like "people with disabilities- in Mexico allowed the creation of a national body that, in turn, helped to pathologize groups that, in eugenicists' views, were not capable of "improving" the national stock-ideas that continue to exist through the usage of veiled and coded language without overtly racist overtones. Thus, I provide the tools to recognize eugenic practices and ideas to reveal their continuation even after the language of eugenics fell from acceptability. However, eugenic practices-like sterilizations-continue to be meted out to indigenous populations. My research, which has been cited in British and American-based studies, points to the similarities of Mexican eugenics with other countries, but also how its internal contradictions and paradoxes make it a noteworthy case for explaining the dynamics behind the production of eugenic knowledge, not only in Latin America but its connections with eugenics societies and eugenicists around the world.