ABSTRACT
John Collier, anthropologist and commissioner of the Office for Indian Affairs of the United States from 1934 to 1945, acknowledged the practical and conceptual advantages of practical anthropology in Mexico. This chapter discusses the Mexican indigenista policies and institutions, which establishes the broader context of post-revolutionary rhetoric and health policies within which research on indigenous populations took place from the mid-1940s through to the mid-1960s. It offers a survey of the research of Mexican doctors on indigenous populations in the 1940s and 1950s, in particular the work of Manuel Salazar-Mallen. The chapter also focuses on Salazar-Mallen student Ruben Lisker, who was in charge of extensive genetic and biochemical surveys of indigenous populations in Mexico in the 1960s. Salazar-Mallen and Lisker's research program illustrates the intersection and the tension between the indigenista rhetoric and policies, and the individual interests of medical geneticists who were part of the post-war international circuits studying the genetics of human populations.
