The Daily Life of DNA: Forensic Genetics and the Administration of Death and Hope in Mexico

In Mexico, encounters with genetic technologies are not primarily driven by curiosity about ancestry or health, but by the urgent need to identify the dead in the context of systemic violence and mass disappearance. Since the end of President Felipe Calderón’s term in 2012, forensic DNA analysis has become increasingly central to public life, framed as a technological solution to a deepening forensic crisis. This chapter examines the everyday role of DNA in Mexico’s human identification process by contrasting its modest place within forensic institutions with its inflated status in political discourse. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at the Institute of Forensic Sciences (Incifo), interviews with experts, and analysis of government documents and media sources, I argue that DNA functions as both a practical forensic tool and a symbolic device for administering hope. The political promise of a national genetic database, I suggest, serves as a necropolitical device—managing death and regulating social discontent through the constant deferral of justice. By approaching DNA through the lens of the mundane, this chapter reveals the tension between its everyday use in forensic work and its spectacularisation in state narratives, exposing how hope and impunity are intertwined in Mexico’s search for the disappeared.