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]

中文翻译：

---

墨西哥人的面孔：墨西哥的种族，民族和犯罪认同

全世界在当代犯罪鉴定中使用了各种科学技术。Caramex，被称为“墨西哥人的面孔”，是专门为墨西哥人开发的面部识别系统，用于犯罪识别。这是一个由墨西哥面部特征组成的摄影数据库，用于生成合成草图。在本文中，我研究了Caramex，并表明它可以根据民族，混合（mestizaje）和种族（mestizo）。与纯洁是种族的假定和期望条件的种族意识形态相反，Caramex强调了杂交性。这个特定的框架（借鉴了我所谓的“墨西哥性”）指导数据库的构建，从而指导肖像的制作。该分析从历史的角度介绍了Caramex的发展，并提供了对该技术的日常使用的见解。它表明Caramex不仅重现了国家和种族的旧观点，而且在这些问题上产生了新的想法，因为用户可以更改照片数据库并质疑形成技术的想法。因此，从更广泛的意义上讲，这个案例说明了身份识别技术如何融入并建构拉丁美洲的民族和人类变异观念。[人脸召回系统，混血儿，种族，Caramex，墨西哥人，墨西哥]