As an immigrant from South America, the dominant society in the U.S. simply identifies one as a “Latin@”. This simplification of identification with one category clearly downplays the differences within Latin American populations and ignores the rich and diverse ancestry of immigrants from Latin America.

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I was born in Peru, as were both of my parents, but I am aware that our ancestors came from different world regions. I’ve always been aware that I most probably have indigenous ancestry on both my paternal and my maternal sides of the family. Likewise, I also knew that my maternal grandmother’s parents were both Italian immigrants that arrived to Peru in the 20th century, and that on my paternal side of the family there was Spanish ancestry... and I had also heard rumors about other possible ancestries in our family, like Jewish and Sub-Saharan African ancestry.

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I had been curious in further exploring my ancestry for some time, and could not resist the temptation when I found out about the numerous DNA tests available nowadays. I decided to try one out with 23andme and received my results, which I am sharing in the following dashboards. 23andme divides populations in six main categories: East Asian & Native American, European, Sub-Saharan African, Middle Eastern & North African, South Asian, and Oceanian. Within each of one of those populations there are different subdivisions.

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I first have to raise my main grievance with this and every other DNA ancestry exam out there, or at least the ones that I’m aware of: The bias towards distinguishing different European regions and subregions (see 23andme Ancestry Composition Guide - https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/). For example, for populations of European origin, 23andme includes 4 different categories, and 8 subcategories, whereas for the “Native American” population, this ancestry test just considered one sub-category, regardless of whether the ancestors may have been from North, Central, or South America, or the Caribbean. On the other hand, I am by no means an expert in genetics, and do not fully comprehend the genetic complexities, similarities, and differences between the Native American populations.

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Now that the venting is over… Here are the results: Out of the six main populations that 23andme distinguishes, the DNA test identified my ancestry with four of them: European (55.1%), East Asian & Native American (38.2%), Middle Eastern & North African (1.5%), and Sub-Saharan African (1%). There were a few surprises, but in general the results were aligned with what I knew or heard about my family's background. Below are the full results of my DNA test and the sub-categories in a tree map, pie chart, and a stacked bars chart.