“Luisa, Karina’s eleven-year-old daughter, is lead-poisoned. According to a blood test she had two years ago, her lead levels are 18.5 micrograms per deciliter, far above what is now considered to be a nontoxic blood level of lead (10µg/dl). That might explain Luisa’s restless nights (‘her sleep is jumpy,’ her mother says [duerme sobresaltada]), her random bouts of fever, and her occasional convulsions. ‘I told the doctor about the fever and the coughing,’ Karina says, ‘and the doctor told me that it is because lead slowly consumes you.'” (Auyero & Swistun 2009: 62).
In a shantytown called Flammable, Argentinian residents live beside oil refineries, oil storage plants, chemical product storage and manufacturing companies, and a thermoelectric plant. The people here are basically swimming in chemicals: “There is little doubt that the physical space in which Flammable residents carry out their daily lives is highly contaminated from past and present industrial activities” (Auyero & Swistun 2009: 53). Javier Auyero and Debora Alejandra Swistun shed light to the understudied topic of environmental suffering in Latin America, noting the disproportionately heavy toll it takes on the women living in these areas. Theirs is an urban ethongraphy, discussing the processes of marginalization, denial, and uncertainty among and around residents of Flammable.
The world seems to grow smaller as populations increase in many countries. When you mix toxic waste with crowded areas, Flammable is what you get, and it is not unique to Argentina. The question, then, is, is the health of some a worthy sacrifice for the benefit of a larger portion of society? Of course the world will never agree on the answer, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep fighting for environmental justice and equal access to healthy air, water and soil.
References:
Auyero, J. and Swistun, D.A. 2009. Flammable: Environmental Suffering in an Argentine Shantytown. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
The Edited Jottings of an Amateur Anthropologist 