Category: South America

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A pandemic of water privatization: Poverty and lack of water in Chile

Maria Christina Fragkou – Hydrofeminist collective La Gota Negra/ Department of Geography, University of Chile mariac.fragkou@uchilefau.cl Chile is globally renowned for its neoliberal politics, imposed during the military dictatorship between 1973 and 1990, and the implications these have had on water management, crystallised in the infamous Chilean Water Code that has been studied extensively by … Continue reading A pandemic of water privatization: Poverty and lack of water in Chile

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Editorial: South America, or the lost Paradise

Patricio Flores Silva- Department of Sociology, University of Warwick. patricio-ignacio.flores-silva@warwick.ac.uk After discovering ‘the new world’, European conquerors felt deeply impressed by its natural richness. Given the majesty of its forests, the unlimited fruits provided by its trees, the fertility of its virgin valleys, the Americas, in general, and South America, in particular, were assumed as … Continue reading Editorial: South America, or the lost Paradise

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‘El aire está malo’: Living with toxics in a Chilean sacrifice zone

Efren Legaspi, Citizen of Horcón (V Region of Valparaíso, Chile)/Universidad de Sevilla. efrenlb@gmail.com ‘El aire está malo’ (‘the air feels bad´) is a common expression among people from the Quintero-Puchuncaví bay (V Region of Valparaíso, Chile), who must deal with the atmospheric emissions generated by the industrial complex Ventanas on a daily basis. In the … Continue reading ‘El aire está malo’: Living with toxics in a Chilean sacrifice zone

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Living and resisting with agrotoxics in their blood: Struggles for health and environmental rights against sprayings and agrobiofuels pollution in the heart of the Argentinian agribusiness

Mauricio Berger, PhD, Social Sciences, Associate Researcher, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Associate Professor Instituto de Investigación y Formación en Administración Pública, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina (IIFAP, FCS, UNC). mauricio.berger@unc.edu.ar Cecilia Carrizo, Msc, Public Administration, Associate Professor, Instituto de Investigación y Formación en Administración Pública, Facultad de … Continue reading Living and resisting with agrotoxics in their blood: Struggles for health and environmental rights against sprayings and agrobiofuels pollution in the heart of the Argentinian agribusiness

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Living with lead in Uruguay

Daniel Renfrew- Department of Sociology and Anthropology, West Virginia University daniel.renfrew@mail.wvu.edu Lead poisoning, the disease of antiquity and the twentieth century’s “mother of all industrial poisons” (Markowitz and Rosner, 2002), continues to haunt and cover the earth. Lead is a legacy pollutant of America’s toxic infrastructure, found in the cracked and peeling paints of old … Continue reading Living with lead in Uruguay

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Mine tailings and enviromental (dis)controls in a Brazilian coastal area

Eliana S. J. Creado – Federal University of Espírito Santo, Brazil[1] eliana.creado@gmail.com When we started to study the possibilities of sociotechnological disasters (see Zhouri et al., 2017) in a fishery village, called Regência Augusta, at Espírito Santo State, Brasil, where Doce River meets the Atlantic Ocean, we were thinking about something related to oil or … Continue reading Mine tailings and enviromental (dis)controls in a Brazilian coastal area

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Making Mercury History: Toxic Assets and Neocolonial Extraction

Ruth Goldstein- Department of Global and International Studies, University of California, Irvine. ruth.goldstein@uci.edu (See below for Spanish translation) “In the neocolonial alchemy, gold changes into scrap metal and food into poison.” Exiled Uruguayan scholar Eduardo Galeano writes about toxic neocolonial alchemies in the first pages of The Open Veins of Latin America (Las Venas Abiertas … Continue reading Making Mercury History: Toxic Assets and Neocolonial Extraction

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The Bahía Blanca Petrochemical Complex: Why I Have Made a Documentary Called “Ingeniero White: A Town They Are Killing”

María Giovis. In October 2017, the documentary “Ingeniero White: Un pueblo que están matando” was released, a documentary marked by an urgency to denounce. To denounce how they are killing my hometown: Ingeniero White. To me, this is the place of my earliest affections, dirt roads, the smell of the sea, beloved friends and family. … Continue reading The Bahía Blanca Petrochemical Complex: Why I Have Made a Documentary Called “Ingeniero White: A Town They Are Killing”

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Editorial: Environmental Justice in the Global South: Uneven Geographies of Extractivism, Industrial Pollution and Toxicity

David Brown, University of Warwick The environmental justice paradigm has its origins in the United States in the 1980s, as a social movement which aimed to tackle the uneven distribution of toxic waste sites and polluting industries located in minority and socio-economically deprived neighbourhoods. Much of the early environmental justice research focused efforts on issues, … Continue reading Editorial: Environmental Justice in the Global South: Uneven Geographies of Extractivism, Industrial Pollution and Toxicity

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The Peruvian oil company Petroperu uses fear and bribery to silence local people and prevent environmental justice

Adrian Gonzalez, University of York adrian.gonzalez.2013@live.rhul.ac.uk; Twitter: @AGonzalez05 Imagine you and your family suffering from the effects of oil pollution and feeling powerless to report it and seek justice. My research shows that this is the situation that rural Peruvian communities face today. Two villages in Peru’s Amazon region of Loreto have both been affected … Continue reading The Peruvian oil company Petroperu uses fear and bribery to silence local people and prevent environmental justice