Auyero, Javier

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1 4l l i l a s   p o r t a l“I RAISED THREE KIDS HERE. I myself have been inside many of the chemical plants, and I don’t have any health problems,” a 70-year-old resident of Flammable—a highly contaminated shantytown on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, Argentina—told me. The shantytown sits adjacent to one of the larg-est petrochemical compounds in the country (the site of the only oil refinery	Shell	has	in	the	Southern	Cone),	and	it	is	surrounded	by	a	hazardous	waste	incinerator	and	by	an	unmonitored	landfill.	Other	residents expressed their doubts about pollution in the following ways: “I don’t really know if I am contaminated or not. . . . I don’t even know what the symptoms are” or “We don’t really know if we have something.” Flammable residents are routinely exposed to chromium and benzene (both known carcinogens) and to toluene. But lead, “the mother of all industrial poisons . . . the paradigmatic toxin [linking] industrial and environmental disease” (Markowitz and	Rosner	2002:137),	is	the	main	toxin	affecting	primarily	shanty-town children. Despite ample evidence of pollution, residents, both young and old, express serious doubts about its sources, extent, and	effects.	Indeed,	in	a	detailed	analysis	of	the	ways	in	which	shantytown residents think and feel about widespread air, water, and ground contamination (Auyero and Swistun 2009), I found dra-matic patterns of pervasive toxic uncertainty and paradoxical absence of community protest. Together with a group of graduate students (Lindsey	Engelman,	Emily	Spangenberg,	and	Pamela	Neumann)	and	with funding provided by LLILAS, we have begun a new research project that seeks to extend that analysis to other places across Latin America (Esmeraldas, in Ecuador; Abra Pampa, in Argentina; and La Oroya, in Peru), and to delve more deeply into (a) the sociopolitical production of uncertainty regarding origins, degree, and impacts of contamination, and (b) the intricate relationship between toxic uncertainty and presence or absence of environmental protest. The	project,	tentatively	entitled	“Environmental	Suffering	in	the	Americas,” will use ethnography, archival research, oral history, and photography	to	describe	the	life-threatening	effects	of	environmental	contamination in three highly polluted marginalized communities in the Americas and to explain the (sometimes puzzling and con-tradictory) meanings their poor residents ascribe to it. The main questions	our	project	will	address	are	the	following:	How	do	poor	people make sense of (and cope with) toxic danger? When and why do they fail to understand (and to act on) what is objectively a	clear	and	present	danger?	How	and	why	are	(mis)perceptions	shared within a community? In answering these questions, we will contribute	to	the	resolution	of	the	two-decades-long	effort	among	scholars to understand the intermingling between risk frames and collective (in)action.The miserable physical environment in which the urban poor live, “the	real	grounds	of	[their]	history”	to	use	Karl	Marx’s	expression,	remains a marginal preoccupation among students of poverty in Latin America, despite having been raised on some of the existing literature on urban environmental problems (Lemos 1998; Pezzoli 2000; Evans 2002;	Hochstetler	and	Keck	2007).	Both	a	recent	comprehensive	review	of	studies	of	poverty	and	inequality	in	Latin	America	(Hoff-man and Centeno 2003) and a symposium on the history and state of the studies of marginality and exclusion in Latin America published in the most prominent journal of Latin American Studies (González de	la	Rocha	et	al.	2004)	make	no	mention	of	environmental	factors	as key determinants in the reproduction of destitution and inequity. With	few	notable	exceptions	(Scheper-Hughes	1992;	Paley	2001;	Farmer 2004), ethnographies of urban poverty and marginality in Latin America have also failed to take into account the simple fact that the poor do not breathe the same air, drink the same water, or play on the same playgrounds as others. Poor people’s lives do not unfold on the head of a pin. Theirs is an often-polluted	environment	that	seriously	affects	their	present	health	and future capabilities, and about which scholars, myself included, have long remained silent. This silence (another incarnation of what Sherry Ortner [1995] famously called “ethnographic refusal”) is shocking given the prominent place of the material context of poor people’s lives both in a founding text in the study of poverty and IEnvironmental Suffering, Here and There by  Jav ier 	Auyero1 5l l i l a s   p o r t a linequality, Friedrich Engels’s The Condition of the Working-Class in England, and also in one of the seminal texts on the lives of urban pariahs in Latin American cities. In Child of the Dark, The Diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus, Carolina, a longtime resident of a favela	during	the	1950s,	provides	a	firsthand	account of everyday life in a shantytown in São Paulo, Brazil. She refers to her favela with words that will sound painfully familiar to the inhabitants of poor neighborhoods throughout Latin America and much of the Third World: “It is a garbage dump,” she writes. “Only pigs could live in a place like this. This is the pigsty of São Paulo” (27). Throughout the book, she points to polluted waters and what she calls the “perfume” of “rotting mud (and) excrement” (40), as defining	features	of	the	lives	of	the	poverty	enclaves.	Half	a	century	later,	the	shantytown	poor	are	still	surrounded	by	filth,	disgusting	smells, and contaminated grounds and water.Any	social-scientific	sketch	of	urban	mar-ginality	and	its	effects	on	socially	organized	suffering	should	pay	sustained	and	systematic	empirical attention to the highly polluted and risky surroundings where the urban poor dwell. Together with income, employ-ment, education, and other conventional variables,	social	scientific	analyses	of	the	causes and manifestations of urban depri-vation should take account of poor people’s relentless exposure to environmental haz-ards. In other words, if we want a better, more comprehensive understanding of “the texture	of	hardship”	(Newman	and	Mas-sengill 2006), and a more adequate grasp on	the	possibilities	of	a	full-fledged	social	inclusion,	the	garbage-filled	sidewalks	the	poor traverse daily, the polluted grounds and streams where they live and play, the open air sewers and the muddy streets they are forced to deal with, and the toxic air they breathe are inescapable objects of analysis.Our project thus heeds the call of a new generation of geographers and urban sociolo-gists	(e.g.,	McFarlane	and	Rutherford	2008;	Murray 2009) who are beginning to focus on social inclusion and exclusion (and on citizenship more broadly) as dynamic pro-cesses inextricably linked to the biophysical fabric of urban spaces. ✹Javier Auyero is Lozano Long Professor in Latin American Sociology at the University of Texas.ReferencesAuyero, Javier, and Débora Swistun. 2009.  Flammable. Environmental Suffering in an   Argentine Shantytown.	New	York:	Oxford		 University	Press.	De Jesus, Carolina. 2003. Child of the Dark.  The Diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus. 	 New	York:	Signet.Engels, F. [1844] 1973. The Condition  of the Working-Class in England. London:  Lawrence & Wishart.Evans, Peter (ed.). 2002. Livable Cities? Urban   Struggles for Livelihood and Sustainability.  	 Berkeley:	University	of	California	Press.Farmer, Paul. 2003. Pathologies of Power. Health,   Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor.  	 Berkeley:	University	of	California	Press.González	de	la	Rocha,	Mercedes,	et	al.	2004.		 “From the Marginality of the 1960s to the 	 ‘New	Poverty’	of	Today:	A	LARR	Research Forum.” Latin American Research Review    39(1):184–203.Hochstetler,	Kathryn,	and	Margaret	Keck.	2007.		 The Greening of Brazil. Environmental Activism   in State and Society.	Durham:	Duke	University		 Press.Hoffman,	Kelly,	and	Miguel	Angel	Centeno.	2003.		 “The Lopsided Continent: Inequality in Latin   America.” Annual Review of Sociology  29:363–390.Lemos, Maria Carmen de Mello. 1998. “The Politics  of Pollution Control in Brazil: State Actors and  	 Social	Movements	Cleaning	Up	Cubatao.”	 World Development.	Vol.	26,	No.	1:	75–87.Markowitz,	Gerald,	and	David	Rosner.	2002.		 Deceit and Denial. The Deadly Politics of  Industrial Pollution.	Berkeley:	University	 of California Press.Marx,	K.,	and	F.	Engels.	1978.	The Marx and Engels   Reader.	Edited	by	R.	Tucker.	New	York:	Norton.McFarlane,	Colin,	and	Jonathan	Rutherford.		 2008. “Political Infrastructures: Governing  and Experiencing the Fabric of the City.”  International Journal of Urban and Regional   Research 32(2):363–374.Murray,	Martin.	2009.	“Fire	and	Ice:	Unnatural			 Disasters	and	the	Disposable	Urban	Poor		 in Post-Apartheid Johannesburg.”  International Journal of Urban and Regional   Research 33(1):165–192.Newman,	Katherine,	and	Rebekah	Peeples		 		 Massengill.	2006.	“The	Texture	of	Hardship:		 Qualitative Sociology of Poverty, 1995–2005.”   Annual Review of Sociology	Vol.	32:	423–446.Ortner,	Sherry.	1995.	“Resistance	and	the	Problem		 of	Ethnographic	Refusal.”	Comparative Studies   in Society and History 37(1):173–193.Paley, Julia. 2001. Marketing Democracy. Power   and Social Movements in Post-Dictatorship Chile.	 Berkeley:	University	of	California	Press.Pezzoli,	Keith.	2000.	Human Settlements and   Planning for Ecological Sustainability: The Case   of Mexico City. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Scheper-Hughes,	Nancy.	1992.	Death without   Weeping.	Berkeley:	University	of	California		 Press. Ingeniero Budge, Buenos Aires. Photo taken by a local fourth grader.

Environmental Suffering, Here and There

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Environmental Suffering, Here and There

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