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“The large question this study addresses is the following: How do people make sense of (and cope with) toxic danger? The Martinezes’ story anticipates the complexity of the answer(s): physical and psychological suffering is compounded by doubts, disagreements, suspicions, fears, and endless waiting.” (4)

‘Flammable is a story of people’s confusion, mistakes and/or blindness regarding the toxicity that surrounds them. Flammable is also a story of silent habituation to contamination and of almost complete absence of mass protest against toxic onslaught’ (4)

“Schoolteachers, journalists, and lawyers are also part and parcel of daily life in Flammable. Together, all these actors contribute to what Flammable residents know about their place. They also influence what they ignore, what they want to know, and what they misrecognize. Government officials, company personnel, physicians, teachers, journalists, and lawyers jointly (but hardly cooperatively, given that their opinions don’t count equally) shape locals’ experiences of contamination and risk. This book examines how and why this production of shared knowledge (or lack thereof ) occurs.” (5)

“All in all, confusions, bewilderments, divisions, rumors, frustrations, and hopes are making Flammable residents wait—they wait for more testing, for further and better knowledge, for relocation, and for the “huge” settlement with one of the “powerful companies” that will, in the words of a neighbor, “allow us to move out.” This waiting is, as we will show, one of the ways in which Flammable residents experience submission.” (6) 

“We did our best to learn how to listen, look, and touch with respect and care, knowing with Nancy Scheper-Hughes (1992:28) that “seeing, listening, touching, recording, can be, if done with care and sensitivity, acts of fraternity and sisterhood, acts of solidarity. Above all, they are the work of recognition. Not to look, not to touch, not to record, can be the hostile act, the act of indifference and of turning away.” (14)

‘… the culture of toxic uncertainty is a complex web of meanings and shared understandings’ (108)

Labor of confusion: “During the long period of slowly germinating contamination, the actions of government authorities toward pollution in the neighborhood were less consistent and more contradictory than either the denial or underestimation that has been documented in the existing literature. Those multiple incongruous actions gave shape to what we term, extending the insights of students of ideology and symbolic power (Thompson 1984; Eagleton 1991; Bourdieu 1991), a labor of confusion that has a decisive effect on shared (mis)understandings.” (10)

 Ulrich Beck, social invisibility, lack of “social thinking” about environmental issues (Beck 1992)

Bourdieu, symbolic violence - misrecognition of power structures on part of the oppressed enables domination

Toxic uncertainty: “a way of experiencing toxic suffering that is shaped by what we call, borrowing from Charles Tilly (1996), the interacting “invisible elbows” of external power forces and of everyday routine survival struggles” (6)

Flammable is an account of how people in a particular place make sense of slow, invisible environmental pollution. The people of Flammable live in an Argentinean shantytown located next to petrochemical companies and storage facilities. They have been deeply affected by the rise in unemployment in the 1990s, with most residents subsisting on part-time manual jobs at one of the companies, retirement pensions, state welfare programmes and what else they can find. The area in which these residents live is known and recognized by government experts to be contaminated and unsafe for human habitation–and yet widespread confusion and uncertainty amongst residents and a lack of government actions means that the shantytown continues to exist. Auyero and Swistun explore the multitude of influences that ‘‘shape what people see, what they don’t see, what they know, what they don’t know, and what they would like to know, what they do and what they don’t do’’ (145). They show how residents gradually naturalize their situations, which, combined with the mystification of dominant discourses, contributes to their quiescence in the face of contamination. 

1. How has Comite Civico Del Valle evolved, and what changes have been made to respond to emerging issues or new challenges?

2. What are Comite Civico Del Valle's most significant accomplishments in its work towards environmental justice and community health?

The CCV advances justice and good governance by advocating for and promoting environmental justice, health equity, and civic engagement in disadvantaged communities. The organization works diligently to empower community members through education and training curricula like, the Promotoras and the Environmental Health Leadership Summit to inform and educate active participants in decision-making processes affecting their lives. By partnering with researchers from universities and government agencies, the CCV also conducts research to identify and further support evidence that environmental health disparities disproportionately impact low-income and minority communities.  

CCV has been covered in a variety of local and national news outlets, including newspapers, television programs, and online media. Coverage is primarily positive, highlighting the organization’s accomplishments and impact, although sometimes it is harmful and focuses on internal and external conflicts or controversies.

Comite Civico del Valle functions within the environmental justice sector and as a non-profit organization.

The CCV has been involved in various partnerships and collaborations with other environmental justice organizations and academic and government agencies to advocate for policies and programs that promote environmental justice and public health. Notably, the CCV works with Identifying Violations Affecting Neighborhoods (IVAN) Community Air Monitoring Network, Salton Sea Community, Outreach, Education and Engagement (COEE), Allies In Reducing Emissions (AIRE) Collaborative among others, including CASA Familiar, CCEJN, The LEAP Institute, and CFASE. Collaborative work is essential to CCV’s mission to promote community-based solutions instead of perpetuating environmental injustice and health disparities, including the fossil fuel industry and discriminatory land use policies.

Given the nature of environmental justice work, it is likely that this organization finds it challenging to address these issues related to environmental justice, public health, and education because of the systemic inequalities, lack of resources, and opposition from other stakeholders like corporate institutions with wealth and political power who prioritize profit over social and environmental justice.

CCV does not claim to have a unique way of addressing problems. Still, the organization’s approach o environmental justice through community engagement and education can be considered different from traditional methods of advocacy that often include technological solutions or top-down decision-making. CCV emphasizes education and views the root causes of environmental injustices as social and political rather than technical or economic. The involvement of local communities is viewed as a critical component of addressing environmental justice issues within the organization.