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Luísa Reis-Castro: mosquitoes, race, and class

LuisaReisCastro
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As a researcher, I’m interested in the political, ecological, and cultural debates around mosquito-borne diseases and the solutions proposed to mitigate them.

When we received the task, my first impulse was to investigate about the contemporary effects of anthropogenic climate change in mosquito-borne diseases in New Orleans. But I was afraid to make the same mistake that I did in my PhD research. I wrote my PhD proposal while based in the US, more specifically in New England, during the Zika epidemic, and proposed to understand how scientists were studying ecological climate change and mosquitoes in Brazil. However, once I arrived in the country the political climate was a much more pressing issue, with the dismantling of health and scientific institutions.

Thus, after our meeting yesterday, and Jason Ludwig’s reminder that the theme of our Field Campus is the plantation, I decided to focus on how it related to mosquitoes in New Orleans.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito and the yellow fever virus it can transmit are imbricated in the violent histories of settler-colonialism and slavery that define the plantation economy. The mosquito and the virus arrived in the Americas in the same ships that brought enslaved peoples from Africa. The city of New Orleans had its first yellow fever epidemic in 1796, with frequent epidemics happening between 1817 and 1905. What caused New Orleans to be the “City of the Dead,” as Kristin Gupta has indicated, was yellow fever. However, as historian Urmi Engineer Willoughby points out, the slave trade cannot explain alone the spread and persistance of the disease in the region: "Alterations to the landscape, combined with demographic changes resulting from the rise of sugar production, slavery, and urban growth all contributed to the region’s development as a yellow fever zone." For example, sugar cultivation created ideal conditions for mosquito proliferation because of the extensive landscape alteration and ecological instabilities, including heavy deforestation and the construction of drainage ditches and canals.

Historian Kathryn Olivarius examines how for whites "acclimatization" to the disease played a role in hierarchies with “acclimated” (immune) people at the top and a great mass of “unacclimated” (non-immune) people and how for black enslaved people "who were embodied capital, immunity enhanced the value and safety of that capital for their white owners, strengthening the set of racialized assumptions about the black body bolstering racial slavery."

As I continue to think through these topics, I wonder how both the historical materialities of the plantation and the contemporary anthropogenic changes might be influencing mosquito-borne diseases in New Orleans nowadays? And more, how the regions’ histories of race and class might still be shaping the effects of these diseases and how debates about them are framed?

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erin_tuttle
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The system is primarily used by researchers, scholars, and organizations with humanitarian interests. The app also has functions which would attract users that are beginning research and do not have established connections within the field as the app provides a support system.

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erin_tuttle
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Emergency response is addressed both in short term, through the interviews with survivors about their escape from the floodwaters and transport out of the city, as well as the lasting effects of the program and response efforts. The immediate response was not as effective as it could have been, in great part the collaborative efforts of communities rather than response groups. The delay in the arrival of response groups such as the National Guard and the Red Cross was in part due to a lack of communication, after the hurricane a significant amount of damage was done to the infrastructure of the city, creating difficulties for the rest of the country to know how serious the flooding was when the levees broke. This delayed the response and likely was responsible for the loss of many lives and continued traumatic experiences of many survivors. The following years showed an immediate lack of interest by the nation once the initial disaster was over. The article highlights this problem with emergency response, that rebuilding after a disaster can be even more challenging then the initial response and requires continued support for those effected.

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erin_tuttle
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  • “interest in how disasters could influence communities and result in large-scale effects, as well as interest in the mental and physical health consequences of different types of disasters, the influence of context on risk to mental health, and the distinct needs of different types of disaster victims.” (170)
  • “Consistent with life-course epidemiologic perspectives (37), characteristics or experiences of individuals before, during, and after a disaster may influence mental health outcomes and interact to produce psychopathology.” (174)
  • “The key functions of pre-disaster preparation efforts are to prevent or minimize exposure to potentially traumatic disaster-related events and reduce likelihood of additional post-disaster stressors, which are both associated with post-disaster mental disorders. Local governments and communities can reduce the likelihood and severity of disaster exposure” (176)

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erin_tuttle
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One specific challenge found by this organization is that not all veterans want their help in dealing with the stress experienced upon returning to civilian life. Although the support is available there is no way for the organization to force anyone to accept their help, which is a big concern for the organization.

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erin_tuttle
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The author Sonja D. Schmid is an assistant professor at Virginia Tech, she has expertise in the history of national energy policies looking at the risk associated with the nuclear industry. She has written several papers on the Soviet nuclear industry as well as policies and political controversies surrounding the nuclear industry and its potential military uses.