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Luísa Reis-Castro: mosquitoes, race, and class

LuisaReisCastro

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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Live Box is designed for disaster zone after the natural disaster. Particularlly the area that relief providers can not arrive immediately. Live Box offers three usage types for different needs which are "air", "land" and " water". For example, the "air" type could be sent by aircraft to the area if the roads are blocked after earthquake. The "water" type could be used for flood-affected areas and it could be used as a shelter on water and land. Similarly, the "land" type could be used as temporary hospital or emergency centre. 

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  • Anecdote are used as a tool to reveal the inequality. A Senegalese man was undergo irregular treatment for six years, and his father was injured when serving with the Senegalese Tirilleurs. However, the only source of income are paid very late and is not sufficient.
  • Short Stories are applied to support the arguments, and two stories are compared in Page 96.  
  • Statistics are used to shows the proportion and number are serious in disaster to death included cancer, AIDs. As well as people are suffered with other physical problems and mental problem.

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The first quote is “Eleven people attempted suicide in one night and the isolated Attawapiskat First Nation in northern Ontario became Canada's most talked about story. A week later five children tried to take their owns lives too.” It shows the mental emergency is serious in Canada.

 

Another quote is "When we go to the health centre for example after hours the staff on duty would probably only be a nurse and an LPN, or a doctor on call or maybe an ambulance, that would be the kind of service available after hours. There is none for mental health or addictions. When families are experiencing PTSD and other stresses, they are having a really hard time, there is no one, really." It shows the lake of support of mental support is a big issue for people. Government should offer more resource for mental health and solve mental issue which is already as a state emergency. 

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The article reveals the Indian Point Disaster's arounding situation which is without any specific nuclear emergency plant. It descripes the different views of communities and shows the area in 5 miles radius to contrast the public emergency response should be urged and expanded. The lack of nuclear emergency response and resisdents education are should be improved by government.