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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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xiaox
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The Ebola Response Anthropology Platform is funded by a grant which is from Research for Health in Humanitarian Crises (R2HC) Programme. It is overseeing, executed and managed by the Wellcome Trust and DFIF. As well as the platform is collaborate with other Ebola response anthropology initiatives, within Emergency Ebola Anthropology Network and francophone SHS Ebola Network. 

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xiaox
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The media mention the Live Box is good to use for natural disaster and helping people. As well as the transport is important, the more resource can be sent to disaster zone, the more people can be helped and saved. It not only can send by car, but also airdrop. There are 192 Life Boxes could be fit into a 50 feet long truck. An Live Box could be carry by two people and easy to use. (Link: https://www.fastcoexist.com/3023120/after-a-disaster-these-inflatable-s…;

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/life-box-disaster-shelter)

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xiaox
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The end of the film shows the party before Kiara Lepora leaving. They have the meeting with local doctors and nurses, and they said MSF being there, work and then leave. A people said in the party, ‘I was told people over and over again, do not get used to any expatriate. As they go, other people come. And, do not expect any expatriate to come and stay forever. The work must go on. MSF’s work must go on. We told people that MSF is not about individuals. MSF is about everybody. The work must go on.’ It is a struggle parts for MSF, they want to help more people as they can, but they know they cannot stay there forever, they need to get it done and go back home. I agree and understand what the person said ‘MSF is not about individuals, and the work must go on’, it is most comfort words for each doctors and people who have been through the tough time. This is the most compelling part, because it is not only about the work, but also the human nature and feelings.

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xiaox
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The American Red Cross has about 900 branches, and each club has duly authorized by national council. The chairman of the clubs have authority of deciding the most important programs and services. The annual budget will be allocated by National Associations to each club. There are lots of volunteers, doctors and nurse work for this organization.