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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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maryclare.crochiere
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The real threats of air quality were covered up due to politics and other reasons, wanting to get america back to work. Instead, the reports were edited and people were sent back into the dirty air to clean up the scene or back to office jobs in the area, with contaminated air surrounding everything. Decontanimation efforts did not start until very late in the process. Bush did not wear a mask and the workers were told they didn't need to, so they didn't. As a result, there were severe health problems afterwards.

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xiaox
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The film show MSF daily life, and difficulties they meet. As well as the personal narrative reveals their inner thoughts and emotions. There are some scientific information is provided. For example, Dr Tom Krueger doing an operation for a man who was shot on the head, and the description of the situation within scientific information. The film have emotional appeal which are struggle, sad and complexity. The music of the film and each characters’ emotions are revealed.

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maryclare.crochiere
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It was created to further outline the uses and resposibilities of medicaid, specifically with IMDs. It places more responsibility on the states for middle-aged people in need of this type of care, rather than the federal government. These changes and specifications occurred throughout the 1970's and 80's, when mental health was becoming more of an understood issue, and treatment of those with mental diseases was being improved.

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xiaox
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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.