To Build a Home: Everyday Placemaking in a Toxic Neighborhood

• In Event: 2341 - Environment, Oppressions, and Justice I

Abstract

Why do residents of a contaminated area actively organize to formalize their land tenure and continually invest scarce resources in strengthening the construction of their homes located in a high-risk area? Plenty of studies document the collective struggles of residents of contaminated communities to leave toxic areas or to fight-off polluting industries. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork in an informal settlement located next to a highly polluting petrochemical complex in Esmeraldas, Ecuador this paper presents the case of a marginalized community that is not only well-aware of their toxic exposure, but is actively organizing and investing time and resources to ensure their neighborhood’s permanence in the area. This paper shows that the strenuous circumstances under which families moved into the neighborhood after multiple displacements, their continued struggle to remain there, along with their longing for housing stability have contributed to their extended exposure to the poisonous toxic externalities of the petrochemical industry. In this paper I focus on an analysis of the shared cultural frames of reference that have been created through the everyday experience of living and surviving in this area, the same that illuminate the ways in which what may seem like an undesirable place to live is imagined, created and lived in a way that is unique to those who share this experience. These frames of reference not only enable but most importantly perpetuate and resignify the neighborhood’s continued existence under such seemingly adverse circumstances.

Author

• Maricarmen Hernandez, University of Texas at Austin