Who are we without our environment? Whether we are situated in shoe-box sized apartments stacked on top of each other in concrete jungles, or perfectly spaced out in backyards in suburbia, or cramped in family-filled kitchens, our environments are intrinsically linked to our every-day lives. How are we, then, when our environments are sinking beneath our feet, heating up, drowning, drying? How did the basic human right to a safe and healthy environment become politicized into a socio-economic class struggle? With focus on North and Latin America, along with a look into how the two regions interact when it comes to politicized production at the cost of a safe environment, I intend to study how environmental injustice in the Americas came to be, what it looks like, and compare the differences and similarities between environmental injustice in North America and Latin America. Environmental injustice is understood through race-based and income-based divisions in North America, while in Latin America it is based upon income and indigenous ethnicities. As the idea of environmental justice gets thrown around between the two regions, the differences between the perception of race, class, and ethnicity should not be merged into a singular idea, as the three are results of different historical lines. This difference must not be forgotten when comparing the historical contexts which have resulted in environmental degradation for specific populations. While analyzing this, it is important to ask: who is most impacted by environmental injustice and why?
Let us begin with the discovery of the New World, not because it is the beginning of history in Latin America, but because it is the beginning of environmental exploitation. In Bartolomé de las Casas’ account of the Spanish conquest in the New World, the brutal implications of colonialism are recorded and described. The Friar priest wrote A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indes in 1542 after accompanying the Spanish Conquest to the Americas. His account recalls the atrocious and horrifying ways in which the Spaniards, described as “ravening wild beasts”, murdered thousands of innocent people and destroyed their land. “These demons [the Spaniards] incarnate have laid waste, destroyed, and depopulated above four hundred leagues of the most fertile lands, and in the grand and admirable provinces, valleys forty leagues in extent, smiling, pleasant regions, large villages filled with a wealth of people and gold” (65 Las Casas). The massacres of the peoples and the destruction of the land were devastating, and these marked the beginning of future explorations in the Americas that would continue to wipe out or enslave indigenous populations and exploit land for resources. How is it that the Spaniards felt so validated in their actions? Why were the pioneers of the European powers at the time so adamant about claiming the land of the Americas as their own and doing so with no remorse for the populations who already existed there and their environments?
We must travel back to ancient Greece and analyze the works of Hippocrates, one of the first in ancient Europe to articulate the impact our environments have on us. In his text On Airs, Waters, and Places, Hippocrates details the way in which the environment, whether cool and breezy or humid and wet, directly relate to the inhabitants. Hippocrates describes the way in which the environment dictates the health, appearance, and nature of the inhabitants in countries outside of Kos and states, “With regard to the pusillanimity and cowardice of the inhabitants, the principal reason the Asiatics are more unwarlike and of gentler disposition than the Europeans is, the nature of the seasons, which do not undergo any great changes” (part 16). This quote is interesting in that it describes the inhabitants of other countries as being incapable of escaping their physical and mental characteristics, all of which were less than those of the people of Kos. These sentiments regarding the predetermined inferiority of other populations will appear again and again throughout history and will be directed at the indigenous populations in the New World from the Spanish. This is the beginning of the concept of environmental determinism, in which you cannot escape the effects of the environment you are born into. Those born into environments that produce weak or unintelligent humans are forever stuck in that mode, and therefore will be capitalized on later in history. For Hippocrates, his island of Kos is considered ideal, for the weather is temperate, the people are healthy and intelligent, and everything beyond Kos is to a lesser degree and there is no way out of this.
Although Hippocrates’ text is short, it informs many more ancient thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Pliny the Elder and others. In the Golden Age of Rome, Pliny the Elder’s Natural History was highly influential. His book was understood as reliable and authoritative source of knowledge that was based in science and reality. In the descriptions of all of the countries and regions in the world, Pliny describes the people and environment of Rome to be the most ideal in the entire world, especially considering that Rome was believed to be in the center of the universe. In describing people in Africa, specifically Ethiopia, he states, “It is not surprising that towards the extremity of this region the men and animals assume a monstrous form” (Pliny). This description of people from Sub-Sahara Africa perfectly emphasizes how populations in the Global South were demonized and presented as less than human.
Although this passage focuses on the inhabitants of Ethiopia, the way in which Pliny has constructed the ‘other’ is repeated later on in colonial times and directed at the populations in Latin America. Pliny’s writing is clearly influential as the ‘othering’ and exoticization of populations in Africa and Latin America are still apparent today. This text also ties back to environmental determinism, in which the hot, arid climate was a reason for the appearance of the people in Ethiopia. Understanding the legacy of European idealism through Pliny’s text helps us to answer why European powers felt entitled in colonizing and exploiting countries, specifically those in Latin America. The people there were not considered human, and therefore it was acceptable to kill or enslave them. When considering how long the concept of European superiority has been engrained in the minds of people for millenniums, we can begin to understand the modern-day intersections of environmental injustice and populations we ‘other’ today based on their class, ethnicity, or race.
In order to grasp the pervasive implications of ancient thinkers who have influenced colonialism and globalization, we compare the ancient European texts to the ancient texts of the indigenous populations in Latin America. The Greek and Roman thinkers valued their surrounding environments, however they saw everything in nature as something that was created for the sole purpose of supporting humans. Animals exist for food and labor, plants exist for food and medicinal purposes, rivers and trees exist for shelter and water. Nothing in nature exists without a purpose to the man. Due to the fact that time was perceived as linear, humans must then continue to progress and develop with the help of the natural resources that surround them. This concept of linear time and anthropocentrism is very different than the beliefs of the Aztecs in Central America. Although they also manipulated nature and exploited it to a degree for their own usage, there was less of a sense of dominance over nature. Nature for them was cyclical, along with time, and therefore existed independently from humans. They believed that they were living in the Fifth Sun, for time and nature cycled through different Sun epochs (Joseph 58).
In an excerpt of the legend of the Aztec Origins, it states, “The third Sun was established. 4-Rain was its sign; it was called the Sun of Rain. In this Sun it occurred that it rained fire and the people were consumed by fire” (Anonymous 59). The Aztecs believed that with each Sun comes a rebirth of nature. Humans have existed in past Suns but were destroyed by nature and reincarnated in a new cycle. This perception of nature is highly different than how the Greeks and Romans perceived it. To the Aztecs, although they were violent and brutal amongst each other, they did not act in violence perpetrated against nature. Where the Aztecs conquered and enacted violence on other people, the environment was spared and held in a high regard as it was so intrinsically connected to their spiritualty and modes of beliefs. Therefore, there was no distinct hierarchy of animal, plant, and creature, unlike European philosophies and sciences which placed everything in order of importance, humans always being on top. This idea of cyclical time which connects to their origin story creates a cycle of respect for nature that has power over man, whereas the idea of linear time results in the understanding of man having power over nature. With this we can understand how ancient European philosophies not only differed from those in Latin America, but we can also understand how environmental determinism and the creation of the ‘other’ resulted in colonization.
The history of colonialism and its implications are highlighted in Eric Wolf’s Europe and the People Without History. He explains the influences of globalism throughout the periods of colonialism and how it informed the future creations of plantation inspired hierarchies in the Latin America which continue to greatly affect the division of populations today based on ethnic background and socio-economic class. What started with the Great Dying in the New World after pathogens from Europe were brought over on ships during Spanish conquests, then became the strategic re-organization of society in which Spaniards were in charge and the indigenous population was enslaved (Wolf 133). Slavery, exploited labor, and the colonial structure of rule also contributed to a large number of deaths. The indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica were dying off from the sheer labor they were into doing in search of silver and gold, as well as the loss of agricultural gain. The “Republicas de Indios”, the indigenous populations who were forced to serve Spanish masters, were the lowest socio-economic class in Latin America and were created by the Spanish plantation masters. Essentially, the groups of native communities that worked year-round or seasonally on the plantations created their own small republics that encompassed pre-colonial cultures, were still dictated by the Spanish domination that framed them (Wolf 145). Today, this structure of society is mimicked in the indigenous populations of Latin America which are consistently of a low socio-economic demographic. This is not so different in the U.S, where low socio-economic communities typically consist of people of color.
What is important to understand now is why the right to a safe environment came to be considered a basic human right. In the time of colonization, the environment was not considered a human right and was instead an opportunity for resource extraction. What is a human right? When did the idea of a human right occur in history? How can such rights be proven to be self-evident? What does it mean for something to be self-evident? Now we enter the period of Enlightenment where Jean-Jacques Rousseau pioneered the way for our current understanding of human rights. In his book The Social Contract, Rousseau explains the differences between the natural state of man and the civil state. In nature, we are bound to natural rights which embody an idea of freedom without reason or knowledge. In order to gain reason and knowledge, one must give up some of their natural freedoms and in return is granted with civil rights (Rousseau 59-60). The idea of leaving the natural state to instead live within a general will and be protected under it is where the idea of unalienable human rights is uncovered. In Leo Strauss’ book Natural Right and History, he synthesizes Rousseau’s impact on the ideology behind human rights and states, “Freedom in society is possible only by virtue of the complete surrender of everyone…By surrendering all his rights to society, man loses the right to appeal from the verdicts of society…all rights become social rights…The general will take the place of the natural law” (260). When present in a society and part of a collective, the protections that you receive in return are then unalienable, as giving up natural freedom in exchange for basic human rights is a transaction one commits to in order to exist within a society. Rousseau’s explanations of the existence of self-evident human rights are also the beginning of the existence of environmental rights. His writings will go on to inspire Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau’s transcendentalist return back to nature. In Oxford’s Environmental History Review, scholar Gilbert LaFreniere reflects upon the impact Rousseau had on the early movement towards environmentalism and writes, “Rousseau’s normative importance as a pre-environmental thinker at the beginning of modern Western man’s reassessment of humanity’s relationship to nature seems unassailable” (66). By defining self-evident human rights and by explaining the relationship between man and nature and man’s natural state, Rousseau begins to take into account the necessity of a good relationship between man and nature.
With an understanding of the colonial past, fueled by ancient European philosophy and science, that ravaged through the Latin America and caused class divisions based on indigenous predispositions, we observe cases of environmental injustice in the Americas with a newfound understanding of everything that has led to it. Where are these communities in the Americas? Are they similar or different? In both the low-income communities in New Orleans, Louisiana and in Chile, there are communities suffering devastating public health implications due to violations against their right to a clean and safe environment. In New Orleans, the marshy foundation of the land has always been susceptible to subsidence, yet the numerous oil rigs that line the Mississippi River have only further aggravated the land. As canals were built in the past in the exploration for oil, the lattice work has led to more soil erosion, and life-long residents of New Orleans have watched their childhood backyards sink into open water.
In Arlie Russel Hochschild’s book Strangers in their Own Land, the documentation of land degradation is met with the reality of American conservatism and the dichotomy between environmental injustice and low-income job security. Hochschild writes, ““Victim” is the last word my Louisiana Tea Party friends would apply to themselves. They didn’t want to be “poor me’s.” …But in the loss of their homes, their drinking water, and even their jobs in non-oil sectors of the economy, there is no other word for it: they are victims. Indeed, Louisianans are sacrificial lambs to the entire American industrial system” (166). What is highlighted here is the environmental injustice in New Orleans that disproportionately affects low-income communities as people have no other option but to work for oil companies at the cost of their own public health and safety. It is well-known that in the United States, low-income communities are often composed of marginalized populations i.e. people of color or indigenous people. The state of Native American reservations and black and Latinx communities are generally worse than those of their white counter-parts. I use an example of white, low-income communities in Louisiana, however, to express how in the United States, the rate of environmental injustice has surpassed the common victims and now affects anyone of a low socio-economic class due to the ever-increasing rate of capital production. These communities are seen as ‘other’ and less deserving of environmental protection. This is due to post-colonial political infrastructures that dictate city planning and resource allocation, all of which can be connected back to ancient European philosophy and science.
A situation regarding indigenous populations in Latin America is the Mapuche people in Chile who are in constant struggle in the fight against the destruction of their culturally and historically sacred land. The Mapuche people, an indigenous population that has lived in South America from as early as 600 B.C, is still a vibrant and present population with more than 1.5 million Mapuche people still living in Chile (Boccara). The indigenous population, which has laid claim to the land of Chile longer than any other indigenous group, has been fighting for their land and rights for centuries. Mapuche, which translates to “people of the land” (Youkee) is symbolic of how important the land and the environment is to the Mapuche people. Large populations of the Mapuche people are situated in the region of Araucanía in central Chile, which is noted to be the poorest of the poor in the country. Due to a huge increase of deforestation of the Mapuche land, activists have taken extreme measures to protect their land, along with their health, as deforestation directly correlates with a decrease in air quality. Their battle has been on-going since colonialism, and due to their historic position as a savage and primitive population, despite their victories, they still are seen as less-than in Chile. This is supported by the fact that they are of the lowest socio-economic class and are the first to have their environments torn down when companies are in need of resources. Again, we see how the historical trajectory of European excellence and environmental determinism is still affecting populations today.
The situations in both Louisiana and Chile give way to a greater issue at bay. In Louisiana, the oil being produced is sold globally. In Chile, the lumber from the deforestation is also sold globally. Communities where labor is cheapest and resources are available are immediately exploited at the cost of human rights and public health. Additionally, these communities are specifically those of low socio-economic status. The present-day implications of histories created through European superiority complexes, colonial destruction, and resource extractavism is costing lives. Just as Pliny demonized populations in non-European countries, and just as the Spaniards destroyed and exploited the people and land of Latin America, low-income communities in Louisiana and indigenous populations in Chile are becoming the ‘other’. The intersections of environmental injustice, public health, and human rights all play an important role in answering the questions as to why environmental injustice is so prevalent in the Americas in communities of marginalized, low-income populations, as well as globally. Again, I ask, who are we without our environment? How do we alleviate the damage that has been done to communities around the globe, and how do we de-politicize environmental health and transform it into an unalienable right for all?
TALIA RESNICK is a senior at NYU Gallatin with an academic concentration on Environment Injustice in the Americas.
Works Cited
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Boccara, Guillame. “The Struggle of the Mapuche Peoples (English Version).” ReVista, May 2004, revista.drclas.harvard.edu/book/struggle-mapuche-peoples.
Casas Bartolomé de las. A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. Hackett Publication, 2003.
Hippocrates, et al. On Airs, Waters, and Places: The Received Greek Text of Littré, with Latin, French and English Translations by Eminent Scholars. Wyman, 1881.
Hochschild, Arlie Russell. Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. The New Press, 2018.
LaFreniere, Gilbert F. “Rousseau and the European Roots of Environmentalism.” Environmental
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Accessed 21 Oct. 2020.
Pliny the Elder. “Ethiopia.” Pliny the Elder: Historia Naturalis, by Joyce Irene Whalley, S.n., 1982.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, and Christopher J. Betts. The Social Contract. Oxford University Press, 2008.
Strauss, Leo. Natural Right and History. The University of Chicago Press, 1965.
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Youkee, Mat. “Indigenous Chileans Defend Their Land against Loggers with Radical Tactics.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 14 June 2018, www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/14/chile-mapuche-indigenous-arson-radical-environmental-protest.
