Warning: Display title "Sacrifice Zones" overrides earlier display title "Zonas de Sacrificio/Mina Lorena Navarro y Verónica Barreda".
Contents
Definition and origins of the concept
Sacrifice zones are home to a concentration of various capital accumulation projects that favor urban, agro-industrial, and industrial interests (chemical, metallurgical, extraction, or thermoelectric), with their dynamics of dispossession and multiple exploitation causing extreme levels of intoxication and poisoning of the sources of life and the populations that inhabit these territories. In other words, in these territories, a logic of sacrifice is imposed at the expense of the quality of life of the populations and nature, which generates and deepens intense processes of devastation, calling into question the basic conditions for the reproduction of human and non-human life.
In the context of capital accumulation, these areas are the sites of the unwanted consequences or externalities of the processes of (re)production of value, and this is made possible by a series of state and business decisions that seek to systematically hide or deny the claims of the affected populations. Behind each sacrifice zone there is a historical construction or production, that is, long and profound transformations that create the conditions for imposing and naturalizing devastation. Carlos Tornel argues: “sacrifice zones reflect a colonial idea that is more than 500 years old, linked to a matrix of colonial power that perpetuates racial superiority, privileges Western modernity, and imposes hierarchical structures of exploitation.” These designs are also ontological and epistemic insofar as the colonial capitalist mentality considers certain spaces to be expendable. For his part, Reinart suggests that “somehow, somewhere, a calculation has been made, a relationship established between the offering and the return, in such a way that destruction seems justified and logical.”
The concept originated in the United States during the Cold War and was first used by the government to designate areas intended to house radioactive waste from the generation of nuclear weapons and uranium mining. These areas were called “National Sacrifice Zones.” Black Hills County, South Dakota, was the repository for toxic waste. However, it was not until the early 2000s that health effects began to appear: cancers, birth defects, increased mortality, among others. At that time, the communities residing in Black Hills reclaimed the notion of sacrifice zones to denounce the US government's intention to store highly toxic waste in the territory of an ethnic minority population that had historically faced colonial attack. Subsequently, this concept was imported and reappropriated in Latin America along with the contents of environmental justice “as a watershed concept that has sheltered and nurtured the meanings of a series of struggles against socio-environmental devastation that impacts territories unequally.”
Associated philosophies and practices
The notion of sacrifice zones makes visible the socio-environmental damage caused by a concentration and overlap of capitalist dynamics that pollute, poison, and radically alter the fabric of life. Furthermore, this concept opens up a conversation about the unequal distribution of environmental damage, which is intersected by gender, race, and class. That is why various struggles resisting the poisoning of territories have appropriated this concept to denounce the imposition of disaster zoning. The idea of sacrifice zones is not only a theoretical concept that has germinated from academia to name a social phenomenon, but rather a seed that struggles against disaster zoning have cultivated to understand and denounce the multiple forms of violence they experience due to the presence of destructive activities. Therein lies its heuristic potential.
Challenges and opportunities
The expression “sacrifice zones” has been strategically appropriated by the affected and mobilized populations, who have warned of the violence of the concept in terms of what it means for a territory to be designated for sacrifice by state decision. In this sense, they warn of the risk of naturalizing or resigning oneself to such an imposition, as well as becoming trapped in the identity of victims of environmental injustice, thereby erasing their political agency.
In this sense, it is suggested that we should not lose sight of the fact that the strategic use of the notion of sacrifice zone is to alert and denounce the imposition of what the territories are suffering and to diagnose the specificities of sacrificial violence and its implications, not to naturalize or normalize a condition and the suffering it entails. Hence, the affected and mobilized populations are positioning other grammars to name the practices of conservation, persistence, resistance, and creation to reproduce life despite and in the midst of devastation.
A political hypothesis that is articulated in different struggles is not to think of sacrifice zones as impermeable archipelagos that are inaccessible to other populations and territories not directly affected. Although there are bodies and territories that are located in the first lines of exposure to the most radical devastation of living conditions, this does not mean that sacrifice is not a trend that is rapidly spreading to more and more places on the planet. Hence, it is important to listen carefully to what these struggles are proposing and to activate a sense of collective obligation and responsibility.
Examples
An example of its use and appropriation can be found in the struggles of Quintero and Puchuncaví in Chile, who have recognized, mapped, and condemned the socio-environmental impact on their territory caused by the presence of industrial complexes, particularly copper smelters. These populations reappropriated the concept to denounce the state's actions in relation to the unequal distribution of ecological damage in order to guarantee a developmental economic model. Noteworthy in this territory is the struggle of the Women of Sacrifice Zones in Resistance (MZSR), "when they are born, they seek names for women from sacrifice zones, a somewhat harsh title, to refer to themselves as an expression of very strong, very direct violence. Nevertheless, questioning this inaction, as a lack of agency, they speak of adding to the title women from sacrifice zones in resistance, and there they also begin this process of rethinking themselves, rethinking their territories, and becoming active on multiple levels."
We also see the indigenous population of Yasuní National Park, who denounced the state for its insistence on sacrificing the area for the greater good of sustaining the country's economy through the exploitation of oil in the park, considering this territory and all the life it harbors (currently the most biodiverse place on the planet) as inferior, “an offering to achieve a higher good, a universal good, with moral, almost heroic connotations.”
In Mexico, experiences against disaster zoning also persist. Such is the case of the struggle of the Agrupación Un Salto de Vida (A Leap of Life Association), made up of residents of El Salto and Juanacatlán against the territorial devastation of the Upper Santiago River Basin, one of the most polluted in the country. The group has denounced and highlighted the specificities of certain territories in terms of overlapping conflicts and levels of large-scale exploitation, insisting on revealing the intentionality and planning behind the production of regions where productive activities are concentrated, extracting vital forces and dumping their waste, thus causing a series of diseases and often irreversible damage to the territory.
In short, the concept of sacrifice zones has demonstrated great political and analytical potential, as it allows collective networks to denounce and highlight the zoning of socio-environmental devastation and its effects, but also to deploy practices and horizons for the affirmation and reproduction of life. In each of the examples presented, organized populations have been able to reaffirm the need to produce alternatives and make visible the persistence of life by resisting and re-existing in these deeply devastated territories.
Further exploration
- Magazine: Living with territorial devastation, normalizing illness and death. Dialogues from the Global South to understand sacrifice zones
- Dossierhttps://bajoelvolcanx.buap.mx/index.php/bajovolc/article/view/770
- Presentation and dialogue with collectives fighting against sacrifice zones in Mexico https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e01uhl82gf0
- Website: Observatory of Sacrifice Zones in Mexico https://www.zonasdesacrificio.mx/
- Article: Biocidal violence against bodies and territories in resistance in the Upper Santiago River Basin (visual examples): https://www.gob.mx/cms/uploads/attachment/file/558612/7_Violencia_biocida_web.pdf
- Article: A decolonial approach to sacrifice zones in Chile https://www.scielo.br/j/vb/a/vtQ6tPk9TWjThNfhNJTLtcv/
References
- Barreda Muñoz, V. (2021). Know-how for the struggle. Amplification of the community voice, processes of social transformation, and knowledge production for the defense of territory in Santa María Zacatepec, Juan C. Bonilla, Puebla. Master's thesis. Mexico: Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla
- Bolados, P., & Jerez, B. (2019). Genealogy of a disaster: the environmental history of a sacrifice zone in Quintero Bay, Chile. Latin American critical thinking. Reflections on politics and borders. Annablume.
- Bolados, P., Merlinsky, G., Navarro, M.L. 2024. Dialogues on sacrifice zones from the global south. Roundtable discussion. V Latin American Congress on Political Ecology. CLACSO. UACM. Mexico City.
- Bravo, Elizabeth. 2023. Sacrifice zones and territorial defense: The case of the Yasuní and Andean Chocó consultations. Semillas. https://semillas.org.co/es/publicaciones/zonas-de-sacrificio-y-defensa-territorial-el-caso-de-las-consultas-del-yasuni-y-del-choco-andino
- Carmona Gutiérrez, A., Barreda Muñoz, V. M. X., & Navarro Trujillo, M. L. (2024). Naming the radical devastation of life. Towards an eco-political reading of sacrifice zones from the upper Santiago River basin in Mexico. BAJO EL VOLCÁN. REVISTA DEL POSGRADO DE SOCIOLOGÍA. BUAP, 192–237. https://doi.org/10.32399/ICSYH.bvbuap.2954-4300.2024.6.11.782
- Tornel, Carlos. 2024. Development as terricide: sacrifice zones and extractivism as state policy in Mexico. UNDER THE VOLCANO. JOURNAL OF THE GRADUATE PROGRAM IN SOCIOLOGY. BUAP, 18–61. https://doi.org/10.32399/ICSYH.bvbuap.2954-4300.2024.6.11.771
About the Authors
Verónica Barreda holds a PhD in sociology from the BUAP Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities. Her work has focused on research processes related to political ecology, feminism, and knowledge production for the defence of territory. She is a member of the Struggles and Horizons for an Ecopolitical Transition in the Upper Santiago River Basin Collective, where she has been collaborating in the construction of strategic research processes with the Un Salto de Vida since 2022.
Mina Lorena Navarro is a professor and researcher in the Sociology Postgraduate Programme at the BUAP Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities, Mexico. She co-coordinates the area of Community Networks and Forms of Politics at BUAP. She is a member of the Community Struggles and Horizons Collective for an Ecopolitical Transition in the Upper Santiago River Basin. She is an activist with Bajo Tierra Ediciones and Terraformar. Librespacio Cultural in Puebla.