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“WE ARE ALL CONTAMINATED”
LEAD POISONING AND URBAN ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS IN URUGUAY
BY
DANIEL RENFREW
BA, University of Michigan, 1996
MA, Binghamton University, State University of New York, 2001
DISSERTATION
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for
the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology
in the Graduate School of
Binghamton University
State University of New York
2007

© Copyright by Daniel Renfrew 2007
All Rights Reserved

Accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of
the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology
in the Graduate School of
Binghamton University
State University of New York
2007
Carmen A. Ferradas
Department of Anthropology, Binghamton University June 11, 2007
Douglas R. Holmes
Department of Anthropology, Binghamton University June 11, 2007
Thomas M. Wilson
Department of Anthropology, Binghamton University June 11, 2007
iii

ABSTRACT
The dissertation analyzes the emergence of lead contamination in Uruguay as a new
political issue at the turn of the millennium. It focuses attention on the formation of an
environmental justice movement against lead, and the deployment and interventions of
state agencies and professional expertise. As neoliberal restructuring gradually shifted
the economy from agro-industry to services over the past two decades, the Uruguayan
state and society engaged in a process of “greening” through the proliferation of
institutions, laws, discourses and political movements oriented around nature and the
environment. The dissertation situates the lead issue between neoliberal fragmentation
and social exclusion, on the one hand, and this broader societal “greening” process on the
other. It analyzes the origins, dynamics and tensions of neoliberal nature and grassroots
environmentalism in Uruguay. The research provides a unique window into the oftenneglected
environmental dimensions of urban social exclusion, the roots of collective
action, and the development and trajectory of emergent ideologies in a little-studied
country struggling with a prolonged decline from its once-proud status as the
“Switzerland” of South America.
iv

Dedicated in loving memory to my abuela,
María Ignacia “Manacha” García de Loureiro
(July 31, 1906- January 21, 2002)
v

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Five years passed between the time I started thinking about lead poisoning as a research
topic and the completion of this dissertation. The International Institute for Education
Fulbright student research grant and a dissertation grant from the Wenner Gren
Foundation for Anthropological Research generously provided major funding.
Additional support for dissertation and pre-dissertation research and studies include the
Rosa Colecchio dissertation enhancement award (Binghamton University Foundation,
2005), the national Hispanic Scholarship Fund Award (1999-2002), the Graduate Student
Employees Union, the Graduate Student Organization, and the Anthropology Department
of Binghamton University- SUNY. A dissertation writing fellowship from the
Anthropology Department during the Spring 2007 semester proved invaluable for
completing the dissertation.
Innumerable individuals have inspired, shaped, and challenged the many ideas
that came and went before resulting in the culmination of this stage of the project. I
conversed with people about lead poisoning in the United States and Uruguay, Chile and
Mexico, and in academic and non-academic conferences in North and Latin America.
Those who influenced this project are too many to name here, but I will highlight a few.
I need to begin and end with my family. My brother Nicholas Renfrew was perhaps the
first to serve as a sounding board for some of my ideas. I remember it was during one of
our regular camping trips, this time in Uruguay’s Florida Department. Nick provided
initial and ongoing love and encouragement, and it was with his family that I first
celebrated the successful defense of this thesis. My parents, John and Ileana Renfrew,
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have provided support in too many valuable and multi-layered ways to try to put to
words. They have been parents, confidants, editors, colleagues, travel partners, and
friends. Their love and support - emotional, intellectual, and financial – made my
research and writing possible. Their careful editing improved considerably the quality of
the dissertation. With them, I shared much more than what has ended up in these pages,
and in this way they have become my most complicit fellow travelers in this project.
Friends and colleagues at Binghamton University provided intellectual and
emotional support, helped shape the ideas expressed here, and just as important, provided
the necessary social outlets to maintain my energy and vigor. Genesis Snyder offered
love, patience, companionship, and even technological savvy, for all of which I am
immensely grateful. Other dear friends that marked my graduate student years and this
specific project include in particular Tom Pearson, Susan Pietrzyk, Bill Pavlovich, Tom
Besom, Rolf Quam, Tanya Miller, Brian Grills, Greg Ketteman, Pete Little, Verónica
Venegas, Bodil Olesen, Mariana Grajales and Jeff Howison. Several friends from my
hometown of Marquette and others in Detroit and New York City also provided a social
outlet and engaged discussions about my research during my summer teaching jobs at
Northern Michigan University and frequent trips to the city. I would like to Brook Sloan
and Robert Ross, Sonia Park, Joe Rom, Renan Mota, Brian and Kim Weinrick, Ben
Thierry, Corey Stiles, Charlie Hill, the Waite family, and Tony Anthos.
I would like to thank my committee members for the rigorous intellectual
engagement, challenging insights and support during the entire course of this project.
Nancy Appelbaum joined the committee late and on very short notice as an outside
reader. I am very grateful for her willingness to participate, and even more so for her
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close reading of the dissertation and invaluable insights and critical commentary. Tom
Wilson and Doug Holmes struck a fine balance between challenging and encouraging
me. Tom convinced me I could complete this project, more or less on schedule, while
demanding intellectual rigor and attention to detail. Doug always helped me think
“outside the box” and pushed me in new directions. My dissertation chair, Carmen
Ferradás, is the reason I came to Binghamton in the first place. Carmen’s mentoring
shaped and inspired my ideas in innumerable ways. She also pushed hard, made alwaystimely
interventions, and has been an inspiring mentor throughout my graduate career.
My Uruguayan academic colleagues, friends, and family represent the other half
of my professional training and personal development. When I met Majo Techera,
Carlos Serra, Rafael Bazzino, Alfonso, and Tania Bo as a visiting student at the
University of the Republic in 1997, I had no idea they would become such enduring
friends. Their friendship and our intellectual exchanges during my fieldwork inspired my
thoughts, kept me balanced and sane, and made my fieldwork period immensely
enjoyable. Valeria Grabino, Verónica Olivera and Carlos Santos can now be added to
this list as well. Lifelong friends Salvador Malagrino, Javier Díaz and Vicky Calvo
offered wonderful friendship and support. All of my Uruguayan family inspired and
supported me in this endeavor, but I would especially like to thank Hugo Lalanne and our
ever-stimulating conversations about society, politics, and film. Javier Taks, lecturer at
the Anthropology Department, University of the Republic (UdelaR) was one of my first
contacts on the lead issue, an incredible source of insight, and a first-rate academic
colleague. I am grateful as well for the support of Sonnia Romero (Department of
Anthropology). I thank Omar França for inviting me to participate in the bioethics
viii

workshop on lead poisoning at the Catholic University, an activity that greatly enhanced
my research and provided a sounding board for ideas I was in the process of working out
in the field. It was a great pleasure and honor to be a “Fulbrighter” in Uruguay with
fellow Fulbright students Elizabeth Watson and Abby Noble, and I would like to offer
special thanks to Patricia Vargas of the Uruguay Fulbright Commission for all of her
support and kindness.
The various individuals I interviewed and who directly participated in this project
are too numerous to name, but I would like to highlight especially Carlos Pilo, Carlos
Amorín, José Camarda, Milka Pereira, Miguel Cabrera and all of the other activists of the
Live Without Lead Commission (CVSP). I felt deeply honored to be welcomed into their
activist and personal worlds. Their tireless actions and innovative ideas are what gave
me the strength to engage with and see this project through, and the continuing
inspiration to place my research in the service of people’s real lives and needs. Their
work is truly a model for activist research, and their humanity and sacrifice is at once
heartwarming and humbling. Dr. Elena Queirolo of the Lead Poisoning Clinic (Pereira
Rossell Hospital) became a trusted research collaborator, colleague, and friend, and I am
grateful for all of her support, as well as that of the rest of the Clinic staff. Other
individuals with whom I shared deep intellectual and human engagement through this
research while in Uruguay include Marianela García, Claudia Presno, José Radesca,
Adriana López, Julienne Corboz, María José Alvarez, Rachel Terp, Cholo Pilo, Chiquillo
Larramendi, Verónica Bittencourt, Jorge Nusa, Adriana Insúa, Nelly Mañay, Alicia
Pereyra and Julio Brunini. I am very grateful to all of the individuals who collaborated or
assisted this research from the academic, health, environmental, local and national
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government, industry, NGO, and community and commercial press realms, as well as the
scores of neighbors and citizens I met and worked with. Any errors, misrepresentations
or other flaws in this dissertation are of course my own responsibility.
Finally, I return to my family. Though not a blood relative, Isabel Mendietta has
always been an “adoptive” mother to me. Her nurturing, companionship, masterful
cooking, and general help have always made my home special. I simply cannot conceive
of having accomplished what I did without her. This project in general was a deeply
personal endeavor, and guided in part by the desire to contribute something of value to
my country of origin. My late grandmother Manacha was perhaps my biggest
inspiration. I lived in my abuela’s house during my fieldwork, and even in death, she
provided a calming and centering presence as I regularly visited her grave at our family’s
tomb in the La Teja cemetery on the way to or from my interviews and field activities in
La Teja. It was through the memory of her boundless love, strength, and sacrifice that I
found greatest purpose.
x

TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES ......................................................................................................... xvi
CHAPTER ONE: Introduction: “We are all contaminated”: The Creation of a Lead
Poisoning Epidemic in Uruguay ..........................................................................................1
1.0 Introduction..............................................................................................................2
1.1 Research Questions, Reflexivity, and Methods .......................................................4
1.2 The Political and Structural Dimensions of Lead Poisoning.................................14
1.3 An Urban Political Ecology of Health...................................................................22
1.4 The History and Science of Lead Poisoning..........................................................28
1.4.1 A Global History of Lead Poisoning ...............................................................29
1.4.2 Occupational Exposure ....................................................................................32
1.4.3 Environmental and Pediatric Exposure............................................................35
1.4.4 Society Unsafe at Any Level ...........................................................................37
1.5 Introductory Vignette: “Datos de la Realidad”: The CVSP Meeting with
Ehrlich....................................................................................................................40
1.6 Overview of Dissertation .......................................................................................50
CHAPTER TWO: Uruguay Natural: The Production of Nature and the Greening of
Society................................................................................................................................56
2.0 Introductory Vignette: An Unnatural Storm..........................................................56
2.1 The Production of Nature in Uruguay ...................................................................60
2.1.1 Cement triumphs”: The Modern Disciplining of Nature (1860-1930) ............65
2.2 Uruguay Natural: The Production of Neoliberal Nature........................................73
2.2.1 Sustaining Development ..................................................................................77
xi

2.2.2 “The Uruguay we have and think we have”: Constructing Sustainability
..........................................................................................................................80
2.2.3 Uruguay’s “Pandora’s box” of Environmental Conflicts ................................84
2.3 Uruguay (Un)Natural: The “Greening” of Society................................................87
2.3.1 Vignette: The Miguelete River ........................................................................87
2.3.2 The “Greening” of Uruguayan Society............................................................89
2.3.3 Legislating the Environment............................................................................92
2.3.4 Paying for Pollution .........................................................................................95
2.3.5 Sustaining the Urban Environment. The Montevideo Municipality (IMM)
..........................................................................................................................97
2.3.6 Knowing and Acting on the Environment. Science and NGOs.......................99
2.4 Conclusion: Disciplining and Liberating Natures................................................106
CHAPTER THREE: “La Teja Shall Sing”: Workers, Children, and the Rise of
Grassroots Environmentalism in Uruguay.......................................................................109
3.0 Introductory Vignette: Carlos Pilo.......................................................................109
3.1 From Syndicalism to Environmentalism: Burgeoning Environmental Conflicts in
Uruguay (1980s-90s) ...........................................................................................114
3.1.1 When it “rains” cement..................................................................................118
3.2 A Time Bomb in the “Cemeteries of Scrap”: Jobs and the Environment............122
3.2.1 Between Labor and Environmental Protection..............................................126
3.2.2 ANCAP and a Leftist Double Bind ...............................................................131
3.3 Labor, Place, and Socio-Environmental Degradation: Three Testimonios .........133
3.3.1 “I’ve buried a lot of friends much younger than me.” Enebé Linardi’s
Testimonio ....................................................................................................133
3.3.2 Growing up in “Auschwitz.” José Radesca’s Testimonio .............................141
xii

3.3.3 “I haven’t had a decorous life.” Miguel Cabrera’s Testimonio.....................143
3.3.4 Living the Cost Crisis148 ..............................................................................148
3.4 Multipliers of Environmental Consciousness: Children and the Grassroots .......150
3.4.1 “It takes more effort even to dream”: La Teja School 212............................150
3.4.2 “La Teja shall sing”: A Children’s Vision of the Environment.....................156
3.5 Conclusion: Uruguay’s Environmental Justice....................................................160
CHAPTER FOUR: Between Public Health and Environmental Catastrophe: Localizing
Science and Managing Risk in the Creation of a Lead Poisoning Epidemic...................164
4.0 Introductory Vignette: Bioethics and the Inchoate Nature of Lead Poisoning....164
4.1 Falling on Deaf Ears: Pre-2001 Warnings of Lead Contamination.....................168
4.1.1 “Watching the Eclipse”: Metals Smelting in Malvín Norte, 1960s-1990s ....169
4.1.2 The 1992 Environmental Report....................................................................172
4.1.3 Pre-2001 Scientific Studies of Lead Contamination: Toxicology and
Industrial Emissions.......................................................................................174
4.2 “We knew sooner or later it would happen”/ “We looked the other way”: The
Official Lead Intervention Protocol.....................................................................177
4.2.1 The Official Protocol .....................................................................................179
4.3 “Greening” and Localizing Science.....................................................................187
4.3.1 Problematization, Bricolage, and the Environmental Frame.........................187
4.3.2 Otra cabeza: Chronic Disease and Environmental Medicine in Uruguay.....190
4.3.3 You can’t hide a known truth very long”: Pediatricians and Marginal
Medicine
........................................................................................................................193
4.3.4 “That’s how Uruguay is”: Localizing Environmental Science......................199
xiii

4.4 Conclusion: Localizing and Purifying Science in the Creation of a Lead Poisoning
Epidemic ..............................................................................................................204
CHAPTER FIVE: “No somos Marginados.” Culturalism and Othering Strategies
in Montevideo’s Squatter Settlements .............................................................................211
5.0 Introductory Vignette: Living in “shacks of tin and misery” ..............................211
5.1 Joining the Two P’s: Ecological Marginalization in the Free Market City .........216
5.1.1 Cantegriles and the Culture of Poverty..........................................................220
5.1.2 Marginality Myths and the New Social Exclusion ........................................222
5.2 Culturalism, Marginality, and the Politics of Blame ...........................................228
5.3 “Cover the world”: Lead Poisoning in Geo-historical Perspective .....................230
5.4 “You’re acting like someone from the cante!” Refracted Othering and the .............
Internalizing of Culturalist Discourses ................................................................234
5.5 “They don’t live like people”: Perverse Realities and Strategic Othering...........238
5.6 “No somos marginados.” Othering’s Denial .......................................................243
5.7 Lead Poisoning, Dignity, and Biological Citizenship..........................................250
5.8 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................252
CHAPTER SIX: “Reality overwhelms us”: Social Misery, Green Capitalism, and
Environmental Governance .............................................................................................255
6.0 Introductory Vignette: The Second Social Forum...............................................255
6.1 “Reality overwhelms us”: Social Misery, Collective Catharsis, and
New Directions for the CVSP..............................................................................261
6.1.1 CVSP Strategizing and Collective Catharsis .................................................292
6.2 The Green Veiling of Industry.............................................................................270
6.2.1 Managing Nature: The ANCAP Refinery......................................................271
6.2.2 Ecology in the Upper and Lower Circuits of Capital: The Story of Two
xiv

Factories.........................................................................................................275
6.3 Post-Lead Conflicts in Uruguay...........................................................................282
6.4 The Chimney Dreamers and Green Governance .................................................291
6.5 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................300
CHAPTER SEVEN: Conclusion: Environment, Crisis, and Fear...................................304
7.0 Journal Entry: December 29, 2002 ......................................................................305
7.1 Crisis as a Social Laboratory ...............................................................................306
7.2 Five Hypotheses About Environmentalism .........................................................308
7.3 An Attack on Life Itself: The Socio-Symbolic Dimensions of Lead Poisoning..311
7.4 Conclusion: Environmentalism and the Politics of Fear......................................318
Appendix A......................................................................................................................323
Appendix B ......................................................................................................................328
BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................330
xv

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1 “La Teja and Montevideo Poverty”…………………………………………….4
Figure 2 “Montevideo Indigence”……………………………………………………….21
Figure 3 “Eco-Turismo”…………………………………………………………………76
Figure 4 “Carlos Pilo in his barraca”..............................................................................110
xvi

CHAPTER ONE: Introduction: “We are all contaminated”: the creation of a lead
poisoning epidemic in Uruguay
... pero aquí abajo abajo
el hambre disponible
recurre al fruto amargo
de lo que otros deciden
mientras el tiempo pasa
y pasan los desfiles
y se hacen otras cosas
que el norte no prohíbe
con su esperanza dura
el sur también existe.
-Mario Benedetti, “El sur también existe” (1986) 1
Sátira y buen humor/ grotesco nacional/ con tono decadente/ son las estampas del Uruguay
-La Matinée murga (2004) 2
1 Mario Benedetti (b. 1920) is Uruguay’s most well-known and lauded living poet, novelist and essayist. My
translation of this poem verse: “But here below below/ with hunger aplenty/ one recurs to the bitter fruit/ of what
others decide/ while the time passes/ and the parades pass by/ and other things are done/ that the north does not
prohibit/ with its stubborn hope/ the south also exists.”
2 Murga is a popular musical genre typical of Carnaval, consisting of a (traditionally male) chorus of singers, a
director guitarist, and three percussionists, who perform satires based on the previous year’s most notable
cultural, political and social events. Murga groups typically have deep neighborhood roots and perform
choreographed routines in elaborate costumes in outdoor venues across the city during the summer month of
February (cf. Renfrew 2006). My translation of this verse from the 2004 Carnaval: “Satire and good humor/
national parody/ with decadent tone/ are the imprints of Uruguay.”
1

1.0 Introduction
A six-year old boy living on Gowland Street in the western Montevideo working class
neighborhood of La Teja suffered from years of puzzling health problems such as anemia,
bone and joint pain, and severe migraines. Unable to establish a clear diagnosis, a
pediatrician at a local health clinic conducted x-rays of his bones and discovered the presence
of lead. Follow up blood tests in August 2000 confirmed the child had lead poisoning. The
rest of the family and their dog were tested, and all had elevated blood lead levels. By
October 2000 the word had spread to the family’s neighbors. They recognized the same
symptoms in their own children and that the source was most likely an environmental one.
The alarm spread throughout the neighborhood as more children and families were discovered
with lead poisoning. Municipal officials of the decentralized Communal Zone Center 14 that
encompasses La Teja (see Figure 1) tried to keep the cases quiet to avoid a public panic.
National public health officials were informed but sat still. With no officially coordinated
response, Carlos Pilo, longtime La Teja resident and activist, notified his friend, Brecha
journalist Carlos Amorín. In February 2001, Amorín became the first to “break” the story
nationally, and the lead issue soon blanketed the media. La Teja residents organized
neighborhood assemblies that grew into the hundreds. Lead contamination was on everyone’s
minds, and officials, surprised by the public pressure, hurriedly formulated a response.
Creeping up silently and taking surprising directions, lead became Uruguay’s first
acknowledged massive contamination event.
Lead contamination in Uruguay occurred in a context of widening social inequality
and the dismantling of a welfare state once hailed as an “exceptional” model of development
2

in Latin America. Amid processes of neoliberalism and regional integration through
MERCOSUR, and despite a “Natural Uruguay” national marketing campaign that celebrates
the country’s environmental quality, lead became Uruguay’s most widespread process of
environmental contamination and inspired the largest grassroots environmental movement in
its history. The lead issue drew widespread popular sympathy while posing a threat to the
legitimacy of national and local governments as well as a challenge to established
environmental institutions and spaces. Though an environmental pollutant for decades, lead
reached public consciousness only through the 2001 media reports. Lead was discovered to
be a multi-source pollutant (from battery and metals factories, toxic landfills, automotive
emissions, cottage industries, water pipes, and paints) of the air, water, and soil of
Montevideo and several other cities, creating an unprecedented environmental health problem.
La Teja neighbors founded the anti-lead movement (Live Without Lead Commission,
or Comisión Vivir Sin Plomo- CVSP), forging and exploiting political spaces made possible
by relatively new environmentally oriented institutional and legal frameworks. At the
national level, the Public Health Ministry (MSP) spearheaded an Inter-institutional
Commission on Lead in 2001 to provide an integrated and coordinated response to the lead
problem. The MSP opened the nation’s first lead poisoning clinic that same year. Health
professionals, academics, and bureaucrats responded by applying, in many cases for the first
time, newly formed environmental norms, protocols and paradigms to the lead issue.
Parliament debated political discourses of the environment and environmental health like
never before, and some legislation was enacted to address the lead problem (see Appendix A
for a full timeline).
3

Figure 1. La Teja and Montevideo Poverty. The map shows La Teja in relation to
Montevideo and general poverty levels. Source: Observatorio Municipal (Intendencia
Municipal de Montevideo)
1.1 Research questions, methods, and reflexivity
In eighteen months of dissertation fieldwork from January 2004-June 2005, and November
2005 I investigated the social production, socio-political impacts and broad-based responses
to this lead contamination discovery. I was interested in exploring the conditions and
processes that made possible the presence, creation and collective recognition of the lead
problem. What was happening economically, politically and socially in turn of the
millennium Uruguay to facilitate these processes, from the entrenchment of neoliberal
policies, the rise of the center-left Frente Amplio coalition to national power and the
proliferation of newly circulating discourses and ideologies? How was the environment
opened as a space of political mobilization at the grassroots level, and how did social and
institutional actors adapt new and old laws, protocols and paradigms to address this newly
defined problem? I found the environmental health epidemic of lead poisoning, in addition to
presenting a tragic case of human suffering, to offer an interesting window through which to
4

understand the various challenges and transformations faced by the citizens of a crisis-ridden
Uruguay.
Five sets of interrelated questions guided my dissertation research: (1) why did lead
poisoning remain invisible or silent for so long? Why was lead contamination not construed
as a widespread problem and object of concern before 2001? (2) How did an environmental
frame make lead poisoning “visible” at various scales, turning it from a localized public health
to a national political issue? How do different forms of engagement with lead contamination
correspond to variations in environmentalism and competing forms of environmental ideology
within and between state, grassroots, and academic sectors? (3) What do the discovery of lead
contamination and its responses reveal about the Uruguayan state and society (and its place in
the world) at the turn of the millennium, and in relation to local and regional history? (4)
What is the relationship of locally crafted expertise to historical and transnational forms of
knowledge production? How was scientific and medical expertise (both local and global)
used to either extend or to downplay lead poisoning risk and awareness? And (5) what can
environmental analysis add to an understanding of social marginality? Specifically, what is
lead poisoning’s relation to poverty, and what does lead poisoning reveal about the place of
the so-called “new poor” in Uruguayan society?
I conducted most of the dissertation research in Montevideo, Uruguay’s capital,
though I also traveled to the country’s interior for public talks or informal research. I am a
dual citizen of a mixed Uruguayan-American family and have traveled to Uruguay frequently
throughout my life. I speak Spanish fluently, though with a slight foreign accent. Being of
dual cultures inevitably shapes and colors my thoughts, and results in embedded “hidden
references” of which I may not always be aware (Caldeira 2000: 7). I am neither wholly
5

“here” nor “there,” native or foreigner. Each “side” of my identity is further complicated by
the biographical particularities I carry with me, questioning, to paraphrase Kirin Narayan
(1993), how “native” I could be as an anthropologist anyway. Studying and researching for
years in both the United States and Uruguay have shaped me profoundly but in oftencontradictory
ways, reflecting the differences between a Euro-American academic tradition of
detached scholarship and the Latin American tradition of the “public intellectual” who
critically analyzes and directly engages with social problems (Caldeira 2000: 7). My
anthropology and my writing, then, carry an “accent,” to echo Teresa Caldeira (2000), but one
that is doubly marked.
In Montevideo, I lived at my old maternal grandmother’s home in the working class
barrio Nuevo París, adjacent to La Teja and at a walking (or biking) distance from many of
my fieldwork sites there. Montevideo is a relatively easy city to navigate, and I usually took
the public bus to other research sites spanning much of the city. Living in Nuevo París, of a
family from there, afforded symbolic capital when engaging with grassroots activists in La
Teja. I first met Carlos Pilo via his brother Cholo, who owns and runs a small paint shop
across the street from my house. Carlos would often tell people as he introduced me, “He’s
one of us, an ex-pat Uruguayan from Nuevo París.” Indeed, one of the reasons I became
interested in researching the lead issue is that it felt “close to home,” as La Teja and Nuevo
París share similar characteristics as long-standing working class neighborhoods undergoing
prolonged decline, impoverishment and de-industrialization. My grandmother is deceased,
but I still have cousins and many friends in the neighborhood. We were also living in the
“contamination zone,” so lead for me was always a personal as well as an academic concern.
6

My principal methods of fieldwork were interviews (open-ended, informal, semistructured,
life history), participant observation, and the use of secondary sources. I
conducted almost 40 formal interviews (usually semi-structured and recorded through digital
audio), and semi-formally or informally interviewed 150-200 people. I also conducted follow
up interviews with dozens of grassroots, institutional and academic actors. Grassroots actors I
interviewed included: members of the CVSP and other anti-lead activists and groups;
unionized and non-unionized lead industry workers and leaders; residents of La Teja,
Peñarol, 3 and several squatter settlements; and lead poisoning clinic patients and families.
Institutional actors I interviewed included: Directors and low-ranking officials of national
Ministries (MDS, MVOTMA, MSP); national and municipal politicians and legislators;
Directors and scientists (técnicos) at Municipal (IMM) offices and divisions, including
Environmental Development (DDA), the Laboratory of Environmental Hygiene (LHA), and
the Industrial Effluents Division (DEI); hospital authorities and lead poisoning clinic staff
(Pereira Rossell); teachers and school directors; and social workers, directors and subsection
volunteers at Montevideo’s Communal Zone Centers (CCZ), including CCZs 6, 9, 13, 14, and
15. In addition, I interviewed representatives of the state water (OSE) and petroleum
(ANCAP) enterprises, in addition to managers of smaller-scale industries. I also interviewed
or spoke with individuals involved in several NGOs, cooperatives, and research centers,
including environmental (REDES, Claes, Berthold Brecht), social development, and housing
(FUCVAM). I interviewed or was interviewed by journalists, including commercial and
community (La Teja, Cerro) radio and print media. Academics I interviewed hailed from: the
University of the Republic Faculties or Schools of Chemistry, Toxicology, Medicine, Social
Medicine, Psychology, Social Sciences, Agronomy, Sciences (Biology, Environmental
3 Peñarol is a working class neighborhood a few kilometers away from La Teja, also in western Montevideo.
7

Science), Humanities (Anthropology), and Architecture; and the Catholic University (Center
for Bio-Ethics, Journalism, Psychology).
In the early stage of fieldwork I followed a “detective model” of ethnographic
research, piecing together the puzzle of how the epidemic was created, and trying to uncover
official and industry occlusions. My early interviewing consisted of broad, open-ended
questions. I let my interviewees direct the content and orientation of the interview, as I was
interested in their framing of lead as a political issue, the key questions or problems they
signaled as relevant, as well as how they attributed responsibility for contamination and
intervention. I found that almost all actors I interviewed at various levels of society had much
to say on the issue and I had few problems getting them to “open up.” Grassroots activists
were keen on raising awareness and maintaining public attention to the lead issue. They were
receptive to my research and facilitated it greatly. State, municipal, and industry
representatives could be more guarded with their time and information, but on the whole I
found them to be receptive to this “North American researcher.” I strategically used my
cultural capital as a foreign social scientist to gain access to them and to lend authority to my
research (cf. Hale 2006). I received a few veiled threats, some “thinner” than others,
particularly from industry representatives, but on the whole, I had good access to informants
throughout my research.
I conducted regular participant observation at CVSP organizational meetings,
community meetings, labor marches and street protests, academic, NGO, and governmentsponsored
conferences, meetings between families and officials regarding lead exams, lead
poisoning clinic activities, children’s art shows, and the housing relocation process for
families of the Rodolfo Rincón squatter settlement. I reviewed secondary sources drawn from
8

commercial and community media, the Internet, academic studies on lead and the
environment in Uruguay, Uruguayan macroeconomic, political, and cultural studies, and the
global literature on lead poisoning, and Latin American political economy, ecology, and social
movements. Informal visits with CVSP activists and squatter settlers in their homes provided
a less structured engagement and a greater depth of interpersonal communication and rapport
building. I visited Pilo’s wood-selling barraca in La Teja on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, and
in the second half of research, often encountered him in public talks, protests, CVSP
organizational meetings, or other venues. Many of the visits with Pilo and others were
accompanied by the passing around of mate, a tea-like beverage of ritualistic, ubiquitous
presence in Uruguayan society.
As noted, the CVSP was always helpful and receptive to my research, but it took
several months before I was able to gain privileged access to its inner circle. To gain this
access, I had to show them what I could contribute to the cause. Dr. Elena Queirolo, Director
of the lead poisoning clinic, CVSP activist and another of my key informants, was the first to
offer a deepened engagement, in this case as a participant in a bio-ethics workshop on lead
poisoning at the Catholic University, about seven months into my fieldwork (see Chapter 4).
Several weeks later, I showed up at a CVSP public presentation at the La Teja School 212
(see Chapter 3), along with Queirolo, Pilo, and a few others. Pilo and Queirolo both thought
the other had invited me to speak at the meeting. There were no more chairs available among
the audience of teachers and parents, from where I had planned to sit and observe, so I took a
seat alongside the CVSP activists at the front table. Following some confusion between us, I
adlibbed a presentation on the history of lead poisoning in the United States, as well as
scientific knowledge of the disease across the world. It was well received, and Elena told me
9

later that my slight accent and position as foreign researcher lent me an authority the activists
could make use of. I thus fortuitously and literally found myself taking a “seat at the table”
with the CVSP. From that day forward, I received direct invitations to participate in CVSP
activities, I became a regular participant in the CVSP public talk circuit, and I was invited to
their weekly organizational meetings.
In addition to public talks, I was interviewed several times on commercial and
community radio, and I collaborated with print media articles on lead. I regularly passed
along scientific articles on lead poisoning to the CVSP and the lead poisoning clinic. The
Brecha weekly published a letter to the editor in which I supported an article written by
Carlos Amorín on cutting edge research on lead poisoning that I had given to him and helped
him interpret (Canfield et al 2003). I mentored undergraduate students conducting
investigative journalism, social psychology, social work, and sociological studies on the lead
issue. I volunteered time at the lead poisoning clinic and helped organize CVSP activities,
and I played a primary role in organizing the first Social Encounter on Lead, drawing together
over one hundred fifty activists, academics, citizens, officials and professionals involved in
the lead issue (see Chapter 6). Finally, I set up contacts between the lead poisoning clinic, the
Toxicology School and the Catholic University of Uruguay, and lead researchers at Cornell
and Harvard Universities, which resulted in ongoing collaborative research on lead poisoning
in Uruguay.
In participating in the movement, I took an active, unabashed stance of solidarity,
which is variously referred to as an activist, engaged, militant, or “barefoot” form of
anthropological research (Farmer 1999; Hale 2006; Merry 2005; Scheper-Hughes 1995). I
took an engaged stance primarily for reasons of personal and political affinity, but it was also
10

methodologically necessary to gain deeper access to the social movement. My activist
research led to invaluable insights, but not insignificant problems and dilemmas as well. As
Charles Hale (2006: 98) writes:
To align oneself with a political struggle while carrying out research on issues related
to that struggle is to occupy a space of profoundly generative scholarly understanding.
Yet when we position ourselves in such spaces, we are also inevitably drawn into the
compromised conditions of the political process. The resulting contradictions make
the research more difficult to carry out, but they also generate insight that otherwise
would be impossible to achieve. This insight, in turn, provides an often
unacknowledged basis for analytical understanding and theoretical innovation.
During my fieldwork, I gradually went from an outside observer to a social movement
participant and back again. I played the role of activist, advocate of the anti-lead cause, North
American researcher, and Uruguayan returned home.
I faced a series of difficult and often humbling questions. What could I offer, as a
young, North American researcher, to veteran, seasoned activists who have lived through
poverty, dictatorship, torture and exile, union strikes, black listings, factory and land
occupations? Anthropological fieldwork, particularly at the dissertation stage, is largely a
process of apprenticeship, of gaining professional competence. Like a rite of passage, it
involves a process of inward discovery, but the starting point is some form of incompetence or
incompleteness, with the research subjects playing the role of teachers or mentors.
How could I make my research, my preoccupations, or my findings relevant to my
research “subjects”? How could I “bear witness” to suffering without unduly romanticizing
the working class or rendering the poor as passive victims, or on the other hand demonizing
the powerful? How do I offer something valuable in return without falling into the trap of the
heroic ethnographic tale? I faced the pressures of the academy that make us engage
11

theoretically and “academically” in ways that are often incomprehensible to our subjects, or
perhaps worse, irrelevant and trivial. How can we reconcile the inevitable and profound
differences in the interests and goals of the (North American) academy and the lived realities
and social worlds of those we study (in this case, in the global South)?
Through parallel forms of advocacy we may rely more on our situated presence and
positionality than on our expertise per se. In this we can make a difference “through” research
(taken literally, through our position as researchers) rather than, and even in spite of, the
research itself. We network, use contacts (with media, policy circles, government, etc), and
use our position and leverage as privileged agents. By these means we act and write for the
policy makers - we try to move their hearts and convince their minds. But this is the “trickledown”
theory of research advocacy: your findings influence policy makers who make political
decisions that will hopefully be more benevolent for those you work with. While often
worthy and effective, it is an inherently elitist stance. Being an advocate implies distance - it
aligns the researcher with the policy realm - working “for” or in the name of someone, and
from a distanced position - giving voice to the “voiceless” (an often romanticized, illusory
goal).
To attempt an activist anthropology in Uruguay, I found I needed to wear several hats
at once, to strategically position myself as North American anthropologist, as “scientist,” as
an Uruguayan from a working class neighborhood, as a social movement activist, as an
advocate, and even as a media-savvy public figure. These all imply different interests and
goals and require negotiating varied skills. In my first radio interview, for instance, I arrived
with a pile of notes, ready to talk about sophisticated theories and the intricacies of my
fieldwork. I had to quickly learn the different pace, needs and interests of the media industry,
12

its spontaneity and instant reflection. I had to learn to speak strategically, beyond the
“messiness” of data and social reality. I had to send clear, unambiguous messages, to
denounce wrongdoings and injustices, and to be content with sorting out the mess later.
Academic theory and social activism can coincide, but it is hard to figure out their
exact and often surprising intersections (e.g. Merry 2005). One thing we can do while we
wear the academic hat is to privilege in our narratives the voices and perspectives of
“ordinary” citizens. We can level the field of discourse and theory by bridging the lay/expert
divide. Taking seriously grassroots expertise is a worthwhile goal so long as the voices and
perspectives of ordinary citizens continue to be silenced from the mainstream media, scientific
studies and political discourses and policies. In the lead issue, the expertise of ordinary
citizens often eclipsed that of scientists and policy makers, or other times actively shaped it,
but it was rarely acknowledged and more often dismissed. In any case, these questions need
to be thought through methodologically and epistemologically- for whom do we research and
write? Whose voices and perspectives are informing our “data” and analysis? Who are our
interlocutors and our peers? These questions informed my research and the writing of this
dissertation, though I do not pretend to have worked out clear answers. I privilege different
voices and perspectives throughout my narrative, including social scientific analysis, medical
and scientific reviews, personal narratives and reflection, and ethnographic vignettes and thick
description. I try to negotiate the workings of power I confronted in the field, a reflexive
positioning as a “bi-cultural” researcher, and the dilemmas of having one foot set in the
academy and the other in the activist world that drove my passion on this issue while in turn
informing my academic and theoretical concerns.
13

1.2 The Political and Structural Dimensions of Lead Poisoning
At the time of the lead discoveries, the Uruguayan state and society were in a process of
disarray following decades of economic decline, the progressive dismantling of a once-strong
welfare state, and the socio-spatial fracturing of a country once lauded by insiders and
observers alike as the integrated “country of social proximities” and the democratic and
prosperous “Switzerland of South America.” 4
President Jorge Batlle (1999-2004) was in his
second year of office and presiding over a deepening economic recession. The popular
legitimacy of his Colorado Party was quickly eroding. This was the self-proclaimed “party of
the government” that ruled for most of Uruguay’s modern history and first implemented the
advanced reforms distinguishing Uruguay in the region.
The economic recession that began in 1999 led to a 108% increase in poverty and
reached its peak in 2002, fueling the Colorado Party’s fall from grace (Renfrew 2004). Its
legitimacy was further eroded by its association with a deeply unpopular neoliberalism,
rejected repeatedly through a series of popular referendums and plebiscites during the 1990s
and 2000s. 5
The discovery of lead poisoning was soon followed by a hoof-and-mouth
epidemic that would devastate the cattle industry, and which further strained Colorado Party
governance. Various instances of mismanagement, corruption, and widely publicized
4 The “Switzerland of South America” label became popular around the time of the progressive reforms of
President José Batlle y Ordóñez in the early twentieth century, while the “country of social proximities” is a
concept first elaborated by Uruguayan historian Carlos Real de Azúa.
5 These include a 1992 referendum that by a 72% vote overturned the Lacalle administration’s (Blanco Party,
1989-1994) privatizing “law of state enterprises,” a successful 2003 referendum to oppose the partial
privatization of the ANCAP state petroleum refinery, and the 2004 plebiscite to oppose water service
privatization and declare water resources of “vital national interest,” which won a 65% majority. Santos et al
(2006) characterize the 13 referendums and plebiscites promoted through popular campaigns in the 1990s and
2000s as a mostly successful example of direct democracy against the privatizing initiatives that took hold in the
region but were only partially implemented in Uruguay, which retained at least the major public utilities under
state control and ownership.
14

embarrassments provided the final breaking point of Colorado legitimacy. 6 By the 2004
national elections, the Colorados polled a historic low of 10% of the electorate, and the centerleft
Frente Amplio coalition swept to power for the first time, breaking the historic duopoly of
Colorado and Blanco Party governance. 7
What are the connecting points between the lead epidemic and these broader political
and economic processes? Lead contamination, a long-standing if largely unrecognized public
health problem, intensified through a set of processes associated with neoliberal economic
restructuring and the accumulated effects of de-industrial decline. I think of neoliberalism,
following Harvey (2005: 2), as a set of political economic theories and practices that proposes
that “human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial
freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property
rights, free markets, and free trade.” The state serves as guarantor of the conditions making
market freedoms possible, most often through deregulation and the privatization of former
state-run enterprises or services. Market competition is envisioned, at least in theory, on a
global rather than nation-state plane. At the same time, the state cuts costs by withdrawing
various social democratic-style welfare provisioning services.
In Uruguay, neoliberal market logic promoted the development of new export
industries and manufacturing technologies, some of which intensified lead exposure. The
6 Batlle was widely ridiculed for a perceived propensity towards errors in judgment and unscrupulous public
discourse. In one frequently cited instance, Batlle made unflattering characterizations of Argentines as
endemically violent and irrational, and following the political and diplomatic fallout, tearfully apologized on
Argentine television. Corruption charges were usually made against other Colorado and Blanco political leaders.
The Colorados and Blancos for the last two presidencies arranged a “co-government” that divided national posts
between the two “traditional” parties, in an attempt to stave off the rising power of the Frente Amplio (e.g.
Moreira 2004).
7 Presidential candidate Tabaré Vázquez and his Encuentro Progresista-Frente Amplio-Nueva Mayoría (EP-FA-
NM) coalition won over 50% of the popular vote, thereby avoiding a runoff with the second place Blancos (34%)
and ensuring an absolute majority in Parliament. In Uruguay, the Presidency and the Upper and Lower chambers
of Parliament are elected together according to party faction lists, and voting is mandatory. In this dissertation,
the EP-FA-NM is referred to only as the “Frente Amplio,” following common usage.
15

industrial use of lead in Uruguay increased during the 1990s, according to the Occupational
Health Commission of the Uruguayan Medical Syndicate, with new industries such as plastics
and electronics increasingly replacing more traditional uses of the metal (SMU 2001: 2). In a
consequential development, the tannery industrial sector introduced in the late 1980s a leadbased
wool “whitening” (nevado) dyeing process. With wool and leather tanneries
concentrated along the Miguelete and Pantanoso River basins of Montevideo, industrial
contamination exposed the neighboring populations of Nuevo París and La Teja to
concentrated levels of lead and other heavy metals and toxins (Bernardi and Paez 1999).
Visitors to Uruguay since the postwar period have often viewed the country as an
anachronistic society permanently reliving its history. The architecture of its cities was old
and seldom renovated, Ford Model T’s and other “classic” cars could be found everywhere
and in continual use, and both the urban landscape and its isolated rural areas gave the
impression of a society frozen in time. The military dictatorship (1973-1985) only reinforced
Uruguay’s evident insularity, not so unlike the societies of the Soviet bloc. This state of
affairs began to change dramatically by the late 1980s. The government, following regional
trends, introduced a floating currency and reduced tariff regime in the late 1980s, opening the
economy to an influx of imported consumer goods. It is not clear how many imported or
nationally fabricated consumer products contained lead, but the use of lead in toys, paints,
food products and other consumer items was not regulated until a 2001 law passed through
Parliament. Of the few data available, studies in the 1990s indicated a prevalence of lead
tainted alcohol and soda beverages (Schutz et al 1997). With a boom in new automobile sales
in the 1990s, the associated sharp increase in urban vehicular traffic intensified exposure risk
through leaded gasoline. Uruguay employed among the world’s highest levels until 2000 of
16

the tetraethyl lead (TEL) gasoline additive (Tong et al 2000: 1073). 8 ANCAP imported 292
tons of TEL in 1991, 135 tons in 1997, 154 tons in 2000 and 60-70 tons by 2002, with TEL
levels gradually descending from over 1g/L in 1991 to 0.22g/L by 2002 (Legnani 2002).
Decades of leaded gasoline use have significantly contributed to the urban population’s longterm
lead exposure, providing a “baseline” blood lead level in the 1990s and early 2000s that
was more or less equal to the WHO and CDC’s threshold for lead poisoning. 9
Following the Uruguayan economic downturn of the late 1990s, political pressures for
a less rigid regulation of industrial activity resulted in the loosening of municipal and federal
oversight of industrial emissions, increasing direct pollution in urban centers (Caffera 2004).
Urban infrastructure suffered from federal economic constraints, and combined with charges
of widespread corruption, the coffers of state enterprises such as water (OSE) were gutted.
OSE prioritized the extension of potable water services rather than replacing old pipe
connections in already-serviced areas, thereby neglecting a decaying system of 300,000-
600,000 pre-1982 lead water pipe connections in the country. 10 Along with the continuing
existence of widespread lead pipe connections, OSE has maintained also since 1982 a water
8 Anido et al (2000: 188) signal the economic opening of 1985 following the dictatorship as sparking the first
wave of automobile imports, with a sharp rise in private automotive sales since 1995. The Montevideo
Municipality (IMM 2005) identifies 1990-1997 as the period with the largest increase in vehicular circulation in
the city. I compared TEL levels in Uruguayan gasoline during the 1990s, based on ANCAP figures, to the Tong
et al (2000) report on world TEL levels. ANCAP used over 1.0 g/L of TEL in 1991 in one gasoline product, and
a maximum of 0.8 g/L of TEL until 2000, when levels were lowered to 0.22 g/L. Tong et al (2000) cite some
African countries’ use of 0.8g/L as among the world’s highest TEL levels. ANCAP emphasized (in media
statements) that the TEL limit of 0.4g/L recommended by the United Nations and the World Bank since 2001
“doubles” ANCAP’s usage, but they neglect to draw attention to the 1990s figures. Leaded gasoline in Uruguay
was finally phased out in June 2004.
9 The CDC threshold since 1991 is 10µg/dl (micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood). Since no
epidemiological studies of lead exposure have been conducted in Uruguay, this is an inference based on existing
studies of urban centers (Mañay et al 1999; 2003; Schutz et al 1997), and personal communication with
toxicologist Nelly Mañay, one of the foremost Uruguayan specialists on lead (May 14, 2005). See below for
more discussion.
10 Marta Ramírez, OSE, August 31, 2004, personal communication; Luis Lazo, Director of Montevideo’s
Department of Environmental Development (IMM-DDA), February 3, 2004, personal communication. Figures
of the exact number of lead pipe connections are estimates only and vary widely depending on the source. OSE
did not release the numbers to me upon my request, though it is not clear that they even possess these figures.
17

quality standard that permits 50µg/L of lead, or five times that allowed by the WHO. 11
A
1996 newspaper story documents that OSE officials were aware of the problem but made a
calculated choice of not lowering the permitted lead levels. As engineer Castagnino stated to
the La República daily (January 9, 1996): “If the OSE Directorate decides to lower the lead
level norm, we have to make an investment of 40 million dollars.”
Growing impoverishment and unemployment fueled a housing crisis compounded by
IMF-mandated reforms of the heavily indebted Uruguayan Mortgage Bank (BHU). The
reforms drastically reduced housing credits and helped push unprecedented numbers of people
from formal housing into makeshift squatter settlements, called asentamientos in Uruguay
(Apezteguía 2007). Many of these settlements were built on marginal lands long
contaminated by industrial waste, particularly from the battery and metallurgic industries. 12
In La Teja, industrial waste was used as landfill primarily from 1969-1980, when the area’s
population expanded and workers settled near industries. 13
The housing from this period was
more formal, made of solid material and integrated into the urban infrastructure, and the
landfill was necessary due to the gaping holes left from an earlier period (late 19 th and early
20 th centuries) in which local quarries provided the raw material for the geographic expansion
of Montevideo. The squatter settlements, on the other hand, were built more recently on
remaining empty lots of landfill, along flood-prone riverbanks, or in the case of one La Teja
settlement, on the grounds of an abandoned scrap metals smelter. 14
11 OSE and the MSP lead regulations date to the same year (1982), suggesting a coordinated, government-level
decision. I do not have further information regarding the origins of these regulations, however.
12 See Chapter 3 for personal histories of battery waste dumping in an area that later became a large squatter
settlement.
13 Interview with Luis Lazo, IMM-DDA, February 3, 2004. The IMM and MVOTMA estimated the dates using
satellite imagery and Geographic Information System (GIS) technology.
14 See Chapter 5 for further discussion.
18

The growing informal economy of the 1990s and 2000s, stimulated by unemployment
and economic recession, included concentrated and highly polluting battery, metals and waste
recycling, often conducted in close proximity to residential spaces. Some cottage industries
such as the making of lead fishing weights have a longer history in Uruguay but were only
identified recently as a hazardous activity. Others like “cable burning,” or the melting down
of stolen cables for heavy metals resale, have a more recent history. Cable burning, normally
a clandestine activity conducted close to homes or residential areas, releases highly toxic lead
vapors in the immediate vicinity of the activity, and deposits high concentrations of lead in
soils where the smelting is conducted. Many authorities have signaled cable burning as one of
the primary lead contaminating activities in Montevideo, though figures are not available to
support these claims. As argued in Chapter 5, cable burning, associated with criminal
behavior and the extreme poverty of squatter settlements, is more often used as part of a
strategy to “other” the lead poisoning problem to deflect anxiety about lead poisoning from
the middle and upper classes, and to redirect responsibility for contamination from the state
and industry to the poor.
According to declarations made to Parliament in 2002 by Oscar Rufener, President of
the Environment Commission of the Uruguayan Chamber of Industry, gasoline combustion
and vehicular battery production and recycling were the two most prevalent sources of
contamination in Uruguay, with the recycling of used oil another important source (Legnani
2002: 13). Rufener said that between 800,000 and 1,000,000 kilos of lead are handled
through battery recycling each year, most of which end up as contraband smuggled to Brazil
(Legnani 2002: 14). Environment (DINAMA) Director Andrés Saizar expressed to me in an
interview that up to 80% of used car batteries were sold as contraband to Rio Grande do Sul
19

state in Brazil. Many of them are sent “empty,” meaning the highly toxic lead oxide they
contain is being dumped somewhere in Uruguay. 15
I met “Jorge,” a worker at the multinational Delphi battery manufacturing plant. 16
Jorge says that dealers are obliged to ask costumers to turn in their old batteries when
purchasing new ones. At Delphi, they take the old batteries and pile them high in a
warehouse. “Every once in a while,” said Jorge, “some trucks come and take the batteries.”
Given the absence of a battery-recycling system in Uruguay, Jorge is certain most of these
batteries are sold to dealers in Brazil. 17
Battery contraband, in sum, is a practice sanctioned
by the directors of a multinational company, widely acknowledged by local officials, and an
open secret known to everyone involved in the business.
Neoliberal restructuring and socio-economic decline in Uruguay, then, resulted in both
new and intensified exposure rates of lead for the general population, with children, pregnant
women and the “new poor” facing differential levels of risk and vulnerability. The decline in
quality of health care and services to low-income families increased risk for vulnerable
subpopulations for which poverty and malnutrition conditioned and limited their ability to
mitigate the impacts of toxic exposure. 18
A consideration of place and history offers another insight into lead poisoning’s
impact and resonance in Uruguay. Lead poisoning was first discovered in La Teja, the
western Montevideo working class neighborhood where the grassroots anti-lead movement
(Comisión Vivir Sin Plomo- CVSP) and the media and public spotlight were strongest. La
15 Interview with Andrés Saizar, January 13, 2005.
16 Personal communication with Jorge (pseudonym), May 2005.
17 President Batlle passed a 2003 decree (373/003) for the regulation and recycling of car batteries, but it has yet
to be implemented or enforced.
18 For example, a malnourished child who does not ingest adequate amounts of iron and calcium will absorb lead
more quickly, and the heavy metal eventually replaces calcium in the bones. It is for this reason that children
with severe lead poisoning in Uruguay are given fortified food baskets.
20

Teja exemplifies the drastic transformations of Uruguay’s recent history. Once filled with
factories, full-time workers and a dignified standard of living, La Teja became a deindustrialized
and impoverished zone in recent years. The area is now characterized by
shuttered or partially functioning factories, legions of unemployed workers turning to the
informal economy for subsistence and to informal housing for shelter, youth increasingly
seeking solutions through emigration or crime, and a swelling in the ranks of the destitute and
the desperate (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. Montevideo Indigence. The maps show the progression of indigence in
Montevideo from 1996-2001, with green representing lowest and red the highest levels.
Source: Observatorio Municipal (Intendencia Municipal de Montevideo)
La Teja’s experience is typical of the hardships faced by the working poor and the indigent in
Uruguay. What sets the neighborhood apart, however, is its long and rich history of
21

community organizing and political activism. 19
When lead poisoning was discovered in La
Teja, a dense, already existing network of community activists mobilized, and later turned
into the nation’s largest grassroots environmental movement. 20
In summary, the timing of the lead outbreak, its various political uses, and the media
and public’s fascination with the issue coincide with a “political opportunity structure” 21 that
combines: the loss of legitimacy of the traditional political party system and hegemonic forms
of authority linked to the state; the crisis of traditional political economic structures and
practices and the rise of the informal economy; the strength and tradition of community
activism in La Teja; and growing forms of socio-economic and spatial polarization and
exclusion. These are some of the macro processes that transformed the old environmental
health disease of lead poisoning into a political problem. Recent structural transformations at
once intensified existing contamination, increased social vulnerability to it, and created new
forms of pollution and exposure.
1.3 An Urban Political Ecology of Health
Urban centers have recently overtaken rural areas in their share of the world population, and
environmental degradation and urban social tensions have become urgent political concerns.
In the 21 st century, the Third World metropolis “has emerged as the trope of social
19 La Teja and the adjacent Cerro are generally considered the most politically organized and radical
neighborhoods of Montevideo.
20 See Chapter 2 for a more detailed discussion of La Teja and the lead issue, and Chapter 3 for a historical
overview and analysis of the rise of grassroots environmentalism in Uruguay.
21 I am using the “political opportunity structure” concept loosely here. Rather than the formal sociological and
political science model (e.g. McAdam et al 1996), I refer to a general set of conditions that provide an opening
and enhanced possibility for certain kinds of political action.
22

disorganization and unfathomable crisis” (Roy 2004: 294). Cities have become uneven and
fragmented landscapes where extreme poverty and wealth coexist. Informality has become a
permanent feature of urban life, increasingly integrated with the circuits of global capital and
power (Sassen 2000, 2001). Modernist urban integrationist projects have been abandoned in
favor of “fortress cities” and “fortified enclaves” that ward off perceived insecurities and a
fear of violence and terror attributed to the surrounding ghettoes and mushrooming megaslums
(Caldeira 2000; Davis 2006; Goldstein 2004; Holston 1989; Low 2004; Marcuse 1997;
Renfrew 2004). The dissertation also builds on the seldom-analyzed environmental
dimensions of marginality. As the Uruguayan case shows, environmental conditions can play
a crucial role in furthering urban marginality through the direct attack on health and bodies, as
well as through forms of socio-symbolic stigmatization.
Transformations in the character and functions of the state have been remarkable but
varied in neoliberal times. The way the nation and state is produced historically and
“imagined” is central to my research (Anderson 1983; Coronil 1997; Ferguson and Gupta
2002; Miller 1999; Schelling 2000). Uruguay is a state-centered society that established a
strong party and state apparatus through modernizing reforms at the turn of the 20 th century
(Finch 2005; González Laurino 2001). The political processes and social impacts of
neocolonialism and dependency, and state-led development through Import Substitution
Industrialization (ISI) and populist nationalism in Latin America have received widespread
attention from scholars (Canak 1989; Cardoso and Faletto 1987; Gledhill 1995; Gunder-Frank
1972). Although neoliberal reforms have provoked a “crisis of sovereignty” and the
“decomposition of the state” (Turner 2003; Wievorka 2003: 133), the lead issue in Uruguay
called on the state to reenact its presence.
23

In contrast to other nations of the region that embraced a populist style of
neoliberalism during the 1990s (including under the leadership of Menem in Argentina,
Fujimori in Peru, and Salinas in Mexico) Uruguayan society maintained a strong ideological
opposition to neoliberalism, expressed through repeated and successful plebiscites and
referenda blocking or overturning neoliberal reforms, and by the lack of orthodox neoliberal
ideologies among any of its major political parties. The lead issue forced an increasingly
dismantled and bankrupt state to project a continued “lived fiction” of competence and
strength (Trouillot 2001: 130). Social movement claims are still made on the state, which
persists as an institutional reality and political project, despite premature claims of the death
of the state under globalization (Ferguson 2006; Friedman 2003). The dissertation examines
the social and bureaucratic practices that reinforce the state’s presence while drawing
attention to the “profoundly transnational character of both the ‘state’ and the ‘local’” (Gupta
and Ferguson 2002: 995), expressed for instance through migration, consumerism, the
circulation of knowledge and ideology, international regulatory regimes, and the
macroeconomic processes of neoliberal globalization.
Jonathan Friedman (2003) characterizes neoliberal globalization as a complex process
of double polarization. A horizontal fragmentation leads to the decline of mechanisms of
unification across classes and social divides, resulting in the rise of rooted forms of identity.
Vertical polarization, meanwhile, consists of the decline of the welfare state, class
stratification, growing impoverishment and the return of the “perilous zones” and the
“dangerous classes” (Friedman 2003: 11). Javier Auyero (1997) classifies the new spatial
concentration of the “de-proletarianized” in squatter settlements as “territories of urban
relegation,” stigmatized with people “out of place” who confront the abandonment of the
24

state. Forms of structural violence are concentrated in these zones, where the negative effects
of the socio-economic crisis are embodied through “structural violence” resulting in poor
health and life outcomes (Farmer 1999, 2003).
Within this context of crisis and double polarization, environmental issues are often
presented as contrary to the interests of the popular classes, or as a “post-material” or first
world luxury. Popular environmentalism, or the “environmentalism of the poor” (Guha
1997), however, offers new forms of resistance and a logical response to capitalism’s cost
crisis, or the degradation of the conditions of capitalist production (Escobar 1999; O’Connor
1994). According to Bauman (2004), modernity now transcends the globe resulting in
redundant populations and a crisis in “waste,” both human and material. Sweatshops, toxic
imperialism and the global environmental crisis have unified the world in ways that stimulate
the “reflexive modernization” and “anthropological shock” theorized by Beck (1995, 1996),
or the “loss of sovereignty” over the senses and the “collapse of everyday knowledge” in
confronting new and hidden hazards. In contrast to Beck’s formulation of reflexive
modernization that posits a roughly equal exposure to risks, however, socio-ecological risks
are unevenly distributed and suffered differentially based on class, gender, race, or other axes
of inequality (Bocking 2004: 150; Farmer 2003). The global growth of popular
environmentalism, drawn from the ranks of the oppressed and the excluded, represents a
grassroots response to this ecological and social crisis.
The Uruguayan anti-lead movement constitutes an urban, deindustrialized, classbased,
and developing world version of an environmental justice movement. Most
environmental justice literature focuses on the race and class based dimensions of socioecological
degradation in the developed North (c.f. Bryant 1995; Bryant and Mohai 1992;
25

Bullard 1994; Checker 2004; Taylor 2000; Szasz 1994). Political ecology studies of the
developing world, furthermore, tend to focus on settings of rural nature, issues of land and
resource use, biodiversity and conservation, and/or indigenous and peasant groups (c.f.
Collinson 1996; Faber 1993; Guha and Martinez-Alier 1997; Peet and Watts 1996; Peluso and
Watts 2001). This dissertation addresses the growing but under-theorized phenomenon of
urban grassroots environmentalism in the global South. The anti-lead movement reflects
some aspects of the New Social Movement (NSM) paradigm (cf. Escobar and Alvarez 1992;
Laraña et al 1994; Melucci 1989; Slater 1985), in that it exhibits autonomy from the
traditional political system, focuses on a “new” cause, and promotes an expanded notion of
human rights. It diverges from NSM theory, however, in that its distancing from traditional
politics has enabled new forms of articulation with the political party system, in its
continuities with “old” forms of struggle such as union activism and neighborhood
assemblies, and in the fact that although “cultural politics” plays a role in their activism
(Alvarez et al 1998), many of the demands of the CVSP are anything but “post-materialist.”
The dissertation moves beyond the limited NSM framework and tries to balance the
“newness” of the lead issue with a historicized analysis of the continuity and legacies of
activism (cf. Edelman 1999). It bridges the common divide between identity or discursiveoriented
approaches to environmentalism and materialist or practice-based ones.
My research draws broadly from a political ecology perspective. Political ecology
combines neo-Marxist and poststructuralist approaches to the human-nature nexus, bringing
political economy to bear on environmental processes, with careful attention to issues of
power and inequality, as well as the discursive constructions of nature. In this way it is a
“fluid and ambivalent space that lies among political economy, culture theory, history, and
26

iology,” or “culture/power/history/nature” (Biersack 2006: 5). Following Escobar (1999: 2),
nature is “simultaneously real, collective, and discursive - fact, power, and discourse - and
needs to be naturalized, sociologized, and deconstructed accordingly.” This dissertation
analyzes Uruguay’s human-mediated or “second nature,” by producing an “ethnography of
nature” that “examines the conventionalization or institutionalization of human-nature
articulations (within modes of production, exchange, reproduction, etc.) and the actual
practices that both effect and affect these articulations” (Biersack 2006: 25). In doing so,
however, it is important to incorporate nature’s materiality or “first nature” as well (Biersack
1999: 26), against the overly discursive constructivist tendencies of poststructuralist theory.
According to McCarthy and Prudham (2004: 275), the “connections between
neoliberalism, environmental change, and environmental politics” are rarely addressed and
“remain under-explored in critical scholarship.” While research exists on the impacts of
neoliberal reforms on environmental conditions, there is less on neoliberalism as
environmental governance, or the “parallels and tensions between neoliberalism and
environmentalism as ideologies, discourses, and class projects” [emphasis original]. I
approach in this dissertation neoliberalism as a process of “creative destruction” (Harvey
2007), in other words as a political project that results not only in the dismantling or
degradation of existing state, economic, social and environmental institutions and conditions,
but also in their creative transformation. I draw attention to the malleability of
environmentalism, and how it can serve both emancipatory and repressive functions: as a
vehicle for the claiming of rights and justice (Harvey 1996; Schlosberg 2003), and as means
of social control and governance (Agrawal 2005; Luke 1995). Environmental governance
neutralizes opposition and in Uruguay is enacted through its insertion into a global
27

environmental regulatory apparatus that promotes discourses and practices of ecological
modernization and sustainable development, creating a distinctly “neoliberal nature”
(Hartwick and Peet 2003; Harvey 2003; Hayden 2003; Luke 2006; McCarthy and Prudham
2004; Perrault and Martin 2005).
Finally, a political ecology perspective on lead poisoning or other environmental
health problems opens up spaces for analysis that move beyond the restrictive parameters of
biomedical and public health paradigms. A political ecology of health addresses the
intersections of environment and health, and the causes and practices that result in “social
disparities in health status” (Harper 2004). This is a little developed field and has never been
applied to lead poisoning, despite its long and storied history as a disease. A political ecology
perspective on lead poisoning places politics, power, and economy at the forefront, seeking an
understanding of the causes of lead poisoning and the patterns of victimization; the varied
impacts and meanings attributed to the epidemic; its use as a vehicle of both protest and
governance; the dynamic relationship between local and global flows of expertise and capital;
and the complex articulations of knowledge, power, state, history, society, and nature.
1.4 The History and Science of Lead Poisoning
“Lead” is more sinister, maybe because of its color, hue or weight. Lead communicates
something special to us about matter, our existence in matter.
And it isn’t the Grand Inquisitor’s universal anthill that we have to worry about after all, but
something worse, more Titanic- universal stupefaction, a Saturnian, wild, gloomy
murderousness, the raging of irritated nerves, and intelligence reduced by metal poison, so
that the main ideas of mankind die out, including of course the idea of freedom.
--Saul Bellow, The Dean’s December (1982)
28

Lead is a potent neurotoxin that has long been a global environmental and public health
hazard. It spreads through the air, water and soil, and finds its way into human bodies
primarily through ingestion. At low doses of exposure, lead interferes with various
biochemical processes and impairs psychological and neurobehavioral functioning (Tong et
al. 2000: 1068). At high levels, almost all organs and organ systems are damaged, most
notably the central nervous system, blood, and kidneys (Tong et al 2000: 1068). As lead
researcher Sven Hernberg (2000: 252) states, “There is probably no biological function and no
enzyme activity that is not affected by lead in sufficiently high concentrations.” The ultimate
outcome of high-level exposure to lead is coma and death.
Knowledge of the negative health impacts of lead exposure goes back centuries and
continues to evolve in the present. With thousands of scientific articles published on the
topic, lead is probably the most studied environmental pollutant in the world (Bellinger 2004).
This long-standing knowledge of lead poisoning and toxicity makes the Uruguayan
widespread “discovery” of it in 2001, even among much of the medical and scientific
community, that much more puzzling and intriguing, and is a primary focus of this research.
1.4.1 A Global History of Lead Poisoning
A versatile heavy metal, lead has been mined and used by humans for over 6000 years, and its
toxic effects were identified in writing almost 2500 years ago (Hernberg 2000: 244). Through
lead-silver mining, lead poisoning became “one of the earliest occupational diseases
contracted” by humanity (Nriagu 1983: 309). Hippocrates described lead colic in 370 B.C.,
29

and by the 1 st Century AD, Diascorides recognized a connection between lead exposure and
toxicity (Hernberg 2000: 244).
Leaden pipes for transporting water were used in ancient Ur, Mesopotamia, and Persia,
and were the “mainstay of the Roman water-distribution system” through its vast network of
aqueducts (Nriagu 1983: 240). In addition to piping, the Romans used large quantities of lead
in pottery, stationary, weights, and as a sweetener to neutralize the acidity of wine tannins
(Nriagu 1983: 399), producing a yearly average of 60,000 tons of lead for over 400 years
(Hernberg 2000: 244). Lead poisoning reached “pandemic” proportions in ancient Rome,
particularly affecting the ruling patrician class, and resulting in widespread stillbirths,
miscarriages, sterility, and infant mortality, leading several authors to hypothesize a link
between lead poisoning and the “fall of Rome” (Gilfillan 1965; Nriagu 1983: 402).
Saturnismo, the old Spanish term for lead poisoning, is derived from Saturn, the Father
of the Gods, who was associated with lead, the first of the “seven metals of antiquity” (Nriagu
1983: 35). In pre-Columbian America, lead had a name in Quechua and Náhuatl, and the
chronicler Sahagún referred to it as the “excrement of the moon” (Nriagu 1983: 185). Lead
was used in mortuary practices across the ancient world, and is linked to the history and
origins of writing (Warren 2000: 19). Lead was used for over 2500 years in body and face
painting in places such as Greece, West Africa and China, and is still used in East Asian
cosmetics and medications, for ceramic glazes in Mexican pottery (Warren 2000: 21), and in
South Asian herbal remedies (Frith et al 2005). Art historians have linked the “genius,
madness and art” of great painters such as Goya and Van Gogh, who would eat the sweet
leaded paint straight off the brush (Warren 2000: 23). Among the first public health-related
laws of the American Colonies was the prohibition in 1723 of the use of lead in the distillation
30

of molasses for rum (Bellinger and Matthews 1998). In the nascent United States, Benjamin
Franklin referred to the “mischievous Effect” of lead in a letter to a friend in 1786 (Warren
2000: 8).
Beginning with the Industrial Revolution, environmental lead levels increased
exponentially. The British geologist Clair Patterson published a breakthrough study in 1965
that compared lead levels in areas heavily affected by industrialization to more remote areas
of the globe. Patterson measured lead in the ice caps of Greenland, showing sharp peaks
beginning in the nineteenth century, and in particular after 1950, and compared these to lead
levels found in remote Southern Hemisphere samples from freshwater lakes, ancient tree
trunks, glacial ice, deepwater tuna skin, and high-altitude Andean air (Patterson 1983: 28).
Patterson found vastly higher environmental lead levels in the North than in the South, and
traced this anomaly to the relative differences in industrial activity between the two
hemispheres.
In another study published in 1980, Patterson determined that lead emitted to the
atmosphere per year, mainly from automotive exhaust, exceeded prehistoric levels by at least
100 times. Modern humans, he calculated, carried a body burden of between 500 and 1000
times their natural “base” level of lead (Patterson 1983: 17). A more recent measurement of
the bones of pre-industrial humans has revealed a “natural background” level of lead in
human blood of 0.016 μg/dl (Flegal and Smith 1992: 1293). The current U.S. “level of
concern” of 10 μg/dl, therefore, would be 625 times the “natural” lead level in humans
(Montague 2004). More recent and technologically advanced studies have also corroborated
Patterson’s findings on environmental lead levels, charting the rise of medieval metallurgy,
the industrial revolution, the post-war period of industrial production and increased leaded
31

gasoline use with correlating peaks in the environmental lead levels of arctic regions (Renberg
et al. 2000). By the late 20 th century roughly one million tons of lead per year were
“dispersed into the biosphere” (Bellinger and Matthews 1998). Lead consumption in the
global South almost tripled in recent years, while increasing only slightly or being phased out
in many industries, products and infrastructure in countries of the global North (Tong et al
2000: 1069).
Lead exposure moves through multiple pathways including air, soil, dust, water, food
and blood or placenta. There are three primary modes of exposure to humans: occupational,
environmental, and pediatric, each of which has drawn different regulatory responses (Warren
2000: 4). Occupational exposure has the longest history of medical knowledge, with
recognition of environmental and pediatric exposure beginning only during the past century.
1.4.2 Occupational Exposure
About 10-15% of lead taken into the adult body is absorbed, and as much as 90% of the body
burden of lead remains in the bones, where it can remain for decades (NIOSH 2001).
Occupational exposure to lead has typically occurred through direct inhalation of lead fumes
or dust, and more commonly through ingestion of lead-contaminated food, water or cigarettes.
Lead in workers has been measured through concentrations in blood, urine, teeth, hair, or
skeletal bones (NIOSH 2001). Knowledge of the negative health impacts of occupational lead
exposure can be traced for millennia, but the levels considered “dangerous” have changed
markedly in recent decades. For much of the twentieth century, a blood lead level (BLL) of
32

80μg/dl was considered “toxic,” but later studies have showed toxicity at much lower levels.
The United States National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the
CDC set a goal of eliminating BLLs of over 25μg/dl by the year 2000 (though these efforts
were unsuccessful), and the current “acceptable” rate of exposure for workers according to the
WHO is 30μg/dl, though the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)
maintains the current level of concern at 40μg/dl.
Lead affects the central and peripheral nervous systems, with BLLs above 80μg/dl
possibly provoking coma, encephalopathy or death (NIOSH 2001: 4). Localized forms of
paralysis such as “wrist drop” and “foot drop” have been typical ailments of lead industry
workers. BLLs between 40-50μg/dl are associated with “fatigue, irritability, insomnia,
headaches, and subtle evidence of mental and intellectual decline,” according to the NIOSH,
and between levels of 30-40μg/dl, “decrease motor nerve conduction velocity” may occur
(NIOSH 2001: 4).
Prolonged high exposure to lead may result in anemia, as lead inhibits heme synthesis
and damages red blood cell formation and functioning. Renal effects of lead exposure can
ultimately result in kidney failure (NIOSH 2001: 4). Lead exposure has historically been
associated with reproductive and developmental effects, including stillbirths, miscarriages,
male infertility, abnormal sperm morphology, and hormonal changes, as well as negative
effects on the developing nervous system of the fetus (NIOSH 2001: 4-5). Lead
concentrations in the mother are passed along through the placenta to the developing fetus.
Hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and increased blood pressure are all linked to
lead exposure in adults, even at levels below 10μg/dl (NIOSH 2001: 6; Tsaih et al 2004). A
recent report correlated homocysteine, an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease
33

and cognitive dysfunction, with low-level lead exposure, with dysfunctions occurring even
years after the end of occupational exposure (Schafer et al 2005). The development of
cataracts have also been linked to earlier lifelong lead exposure. Lead is a proven animal
carcinogen, and has been declared as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” by the International
Agency for Research on Cancer. In 2005, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
added lead for the first time to its list of cancer-causing agents, designating it to the secondtier
status of “Reasonably Anticipated Carcinogens” (Kay 2005).
Hernberg notes the “strange assumption” that “industrial workers were a special race
or species” and could withstand higher levels of lead than the general population (Hernberg
2000: 248). Researchers working through the Normative Aging Study have revealed that
even moderate levels of early lead exposure are associated with an increased risk of phobic
anxiety and other psychiatric symptoms in middle-aged to elderly men (Rhodes et al 2003).
Tsiah et al (2004: 1173), working with a subset of the same study, conclude that “longitudinal
decline of renal function among middle-age and elderly individuals appears to depend on both
long-term and circulating lead, with an effect that is most pronounced among diabetics and
hypertensives, subjects who likely represent particularly susceptible groups.” Another study
on elderly workers suggests a link between lead and elevated uric acid levels, and
subsequently lead-related nephrotoxicity (Weaver et al 2005), while adult cognitive function
decline and dementia have been linked to early exposure among tetraethyl lead (TEL) workers
(Schwartz et al 2000).
In a study on adult women, Gulson et al (2004) report a significant increase in BLLs
during late pregnancy and postpartum, when skeleton lead is mobilized. Their study shows
that even taking calcium supplements provides only limited relief from lead exposure. The
34

mobilization and release of existing lead stored in bone during menopause has been suggested
as well (Hernandez-Avila et al 2000), though other study results were inconclusive
(Berkowitz et al 2004).
1.4.3 Environmental and Pediatric Exposure
Environmental exposure refers to those lead substances with a more or less universal
distribution in the environment and with which human individuals or populations come into
contact. These include all non-occupational forms of exposure that affect people who are
involuntarily exposed to lead through the environment: whether in the home, at (non-lead
industry) work, at school, or out-of-doors. Sources of environmental exposure may include
leaded gasoline and other forms of atmospheric pollution, smelters, water pipes, paints, food
cans (from solder), insecticides, contaminated soil, cosmetics, or drugs containing lead.
An understanding of pediatric exposure reflects developing knowledge of how
children comprise a unique subset of the population, different from workers and other adults
in their vulnerability to the effects of lead exposure. Children and adults differ in terms of
exposure sources and pathways, lead metabolism in the body, and in the ways toxicity is
expressed (Bellinger 2004: 1016). A child exhibits more hand-to-mouth activity than an
adult, thereby increasing susceptibility to lead and other environmental toxins. Children also
have a higher gastro-intestinal absorption rate of lead than adults, absorbing as much as 50%
of the lead that enters their bodies (UNEP-UNICEF 1997). Lead directly affects the
development of the central nervous system of children leading often to irreversible damage, in
35

contrast to the more typical peripheral nervous system damage in adults (Bellinger 2004).
Bellinger notes the differences in functional neuroanatomy and in “brain-behavior
relationships” between adults and children that underlie complex cognitive processes,
concluding: “it seems that the adult and the developing child differ in so many critical respects
that few lessons about pediatric lead neurotoxicity can be gleaned from studying adult lead
neurotoxicity” (Bellinger 2004: 1020).
At the fetus and newborn stages, the child is already at a disadvantage through the
absorption of the mother’s blood lead through the placenta and by means of a “burst” of lead
through pregnancy and birth-related bone mobilization. Lead exposure shows differential
effects on fetus stem cells, affecting in particular brain development (Dooley 2004). One
recent study indicates prenatal lead exposure as a risk factor for adult schizophrenia (Opler et
al 2004). Children born with elevated lead levels commonly have lower birth weights, and
their growth and stature are slowed or lowered. Sexual maturity during adolescence is altered
by lead exposure as well, with girls sexually maturing earlier than normal, according to one
study (Schell and Denham 2003), or experiencing delayed puberty, according to others
(Rogan and Ware 2003).
Clinical intoxication in children occurs at around 60μg/dl, when manifested symptoms
may include: abdominal pain, colic, arthralgia, headaches, clumsiness and staggering, stupor,
alterations of consciousness, convulsions and early encephalopathy (Needleman 2004: 212).
Cognitive, attentional and behavioral impairments are common at this stage, and anemia may
develop. At lower, asymptomatic levels, studies have shown behavioral and attention deficits
among lead exposed children, as well as difficulties in language processing, auditory
capability, neuropsychological and cognitive functioning (Canfield et al 2004), and nerve
36

conduction (Needleman 2004). Visuo-spatial memory deficits, fine motor skills, and
executive functioning are also affected by low-level lead exposure, exhibiting a similar profile
of cognitive impairment to brain injury from other causes (Lidsky et al, in press).
“Subclinical” lead exposure has also been associated with various forms of anti-social
behavior, including aggression, violence and delinquency (Dietrich et al 2001; Needleman
1979, 1996). A history of childhood lead poisoning was found to be the strongest predictor
of adult criminality among Philadelphia males according to one study (cited in Bellinger
2004). Though disputed, social ecologists have found striking correlations between the levels
of commercial lead sold and released into the environment over time, and rates of violent
crime and unwed pregnancy (Nevin 2000).
1.4.4 Society Unsafe at Any Level
Richard Canfield led a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (2003) on
intellectual impairment in children with low-level lead exposure, in which children’s
intellectual functioning at 3 and 5 years of age were found to be inversely correlated with
blood lead concentrations, even when their peak concentrations remained below the 10μg/dl
CDC/WHO level of concern. This longitudinal study, conducted by means of rigorous
methods including nonlinear mixed models and a sophisticated control of confounders (Koller
et al 2004), supports a growing body of work that had earlier pointed to intellectual
impairment in children with BLLs below 10μg/dl (Bellinger et al 1992; Tong et al 1996).
37

The second major conclusion of the Canfield study is that the relation between a
child’s IQ and BLL is nonlinear. Rather than a steady and linear progression of IQ loss as
BLL increases, as other studies have suggested, Canfield et al discovered an initial “burst” of
IQ loss of over 7 points during the first 10μg/dl of lead, followed by a tapering off of 2.5 IQ
points lost between 10-20μg/dl (Canfield et al 2003). The results of the Canfield study were
later replicated by Bellinger and Needleman in a reevaluation of their own Boston cohort
study, and have been generally well received within the field.
If it is true that the effects of lead exposure are proportionally greater at lower lead
concentrations and the total lead-related impairment of a child is due largely to the “initial IQ
loss at blood lead concentrations of 10μg/dl or less,” then the CDC/WHO “level of concern”
is called into question. Canfield et al (2003) conclude that theirs and other findings, including
other longitudinal and cross-sectional studies (Koller et al 2004) suggest, “there may be no
threshold for the adverse consequences of lead exposure, and that lead-associated impairments
may be both persistent and irreversible.”
According to Bellinger (2004: 1017), the 10μg/dl screening action guideline set by the
CDC was only meant to serve as a risk guidance and management tool at the community
level, and has been erroneously interpreted by others as a safety “threshold.” He stresses the
importance of context in determining risk, and supports the conclusion that adverse effects are
common at lead levels below 10μg/dl. Lidsky et al (in press) support the claim that context
needs to be taken into account in the treatment of lead poisoned children, arguing that lead,
like other brain injuries, “does not produce exactly the same set of impairments in each
patient.”
38

While individual context and response is important for clinicians, educators and social
workers in treating and working with lead poisoned children, the elimination of lead sources
and exposure prevention are the only viable means to truly address the problem, as many of
the effects of lead are irreversible. Bellinger and Matthews (1998) have argued that an
ecosystem or population model of health is more appropriate than the classic clinical medical
model in order to appreciate the full societal impact of subclinical lead exposure. In the
diminishing of IQ, for instance, a loss of a few IQ points may be detrimental to an individual
child, depending on his or her rearing, environment, or individual bio-psychological
responses. The loss of a few IQ points on a society-wide scale, however, has potentially
devastating effects. As Rogan and Ware (2003) put it:
Relatively small changes in the mean IQ of a large number of children will
dramatically increase the proportion of children below any fixed level of concern, such
as an IQ of 80, and decrease the proportion above any ‘gifted’ level, such as 120.
The intelligence bell curve is collectively shifted to the left at chronic low-level lead exposure,
with more resources needed for remedial education and other services, and proportionally less
intellectually gifted individuals in society. If we also take into account the collective costs of
an increase in anti-social and delinquent behavior, the benefits of primary prevention of lead
poisoning are evident. There is a clear ethical dimension to prevention and a lead phaseout as
well. As Dr. Lanphear put it, “We are still using children like canaries in a mine to tell us if
there is lead in the environment” (cited in Gavaghan 2002).
39

1.5 Introductory Vignette: “Datos de la realidad”: The CVSP Meeting with Ricardo
Ehrlich
This section presents an ethnographic vignette of a meeting between the CVSP and Frente
Amplio Montevideo mayoral candidate Ricardo Ehrlich in 2005. 22
Each subsequent chapter
of the dissertation opens with an ethnographic vignette that introduces and encapsulates the
major themes to be developed in the respective chapter. The vignette is meant to serve as an
ethnographic “thick description” of what was a typical fieldwork engagement. The meeting
drew together many of the central actors, problems, and questions at stake in Uruguay’s lead
poisoning epidemic, and thus serves as a mise-en-scène of the lead issue, its major “actors,”
and the dissertation itself.
The CVSP had for weeks been cultivating ties with Ricardo Ehrlich, the probable
victor of the upcoming municipal elections. They scheduled a meeting in a social club on
their La Teja “turf” to give him an overview of the continuing problem of lead contamination
and to pitch to him some of their ideas. I walked from my home in Nuevo Paris to the
firewood depot or barraca of Carlos Pilo in La Teja, where pediatrician and anti-lead activist
Elena Queirolo and I were supposed to meet him. The charismatic Pilo was the longtime
barrio activist and unofficial leader of the neighbors’ movement against lead. As we arrived
at the club, a car pulled up with other CVSP members or collaborators, including Brecha
journalist Carlos Amorín and former national Director of Housing José Camarda, dismissed
for his eventual solidarity with the neighbors’ movement. I asked Pilo about Elena and he
answered matter-of-factly: “I don’t know, she hasn’t shown up yet.” Pilo’s typical response
22 The following information is drawn from participant observation at the CVSP-Ehrlich meeting, La Comparsita
social club, April 8, 2005.
40

eflected a position (tinged with cultural significance) that everyone should know the way
around La Teja. Milka Pereira, a nearby resident, nurse, and founding member of the CVSP,
was also present with her two lead poisoned children.
Ehrlich and company were late to arrive. In the meantime, Pilo offered us a steady
stream of anecdotes about this long-standing social club and its strong associations with the
La Reina de la Teja murga and with area sports clubs. The club served as a primary meeting
place in the early days of the anti-lead movement. 23
On the walls of this small and modest
corner building were both faded and recent photographs of murga, Carnaval, and various
soccer clubs. Several soccer trophies were stacked high along one of its walls. Pilo
commented: “you know how many bruises and fights are behind those trophies?” He showed
us an old yellowed photograph of a soccer team. He said that only the young “water boy” in
the picture survives and is now seventy-five years old. Most of the players died of natural
causes, but Pilo added that a few of them had been exiled or tortured during the dictatorship. 24
After arriving, Ehrlich sat down in one corner and the other fifteen or twenty people
present, including CVSP members, local residents and municipal authorities, settled in on the
other chairs and long benches (the benches used by La Reina de La Teja, Pilo pointed out).
After a brief awkward silence, Amorín opened the meeting, followed by self-introductions by
the members of the CVSP, including me. Amorín said that they had had many meetings at La
Cumparsita since lead contamination was first discovered in La Teja. The problem has
continued, however, and today they hoped to “take a longer step.” Amorín passed the word to
the sixty-year old Pilo, who let off a somewhat juvenile giggle and proceeded to give his
typical and compelling history of the lead problem and anti-lead movement, interspersed with
23 La Reina de la Teja and Los Diablos Verdes are the La Teja neighborhood’s most popular and iconic murgas.
Pilo has long served as a driver and more recently bookkeeper for La Reina de La Teja.
24 Uruguay’s military dictatorship ran from 1973-1985.
41

detailed “facts from reality” (datos de la realidad) highlighting the social and environmental
hardships faced by residents of La Teja and the western poverty-stricken areas of Montevideo.
Pilo emphasized his vocational identity as an old typesetter (obrero gráfico), noting
that he had worked since he was a child. He said that “by necessity” he had to “enlighten
himself” by reading a lot and studying the issue of lead poisoning, first because “saturnism”
was a disease that greatly afflicted the typesetting industry, and secondly when it was later
discovered as a massive pediatric illness. This “enlightenment” was the only way to
effectively confront doctors, industry, and the State, he said, as they would otherwise use their
erudition as a distancing device to whitewash the problems facing the neighborhood.
La Teja’s history is crucial for understanding the lead problem, according to Pilo, who
described the neighborhood as a zone defined in relation to its industry with “particular
characteristics and where solidarity reigns.” 25
La Teja consists of 400 square blocks and
50,000 residents, one-fifth of which are children, recounted Pilo. He added that 19,000 of La
Teja’s residents live below the official poverty line. In this highly industrialized area, many
of its metals-working plants have been linked to lead contamination. Pilo explained how
families for decades had built their homes on sites piled up with industrial landfill, unaware of
the dangers. The biggest problem for the country, however, stems from the ANCAP State oil
refinery, located in La Teja, that produced and distributed leaded gasoline for decades before
finally phasing it out in 2004, Pilo stressed.
Pilo lamented the lack of national guidelines for lead contamination, with the State
using the Canadian soil lead standards at first (140 mg/kg for residential spaces; 60 mg/kg for
cultivable land), and later choosing the less stringent U.S. EPA guidelines (400 mg/kg).
Either way, in the Rodolfo Rincón cantegril or slum of La Teja, officials discovered soil lead
25 “La Teja es una zona con determinadas características donde prima la solidaridad”.
42

levels of 7,500 mg/kg, and in another area home they found 38,000 mg/kg in the backyard.
Pilo said that there has been an almost exclusive focus on soil contamination on the part of
officials, while water and air, the other two major pathways of lead, are largely ignored. Pilo
noted the State water company OSE has maintained drinking water standards of 50 μg/L of
lead, while the World Health Organization recommends a limit of 10 μg/L. Pilo added that
they had found a level of 137 μg/L in a La Teja house, arguing that much more needs to be
analyzed to discover the true dimensions of the problem. While Pilo pointed out that 300,000
lead pipe connections remained in Montevideo and twice as many around the country, he said
OSE to date had only changed a handful of them due to concerns over lead contamination. 26
La Teja’s squatter settlements or asentamientos, which Pilo usually refers to by the
older name of cantegriles, are made up largely of former factory workers or people with other
stable jobs who were pushed to the margins of the neighborhood upon the shutting down of
factories and the onset of the socio-economic crisis of the past fifteen years. Pilo
characterized the Miguelete and Pantanoso riverbanks that straddle La Teja as a “no-man’s
land” where people seeking homes often settle and “no one takes responsibility for what
happens.” 27
The Pantanoso River that splits La Teja and Cerro to the west, he said, has water
lead levels that are sixty times the “internationally accepted limit.” Pilo acknowledged that at
least the problem of lead contamination has grown more in the popular “sensibility” (se ha
sensibilizado). He cites as conquests of the movement the creation of the public health-run
lead poisoning clinic and free transportation for patients and their families, the delivery of
supplementary food baskets to lead poisoning victims, and the relocation of dozens of affected
26 OSE officials dispute the claim of hundreds of thousands of existing lead pipe connections in Uruguay, but
they refuse to release any relevant data. OSE official Sergio Ham acknowledged to me in an interview that there
were probably “tens of thousands” of remaining lead connections, though he and other officials downplay the
related health risks (Interview with author, October 22, 2004).
27 “Los márgenes de los arroyos son la tierra de nadie donde nadie se hace cargo”.
43

families to new housing. The movement has been able to forge paths to get things done,
despite suffering physical threats, cooptation attempts and other forms of silencing.
Throughout this initial part of the meeting, I sensed a heaviness in the air. Pilo and
Amorín were their usual relaxed and confident selves, though Pilo stumbled a bit more than
usual in his delivery. Ehrlich maintained a stony silence throughout the first twenty minutes
or so until Pilo mentioned the contamination of waterways in the capital and Ehrlich nodded
for the first time. After Pilo spoke, the ever-fearless Milka Pereira interjected to denounce the
lack of information sharing with the activists. She noted in particular that the results of air
sampling conducted by the Municipality (Intendencia Municipal de Montevideo- IMM) in La
Teja and other parts of Montevideo were never released, despite repeated requests on the part
of the neighbors. Ex-Housing Director Camarda also noted that the lack of information has
been a contributing cause of the growing sense of frustration on the part of activists, leading
to a dwindling of participation in the movement. He spoke of the positive collaboration
between the neighbors and the lead poisoning clinic directed by Dr. Elena Queirolo at the
Pereira Rossell maternity hospital. He then asked Elena to speak.
Dr. Queirolo began with an overview of the institutional situation. She spoke a bit
nervously, though she relaxed as her presentation progressed. Elena noted the discrepancy
between the standards for intervention employed by the MSP and that of international
organizations. Whereas international agencies such as the World Health Organization and the
Centers for Disease Control set a recommended action threshold for lead poisoning at a blood
lead level (BLL) of 10 µg/dl, the MSP has since the beginning of the lead problem maintained
a medical intervention threshold of 20 µg/dl. 28
Because of this arbitrarily defined intervention
28 Blood lead levels are typically measured by parts per million, and denoted as “µg/dl,” or micrograms of lead
per deciliter of blood.
44

norm and the continuing lack of comprehensive epidemiological studies, Dr. Quierolo and the
other pediatricians at the lead poisoning clinic treat “only” around 700 children. She said that
the diagnostic of the child population was thorough in the case of La Teja in 2001, but little
follow up or extension from this area has been conducted since then, with officials focusing
only on some of the asentamientos of Montevideo’s poverty-stricken periphery.
By limiting the scope of intervention to La Teja and the asentamientos, Queirolo
argued, officials have reduced the problem to one of poverty, equating the “two p’s” of plomo
(lead) and pobreza (poverty), and failing to recognize the “true” scope of the problem. 29
In
2001, when public concern and media coverage of the lead problem was at its peak, it took
about eight months to complete the diagnostic of La Teja, with cooperation between various
institutions. In 2002, “the follow up detection ceased.” This has resulted in a situation in
which the lead clinic has virtually “received no new cases” since 2003, a fact that does not
correspond with the probable situation of childhood lead poisoning across the city and
country, Queirolo stressed. Elena then discussed the symptoms of lead poisoning and the
treatment protocol at the clinic. She concluded that lead “passes silently, and is usually
diagnosed too late.”
In Ehrlich’s response, he said that he would offer “dedication” (compromiso) to the
people and the CVSP. He added that he had at times “followed the lead issue closely” in his
former position as Dean of the University of the Republic Faculty of Sciences. He had met
previously with Parliamentary Representatives Nora Castro and Martín Ponce de Leon over
29 The equating of the “two p’s” was in fact the argument promoted by a public health official and reported in the
media in the early years of the struggle, and one that has resonated with social and political actors in Uruguay.
This stance has been repeatedly denounced by the CVSP and the lead poisoning clinic, among others.
45

the lead issue and suggested that he would do so again. 30
Ehrlich proposed setting up a
permanent “committee of vigilance for the environment,” consisting of various specialized
actors and working at the “highest level” of the Departmental (IMM) government. The goal
would be to prevent environmental disasters before they occur.
A monitoring system consisting of children, neighbors, and local organizations would
create a network that could “multiply the kinds of things that you people are doing,” said
Ehrlich. Ehrlich added it was necessary to attack “all of the causes,” as they often get “mixed
together” in confusing ways. He also said it was important to differentiate “real threats” from
the “sense of threats.” Information needs to circulate democratically both to detect real risks
and to bring tranquility to the concerns of neighbors, he added. Ehrlich applauded state
prosecutor Oscar Peri Valdez’ tireless work on the lead issue. 31
“Today it is lead,” Ehrlich
said, “Tomorrow it will be chromium, a bacteria, hepatitis or some other problem.”
During Ehrlich’s remarks and the ensuing discussion, a large contingent of print, radio
and television media descended on the scene, including a few journalists of the El Puente
community radio station and the El Tejano community newspaper of La Teja. A
photographer from the La República daily snapped photos while the television media filmed
the audience. Amorín then presented Ehrlich with the CVSP’s pilot project of creating an
“Antenna of Socio-Environmental Risk Detection,” emphasizing the various convergences
between their project and the ideas espoused by Ehrlich. Amorín read a few paragraphs of the
30 Castro and Ponce, both of the Frente Amplio (FA) coalition (Movimiento de Participación Popular- MPP and
Vertiente Artiguista-VA, respectively), had introduced legislation during the Batlle administration (Colorado
Party, 1999-2004) relating to the control and mitigation of lead contamination in Uruguay, and both hail
originally from La Teja. Under the current Frente Amplio administration of Tabaré Vázquez, Castro became
President of the Senate for a term and Ponce was named Sub-Secretary of Industry.
31 Peri Valdez worked in solidarity with the anti-lead movement until he was suspended from his job indefinitely
in 2003 under ethics charges at the behest of ruling Colorado Party Education Minister Leonardo Guzmán. The
details surrounding his destitution have remained murky at best, and Peri Valdez was finally cleared of the
charges in 2005 by the Frente Amplio administration, but in exchange for his resignation.
46

cover letter of the project, while Ehrlich nodded enthusiastically. 32
A moment of harmony
had been reached.
With cameras flashing, Pilo introduced Milka’s two older children, saying they were
lead poisoned and that the older boy had accompanied them throughout most of their struggle.
Milka added that they had even roamed the halls of Parliament together. The two children sat
on the couch next to Ehrlich, and the eight-year old boy asked him some tough questions
about a future Ehrlich administration, and how he’d take care of the problems of
contaminating industries, street recyclers (hurgadores) and squatter settlements.
As the meeting adjourned, Ehrlich, Pilo, and Queirolo granted interviews to the media
outside the La Cumparsita building in the shade of the tall and spiny Palo Borracho trees Pilo
had planted a decade ago. It was a brilliant and fresh autumn day, and spirits were high.
The final phase of our engagement with Ehrlich consisted of taking him on a kind of
“reality tour” through some of the more environmentally and socially devastated areas of La
Teja. We rode to the northern outskirts of La Teja, to the decimated and deindustrialized
areas bordering the Cadorna and Tres Ombúes neighborhoods. Having grown up there, young
El Puente journalist Javier Cáceres recounted how the neighborhood used to be filled with
bustling factories, whose timed whistles would sound throughout a once vibrant barrio. Some
of the houses in the area appear “normal” from the outside, Javier added, but just a slip
through a side corridor can reveal slum tenements with “people piled together” in subhuman
conditions.
We toured the areas around the Victoria and Alaska streams (cañadas), forming the
core of a larger marshland (bañado). Javier recalled even as a child how the marshlands were
mostly wild and undeveloped. Now the area is interspersed with modest working class
32 The project is discussed in Chapter 6.
47

housing, poor cantegriles and various garbage dumps and areas for recycling carthorses and
other animals to pasture.
The first stop was at the Cañada Victoria. This is an area heavily contaminated by
lead and other heavy metals, with several of its children treated at the Pereira Rossell clinic.
A narrow bridge crosses the stream. Looking north, the stream is saddled by the shacks that
make up the Cañada Victoria asentamiento, one of the settlements where lead contamination
was first discovered. As we pulled up, Pilo spoke with a few of the neighbors. He introduced
us to a black woman in her thirties as the sister of Uruguayan footballer Mario Regueiro. I
noted a resemblance with the soccer star playing in Spain. To the side of the bridge, a heap of
garbage virtually detained the stream’s progression, while lush green vegetation covered the
area upstream.
Our next stop was Cañada Alaska, another heavily contaminated area. We drove up a
dead end road bordered by shacks, with some grazing horses nearby and dogs barking
everywhere. The road ends abruptly on a concrete platform overlooking a large open pipe
with sludge-filled water rapidly flowing from it. This canal channels the effluents from
nearby industries including leather and wool tanneries. The stream opens up into a small
drainage basin, which at this time had a white, murky and thick film floating on top of it.
Almost fully submerged to one side was an old and stripped car.
A large mountain of garbage sits on the edge of the basin, with the colonial Cerro
Fortress overlooking in the distance. A steady wisp of black smoke rose from one part of the
heap. A neighbor woman of the cantegril told Ehrlich that people come every night,
“sometimes at four in the morning,” to burn garbage and plastic on this dump, making the
area “totally toxic.” She said that the operators claimed to have official permission and that
48

the dumped garbage “comes from all over Montevideo.” On this day, a front-end loader was
piling up some of the garbage, suggesting either municipal collusion or as the neighbors
charge, some kind of “mafia” behind the operation.
Across from the platform on which we were standing was a house on a rather large
expanse of terrain. This is the home of el Negro, a man who says he used to raise sheep and
goats and once had as many as 200 pigs. A few years ago after some heavy rains, el Negro’s
land was flooded with the toxic sludge from the bordering drainage basin. The waters receded
and his sheep went back to graze. All thirteen of his sheep and a ram died soon after,
presumably from the toxic chemicals that had impregnated the soil and grass.
Our final stop was a brief visit to a soup kitchen (comedor) near Carlos María Ramirez
Avenue in La Teja operated by the Progreso Athletic and Social Club, in which Frente
Amplio President Tabaré Vázquez’ son is on the club’s Board of Directors, and Pilo’s
daughter Carla volunteers in the kitchen and as a dentist. 33
The demand here is so great that
they have to serve food in shifts in order to accommodate the roughly 250 children that
receive the free meals each day. I visited this club on more than one occasion and often heard
stories of the terrible hardships and social misery faced by the poor. Pilo and Carla have told
of having to wash and clothe barefoot children, of a child that has to sleep with the horse the
family uses for garbage recycling, of three young siblings who must share the same baby
carriage, and in perhaps the most horrifying of tales, of the seven-year old boy that, Pilo tells
us, tried to commit suicide. 34
33 President Tabaré Vázquez, originally from La Teja, was President of the Progreso club in the late 1980s in one
of his first political positions. In 1989, Progreso F.C. won its first and only national soccer championship under
Vázquez’ direction.
34 I use the term “tale” here to indicate that I have no way of independently verifying these accounts, and also to
suggest how stories like these are woven together into a broader narrative of human suffering and decline.
49

1.6 Overview of Dissertation
Many of the key CVSP activists were present at the meeting, particularly those with whom I
worked most closely throughout my fieldwork. The meeting was held in La Teja, the most
iconic site in the lead issue, and specifically in a community social club that had been the
place of some of the greatest ferment of the early (pre-fieldwork) years of struggle. It took
place towards the end of my field research by the time I was publicly established within the
movement and as a researcher of the lead issue. The meeting’s major themes represent many
of the principal issues and dynamics I researched during the course of my fieldwork,
including: the relationship between La Teja place identity, deindustrialization and grassroots
political action; the politics of blame in lead contamination and poisoning; struggles over risk
definition and the parameters of intervention into the lead problem; expertise and the politics
of knowledge production; the CVSP in relation to the broader Uruguayan political system and
environmentalism; and the places and meanings of poverty, structural violence and embodied
suffering for a state and society in disarray.
The importance of La Teja history and community organizing is exemplified through
the stories of long-term resident and neighborhood figure Carlos Pilo. Public talks provide
Pilo with an opportunity to educate the audience in the complex and rich history of La Teja,
and to firmly portray its identity as a working class neighborhood rather than merely a poor
one. Pilo’s core narrative about La Teja, lead contamination and social struggle is always
presented eloquently and “off the cuff,” though the specific details and emphases will shift
based on the audience. On a practical level, the stories and histories Pilo tells are meant to
inform officials or the public about the barrio’s continuing needs. But his stories also act as a
50

community-building device by means of reaffirming an underlying narrative of solidarity and
by emphasizing neighborhood commitment, unity and perseverance. The power of political
action and of “ordinary people” pulling together against all odds is continuously reenacted.
The various actors are carefully positioned, including the role of the state, science, NGOs,
communities, workers, industry, the media and other social actors. Finally, political
independence is manifested through critiques of both the rightist national government and the
leftist municipality, in Pilo’s case reflecting his longstanding anarchist roots. 35
Pilo’s stories of the decline of La Teja from a once-proud and unified working class
neighborhood to a poverty-stricken de-industrialized one are woven together with
explanations of the major sources and pathways of lead contamination in the area. Pilo’s own
trajectory from militant worker to environmental activist mirrors that of several other activists
of the area and around the country, and embodies the recent rise of popular or grassroots
forms of environmentalism in Uruguay. Pilo places responsibility and blame for
environmental pollution squarely on the shoulders of industry, the state, and the capitalist
system itself, whereas many state actors and professionals are more likely, through the use of
complex discourses and framing devices, to place blame instead on the victims of lead
contamination.
The context of lead poisoning’s discovery and creation as a problem is elaborated in
Chapter Two through an analysis of the production of “nature” and the environment. The
chapter opens by drawing together environmental history with economic development and
state and nation formation in Uruguay. An understanding of the foundations and
interrelations of modern nature and culture in Uruguay provides a historical grounding to
35 This had been the political configuration for the first four-and-a-half years of the lead struggle, though the
political and ideological orientation of the national government and local municipality had been significantly
altered by the time of this meeting.
51

ecent changes in environment, economy and society. I argue the recent growth of
environmentalism has developed in dialogue with macro-economic and political processes
associated with neoliberal globalization and regional integration through MERCOSUR. The
Uruguayan government in the past fifteen years, often in response to international treaties and
conventions, has crafted unprecedented legislation oriented to the environment, creating a
legal and institutional framework that coincides with, facilitates and feeds the emergence of
the environment and environmentalism as political movement and broader category of
thought.
Chapter Three expands on the analysis of this general societal greening process by
discussing the origins and development of grassroots environmentalism in Uruguay. I
examine the ways earlier anti-toxics and locally based struggles have become partially
eclipsed by more encompassing environmental justice movements that fuse environmental
and labor concerns and promote an integrative vision of environmentalism that is able to draw
widespread popular appeal. I also discuss the difficulties of transcending the “jobs versus
environment” debate through a labor-centered popular environmentalism, as vulnerable
workers face repression and blacklisting, and the desperation of coworkers and families for
jobs of any kind in a crisis-hit Uruguay.
The lead issue struck a peculiar chord in Uruguayan society as it engaged with
emerging environmental discourses, categories and practices. Neighbors, children, and
workers at the grassroots level were able to draw from environmental ideologies and
frameworks when they called on society to respond to the lead problem. That difference
made possible a response to already-existing but largely ignored processes of environmental
degradation and industrial pollution. In these ways lead became both a product of and
52

contributing factor to the broader transformations underway in Uruguayan society’s
consciousness and understanding of the environment.
Chapter Four examines the role and nature of science and risk in the creation of the
lead epidemic. It centers on how the lead problem has been defined by the state, science, and
medicine in Uruguay, and the conditions and dynamics of knowledge production under which
lead was “discovered” in recent years. As the world’s oldest known and most studied
environmental disease, lead’s recent discovery in Uruguay raises questions about knowledge
production at local and global scales, including the ways “universal” science is disseminated
and selectively appropriated at the local level by scientists, physicians and officials. I analyze
the creative investigations into lead contamination and poisoning by variously situated
knowledge producers in Uruguay. Scientists and academics have in varying ways struggled to
draw academic attention and resources to researching lead poisoning, against an entrenched
academic tradition that is only slowly beginning to recognize and incorporate the
environmental sciences and medicine.
Chapter Five examines how “culturalist” discourses that attribute essentialized cultural
values and behavioral patterns to the poor serve to particularize and naturalize the disease.
The culturalist discourses of the state are countered by a grassroots tactic of “strategic
othering,” in which similarly negative images of the poor instead emphasize the external,
structural and systemic origins of poverty. The grassroots strategy attempts to “democratize
risk” by promoting an awareness of lead contamination as a universal and cross-class
phenomenon.
Often caught in the middle are the lead poisoning victims among the new poor, who
either internalize culturalist discourses, resort to forms of “displaced othering” that reproduce
53

these discourses but aimed at the “other” poor, or they turn to an emphatic denial of otherness
and marginality. A tension ensues once again between the formal laborers of La Teja and
other areas that identify with the working class, and the “non-worker” poor who largely resort
to informal survivalist strategies for labor and housing, and represent the possible future path
of degradation of the working class.
Throughout most of the development of the lead issue and during most of my
fieldwork, the state had been comprised of the right-wing Colorado party government of
President Jorge Batlle, with the center-left Frente Amplio coalition controlling a plurality in
Parliament as well as controlling the Montevideo Municipality. At the time of the CVSP-
Ehrlich meeting, however, the Frente Amplio had come to national power through President
Tabaré Vázquez. The CVSP was adjusting to the new political realities of a leftward shift at
the state and municipal levels, with new projects attuned to these emerging political
conditions as well as in response to a dwindling activist base.
Chapter Six analyzes post-lead environmental conflicts and new forms of green
governance, and speculates on the future of Uruguayan environmentalism. It argues that the
anti-lead movement represents a pinnacle in the growing wave of grassroots
environmentalism, and has significantly altered the basis and dynamics of environmental
social movements in Uruguay by serving as an iconic example of this new form of struggle,
by forcing state agencies to mobilize resources for environmental issues, and by providing the
opportunity for the training of a new generation of technicians, journalists, physicians,
scientists, and officials in the intervention into environmental problems.
The chapter brings into focus a strong countertendency to grassroots
environmentalism, however, namely corporate strategies that co-opt and subvert emerging
54

forms of environmental consciousness and action through a process I refer to as “green
veiling.” A more expansive notion than “green washing,” green veiling incorporates both the
planned and unanticipated broad-based impacts of corporate strategies to cover up degrading
industrial activity. I discuss how the greening of society and political discourse in Uruguay
have enabled forms of green governance that seek to manage the potentially dangerous
category of thought and action represented by grassroots environmentalism and environmental
consciousness more broadly. This chapter shows how greening processes from above and
below have come into conflict and points to some of the emerging tendencies and possible
legacies of the lead issue through its impacts on institutional interventions and social
movement formation.
Chapter Seven, finally, provides an evaluation of the state of environmentalism in
Uruguay and its current and future directions under a leftist government. The chapter
summarizes some of the main arguments presented in this dissertation and the contributions of
this research to anthropology and the social sciences.
55

CHAPTER TWO: Uruguay Natural: The Production of Nature and the Greening of
Society
The idea of nature is the idea of man… the idea of man in society, indeed the ideas of kinds of
societies.
--Raymond Williams (quoted in Escobar 1999: 1)
Here, doubtless, was the one spot on the wide earth where the golden age still lingered,
appearing like the last beams of the setting sun touching some prominent spot, when
elsewhere all things are in shadow.
--W. H. Hudson, The Purple Land (1885)
2.0 Introductory Vignette: An Unnatural Storm
“I watched on CNN the images of the storm and the truth is it hit me hard. Finally a reality
happened that had looked like would never reach us. But it did.” (Madelón, United States) 36
On the night of August 23rd, 2005, as Hurricane Katrina was forming over the Bahamas and
amid one of the most devastating hurricane seasons ever in the Northern Hemisphere,
Uruguay’s southeastern coast was battered by a brutal and unprecedented storm. The storm
lasted two days, carrying with it sustained ten hour winds reaching 187 km/hr, leading to nine
deaths and at least thirty injured, hundreds evacuated, thousands of felled trees, destroyed
buildings, and millions of dollars in damages (El País, August 26, 2005). One hundred
thousand people were left without electricity, and telephone and water services were severed
36 El País, August 26, 2005.
56

for tens of thousands. The deaths included two teens crushed under the crumbling wall of an
abandoned soap factory as they were on their way to buy candles. A middle-aged man died
along the coastal rambla as his car lost control and careened into a stolen one. Another died
when a tree fell onto his modest asentamiento squatter dwelling, while in Maldonado a man
died from the cold in his own rancho (El País, August 26, 2005).
Perplexed meteorologists debated whether the strange phenomenon was really a storm
or a cyclone. There had only been four similar occurrences in the past century, but in each
case the high winds were only sustained for five to ten minutes rather than ten hours. The
high winds were enough to have qualified it as a category 3 hurricane according to the Saffir-
Simpson measurement scale used for North Atlantic hurricanes (El País, August 26, 2005).
The debates over classification did not help diffuse popular outrage that no warnings had been
issued to the population or to the emergency services. Meteorologists and politicians later
admitted that the country did not have technology like Doppler radar that could have detected
the oncoming storm. For the next several weeks, jittery meteorologists issued numerous false
alarms of impending storms, causing slight panic and fueling popular anger and frustration.
The debate over the classification of the weather phenomenon and its impact revealed
a tension over the character of Uruguay’s “nature” and the society with which it is
intertwined. The cyclone, if that is what it was, did not fit into Uruguayan self-identity of
both its social and “natural” essence. Uruguayans have long identified themselves as enjoying
a lack of extremes. They perceive their society as “mesocratic,” driven by conservative
values and distanced from the extreme tendencies that were thought to characterize the rest of
Latin America and the developing world. This social, economic and political evenhandedness
underlined the national foundational myths of exceptionalism that were cemented in the early
57

twentieth century by the great modernizer José Batlle y Ordóñez (Perelli and Rial 1986;
Renfrew 2001).
Social-national foundational myths have always been in dialogue with ideas of the
natural. This has been clear in the case of human nature, as Uruguayans have identified
themselves in contrast to the constructed violent, primitive, or diseased bodies of other
nations. They have highlighted the absence of tropical maladies and other deadly pathogens,
and proudly signaled in the early 1990s that the country was the only Southern nation to
successfully fend off the invading pan-American cholera epidemic. This exceptionalism is
true of ecological or biotic nature as well. Uruguayan officials and citizens alike often point
to the absence of natural catastrophes that afflict other countries, with the exception of the
occasional weather-related disruption such as flooding or droughts. There are no earthquakes,
volcanic eruptions, mudslides, extreme cold or blizzards, and, no hurricanes or cyclones. The
perceived lack of extremes of Uruguay’s nature is deeply intertwined with constructions of
social and national identity.
In the twenty-first century Uruguay’s foundational myths, long unraveling, hit a crisis
point. Unemployment, poverty and socio-economic marginality reached staggering and
shocking proportions, with previously unheard of cases of child starvation deaths and the
return of once eradicated diseases, all of which contributed to the cracking of a century of
political hegemony as expressed through the Frente Amplio 2004 electoral victory (Renfrew
2004b). A result of the negation of the existence of social and natural extremes meant that the
Vázquez government was unable to receive the aid offered by the United States embassy on
the heels of the 2005 cyclone. The embassy required a national declaration of emergency in
58

order to channel its aid, but no legislative framework exists to declare or manage a natural
disaster, as this is not supposed to happen in Uruguay.
This chapter explores the social constructions and biophysical characteristics through
history and in the present of Uruguay’s nature. It examines the ways they are intimately
linked to socio-political and productive processes, as well as social constructions of self and
nation. The chapter analyzes the socio-environmental context and background of the lead
issue, with the goal of producing a deeper and historically grounded understanding of the
development of lead poisoning as an objective reality and as an object of concern. Lead
contamination became an issue due to a political opportunity structure presented by
Uruguay’s position within and responses to a neoliberal and globalized world. Specifically,
the anti-lead movement and Uruguayan society’s engagement with the lead issue are in part
products of a progressive “greening” of society over the past fifteen years. The movement has
simultaneously served as a catalyst for the development of grassroots environmentalism
generally.
The chapter discusses how social perceptions of the environment have changed over
the past century in relation to changing socio-political dynamics and productive conditions. I
argue the modernizing political project that promoted a “civilizing” drive against Uruguay’s
archaic vestiges of “barbarism” involved a two fold disciplining of nature, both human and
biophysical. Uruguay’s national foundational myths, firmly established in the early decades
of the twentieth century and unraveling in recent years, are necessarily and at once both social
and natural.
The chapter then extends the analysis of the co-production of nature and society to the
present. In Uruguay, the linkages between coinciding projects of neoliberal and
59

environmental governance have received scant attention. The section argues that
environmental governance, expressed through Uruguay’s insertion into a post-1992 Rio Earth
Summit global environmental regime cannot be separated from neoliberal strategies to
privatize resources and utilities and to reorient production by incorporating “nature” as an
accumulation strategy.
The chapter also draws attention to the specific political projects and social processes,
also linked to neoliberal globalization, which contributed to the “greening” of Uruguayan
society over the past fifteen or twenty years, ultimately expressed through the official
marketing campaign promoting a “Natural” Uruguay. Also discussed are the ways ideologies
of sustainability have shaped politics at the state and municipal levels, as well as the rise of (at
times competing) environmental forms of knowledge production and civil society
organizations, specifically in the academic and NGO realms.
2.1 The Production of Nature in Uruguay
Traveling through Uruguay’s countryside, one discovers a bucolic landscape of rolling green
hills dotted with clumps of trees, intermittent streams and ever-present cattle, sheep and birds.
The nature of Uruguay, the Guaraní name meaning “river of the country of birds” (Trigo
1990: 9) does not conform to the dominant western romantic tropes of “third world” nature. 37
There are few forests and vegetation is thin, there are no “forest peoples” or indigenous
populations, and there is a general absence of large wild animals, the “charismatic
37 Guaraní is the language group of indigenous peoples that lived on the lands of present day Paraguay,
northeastern Argentina, southern Brazil and northern Uruguay. “Urú” means bird, “gua” represents place or
country, and “i” represents water, hence “river of the country of birds” refers to the Uruguay River, from which
the country took its name (Trigo 1990).
60

megafauna” (Smith 1996) that have become some of the developing world’s most iconic
symbols. 38
Uruguay’s 3.2 million people are over 90% urban based, with almost half of the
population settled in the capital and well over half in the Montevideo metropolitan area. The
rest is mostly concentrated in cities and villages of the interior, leaving vast expanses of
pasturelands throughout most of the territory’s 176,215 km², in which the occasional modern
day gaucho on horseback often symbolizes the lone human presence.
Uruguay has a temperate, subtropical and semi-humid climate, with four distinct
seasons and a median temperature of 16 degrees centigrade (Gazzano 2001). Annual rainfall
is more or less evenly distributed, with peaks during the spring and fall, and susceptibility to
occasional droughts. The landscape consists of plains, rolling hills and low mountain ranges.
Soils are typically shallow and rocky, with deeper soils along the six major aquatic basins
(cuencas) of the territory. Uruguay’s four major ecosystem types are prairie lands, forests,
wetlands, and coasts (Gazzano 2001; Pierri 2002: 292). The prairies cover 76% of the
territory and have long made up the productive core for the country’s economic development
(Altesor 2002: 57; Pierri 2002). Forests currently make up about 3.5% of the territory, and
estimates put pre-colonization forest coverage at 6-7% (Pierri 2002: 293). Wetlands cover
about 4% of Uruguay’s territory, hosting a rich range of biodiversity, with 680 km of
coastline between the River Plate estuary in the south and the Atlantic Ocean to the east
(Pierri 2002: 294). Hydrological resources are dense in Uruguay, including vast superficial
and subterranean aquifers (Anido et al 2000).
Despite the relative lack of development, Uruguay’s landscape is socially mediated
and has been “produced” historically (Smith 1996) and in relation to the international
38 Some charismatic megafauna do exist and have been promoted as eco-tourist attractions in recent years. These
include marine life such as whales, seals, and sea turtles, and the ostrich-like Ñandú that roam the country
alongside domesticated cattle and sheep.
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capitalist division of production (Coronil 1997). Prior to colonization, Uruguay was sparsely
populated by Charrúa Indians and other semi-nomadic indigenous peoples. In the seventeenth
century, European colonists introduced cattle grazing (Achkar et al 1999: 22). In 1780 the
first meat salting industry was established, replacing leather as the principal commercialized
product, with incipient forms of agriculture directed towards the internal market. Cattle
grazing expanded after 1860 as once-endemic civil wars diminished, bringing about relative
political stability in the countryside. By the end of that decade the introduction of sheep
modernized and capitalized Uruguay’s livestock farming (agropecuario) system, with wool
overtaking leather and beef as the primary export commodity by the 1880’s (Achkar et al
1999). The introduction of hoofed sheep significantly altered the prairie ecosystem, which
had already lost its 1.5-meter grasses to cattle grazing (Panario et al 2000: 76).
Technological innovations further modernized the production and commercialization
of the livestock farming system. The introduction of meat packing industries in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, financed by British and North American capital, as
well as the British-financed construction of a railway system during the same period
established Uruguay’s place in the international division of production as a peripheral beef,
leather, and wool exporter to the world’s core markets (Achkar et al 1999: 30-31; Coronil
1997: 61). The countryside was fenced off in the 1880s normalizing rural property and
livestock rights, and effectively provoking the “domestication” of the once libertine gaucho
horsemen. Former gauchos became ranch hands or peons, and were forced to settle in the
marginal “rat villages” (pueblos de ratas) along the edges of large estancia ranches (Achkar et
al 1999: 31). Agriculture in Uruguay has always played a secondary role, with a few crops
oriented to the internal market until the late twentieth century when commercialized crops
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were subjected to green revolution technologies. This technological change facilitated the
concentration of farms, increased yields and supported a burgeoning export industry.
Uruguay’s basic productive orientation has remained more or less intact, however, established
nearly 400 years ago as a “giant ranch looking out to the sea” (Achkar et al 1999: 34).
The system began stagnating by the mid-twentieth century, coinciding with the eclipse
of the import-substitution industrialization (ISI) model, as was the case throughout most of
Latin America. The ISI period in Latin America followed the global economic depression of
the 1930s, restructuring economies toward state-led, inward-oriented industrialization and the
provisioning of domestic consumer markets, a process promoted in the postwar period by the
United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC, or CEPAL; Canak 1989;
Perrault and Martin 2005). Industrialization was still dependent on foreign capital inputs,
however, fueling trade deficits exacerbated by the influx of petrodollars in the 1970s and
leading to the regional debt crisis and hyperinflation of the 1980s, known as Latin America’s
“lost decade” of development (Canak 1989; Edelman 1999; Gledhill 1995). Latin America’s
debt crisis and its dependence on newly restricted private bank credits led the economies of
the region to turn to the IMF and the World Bank for desperately needed loans. Structural
Adjustment Programs (SAPs) were imposed as loan conditions, introducing an era of
neocolonial and neoliberal economic policies. The subsequent economic and state
“adjustment” or restructuring mandated the radical reduction of the state’s role in welfare
provisioning, social spending, public sector employment and public subsidies; currency
devaluations and fixed exchange rates, interest rate liberalization and fiscal discipline; wage
restrictions and labor “flexibility”; greater foreign investment and imports access through
reduced tariffs, privatization and open markets; and the export of mono-cultivated agriculture,
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aw materials and primary manufacturing goods (Canak 1989; Edelman 1999: 83-84;
Radcliffe 2005).
The military dictatorship (1973-85) pushed the first wave of neoliberal reforms in
Uruguay, as elsewhere in the Southern Cone (cf. Ferradás 1998; Paley 2001). The second
wave occurred in the early 1990s through the broad privatization agenda of the Lacalle
administration (Blanco Party, 1989-1994) and Uruguay’s incorporation into the MERCOSUR
regional trade bloc, though neoliberal reforms were contested and repeatedly overturned by a
series of popular referenda and plebiscites (cf. Santos et al 2006). Arguably, the Vázquez
administration (Frente Amplio, 2004-09) is overseeing the third wave of neoliberal reforms.
Promoted by a political force historically and ideologically opposed to neoliberalism, and
thereby neutralizing large sections of the FA’s political base, reforms will most likely have a
stronger chance of success. 39
The basis of the Uruguayan agro-productive system remains livestock, but the past
four decades in Uruguay have witnessed the internationalization of the agro-export economy,
more dependant than ever on fluctuating world markets. The “finance bourgeoisie”
eventually gained hegemony over the large landowners that previously dominated Uruguayan
political economy (Achkar et al 1999: 38). Landholdings became concentrated and soils were
increasingly degraded through the application and abuse of green revolution technologies and
chemical inputs. Consequently, 41% of rural producers disappeared from 1961 to 1995 and
the rural population was reduced from 19% in 1963 to 9.2% in 1996 (Achkar et al 1999: 47-
54). Uruguay’s deepening poverty and “rural exodus,” similar to the effects of the free market
39 This assessment is far from commonplace among Uruguayan scholars and analysts. Some attribute more
radical reformist goals for the Vázquez government, within the context of a regional rise of Left nationalist
governments. Others argue Vázquez is pursuing more of a “Third Way” social democracy, reminiscent of the
early years of Tony Blair’s British administration. See Chapter 6 for more discussion of the Vázquez
administration in relation to neoliberalism and the environment.
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onslaught on other Latin American countries (cf. Edelman 1999; Gledhill 1995), is largely
responsible for the presently de-populated countryside. Rural poverty reached critical levels
in recent years, provoking migration to cities and the explosive growth of squatter settlements
(Corboz 2005).
2.1.1 “Cement triumphs”: The Modern Disciplining of Nature (1860-1930)
With the progressive capitalization of the countryside during the second half of the nineteenth
century, an emerging mercantile, financial and landholding-based bourgeoisie began to
eclipse the power of the rural caudillo military strongmen and the Catholic Church, who
together had wielded political power and cultural influence in Uruguay and across Latin
America since independence (Barrán 1990: 21; Ferradás 1998: 37-38; Wolf and Hansen
1972). Profound demographic, technological, economic, political and social transformations
were underway during this period of Uruguayan modernization, including massive
immigration from Europe, increased class stratification, the introduction of sheep livestock,
the fencing of rural lands, the introduction of the railroad and the increasing cultural
valorization of beef (Barrán 1990: 15-16). This modernizing period was followed by a project
of nationalist integration in the early part of the twentieth century, culminating in the
consolidation of the modern Uruguayan state and national identity by 1930 (Achugar and
Caetano 1992; Caetano 1998).
National identity consolidated around a series of foundational myths of
exceptionalism, promoting Uruguay as the “model Republic” and the “Switzerland of South
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America,” with Montevideo the “Athens of the River Plate.” According to Perelli and Rial
(1986: 22-27), the foundational myths of a democratic and “hyper-integrated” Uruguay
include the myth of averageness (a centralized state promotes security and the mesocratic
cultural values of the middle class); differentiation (Uruguay is different from other Latin
American countries due to its cosmopolitan European origins and political stability, but also
superior to Europe because of its egalitarianism and lack of violence); consensus (order and
respect for the law ensure a highly democratic society); and a cultured population (highly
educated and “civilized”). These foundational myths have structured national identity since
the early twentieth century, and are important in light of the meanings attributed to subsequent
political and economic transformations.
Historian José Pedro Barrán (1990) argues the years 1860-1920 represented the
entrenchment of a new class power. This occurred by means of a hegemonic project to forge
a new modern “sensibility” that would discipline the masses through subtle forms of social
control. Barrán, echoing Sarmiento’s (1961 [1845]) well-known formulation, frames this as a
secular project of self-identified representatives of “civilization” aiming to transform and
convert the lingering vestiges of “barbarism.” A similar movement characterized the Liberal
reformers of Argentina, who sought to “pacify” the countryside (of Indians and gauchos),
consolidate the nation through European immigration and the “whitening” of the population,
and turn to export agriculture as a vehicle of modernization (cf. Ferradás 1998: 44; Guy and
Sheridan 1998; Schelling 2000).
In Uruguay, rural capitalists, physicians, educators and family fathers, grounded in
principles of rationality and positivist science, sought to eradicate what they perceived as the
“backward” popular tendencies of violence, play and leisure. The new social order would
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domesticate human nature through the disciplining of sexuality, bodies and the popular
classes (Barrán 1990: 74). Early twentieth-century hygienist discourses warned of the
disease, promiscuity and criminality portrayed as rampant in popular housing such as the
crowded conventillos of central Montevideo (Rodríguez Villamil 1996: 94). Uruguayan
physicians and social legislators worked within a broader context of a Latin American
higienismo that promoted health as the key to progress and social change by embracing the
ideological trinity of hygiene, health, and morality (cf. Lavrin 1995).
Montevideo’s position as Uruguay’s political, economic, and demographic core
follows the Spanish colonialist pattern of settlement (Wolf and Hansen 1972: 22), and the city
increasingly urbanized during this period. Urbanization was fueled by industrial expansion
that promoted rural to urban migration, as well as a foreign wave of 120,000 European
immigrants mostly from Spain, Italy, and Eastern Europe during the twenties, doubling
Montevideo’s size from 1908-1930 (Jacob 1999: 76). Concrete structures and paved roads
and sidewalks dominated the expanding built environment, fomenting the disappearance of
green and undeveloped spaces, weeds and semi-wild animals. Contact with nature, promoted
through a renewed emphasis on health, hygiene and the virtues of “fresh air” (Rodríguez
Villamil 1996) nevertheless became more regulated, with internal gardens providing a
disciplined and studied gaze of nature’s offerings (Barrán 1990: 17).
The valorization of urban culture as the pinnacle of civilization turned the countryside
into the “last refuge of barbarism” (Barrán 1990: 18). Sporadic civil wars until the end of the
nineteenth century between the Colorado and Blanco political factions offered proof of the
dangerous potentials of human barbarism. The fencing of the countryside and the
reorganization of production guided by expert management represented the triumph of
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science, rationality and order, tied to the economic and political power of newly formed
landholders associations such as the Federación Rural and the Asociación Rural (Barrán 1990;
Finch 2005).
Rural dwellers were considered by the elite to be more backward, barbarous, and
distanced from the urban civilized core, and therefore closer to nature. The “disorder of the
countryside” was to be disciplined through the toils of agriculture, formal public education
and indoctrination through the Church (Barrán 1990: 87). The President of the Asociación
Rural wrote in 1873 that primary education would allow the gaucho to leave his “shack” and
emerge from his “Arab condition,” awakening the good work habits that would guarantee
property (Barrán 1990: 90). Meanwhile José Pedro Varela, the founder of the modern public
school system, wrote in 1865 that the “inhabitant of the countryside who is currently stupefied
through idleness” and “crass ignorance” would have “his savage habits” civilized once he
learned to read and write (Barrán 1990: 91).
The modernizing reforms of Colorado President José Batlle y Ordóñez (1903-1907,
1911-1915) fully institutionalized the civilizing agenda. Batllismo consisted of a radical
reformism that anticipated or co-opted Uruguay’s nascent working class movements. Batlle
promoted major advances in infrastructure, and he nationalized much of the industrial and
banking sectors, promoting a partial sovereignty from decades of British economic dominance
(Finch 2005). Other reforms included progressive workers’ and women’s rights, the
expansion of the vote and other legal and electoral reforms, a radical secularism, and social
legislation that instituted a secular moral batllismo to replace the moral teachings of the
Church (Caetano 1998; Rama 1972).
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The disciplining of human nature during the modern period was tied to the disciplining
and control over biophysical nature. Rural dwellers that lived closer to biophysical nature
were thought of by the new elite as inherently susceptible to the temptations and weaknesses
of human nature. Efforts to promote public hygiene translated to the “cleansing” of nature
from city spaces as well, as suggested in the elimination of weeds and green spaces and the
careful tending of geometric urban gardens.
In the early twentieth century, urban planners, drawing on discourses of hygiene and
modernization, projected and built the coastal rambla that would encircle Montevideo in a
concrete ring of roads and sidewalks. Pre-existing settlements, considered vestiges of
colonialism and tradition, were razed and relocated to make room for Montevideo’s “window
to the world,” modeled after the European cities of Nice, Marseille, Barcelona and Hamburg
(Ántola and Ponte 2000: 236). A 1930 newspaper editorialized: “The cement of the new
Rambla kills, at once, the virus of tradition and the bacillus of the anachronistic sublet.
Cement triumphs. Owner and master of the new peoples, it dominates us with its solid
impulse. It takes with it twisted alleys, it erases them with its instant whiteness and over its
ruins it leaves constructed that rambla that will offer the traveler from the first moment of
impression the true modern capital” (Ántola and Ponte 2000: 238). 40
The general valorization
of urban over rural space, with the corresponding beliefs about the city’s civilizing potential
through order and rationality contrasted to the countryside’s tendencies (and its vestiges in the
city itself) of irrational violence, ignorance and idleness.
40 From the Diario del Plata, Montevideo, October 16, 1930 (cited in Ántola and Ponte 2000). The original: “El
cemento de la nueva Rambla mata, así, a un tiempo mismo el virus de la tradición y el bacilo de la subarra
anacrónica. El cemento triunfa. Dueño y señor de los nuevos pueblos, nos domina con su impulso sólido. Se
lleva por delante las callejuelas retorcidas, las borra con su blancura instantánea y sobre las ruinas deja
construida esa rambla que ofrecerá al viajero desde el primer momento la impresión de la verdadera capital
moderna”.
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Despite the elite valorization of the modern/urban over the traditional/rural, its own
power has long been based in rural landholdings and in the livestock economy. Indeed,
Uruguayans of various stripes have long identified with this livestock foundation despite the
“paradox” of being an overwhelmingly urban country (Panario et al 2000: 22). This
polarization of “town and country,” derived from Mediterranean cultural influence established
during Latin America’s colonial period, consists of the control and management of land and
countryside by urban-based elites (Wolf and Hansen 1972: 22).
Regardless of the “social magnetism” of the town over the countryside (Wolf and
Hansen 1972: 22), however, urban Uruguayans have deep real and symbolic ties to the latter,
referred to as “el campo.” Beyond Montevideo’s downtown core, middle and working class
households often have yards with fruit trees or grape vine parras providing shade for mate
drinking and socializing. Wealthy and middle class residents often have direct ties to the
campo through rural estancias, where they either supervise landholdings and livestock, or use
them as a resting and recreational outlet. The countryside permeates social consciousness and
self-conceptualizations to a greater extent than is typical of urban dwellers in the United
States, for instance, and it usually takes the form of “culturing” the land through
anthropogenic interventions in agriculture, horticulture, viniculture, or the livestock tradition.
This urban-campo paradox is reflected through the fascination of urban writers with the
countryside, fueling a rich literature of the latter half of the nineteenth and first half of the
twentieth centuries that revisited themes of small village rural life, the civil wars of the
expansive plains, or the semi-nomadic lives of the gauchos of pre-fenced Uruguay. The
literature ranges from the romantic and celebratory to a morbid and distanced fascination with
brutal and violent depictions of life in the campo (Elissade 1968; Hudson 2002 [1885]). As
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anthropologist and historian Daniel Vidart (1968: 353) writes: “In our country, for a long time
and in a wide range of public opinion, rural reality was considered the only dignified subject
to be described and interpreted by a true national literature.”
Romantic portrayals of an arcadian past perhaps represent the country’s definitive
entrance into modernity. The triumphant arrival of civilization came at a cost, perceived of as
the loss of a more libertine “primordial” essence. As Hudson wrote (2002 [1885]: 185-186):
“We had only to conquer Nature, find out her secrets, make her our obedient slave, then the
earth would be Eden, and every man Adam and every woman Eve. We are still marching
bravely on, conquering Nature, but how weary and sad we are getting!”
In Uruguay, similar to processes in Argentina (Ferradás 1998: 38), the Charrúa
Indians, once denigrated as primitive and subjected to campaigns of extermination, were later
portrayed as embodying a rebellious fighting “spirit” somehow diffused to all citizens. The
gauchos, once denigrated as anarchic vestiges of a barbarous past, were later celebrated for
the very freedom the elite worked so hard to suppress. Even the bloody civil wars of the
nineteenth century became noble ventures fought through the courage and honor of men for
whom there was more to life than thrift and moral economy. In many ways this barbarous
past, now safely tucked away in memory, became one of the bases for the consolidation of a
unified national identity.
The “drama of the countryside” thus played a crucial part in the forging of modern
national identity even as Montevideo continued to grow and the policies and legacy of Batlle
y Ordóñez were to essentially turn its back to the countryside and its rural masses. Uruguay
grew and developed looking both inward across its vast plains and outward to sea, writes
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cultural critic Abril Trigo (1990: 256), with the prairies representing the “anarchic liberty of
barbarism” and the port representing the “legislated order of civilization.”
With the economic, social and political crisis since the late 1950s and 1960s, Uruguay
gradually lost its status as South America’s model Republic, the “mirror of Europeans and
envy of Americans” (Trigo 1990: 159). The military dictatorship instituted liberal economic
reforms and initiated the slow dismantling of the welfare state over the next several decades.
While maintaining a productive base in the livestock industry, finance and services partially
eclipsed livestock and manufacturing in their contributions to the gross national product. As
tourism gained central importance for the economy, becoming the largest foreign currency
earner in the 1990s, the Uruguayan business and political elite initiated a project of place
promotion centered on the marketing of the country’s beaches and countryside under the
product slogan “Uruguay Natural.” Uruguay, according to this project, would become a
service center of regional and global finance, conferences, tourism, and a general “gateway to
Mercosur” (Campomar and Andersen 1999; Renfrew 2004b).
Ecology is of central importance in the Uruguay Natural campaign for attracting
foreign investors and travelers. The countryside, once considered hostile and threatening or
culturally backward and primitive, has been re-presented as an arcadia of beautiful landscapes
and quaint traditions, a natural Eden for the ecologically sensible. Montevideo’s rambla, once
lauded as civilization’s concrete triumph over nature, is recoded as a gateway to the urban
beaches and ecological splendor of the city and country’s coast (Remedi 2005). This
revalorization of the natural has coincided with rising forms of “green” consciousness,
reflecting broader socio-political processes. From the pervasive negative or distanced images
of the past century and a half, the natural has awakened a renewed importance in present day
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Uruguay. Romantic portrayals of rural nature have resurfaced, but are this time emptied of
their wild, anarchic or “barbarous” character. Instead, nature is presented in terms of human
intervention and management (Franklin et al 2000), or as a packaged commodity to be
“consumed” (Escobar 1999).
2.2 Uruguay Natural. The Production of Neoliberal Nature
One year after the return of democracy, the Punta del Este resort city hosted the Uruguay
Round of GATT trade negotiations (1986-1994), initiating a “new phase in world trading
history within a new era of neoliberal globalization” (Hartwick and Peet 2003: 191). With the
end of the Cold War, Uruguayan liberal democracy was “freed from the specter of
communism,” laying the path for the Lacalle administration’s aggressive neoliberal agenda
within a global context in which the neoliberal “Washington Consensus” achieved political
and ideological hegemony. In 1990, the Treaty of Asunción established the MERCOSUR
regional trade bloc between Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay, with the goals of
reducing tariffs between member countries, stimulating regional and inter-bloc economic
exchange and growth, and providing a geopolitical counterweight to the ascendant North
American, European and East Asian economic forces (Ferradás 1998: 54).
Neoliberalism’s triumph in Latin America coincided with another multilateral
initiative of global governance: the 1992 United Nations Conference on the Environment and
Development, or the Rio Earth Summit. There, the concept of “sustainable development”
went mainstream and global in an attempt to reconcile the countervailing forces of economic
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development and environmental degradation, and to stave off the critiques of an increasingly
powerful international environmental movement. Indeed, as Perrault and Martin (2005: 193)
argue, neoliberalism and environmentalism have become the “political basis of post-Fordist
social regulation.” New forms of environmental governance through resource and capital
accumulation provide opportunities for capitalist expansion, while the cost crisis or second
contradiction of capitalism undermines the productive system from within, and environmental
social movements provide some of neoliberalism’s most serious ideological challenges (Luke
2006; O’Connor 1994; Perrault and Martin 2005).
Neoliberalism as an “environmental project” manages nature through its
commodification, promoting genetic engineering and bioprospecting, pollution trading, and
the extended privatization of natural resources (McCarthy and Prudham 2004: 277). Nature is
reframed as biodiversity and as a productive force (Hayden 2003: 49, 53), and ecology
becomes a key accumulation strategy of neoliberalism through “primitive accumulation” (i.e.
privatization). This “accumulation by dispossession” involves the expansion of capital “by
incorporating resources, peoples, activities, and lands that hitherto were managed, organized
and produced under social relations other than capitalist ones” (Swyngedouw 2005: 82; see
also Harvey 2003). The widespread privatization of water resources and utilities is a case in
point, setting off “water wars” around the world, most notably in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and
through the successful 2004 water referendum in Uruguay that constitutionally protected
water resources from privatization (Castro 2005; Grosse et al 2006; Johnston 2003; Santos et
al 2006).
The progressive capitalization of “life itself” through the incorporation of nature
(“natural capital”) and people (“human resources”) as “constitutive elements of wealth,” as
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well as emerging forms of human engineered “technonature” have fundamentally altered
social relations, institutions and forms of production across the world (Coronil 2000; Escobar
1999; Haraway 1991; Rose 2001). Timothy Luke (1995: 67) describes this process as
“environmentalization”: “As biological existence was refracted through economic, political,
and technological existence, ‘the facts of life’ passed into fields of control for eco-knowledge
and spheres of intervention for geo-power.” Nations are now more reliant on “naturedependant
activities” such as natural resources and eco-tourism to provide comparative
advantage in a global marketplace (Coronil 2000: 363). The nation-state itself is becoming
redefined and reorganized to facilitate market access and guarantees.
How then are these processes manifested in Uruguay? Specifically, how are nature,
the economy, the state, and society intertwined and co-produced through neoliberal nature?
The Uruguayan society as of the late 1990s underwent a hegemonic process of “representation”
(King 1996) through a reorientation of economic strategy and national identity
around the marketing slogan, “Uruguay Natural,” which for the past few years has adorned
taxicabs, billboards, television ads, national commercial products, and tourism brochures.
Brochures promoting foreign tourism in Uruguay in 2002 referred to the country alternately as
a “green retreat,” a “freshwater paradise,” and a “natural miracle.” Boasting of Uruguay’s
sixth-place ranking in the 2002 World Sustainability Index, one English-language brochure
characterized Uruguay as: “A country with a great diversity of sceneries, combining in perfect
equilibrium the protection of the environment with the social needs for development of its
inhabitants, a place where peace and tranquility reign supreme.”
As the “natural country” slogan developed into an “export line” (MVOTMA 2001),
various forms of eco-tourism were promoted through the “green marketing” of Uruguay’s
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eaches and coastline; seal, whale, and bird watching; rural estancias; thermal bath resorts
along the western litoral; and fishing or tours of interior rivers, streams, and marshes (see
Figure 3).
Figure 3. Eco-Turismo. Uruguay Natural campaign brochure promoting eco-tourism.
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The redefinition of Uruguayan nationhood is largely a political response to regional
and global conditions. Neoliberal economic restructuring steered the economy away from
industrial production and towards a regional repositioning that included a campaign of place
promotion to distinguish Uruguay as the administrative capital of Mercosur, and a regional
center of banking, conferences, tourism, and other services (Renfrew 2004b). The 2001
Argentine economic collapse and the regional and national recessions have undermined the
“new Uruguay” political project, however. The coming to power of the Frente Amplio was
largely based on a platform of renewed classic state-led production coupled with foreign
investment and other key neoliberal policies, reflecting a resurgence of a modernist-era
national identity and a quest for sovereignty through left nationalism (Renfrew 2004a).
2.2.1 Sustaining Development
The Uruguay Natural campaign responds to a United Nations-inspired form of “sustainable
development.” This is the broad discourse that has its origins in the perceived crisis of nature
and development as recognized at the 1972 Stockholm UN Conference on the Environment,
followed by the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth publication, the 1986 Our Common Future
publication, and finally the 1987 Brundtland Commission Report (of the World Commission
for Environment and Development). The Brundtland Report coined and defined “sustainable
development” as development “that meets the needs of the present without compromising the
ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (cf. Sachs 1999).
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The series of UN Conventions, reports, and documents that followed set out a
blueprint and system of international regulation of environmental problems, controlling the
production and distribution of chemicals, waste, toxins, and emissions, and promoting the
protection of ecosystems, biodiversity, and the ecological commons through conservation
programs. An international model of “sustainability” and environmental protection, informed
by the expert knowledge of Northern-based scientists and technocrats, became the de-facto
model for the governance of peoples and resources around the world (Escobar 1996). With
the mandated reduction of state powers, NGOs were positioned as the primary vehicles of
environmental governance. In South America, environmental, development, and other NGOs,
often directly linked to multilateral institutions and Northern funding agencies, experienced an
explosive growth during the post-dictatorship period of the mid-1980s, filling the void of the
retreating welfare state (Ferradás 1996: 87). By the 1990s, many NGOs directly incorporated
the goals of sustainable development.
Critics have linked the discourse and ideology of sustainable development to a project
of continued economic growth serving as damage control for the concerns of environmental
groups and citizens over environmental degradation (Escobar 1996; Hartwick and Peet 2003).
As Timothy Luke argues (2006), the system could be better defined as one of “sustainable
degradation.” Ecological degradation is “lessoned but never stopped”: “[I]t is instead
measured, monitored, and manipulated within certain tolerances” through strategies and
systems of environmental governance (Luke 2006: 100). This version of sustainability has
become the canonical and institutionalized Uruguayan model of environmental management,
or green governance.
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As sustainability becomes “mainstreamed,” incorporated into the agendas of global
multilateral institutions such as the World Bank, IMF and WTO, it turns into “the effects that
the majority of people can be persuaded to find tolerable, as the necessary environmental
consequences of an even more necessary growth process” (Hartwick and Peet 2003: 209).
Problems of development in the South are now largely recast as ecological, managed through
new environment ministries and expert regimes (Ferradás 1998: 11). Critics have argued that
big business interests “captured” the Rio Earth Summit, inserting business-friendly principles
in the definition and goals of sustainable development (Fortun 2001: 327). Hartwick and
Peet concur that sustainability is eminently compatible with neoliberal policies:
“Sustainability in this sense has a number of meanings that range from keeping growth going
using state intervention, through swapping pollution rights in the market, to minimizing
pollution effects so that public concern does not result in organized political action
(unorganized action can be dismissed as deranged anarchism).” In addition to a strategy of
using “appealing terms” and conceptual devices, the authors note a second strategy involving,
“a displacement of regulatory power upward to unelected and only partially responsible global
governance institutions. These relieve pressure on nation-states and provide the thin
regulatory context for the smooth operation of global capitalism” (Hartwick and Peet 2003:
209).
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2.2.2 “The Uruguay we have and think we have”: Constructing Sustainability
The instituting of a hegemonic sustainable development model that uses nature as a vehicle
and foil for economic development is made clear in Uruguay in the government’s report to the
Johannesburg 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development. The report details the state
of the environment, the country’s compliance with international treaties and protocols and its
general progress in the decade following the 1992 Rio Earth Summit (MVOTMA 2002). The
colorful document is full of beautiful pictures of natural areas in Uruguay, its flora and fauna,
rolling hills and valleys, and remote ocean beaches. Absent are pictures of urban industrial
pollution, littered city streets and lots, clandestine toxic dumps, garbage-strewn rivers or the
poverty and social suffering found in Uruguay’s asentamientos. The four pictures selected for
the cover of the report depict a green partially forested valley, a pristine river environment, a
cow peacefully grazing, and an empty and seductive beach.
Parts of the Johannesburg environmental report are borrowed directly from Uruguay.
Open for Growth, a book issued by the Uruguay XXI Investment and Export Promotion
Agency (Campomar and Andersen 1999). Uruguay XXI is a government-funded agency that
works with private banks and interests in promoting the “Uruguay Image” abroad in order to
“facilitate the internationalization of the economy” and to set up the country as a “gateway to
Mercosur.” The book’s opening lines read: “Uruguay is a phenomenon among emerging
markets in Latin America. In the last two decades, this small, export-driven economy has
come back from economic stagnation to become one of the most politically, economically,
socially and legally stable countries in Latin America with one of the most open investment
environments” (Campomar and Andersen 1999: 1). Published on the eve of the latest
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ecession, the book states: “In recent years, Uruguay has been reaping the rewards of its
structural and economic reform.” While attributing recent economic success to the
liberalization of the economy, the authors nevertheless signal as “impressive” what are in fact
legacies of social democratic reforms that led to “one of the highest standards of living in
Latin America,” “European-style social security,” one of the most equitable distributions of
wealth in the region, and high levels of education and literacy that guarantee a “highly
educated and skilled workforce” (Campomar and Andersen 1999: 2; see also Edelman 1999:
84).
The glowing book reproduces the trope of Uruguay as the “Switzerland of South
America” (Campomar and Andersen 1999: 4). The book expands on the European analogy,
however, by predicting that twenty-first century Uruguay is “poised to become a hybrid of
Luxembourg and Brussels, acting as an administrative and service centre, not only for
Mercosur but for the rest of South America, and a springboard from which to access world
markets” (Campomar and Andersen 1999: 7). The marketing book states the following of
Uruguay’s environment:
With a small population and relatively little heavy manufacturing industry, Uruguay is
not faced with the pollution problems of many other Latin American countries.
Nevertheless, environmental protection is important and legislation on environmental
concerns is constantly being updated and improved. The principal environmental
concerns for Uruguay are the industrial and urban pollution of water and soil
(Campomar and Andersen 1999: 9).
The Johannesburg report also discusses the institutional infrastructure and legal frameworks
devised to protect the environment, without providing information of the levels of industrial
pollution found in Uruguay, or an evaluation of the actual controls of emitted waste. In
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contrast to the marketing book, the report does not acknowledge industrial pollution as a
serious environmental issue, and it makes no mention of heavy metal contamination even
though the report was issued a year after the widespread lead discoveries. It goes on to
categorically declare that Uruguay “does not suffer sudden and spectacular [environmental]
catastrophes” (MVOTMA 2002).
Uruguay’s international image becomes sheltered from scrutiny as the environmental
indicators it provides to the international community affect international ratings and ranking
systems such as the World Sustainability Index. The government hides behind the glossy
pictures and greened images of a bucolic landscape and enviable sceneries, veiling and
ignoring other realities.
Environmentalists have pointed out the paradoxical contrasts between the apparently
pristine ecological conditions of Uruguay and its serious but often invisible environmental
hazards, with the former making it possible to veil the existence of the latter. 41
Inés Gazzano
(2001: 267), writing around the time of the Johannesburg report and the Open for Growth
book, contrasts the Uruguay “we think we have” versus the Uruguay “that we have”:
That which we think we have is a country of low population density that suggests a
low distribution of inhabitants per surface area, one of nonexistent environmental
problems, one of natural prairies and waterways extended throughout the territory that
form the basis of its livestock system, with forests, wetlands and coasts that add a
richness of ecosystems and landscapes, etc. Meanwhile, the Uruguay that we have is a
country with a highly urban population concentrated in cities, with several
contaminated waterways, soil erosion, with environmental problems, a country that
has not monitored its biodiversity (in spite of its reduced surface area), a country with
a high rate of environmental uncertainty due to a lack of data, and the consequent
impossibility of interpreting and modifying tendencies. In a parallel and paradoxical
way, there appears to be a growing environmental preoccupation among the
population, together with the international promotion of Uruguay as a “natural
country.”
41 See Chapter 6 for further discussion of industrial “green veiling.”
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Despite the ubiquitous chemical contamination of the country’s lands, water and air; the
production, according to MVOTMA figures, of over two million tons of industrial waste per
year with no facility yet set up to manage it (El Observador, November 6, 2001); and the
various environmental conflicts and disasters that have afflicted the country in recent years,
Uruguay improved on its 2002 position of sixth place to become number three in the world
sustainability ranking of 2004, behind only Finland and Norway (La República, January 25,
2005). 42 The paradox of coexisting urban environmental degradation with internationally
lauded environmental indicators underscores the uneven nature of development and profound
differences in ways of perceiving and measuring the environment. The Sustainability Index
takes into account a broad-based, macro view of environmental indicators, rather than
accounting for the uneven distribution of environmental hazards and risks within cities and
regions. It also projects site-specific environmental conditions based on a western-centered
model of environmental desirability to the rest of the world and across heterogeneous
ecological conditions. The Uruguayan government seized on the improved ranking and
offered it as proof that they were on the right environmental path. The Johannesburg 2002
report declares the Sustainability ranking as reflective of Uruguay’s “efficiency and proactive
stance in confronting new necessities and challenges in the environmental arena” since the
Rio Earth Summit of 1992 (MVOTMA 2002: 1).
The Sustainability Index methodology fails to take into consideration environmental
problems that are relevant to the Uruguayan context, including the progressive loss of
42 The ranking was presented at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and is based on a quantitative
system developed by Yale and Columbia University researchers that ranks 146 countries on their “sustainability”
according to water and air quality and a list of 75 environmental and health indicators (Barringer 2005).
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wetlands, the fragmentation of ecosystems, the distribution of heavy metals and lead
contamination, soil erosion, low levels of recycling, and the ineffectiveness of environmental
regulations (Caffera 2004; Evia 2002). Furthermore, annual forestation rates of 0.25% helped
Uruguay boost its position in the ranking even though it was through the commercial planting
of exotic species (Evia 2002). According to a broad-based eco-systemic view, or one that
takes as a starting point what Wolfgang Sachs (1999) refers to as the “astronaut’s perspective”
on global environmentalism, higher rates of forestation in Uruguay may translate into more
“breathing lungs” for the globe, supposedly reducing global carbon emissions and fulfilling
the goals of the Kyoto treaty. Utilizing a different measuring method, the Worldwide Fund
for Nature (WWF) issued a report in 2001 signaling that Uruguay was the Latin American
country with the highest level of “consumption of natural resources,” consuming 100% more
than those disposable. Interestingly, Finland and Norway also headed the list of European
countries for highest consumption (El Observador 2001), suggesting at least that the World
Sustainability Index ranking rests on contested principles.
2.2.3 Uruguay’s “Pandora’s box” of Environmental Conflicts
Montevideo’s environmental problems are evident to anyone who lives or ventures beyond
the central and eastern sections of the city. The Pantanoso River borders the northwestern
edge of La Teja and together with the Miguelete River to the east, provides La Teja with a
spatial embrace of industrial and domestic waste and water-borne illnesses. A human
geography of squatter settlements follows the bands of these rivers, susceptible to flooding
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and the multiple poisons carried by the rivers. Leather tanneries along the Pantanoso shores
dump untreated wastewater into the river accumulating 160 metric tons of Chromium per year
(Muniz et al 2004: 1022). Both the Pantanoso and the Miguelete flow into Montevideo Bay,
leading to waters highly polluted with lead, chromium, mercury, copper and other heavy
metals (Muniz et al 2004: 1023). While lead levels in Montevideo Bay have increased
through urbanization, fuel combustion, urban sewage, marine traffic and the ANCAP oil
refinery, Muniz et al (2004: 1027) conclude in an environmental study that the “degree of
pollution is attributed to the lack of governmental control regarding anthropogenic inputs
rather than the magnitude of industrialization in Montevideo.” Concentrations of lead and
chromium in Montevideo Bay, they add, are the “highest reported for coastal sediments in this
part of the South Atlantic Ocean” (Muniz et al 2004b: 113).
All of the urban waterways of Montevideo face varying degrees of contamination.
Few national norms exist for solid and industrial waste disposal, there are no hazardous waste
or incinerator facilities in the country, and monitoring and enforcement of existing laws are
inadequate (Caffera 2004). Illegal garbage dumps are spread throughout Montevideo and
there are inadequate recycling facilities or programs for solid waste (IMM 2005). Soil
contamination through heavy metals and other chemicals remains a serious problem in
Montevideo and in cities of the interior.
Scientists and environmentalists have recognized soil erosion as one of the most
serious environmental problems of Uruguay’s countryside, with an inadequate monitoring
system (Gazzano 2001: 237). Nitrates and phosphates from fertilizers have contaminated
waterways across the country. The Santa Lucía River, the principal potable water source of
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Montevideo, is contaminated by 90% of the industries in Canelones Department dumping
directly in its basin, in addition to runoff from agricultural activity.
Green revolution technologies have resulted in widespread chemical inputs in
agriculture, with resulting contamination of soils and water (Panario et al 2000). Chemical
contamination through pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers is prevalent among citrus
production in the northwest, rice cultivation in the north and east, commercial forest
plantations throughout the territory, and transgenic soy and corn production in the south and
west, threatening the wetlands and aquifers and contributing to soil degradation (Achkar et al
2004).
The green revolution dovetailed with neoliberal reforms favoring large landholdings
and production consisting of heavy technological inputs, genetic seed imports, and agrotoxic
chemical use. Since bigger companies and landholders could afford these changes, in addition
to qualifying for international credits and loans, the effects were to squeeze out small and
medium enterprises (see also Collier 1999; Goodman and Watts 1997). As the prices of many
agricultural products fell during the 1990s, several small enterprises went bankrupt. This was
coupled with the introduction of canned, processed and imported foods, leading to the loss of
production and the rural exodus to the cities described above (Panario et al 2000). Neoliberal
policies favor mono-cultivation and export agriculture, displacing local subsistence needs and
and increasing dependence on foreign inputs and imports. A spike in foreign acquisitions of
landholdings in Uruguay has accompanied these policies, tied in particular to commercial
crops and the commercial forest industry.
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While the economic crisis temporarily diminished industrial emissions, it also served
to weaken regulatory controls and foment a desire for production at any cost. 43
Scientists and
regulators in Uruguay scramble to react to environmental problems rather than fomenting
research and a thorough evaluation of environmental risks. As geologist and environmentalist
Daniel Panario stated in a media interview, the environment is a “Pandora’s box” where “the
gravest problem is the last one we’ve studied” (Amorín 2003).
2.3 Uruguay (Un)Natural: The “Greening” of Society
2.3.1 Vignette: The Miguelete River
As a child and adolescent frequently visiting my family in Uruguay, I would pass by bus daily
over the bridge on Agraciada Avenue that crosses the Miguelete River fifteen or twenty
blocks from my grandmother’s home in Nuevo Paris, not too far from La Teja. Over the
years and throughout the period of my fieldwork, I would make a regular habit of walking to
the grandiose turn-of-the-century Prado park where I would play soccer with friends in one its
many green and shaded spaces, or go for a jog on a circular route that would take me along
each side of the Miguelete’s banks. In years long past, when the Prado neighborhood was
filled with bourgeois mansions and Parisian-style elegance, ladies with parasols would drift
down the meandering river in small boats and children would fish and swim in its waters.
43 According to documents obtained from the Industrial Emissions Unit of the IMM, heavy metals emissions to
urban waterways peaked during the late 1990s, followed by a precipitous drop during the economic crisis of
2001-2003, and a slight increase in 2004, coinciding with the economic recovery.
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The Miguelete I know, however, has always been a frightening sight. I remember it
full of garbage, raw sewage and toxic industrial sludge. On several occasions, particularly in
the 1980s, I would see dead and bloated dogs or cats, and once even a horse, slowly floating
through the sludge and creating small dams of refuse. I found the stench of the river
unbearable at times. Depending on the direction of the wind, I would have to hold my breath
even as I was jogging, or cover up my mouth and nose with my shirt to ward off nausea. I
would often express my shock of the state of the river to friends or neighbors, who never
seemed overly concerned.
Sometime in the mid 1990s, I was jogging on my regular route and came upon the
Agraciada bridge where the river narrows and a small spillway provokes the build up of
refuse, often bringing the emitted smell to its most intense level. This was one of those days
on an otherwise pleasant afternoon. There were few people in the park and there were plenty
of spaces to play, sit, or take part in the Uruguayan ritual of mate drinking. As I quickened
my pace to get around this bend I ran past a family sitting comfortably on the grass, drinking
mate and enjoying a quiet picnic. They appeared oblivious to the stench that enveloped them,
unbothered to find a “better” spot just a few meters away.
This scenario would now be more difficult to encounter, as people have become more
attuned to garbage and pollution. There is now a greater popular recognition of the pollution
and filth of the Miguelete. As the La Teja murga Diablos Verdes satirized in the 2002
Carnaval, referring to a day when Uruguay is subjected to chemical warfare: “If they threaten
with bacteria/ we’ll send them a piece of shit/ from the River Miguelete.” 44
People are
collectively recognizing the river as unacceptably dirty. The ways they see and smell it are
now coded as negative, and are in part a response, I argue, to the dissemination of an
44 “Si amenazan con bacterias/ les mandamos un sorrete/ del Arroyo Miguelete”
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environmental sensibility in recent years. This change in sensory perception is partially
responsible for spurring the city to action. The river’s association in recent years with the
mushrooming human corridor of squatter settlements has probably afforded the river a
symbolic pollution and an avoidance impulse for the middle and upper classes. Though not
entirely successful, and aquatic life is far from returning, great strides have been made in
cleaning up the river. The stench has lessened, the garbage is less visible, the municipal
sanitation system has expanded and reduced the influx of raw sewage, several of the squatter
settlements along its banks have been demolished and relocated, and some of the industries
along its basin have been more rigorously controlled. The changing popular perceptions of
the Miguelete and environmental pollution, and the city’s responses and interventions are the
product, I argue below, of a broad-based process of “greening” of Uruguayan society.
2.3.2 The “Greening” of Uruguayan Society
References to ecological issues and a general environmental sensibility have grown in recent
years in Uruguay, whether through political discourses, reports in the media, advertisements
and corporate slogans, or everyday talk. The introduction of cable and satellite television in
the mid-1990s brought forth international programming promoting an environmental
sensibility. Cartoons and other programs directed messages of non-littering and recycling,
respect for animals and the protection of resources to children. Commercials ran eco-friendly
messages on behalf of corporations, and the prefix “eco” began to accompany a broad range
of product slogans, logos, and names. Newspapers carried Reuters, EFE, and other
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international news agency stories of environmental disasters and struggles around the world.
Global warming and ozone depletion were suddenly familiar concepts to Uruguayans, with
the summer sun becoming increasingly treacherous and skin cancer turning into a formidable
disease at the turn of the millennium.
These processes are evident to any long-term observer. Few comprehensive opinion
polls have been conducted on environmental perception among Uruguayans, but the ones
available suggest the environment is taking on greater salience in people’s minds (Ambios
2001: 6). While polling figures showed 47% of respondents in 1992 believed the
environment could affect health, this number had increased to 74% according to a poll
conducted in 2000. According to an analysis by the Ambios environmental magazine, by
2000 environmental concerns had passed from being an “elite” preoccupation to one
encompassing more of the population (Ambios 2001).
According to the “Montevideo Environmental Agenda 2002-2007” report, there has
recently been a drop in the priority placed by Montevideans on environmental concerns,
attributed to shifting priorities stemming from the economic crisis, with a focus on specific
environmental aspects but without placing them into a broader, more “systemic” context
(IMM 2002). The authors of the report add, however, that certain specific issues have
resulted in “processes of strong sensitization, debate and the building of public
consciousness” of environmental concerns (IMM 2002). They note in particular that the lead
issue in Montevideo had provoked this effect.
Uruguay has witnessed the rise of forms of “green capitalism,” with companies such
as Shell, Coca-Cola or McDonald’s marketing for the first time “eco-friendly” production
practices, materials, or ingredients, promoting recyclable materials and containers, or seeking
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international environmental quality certification (Pierri 2002: 330-31). Organized labor until
recently eschewed environmental concerns (Pierri 2002: 331), but this has slowly been
changing, with the PIT-CNT highlighting environmental issues including the Water
Referendum agenda and opposition to the construction of multinational pulp mills by the
Finnish Botnia and Spanish Ence corporations in western Uruguay in the workers
confederation’s official platform and 2004 and 2005 May Day rallies. 45
While environmental awareness is growing, the media and educational institutions
continue to promote messages about environmentalism that are dominated by a personal ethic
of responsibility, according to sociologist Naina Pierri, while the University largely reduces
itself to the promotion of technocratic solutions to environmental problems (2002: 332).
Pierri (2002: 333) writes of the prospects of an engaged and critical environmentalism in
Uruguay:
Environmental conflicts at their foundation are objectively manifested through the
reproduction of the socio-economic model and they become unhinged based on these
forces, without the majority of those affected understanding or elaborating their own
defense. And it will continue this way so long as the popular sectors are unable to
integrate the environmental dimension into their daily struggles, understanding it as a
structural question (rather than fleeting), social (rather than individual) and political
(rather than moral).
Pierri was writing her dissertation during the development of the lead issue, and
acknowledged then what she observed as the “revitalized” discussions about the environment
that were occurring in 2000 and 2001. I argue that the creation of the lead issue represented a
turning point for Uruguayan environmentalism, building on recent foundations, but signaling
a push that placed environmental concerns on center stage in new ways. Part of this new
45 The PIT-CNT has since reversed its position on the pulp mills with the coming to national power of the Frente
Amplio and its promotion of pulp mill development. See Chapter 6 for further discussion.
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eality was achieved precisely by what Pierri had argued was necessary: the integration of the
environment into daily popular struggles and an understanding of its links to broader political
and structural dimensions. The explosion of the lead issue was made possible through the
greening of Uruguayan society, but it also served as an accelerator of this greening process. It
became a vehicle through which the quickly emergent environmental frameworks and spaces
that were crisscrossing through Uruguayan social fields were able to merge with a diffuse
environmental sensibility and the rise of Uruguay’s first broad based movement for
environmental justice.
2.3.3 Legislating the Environment
The legislative origin of the Uruguay Natural marketing campaign is through the “General
Law of Environmental Protection” of 2000 (Cousillas 2001). The law promotes the principle
that “the economic, cultural and social objective of the Republic is to distinguish itself among
nations as a ‘Natural Country’, within a framework of sustainable development” (Cousillas
2001). Through this law, the protection of the environment became an obligation (deber) of
the State, making it the ultimate guarantor of environmental quality and security. The law
also promotes the principles of “prevention and precaution,” building on the 1994
Environmental Impact Law that first established the preventive principle, and extending this
to the “precautionary principle” that mandates environmental protection if there is a suspicion
of possible harm (Cousillas 2001).
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Uruguay was relatively late in ratifying a general law of environmental protection, as
compared to regional precedents such as the United States in 1969, Venezuela in 1976, Brazil
in 1981 and Chile in 1994 (Cousillas 2001). Indeed, as Marcelo Caffera (2004: 5) argues,
Uruguay is a peculiar case in that despite its relatively high levels of economic development,
“its environmental legislation is extremely underdeveloped, even compared with other
countries in the region with poorer social indicators.” The Environmental Protection Law was
the end product of a 1996 constitutional reform of Article 47, ratified in 1997, that declared of
“general interest the protection of the environment,” and calling on all persons to “abstain
from any act that causes the serious depredation, destruction or contamination of the
environment” (Cousillas 2001).
Legal precedents for the protection of the environment can be traced back to the Rural
Code of 1875 protecting water resources from industrial contamination. 46
Other laws and
decrees were issued throughout the twentieth century, including during the dictatorship.
Following the emergence of a global environmental regulatory framework since the 1970s,
Uruguay ratified a series of international conventions and laws protecting the environment.
The years between the Rio and Johannesburg summits ushered in a boom in environmental
legislation. Uruguay passed 38 laws and decrees related to the environment, in areas related
to water, atmosphere, fauna, flora, protected areas, agrochemicals, fishing resources and
biological diversity (MVOTMA 2002: 8-10).
Three environmental laws merit further scrutiny for the ways each has promoted forms
of sustainable development and green capitalism: (1) the Forestry Law 15.939; (2) Law
16.112 that created the MVOTMA Ministry; and (3) the Environmental Impact Assessment
Law. The 1987 Forestry Law (Ley Forestal), promoted by the Lacalle administration with
46 See Appendix B for a listing of national and international environmental legislation in Uruguay.
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oad political support declared of national interest “the defense, improvement, expansion,
and creation of forest resources” (Mangeney 1993). The Forestry Law was championed by
some environmentalists at the time, but set up the groundwork for the cultivation and
commercialization of pine and eucalyptus tree plantations. This would prove controversial
years later with the discovery of slave-like working conditions on the tree plantations, the
depletion of local water resources and biodiversity, increased foreign ownership of Uruguayan
lands, and the links of the plantations to the proposed development of a massive pulp mill
industry in Uruguay (see Chapter Six).
Law 16.112 resulted in the creation of the MVOTMA in 1990 and set up the National
Environmental Directorate (DINAMA), charging it with the “supervision and instrumentation
of environmental policy, establishing norms and environmental quality controls” (Ambios
2001). The 16.112 Law for the first time provided a systematic political apparatus for setting
national environmental norms and standards, as well as creating enforcement mechanisms for
the various laws, decrees, and conventions approved by the government in previous years and
decades that had seldom been enforced.
The Environmental Impact Law of 1994 established a formal mechanism for citizen
input into development projects. Public pronouncements and information distribution were to
be followed by a public hearing to debate and exchange information on projects classified as
“risky” to the environment (Pignataro 2001). Only large-scale projects have been submitted
to the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process, however, in part because the Inter-
American Bank requires a “green certification” for any project they finance (Cantón 2000:
182-84). Between 1998-1999, 300 development projects were subjected to EIA, but it was
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not until January 1999 that the first public hearing was held under the new system, in this case
on the proposed installation of a hospital waste incinerator in Montevideo (Pignataro 2001).
Pierri found the EIA legislation and practice in Uruguay to be anthropocentric in
orientation, conservative and restrictive in scope, procedurally closed and non-participative,
corporate-controlled, and susceptible to a biophysical and techno-administrative bias (Pierri
2002: 324-27). The law faced initial resistance in Parliament and was only accepted,
according to Pierri, when key provisions were amended to make it less “hostile” to national
and international corporate interests and more palatable to the Uruguayan political and
economic elite (Pierri 2002: 310).
2.3.4 Paying for Pollution
Environmental litigation has been slow to develop in Uruguay. 47
Federal prosecutor Enrique
Viana filed a lawsuit against ANCAP in 2001 for its “ongoing and progressive” degradation
of the environment and human health through the refining and distribution of leaded gasoline.
“With what authority, if one does not want to be hypocritical,” Viana wrote, “can the State
exercise its ‘environmental organizing and policing power’ against other agents of lead
pollution, knowing that it is also responsible, and by a larger degree, and that on top of
47 The first environmentally related lawsuit in Uruguay regarded an environmental conflict in the coastal
suburban Montevideo town of Pinar Norte, involving a years-long neighbors’ mobilization against sanitation
“oxidation tanks” in a residential area. The Pinar Norte case went to court in 1996, becoming the first successful
environmental lawsuit through a 1997 court decision in favor of the neighbors that mandated reparations in the
name of “third generation” human rights (Santandreu and Gudynas 1998: 61).
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everything does nothing to prevent it?” (Viana 2001: 45). 48
Judge Lobelcho ruled initially in
favor of the plaintiffs, but reversed his decision upon ANCAP’s appeal in 2004. The Supreme
Court upheld the ruling in 2005, arguing that not all forms of environmental degradation are
“anti-judicial” (anti-jurídico), and that environmental rights and protection are not “absolute.”
In the Court’s view, it remained unproven that ANCAP was responsible for contamination
across the city or country, with La Teja the only “proven” area of contamination, which it
attributed to sources other than the refinery or leaded gasoline combustion (El País, December
7, 2005).
Viana has been dubbed the “green prosecutor” for his dedicated pursuit of
environmental litigation. Viana justifies his environmental involvement based on the General
Procedural Code (Código General de Procedimiento) in place since 1989 that mandates
prosecutors defend the “diffuse interests” (intereses difusos) of the nation, including the
environment (Carbajal 2005). The public prosecutors’ legal mandate is covered by the 1997
constitutional reform of Article 47, establishing as of general interest the protection of the
environment. Viana argues that the defense of general interests takes legal precedence over
the rights of individuals, property, labor or industry (Bacchetta 2005). The lawsuit against
ANCAP was Viana’s first application of this mandate, and it was followed by another lawsuit
related to the lead case filed against the MVOTMA and the IMM.
Viana is well aware of the limitations facing environmental litigation. As he
expressed to me in an interview, “Going to the Judiciary, in other words appealing to Justice
and going to the judges is a bit utopian.” 49
Viana explained:
48 “¿Con qué autoridad, y su no quiere ser hipócrita, el Estado puede ejercer ‘su poder ordenador o de policía
ambiental’ contra otros agentes de polución con plomo, sabiéndose que lo es también, en un grado superior y que
encima no hace nada para evitarlo?”
49 Interview with Enrique Viana, November 22, 2005.
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First of all the judges are not accustomed to seeing these environmental issues. It’s
different in Argentina and in Brazil, where first of all the judges have, I don’t mean to
say more independence but they do receive higher incomes, they have an organization
much more separated say from the other powers of the State, and they have more
experience, because they have had problems…. In Uruguay environmental problems
were not known. On the other hand in Argentina for 20 years and in Brazil for 30
years they have had serious problems, right? (…) We are in a way only just now
receiving these.
2.3.5 Sustaining the Urban Environment. The Montevideo Municipality (IMM)
In the early 1990s, an environmental conflict over cement factory pollution in the western
Montevideo working class neighborhood Sayago led to the implementation of the first
municipal decree related specifically to environmental protection (see Chapter 3). Prior to
this, a 1968 municipal decree set the foundation for the control and oversight of industrial
emissions. While the IMM has been regulating industry in some form since 1968, and more
diligently since the early 1990’s, no similar national standard exists, and none of the cities of
the Interior have passed regulatory decrees. The DINAMA in 2004 asked for copies of the
IMM’s latest regulatory framework for a planned implementation on a national scale. 50
After the Frente Amplio won the Montevideo Municipality (IMM) in 1989, the city
government structured a series of changes including decentralization and the promotion of
“popular participation.” The environment as a category of thought and action was first
officially recognized through the Junta Departamental Local municipal governing structure,
formed by politically appointed ediles, or representatives, who are distributed proportionally
50 This information is derived from an interview with chemist Alicia Raffaele of the Industrial Emissions
Division of the IMM, August 11, 2004.
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according to the municipal electoral results for each party. The Junta Local in 1992 declared
through a municipal act the environment was an “essential part of the patrimony” that “fulfills
a social function” (IMM-DDA). 51
The Junta also prescribed socio-economic development to
be “made compatible with environmental policies.”
The act laid the foundation for a municipal program of sustainable development. It
defined the environment as “the sum of the natural and cultural resources that are at our
disposal,” that consisted of three components: “natural, constructed, and human or social”
(IMM-DDA). Environmental objectives, among others, include the sustainable use of soils,
air, flora and fauna, the creation of natural and cultural “monuments,” and the encouragement
and development of public and private initiatives that “stimulate and make effective citizen
participation in questions related to the environment” (IMM-DDA).
The Department of Environmental Development (Departamento de Desarrollo
Ambiental- DDA) was created within the IMM in 1995 as a means of monitoring
environmental quality in the city, organizing resource and waste management, extending and
completing the sanitation system, and promoting the initiatives of participation and
environmental education stipulated by the Junta’s legislative act. The IMM began issuing
yearly environmental reports (Informe Ambiental) in 2001. The task of environmental
education was formalized in 1997 through the Environmental Education Group (Grupo de
Educación Ambiental- GEA). In the year 2000, the IMM approved the “Montevideo
Environmental Agenda” (Agenda Ambiental Montevideo), the local expression of the Agenda
21 promoted at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. The Montevideo Environmental Group (Grupo
51 Information drawn from web document: “La ciudad y su ambiente: Desarrollo ambiental”,
www.imm.gub.uy/ambiente/amb_ciudad.htm
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Ambiental Montevideo- GAM) was also created in 2000 and charged with implementing the
Agenda and promoting access to environmental information among citizens.
Paralleling the rise of environmental institutions at the municipal core, most
decentralized municipal zones organized environmental or environmental and health
commissions by the mid- to late 1990s. The commissions are made up of volunteer citizens
of each communal zone, and coordinate with other commissions organized around women’s,
youth, health, development, or infrastructure issues, to name a few. Together these initiatives
changed the face of municipal governance, giving it a distinctive “green” tone and drawing it
in line with international initiatives, discourses and agendas.
2.3.6 Knowing and Acting on the Environment. Science and NGOs
The NGO and academic sectors are other prominent organizational spaces that have greened
in recent years. Environmental initiatives in Uruguay were dominated by conservation and
the natural sciences in the 1950s, followed by environmental research centers in the 1960s-
1980s, and environmental social movements in the 1980s and 1990s (Pignataro 2001: 58;
Santandreu and Gudynas 1998: 19). The 1972 United Nations Stockholm Convention on the
environment served as an impulse for the creation of several conservationist and ecological
organizations and institutions during the 1970’s (Ferreira 1993: 39). In 1971, the National
Institute for the Preservation of the Environment (INPMA), the first State environmental
institution was founded, though it lacked the necessary budget or authority to conduct
significant work (Ferreira 1993). Some of the burgeoning environmental institutions,
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particularly of the conservationist vein, were formed during the military dictatorship in a time
when it was risky to form groups or collective associations. The military regime’s relative
tolerance for environmental organizations demonstrates environmentalism’s malleability, able
at once to appear politically innocuous and even conservative, and at other times representing
a radical and subversive potential. In this case, the rare allowance of holding collective
meetings in a seemingly “neutral” political setting was used as a foil for some
environmentalists to discuss and question the political, economic, and social situation of the
country (Pierri 2002: 297).
A sharp growth in environmentally oriented NGO’s from 1985-1992 coincided with
the return to democracy following the dictatorship and later the rise to power of the left in
Montevideo (Ferreira 1993: 42). While eight environmental organizations were founded
between 1945 and 1984, over sixty were founded between 1985-1992. Three national
environmental networks formed in 1990 and 1991 that grouped together over seventy
environmental organizations (Cruz and Lerena 1993: 58). Preparations for the Rio Earth
Summit was a major reason for the growth of environmental organizations, as well as the reorientation
of existing institutions towards the environment (Cruz and Lerena 1993: 60). In
the post-authoritarian period, multilateral institutions promoted NGOs as a market-oriented
and efficient means of filling the vacuum of a retreating state (Ferradás 1998: 186; Gill 2000).
The Earth Summit stimulated the creation of more specialized environmental areas within
already established social organizations, unions, and commercial groups (Santandreu and
Gudynas 1998: 21). There was a funding boom for environmental organizations around the
world and regionally following the Summit, sparking the formation of several new Uruguayan
NGOs. The Earth Summit was responsible as well for the growing coverage of environmental
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issues in the national media, which “except under rare circumstances did not merit until that
moment sweeping headlines” (Ferreira 1993: 47).
By 2005, the number of NGOs grouped within the Uruguayan Environmental NGO
Network (Red Uruguaya de ONGs Ambientalistas) had fallen to only 30 (Matos 2005). The
formation and development of Uruguayan environmental organizations then can be divided
into three major moments: the founding period between 1945-1984, characterized by a only a
handful of organizations mostly oriented towards conservationism; the “explosive growth”
period of 1985-1992, when NGO’s proliferated in response to democratic opening and in
preparation for Rio 92; and from 1992 to the present, with the absolute number of NGOs
shrinking, external sources of funding increasing for only a handful, and the gradual
professionalization of environmental organizations.
It is during this third period, I argue, that Uruguayan society greened in a systematic
manner, and previously unarticulated grassroots environmental social movements grew
stronger. While NGO’s became more sophisticated and increased their ties to the global
funding circuit, a series of loosely organized grassroots initiatives were taking shape in
Uruguay, forming a burgeoning popular environmentalism that largely grew in parallel to and
sidestepped the longer established but largely bureaucratized and increasingly elitist NGO
community (see Chapter 3). Environmental issues were being addressed during the 1990s and
the turn of the millennium like never before, but the variously constituted organizations and
groups involved had increasingly divergent class characters, affecting the agendas set and the
methodologies employed to address these issues.
While environmental preoccupations drew societal interest in the 1990s, scientists
mostly maintained a distance from activist forms of environmentalism (Pignataro 2001: 61;
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Santandreu and Gudynas 1998: 22). During the 1980s and 1990s, as environmental
movements gathered steam, some scientists provided technical advice, but assistance was
hesitant at first (Pignataro 2001). In the years following the Rio conference, the University of
the Republic (UdelaR) began introducing environment-oriented academic programs. Most of
these initiatives were in the natural sciences, biotechnology and engineering. In 1994, the
University created the “Central Unit of the Environment” (Unidad Central del Medio
Ambiente) in an attempt to “environmentalize the curriculum” (Pignataro 2001). It initiated a
Masters program in environmental science in 1998, followed by a Masters program in
environmental engineering. State funds were channeled for the first time into environmental
areas such as the agroindustry, climate change, waste management, tourism, health, the sea
and coastlines, and the conservation of natural resources (Pignataro 2001: 62-64).
UdelaR faculty inaugurated in May 2001 the Environmental Theme Network (Red
Temática del Medio Ambiente-RETEMA), with the objective of integrating and coordinating
the various academic programs (Unidades Académicas) dedicated to environmental studies
and promoting an applied focus through environmental teaching, research, and community
“extension.” 52
By the end of 2001, 80 academic programs from eleven Faculties and other
University-linked programs participated in the RETEMA, with a governing structure and
Internet communication system. Employing a tiny budget, the RETEMA has served as a way
of integrating both “hard” and “soft” scientific disciplines into the study and assistance of
environmental causes and conflicts. It has promoted public awareness of environmental
issues, forged international links with environmental programs in European and Latin
American universities, and bridged the public and private realms by conducting
environmental studies with private industry.
52 Information on the RETEMA is taken from documents and memos provided by coordinator Javier Taks.
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The RETEMA dedicated a working group in 2001 and 2002 to study the lead issue in
La Teja. Academic involvement in popular environmental struggles and conflicts presents a
break for a university that has historically ignored environmental issues, continues with only
timid attempts to research in the area, or has maintained a positivist stance of objective
scientific scholarship that could not be “tainted” by social and political concerns. In a media
interview, RETEMA participant Daniel Panario said the University still exhibits an
“incredible lag” (terrible retraso) in environmental studies in comparison to universities
around the world, with very little research in environmental areas. “One cannot teach what
one does not research,” he added (Amorín 2003). Panario claims when the RETEMA offered
Luis Lazo of the IMM-DDA to train technicians in postgraduate environmental science, Lazo
answered: “We don’t need environmental technicians, we need managers” (cited in Amorín
2003). The positivist stance of the academy still has many practitioners, and the RETEMA’s
involvement in corporate-sponsored studies shows that the University’s “commitment” role
through its applied initiatives works for a broad and sometimes conflicting spectrum of
interests.
The increasing engagement of Uruguayan scholars in environmental issues is also
reflected in the niche publishing market, where some publishing companies have specialized
in environmentally oriented books and volumes. Such is particularly the case of the publisher
Nordan Comunidad, which has specialized in environmental publishing through its “ecoteque”
(eco-teca; cf. Achkar et al 1999; Amorín 2001; Barreiro 2002; Dominguez and Prieto
2000, 2002; Gatti 2002; Honty 2003). Some environmental NGOs and research centers have
published their own print or online articles or books on environmental research and issues.
The CLAES research center, directed by Eduardo Gudynas, the REDES-Amigos de la Tierra-
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Uruguay Sustentable collective and the Berthold Brecht House (Casa Berthold Brecht) have
provided some of the most prominent examples of the latter (cf. Achkar et al 2004; Grosse et
al 2006; Ortiz 2005; Santandreu and Gudynas 1998; REDES 2000). These organizations
receive funds from European parent organizations and foundations, such as the German
Heinrich Böll Foundation (Berthold Brecht, REDES) or the German Friedrich Ebert
Foundation (Claes).
The funding of Uruguayan NGOs and research centers by European-based sponsors,
including from Germany, Sweden, Belgium, and the Netherlands, has signified that many are
subject to sponsors’ agendas, most often set within the Northern contexts from which they
operate. The various NGOs compete with each other for funds, leading at times to somewhat
aggressive appropriations of ongoing environmental conflicts. 53
According to José Pedro Porta, longtime ecological militant and owner of the “First
Ecological Center” book and health food store in downtown Montevideo, the influx of
funding following the Earth Summit ended up either dissolving many of the previously
established environmental organizations or it led to their redundancy. 54
Porta was part of the
umbrella Uruguayan Environmental Network that worked with international funding agencies
following Rio 92. He says they discovered that with financial support came obligations to
“follow certain lines,” and that even their methods of protest and activism changed. Porta said
that international donors forced the activists into what he considered “ridiculous charades”
(payasadas ridículas), such as marching down the 18 de Julio Avenue downtown with giant
masks and other forms of “street theater.” He considers these methods “foreign” and
53 Personal communication with RETEMA coordinator Javier Taks, January 17, 2003.
54 Interview with José Pedro Porta, January 20, 2003.
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unsuitable to traditional Uruguayan forms of protest, though other NGO representatives would
disagree.
2.4 Conclusion: Disciplining and Liberating Natures
Where the times of modernity end, the spaces of environmentality perhaps begin.
--Timothy Luke (1995: 79)
This chapter has analyzed nature and the environment in relation to broader Uruguayan
histories of the state, political economy, and society. The nineteenth century civilizing and
modernizing mission involved a political project of dominating Uruguay’s vestiges of
“barbarism,” represented by the unruly sexuality and polluting practices of the urban poor or
the free-roaming gauchos and Indians of the countryside. The disciplining of human nature
was tied to the disciplining of biophysical nature, expressed through the fencing of the
countryside, the modernizing of livestock production, and the concrete triumphs of the city. I
have also argued that neoliberal globalization has resulted in profound transformations of the
Uruguayan economy, state, society and nature, largely ending the hegemony of a mesocratic
and “hyper-integrated” batllista society. Nature in neoliberal times draws increased salience
as an accumulation strategy, and has helped reconfigure national identity, subjectivity,
politics, and the state.
Neoliberal globalization has played a creative and transformative, and not merely
destructive role as well. Under neoliberal times there has been a growing public
consciousness of and concern with environmental issues, and the environment has at times
attained a strong presence in the media and in popular culture. Formal legal and institutional
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mechanisms and frameworks have engaged environmental issues, and there has been a growth
of green and sustainable development discourses within municipal, state, and corporate
spheres. NGO and scientific and academic interventions into the environment have increased
as well. These processes represent both a new objective or practical salience of nature, as
well as a “discursive explosion” (Foucault 1990) around the environment in a newly greened
Uruguay.
A discursive explosion around the environment, however, does not necessarily signal
its “liberation.” It can also be a means by which to manage and control a potentially
dangerous category of thought, and subsequently of politically managing populations and
nature (cf. Escobar 1996; Foucault 1990; Luke 1995; Sachs 1999). The environment has at
once created spaces of action, channeled resources, formulated specialized knowledge, and
introduced new forms of control over nature and people. Environmental governance or
“environmentality” corresponds to a global disciplining move, involving sites of supervision,
expert management and instrumental rationality (Agrawal 2005; Luke 1995; see also Chapters
4 and 6). “To save the planet, it becomes necessary to environmentalize it, enveloping its
system of systems in new disciplinary discourses to regulate population growth, economic
development, and resource exploitation on a global scale with continual managerial
intervention,” writes Luke (1995: 77). The greening of Uruguay represents a node of
articulation within the new global environmentality regime.
In Uruguay, grassroots and NGO pressures have played a major role in a strong
ideological opposition to neoliberalism and capitalism’s cost crisis. They represent some of
the new subjects of a neoliberal order (Hayden 2003) but are situated in an ambivalent
position vis-à-vis the dominant economic and political forces of the country and globe.
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Grassroots groups and NGOs have instituted and politicized environmental concerns and
addressed real environmental problems, but they are faced with the constant threat of
appropriation, co-optation or forced redundancy, whether at the hands of state, corporate, or
international and trans-local institutions and agendas (see Chapter 6). The rise of grassroots
environmental mobilizations in Uruguay, developing largely in parallel with and external to
NGO frameworks, reflects some of the liberating potentials of environmental action (see
Chapter 3). But it also underscores the contested constructions of nature and the environment.
Most grassroots environmental movements in Uruguay organize around issues related to the
urban environment. Urban ecology, nevertheless, is often left out of the discourses, agendas,
and evaluations of international environmental institutions and their Uruguayan counterparts.
To discuss or analyze the state of the environment without paying attention to urban soils,
waterways and air quality, particularly in an overwhelmingly urbanized country such as
Uruguay, masks the real environmental problems faced every day by its citizens, and results
in a popular assessment of environmentalism as an elitist preoccupation irrelevant to human
needs.
Lead contamination is of environmental origin, but it is caused by anthropogenic
activity. It therefore mediates and blurs the boundaries of the human and the natural. Antilead
activists call on the protection of the environment, but always and necessarily in
reference to and dialogue with human habitation and experience. The lead issue has revealed
a divide in competing organizational, institutional, and grassroots constructions of nature.
Social actors attribute differing meanings to nature, with very real consequences for the
substance and direction of environmental politics, and for state, academic and organizational
interventions into the lead problem (see Chapters 3-6). Activists have complained in
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eference to the lead issue that for Uruguayan NGOs, “saving a whale is more important than
saving a child.” While somewhat unfair as a blanket assessment, this charge reveals contested
versions of environmental perception and politics in Uruguay. Nature in a neoliberal Uruguay
has at once become a means of political action, a prism through which to understand broader
social processes at work, and a vehicle for new forms of social control. The lead issue and the
rise of the anti-lead movement cannot be adequately analyzed without an understanding of the
multifaceted, contested, and sometimes contradictory or paradoxical forces at work in the
production of nature.
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CHAPTER THREE: “La Teja Shall Sing”: Workers, Children, and the Rise of
Grassroots Environmentalism in Uruguay
Mirar, mirar/ nos parece que no es sano/ que la tierra escupa plomo al ser humano
Nos parece que esa queja/ dignifica los botijas de La Teja
--La Reina de La Teja 55
3.0 Introductory vignette: Carlos Pilo
“We were ten brothers, eight of us are left, they killed two. One of them they killed under
torture in Bolivia, and the other they killed here.” 56
With words reflecting a history of noble
militancy and painful loss, Carlos began to recount to me interwoven stories of family and
working history, his beloved barrio La Teja, political militancy, and environmental activism.
Pilo was one of my key informants- my research would have in fact been impossible without
him- yet I had never recorded an interview with this key activist of the anti-lead struggle (see
Figure 4). Pilo is the unofficial leader of the grassroots Live Without Lead Commission
(CVSP), and the constant reference point of the struggle and of the lead issue itself. I suppose
55 Murga lyrics from the 2002 Carnaval. My translation: “Look, look/ we do not think it is healthy/ that the Earth
spits lead on human beings/ We think that their protest/ dignifies the kids from La Teja.”
56 “Nosotros éramos diez hermanos, quedamos ocho, mataron a dos. Uno lo mataron torturándolo en Bolivia y el
otro lo mataron acá.”
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I waited to record his words until only a few days before I left because I wanted to “get it
right” and to cap a fitting ending to my fieldwork. 57
Carlos Lucio Pilo Yáñez is a towering and strong man with the weathered and worn
hands of a worker who has struggled for most of his sixty years. We spoke at his barraca on
a Monday morning, at the place we had met dozens of times, chatting between his intermittent
work selling lumber or his passion as a horticulturalist. 58
The morning was cold and rainy.
The door to the shed was open, letting in the cold air. Pilo told me I had to wear a wool hat
for days like this, as he was wearing. I had brought one along so I pulled it on. Pilo prepared
a mate and we passed it back and forth for most of our long conversation.
Figure 4. Carlos Pilo in his barraca.
Pilo’s political militancy cannot be separated from that of his brothers, his Spanish
grandfather, or his ancestors. His personal history is his family’s history, as his family’s
history is La Teja’s. The family and the barrio, a proletarian Uruguay told and lived through
57 The following notes are drawn from an interview with Carlos Pilo, May 23, 2005.
58 A “barraca” can refer to a workshop or small shop, usually selling goods worked by hand or from the land. In
this case, Pilo sells lumber and grows plants, trees and flowers in this small urban plot.
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the experience of an old revolutionary anarchist-turned-environmentalist. Seen through this
perspective, Pilo’s militancy in the anti-lead movement becomes a logical consequence of his
existence: his lifelong struggle for a hopeful and dignified change and against all forms of
tyranny; his brief sixth grade formal education and the informal one gained through his
vocation as a typesetter, in jail, or on the streets; his love and respect for all forms of life and
his strong devotion to barrio and country.
Pilo claimed, tongue in cheek, that his rebelliousness is “genetic”: it has afflicted most
of his brothers and was handed down most directly from his anarchist grandfather of
Andalucía, Spain. True to his ideology, Pilo has never voted, despite its mandatory character,
nor does he possess the legally required voting card (credencial). Pilo was imprisoned before
and throughout parts of the dictatorship (1973-85) and along with two of his brothers was of
the few “political prisoners of democracy,” jailed at various points under each administration
from Pacheco (early 1970s) through Sanguinetti and Lacalle (1980-90s). It was at this latter
time that he first met Brecha journalist Carlos Amorín, who would become a key ally and
comrade in the anti-lead and other environmental struggles of recent years. Broadly admired,
Pilo was named spokesman for the prisoners during the visit of Pope John Paul II.
During the dictatorship, Pilo said he was so broken from imprisonment and torture that
he more than once thought of killing himself, but he managed to “keep fighting.” Still, Pilo
often told me that living in exile, uprooted, was the “worst that can happen to you.” He lived
in Bolivia for six years during the dictatorship. He was so poor he slept on the floor of his
workplace wrapped in newspapers. His daughter Claudia was three months old when they left
and she had to sleep in a dresser drawer. Pilo maintained his political combativeness in
Bolivia and joined the underground resistance. This militancy cost the life of his brother.
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Despite the hard blows he has received, Pilo has always maintained a deep love of life.
He is an avid reader, having spent years at the printing press making extra personal copies of
every printed edition. He struck up a personal friendship with Uruguayan writer Eduardo
Galeano, and knew writers Mario Benedetti and Juan Carlos Onetti as well. Pilo loves music,
and was taught to play the bandoneón accordion by his accomplished uncle. He had to give it
up, however, as years of hard labor and a broken hand in prison cut short his dreams of
studying music.
Pilo was a syndicalist for eighteen years, and became the youngest elected leader of
his union. He was later blacklisted, and now only refers to the printing press as the “largest in
Uruguay,” but never by name. His childhood was difficult and his family was large and rather
poor, but they made ends meet and they did so with dignity, recalled Pilo. He remembers well
the days of thriving industries in La Teja, when one factory nearby employed 1200 workers
and a neighboring bar would make “600 sandwiches a day” for lunchtime. The factory
whistles were a permanent part of the neighborhood soundscape, marking the hours and the
rhythms of the day.
Pilo says there was plenty of poverty back then, but workers at least had jobs and they
had not lost hope, as he says they now have. He spoke about the cantegriles (slums) that
proliferated in the past few decades and the growing misery of the population. A “Warsaw
ghetto” was created in the western part of Montevideo, said Pilo, with “the protected” living
on the other side. Nevertheless, the “ghetto dwellers” are Pilo’s people. He wouldn’t give up
La Teja for anything, and will most likely fight until the last of his days, head lifted high,
defending his barrio.
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This chapter questions how long time trade unionists or anarchists such as Carlos Pilo
have transitioned to environmentalism in recent years. What are the connecting points
between labor, environment, health, and place? How have “old” and “new” forms of struggle
converged? I first analyze the development of environmental conflicts and popular
environmentalism in Uruguay since the 1980s. Environmentalism has historically remained
distant from union militancy, political party platforms and civil society concerns. Since the
late 1980s, however, environmental conflicts linked to issues of urban industrial
contamination grew significantly, led by grassroots groups and ad-hoc neighborhood
coalitions. The conflicts arose, I argue, through the coming together of processes of
deindustrialization, the weakening of the welfare state, intensified forms of urban industrial
pollution, and the proliferation of environmental ideologies. The chapter ties together various
strands in the development of grassroots environmentalism, including the testimonios of lead
industry workers, 59 the challenges of transcending the jobs-versus-the-environment
dichotomy, the struggle of teachers in educating lead poisoned children, and the efforts of
children themselves to spread awareness of lead poisoning across society. The chapter
provides a theoretical discussion of the CVSP’s promotion of integrated health, drawing on
place-based identity and forging a vision of environmental justice that resonates with social
movements across the globe. As Pilo has often said, the lead issue in Uruguay will mark “a
before and an after”: “After lead, nothing will be the same environmentally in Uruguay.”
59 “Testimonios” in the Latin American tradition expand beyond legal forms of testimony, as thought of in
English. Testimonios are a narrative form made common as a historical methodology linked to scholarship on
human rights abuses in the 1980s, where victims would provide a first person account of hardship or suffering.
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3.1 From Syndicalism to Environmentalism: Burgeoning Environmental Conflicts in
Uruguay (1980s-90s)
The 1980’s and 1990’s witnessed a relative flourishing of popular mobilizations in Uruguay
framed for the first time specifically in terms of environmental issues. The “disarmed retreat”
of the Uruguayan state 60 through a double movement of the finalization of the military
dictatorship in 1985 and the civilian government’s implementation of neoliberal reforms by
the end of the decade (a process initiated by the military regime) resulted in the scaling back
of mediating mechanisms between the state and civil society. The once-strong and ubiquitous
Uruguayan state in part lost its “silencer” or buffering function through which it had
previously confronted popular movements through cooptation, clientelism, and other forms of
mediation. Political parties also lost ground as protagonists and mediators of social conflicts,
as well as brokers of popular demands on the state (Santandreu and Gudynas 1998). As in
other parts of Latin America, NGOs, civil associations and other expressions of organized
civil society quickly filled the vacuum left by the retreating state (cf. Gill 2000; Phillips 1998;
Veltmeyer and O’Malley 2001). During the dictatorships, human rights NGOs took on great
importance in the resistance to authoritarianism. Following the dictatorships, they repackaged
themselves along other themes, such as environmentalism (cf. Ferradás 1998). The degree of
scaling back and the loss of legitimacy of the political party system, as well as the influence of
NGOs, however, has been less articulated in Uruguay than elsewhere in the region (Moreira
2005).
As opposed to other popular demands, environmental issues have remained largely
absent from the platforms and policy debates of parties across the political spectrum in
60 I am playing on Lesley Gill’s (2000) reference to the “armed retreat” of the Bolivian state.
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Uruguay (Amorín 2003). The 1994 national elections were the first time environmental
concerns were expressed in political party campaigns, according to Naina Pierri, but
politicians of both the right and left remained suspicious of environmentalism and reduced
their campaigns to empty slogans promoting “sustainability” while espousing
developmentalist agendas (Pierri 2002: 329). Given this relative political vacuum, a space
opened for popular environmental mobilizations that critiqued the policies and practices of
both the left and right.
Alain Santandreu and Eduardo Gudynas (1998) surveyed and analyzed fifty
environmental mobilizations between 1990 and 1998. The authors found a growing space and
legitimacy for environmental concerns during this period, though political parties, the
scientific community and existing NGOs remained distanced from this burgeoning
environmental movement. They found environmental mobilizations to be a cross-class
phenomenon, but mostly centered among middle and popular sectors (Santandreu and
Gudynas 1998: 24).
Most of the environmental conflicts analyzed by Santandreu and Gudynas were longterm
and most were reactive to specific environmental threats and risks, associated for
instance with industrial contamination, resource degradation, mining, transgenics, or health
concerns. If analyzed in terms of the categories of “brown” environmentalism, or a human
and often urban-centered form of environmentalism concerned with quality of life issues,
versus “green” or eco-centered issues (cf. Peña and Mondragón-Valdez 1999), the saliency of
the former is evident in Uruguay.
Of the fifty environmental conflicts analyzed by Santandreu and Gudynas, over 70%
were concerned with various “brown” issues such as urban industrial contamination (n=22),
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ural contamination from agro-toxics or mining (n=2), and garbage, health, sanitation, and
urban infrastructure (n=11). Those issues responding to a “green” agenda, meanwhile,
included biodiversity, protected areas, natural resources, and flora and fauna (n=11), and
made up about 15% of the cases. Transgenics, nuclear risk, and other concerns were also
represented. It is noteworthy that 43 of the conflicts were urban-based and only 7 rural,
reflecting in part the highly urbanized demographics of the Uruguayan population, but also a
tradition of urban-centered preoccupations. Environmental NGOs participated in or promoted
10 of the 11 “green” conflicts, as well as the three “nuclear” conflicts, but only participated or
assisted in 3 of the 13 “brown” non-contamination conflicts, and in none of the 22 urban
“contamination” conflicts. 61
This tendency supports the assertion that Uruguayan
environmental NGOs have tended to reproduce the “green” agendas of many Northern-based
sponsors and have remained relatively distinct from grassroots neighbors’ mobilizations.
Political parties remained marginal of all fifty environmental conflicts, and movement claims
were often made against industry, the state and the “entire political system” (Santandreu and
Gudynas 1998: 71).
Neighbors’ groups led most of the “brown” conflicts, with involvement in only a
handful of cases by local municipal or union representatives. Most mobilizations were in
response to single-issue concerns, such as a contaminating factory, or a specific mining
operation or infrastructure development plan, and were similar to the NIMBY (“Not In My
Back Yard”) and anti-toxics movements in the United States and other parts of the world, with
local residents calling on the contaminating industry or process in question to shut down and
move elsewhere (cf. Bryant and Mohai 1992; Bullard 1994).
61 All information taken from Santandreu and Gudynas 1998, though the breakdown and analysis is mine.
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Of the burgeoning environmental movements in Uruguay that preceded the lead issue,
perhaps the three with the highest profile were: a successful nation-wide movement against
the proposed installation of a nuclear energy facility, a neighbors’ struggle in Montevideo
against the installation of electromagnetic towers by the UTE State electrical utility, and a
neighborhood movement organized against a polluting cement factory in the western
Montevideo working class neighborhood Sayago, all of which transpired from the late 1980s
to the early 1990s. The nuclear project had been negotiated between President Sanguinetti
during his first term in office (1985-89) in 1988 and the Canadian government, and was on the
verge of being ratified in Parliament during the Lacalle administration (1989-94) in 1992
(Pierri 2002: 298-99). During the “discussion period,” simultaneous protests were held across
the interior of the country and in Montevideo, drawing as many as 6,000 people in the central
city of Paso de los Toros, and resulting in enough pressure for the project to be shelved (Pierri
2002: 299).
In the second case, UTE was constructing electromagnetic towers in 1990 in a
populated area of Sayago, a peri-urban neighborhood of western Montevideo, when a
neighbors group organized to express concerns over negative health outcomes (Pierri 2002).
The Montevideo Municipality (IMM), under the Vázquez administration (1989-1994, Frente
Amplio), first supported the neighbors but ended up ceding to pressure from the national
government to approve the project. Nevertheless, the protests drew widespread media
attention, demonstrating the potential political independence of the environmental movement
(critiquing both the right wing national government and the left wing municipality), and
involved an until-then rare popular protest against a state enterprise (Pierri 2002). The third
conflict, discussed in more detail in the following section, was initiated against a polluting
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cement factory in Sayago in 1987, gathering steam over the next five years and eventually
resulting in the relocation of the factory.
3.1.1 When it “rains” cement 62
For seventy-five years the cement company Compañía Uruguaya de Cemento y Portland
Artigas, changing hands among several multinationals, including the United States based
Lone Star Industries Corporation, had been releasing noxious ash that blanketed Sayago and a
large swath of western Montevideo. Several grassroots environmental commissions formed
over the years to address the issue but had always dissipated after facing municipal
bureaucratic inaction and inflexibility (Alzugarat et al 2000). In 1986 and continuing into the
early 1990’s, however, a neighbors’ mobilization led by activist Germinal Azaretto and the
TEBELPA cooperative housing complex sparked a widespread movement. They finally
managed to get newly-elected Frente Amplio mayor Tabaré Vázquez to take action against the
company, representing one of the major grassroots environmental victories of the time and
spurring some of the first environmental actions and regulations at the municipal level.
The formation of the TEBELPA cooperative housing complex in itself was an
innovative and unprecedented initiative for Uruguay. TEBELPA was created, designed, and
built by workers and architects in the 1970’s as an integrative “garden village” (aldea jardín),
preserving an impressive collective of native trees and flora, a rarity for a working class
neighborhood. It was named after the areas where its textile worker and family residents
came from: La Teja (TE), Belvedere (BEL), and Paso Molino (PA; Alzugarat et al 2000: 55).
62 The section title is borrowed from the chapter title “Cuando llueve Portland”, in Alzugarat et al 2000.
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Men and women volunteered labor equally to build a communal center, library, recreational
spaces and lottery-assigned housing. The land on which the cooperative was built was a
former vineyard and tree farm (vivero). The construction of the housing preserved 95% of the
original trees, in what architect Atilio Farinasso considered as a “pioneering” form of
environmentalism in Uruguay: “Because now there’s a lot of talk about protecting the
environment, but we did this thirty years ago.” Farinasso said the “privilege” of preserving
nature, “couldn’t only be for Carrasco,” because “the textile workers also deserved that”
(Alzugarat et al 2000: 63). 63
The cooperative housing umbrella organization FUCVAM assisted with the project as
well. Gustavo González, General Secretary of FUCVAM in 2000 said that TEBELPA was
promoting an ecological vision, “at a time when no one was talking about ecology.” González
continued: “TEBELPA was the first worker organization that supported the environment” and
among the “first ecological fighters” of Uruguay (Alzugarat et al 2000: 65). The collective
consciousness that was forged from the experience of environmental protection and
preservation fueled the struggle against the cement factory years later, led by Germinal
Azaretto. As Azaretto reflected to a community publication in 2002 shortly before his death,
“Obligated, from a union activist I ended up converted to environmentalist” (Alzugarat
2002). 64 This forshadowed the trajectory Carlos Pilo would take and was a formative
environmental struggle for others as well, including Carlos Amorín, the future Brecha
journalist and anti-lead movement activist, who wrote extensive articles on the cement
conflict for the environmental magazine, Tierra Amiga (cf. Amorín 1993).
63 Carrasco is a wealthy “garden neighborhood” along the coast just east of Montevideo.
64 “Obligado, de sindicalista terminé convertido en ambientalista”.
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The cement factory pumped 15-20 tons of noxious dust daily out of their unfiltered
chimneys for decades, equaling as much as 7 million tons of waste by the early 1990s. The
dust covered the area’s rooftops and backyards, vegetable gardens, and clothing hung to dry,
resulting in numerous health problems such as allergies, bronchitis, asthma and other
respiratory problems (Amorín 1993). The large transport trucks would lift up settled dust, and
the homes in the area would regularly be covered by a thin layer of white, found even inside
wardrobes and coat pockets (Alzugarat et al 2000: 72). Neighbors, acting in the name of
protecting their children and environment, collected over 7500 signatures against the
company, and assemblies drew up to one hundred people (Alzugarat et al 2000: 73).
The neighbors faced difficulties in convincing the workers of the company, who
distrusted their actions out of fear of losing their jobs. In 1988 neighbors, artists and
supporters gathered for what became known as the “march of the umbrellas,” where several
dozen people marched around the neighborhood with open umbrellas to symbolize and protest
the “raining” cement dust. Poetry and street theater accompanied the protest, and a graffiti on
a street wall announced: “Filters, work and health/ In the fatherland of cement there is no
room for lungs/ smoking is detrimental to your health/ breathing here is too” (Alzugarat et al
2000: 76-77). 65
Ceding to popular pressure, the IMM shut down the company’s operations.
Management decided to move the factory to Minas, in the Interior, and the workers were
transferred elsewhere. Martín Ponce de León, then-director of the IMM’s Department of
Environmental Development and who later became a Representative in Parliament before
taking up his current post as Sub-Secretary of Industry, recalled how the factory was using
65 “Filtros, trabajo y salud/ En la patria del Portland no hay lugar para los pulmones/ Fumar es perjudical para la
salud/ Respirar acá también”. “Portland” is the name given to cement.
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early twentieth-century technology in a densely populated area. Ponce attributes to the
cement conflict the impulse for the creation of the first broad municipal decree regulating
industrial activity and promoting environmental protection: “As of that moment the
environmental became institutionalized in the municipal structure, and moreover, as the
decree states, the environmental went on to become an obligation to the entire municipal
structure” (Alzugarat et al 2000: 86-87).
After the victory in Sayago, Azaretto went on to fight for environmental issues in
Nuevo París, degraded for decades by the numerous tanneries and other industries of the area.
Azaretto found a natural symbiosis between environmentalism and workers’ rights, reflecting
the necessities and hardships provoked by capitalism’s cost crisis. In this passage of his
biography he succinctly encapsulates the origins, meanings and goals of popular
environmentalism in Uruguay:
Environmental movements in general are constituted by working people, people who
in their neighborhood experience problems that affect their health. For instance, the
proximity of some factory whose chimneys contaminate the air or that dumps acids on
the streets. These movements arise from people of humble origins, who organize to
form environmental commissions in the peripheral neighborhoods of Montevideo or in
the interior of the country. They have to emerge from below due to the necessity [to
meet the needs] of the people who are affected by these undesirable surroundings;
those most worried about that reality are the ones who organize to defend themselves.
I think that the ideal would be for the neighbors to approach the workers of those
companies and to try to unite to achieve the objective they propose together. If that
were to happen, with their numbers and with their strength, they would become more
efficient and more forceful in confronting authorities (Alzugarat et al 2000: 93).
Similar to the history of environmental movements in the United States, the anti-cement and
other burgeoning anti-toxics and NIMBY struggles laid the foundation for the emergence of
more comprehensive and organized environmental justice movements in Uruguay, such as the
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anti-lead movement. These struggles grew out of the decline of factory labor (and
unionization) and the degradation of environmental and production conditions. The retreat of
the state, the inability or unwillingness of traditional political parties to address new social
realities, and the limited influence of NGOs combined with the proliferation of environmental
ideologies to allow a space for grassroots movements to fill this social and political vacuum.
3.2 A Time Bomb in the “Cemeteries of Scrap”: Jobs and the Environment
The language and practice of environmentalism has historically been absent from working
class ideology and militancy in Uruguay, as across much of the globe. The lead issue has
dovetailed with a broader consciousness and valorization of the environment, however,
presenting new possibilities for an integration of working and environmental concerns. These
are often portrayed as antagonistic forces, with environmentalism thought of as a postmaterial,
middle-class luxury rather than an integral concern to the livelihood and well-being
of working people.
The jobs-versus-the-environment dichotomy has been undermined by the growing socalled
“second contradiction” or “cost crisis” of capitalism, which consists of the degradation
of production conditions, as for instance of natural resources, labor conditions and urban
infrastructure, or nature, the body, and space (Escobar 1996: 17; O’Connor 1988, 1994).
With the ecological crisis affecting the very conditions of capital and labor reproduction,
workers, making up the newly “redundant populations” and “human waste” of a globalized
planet (Bauman 2004), find themselves in a structural position in which environmental
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protection becomes intimately tied to the protection of labor and work conditions. Workers
may be “obligated,” in Germinal Azaretto’s terms, to become environmental activists.
The PIT-CNT workers confederation invited Carlos Pilo to give a speech on May Day
2003 in La Teja as part of the scheduled stop of the “Cerro-Teja workers’ column,” a decadeslong
tradition where workers march from the “Meat Packing Martyrs” square in neighboring
Cerro, across the Pantanoso River bridge, through La Teja, then on to the main workers’ rally
at the Legislative Palace several kilometers away. This workers’ column is traditionally
among the most radical, is often at odds with the PIT-CNT leadership, and has a history of
altercations with the police.
Pilo considered his invitation as neighborhood referent, militant anarchist worker, and
environmental activist an honor. It represented the first time he had spoken at the rally in his
decades of participation. His speech to the estimated 6,000 assembled workers and supporters
linked the problem of lead contamination to the neoliberal assault on livelihoods, the
progressive deindustrialization of Montevideo’s working class neighborhoods, and the
“greed” and corruption of politicians in power (Lucha Libertaria 2003). Pilo stated:
Isn’t it true that for money, for multimillionaire interests today we have our children in
many parts of our country contaminated with lead? How and when did this happen?
What controls do the powerful skip so that they may keep showering their junk around
our homes? 66
Characterizing lead as Uruguay’s “greatest ever contamination event,” Pilo went on to
describe the grassroots response of La Teja: “An entire neighborhood organized in popular
66 “¿No es así que por dinero, por intereses multimillonarios hoy tenemos en muchas zonas de nuestro país a
nuestros niños contaminados con plomo? ¿Cómo y cuándo pasó? ¿Qué controles saltean los poderosos que
pueden ir regando su porquería por nuestros hogares?”
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assemblies, searched for the paths of struggle that would lead to solutions, to confront a
problem previously unknown to the bulk of society.”
Pilo listed some of the neighbors’ demands, including the relocation of 250 families
from squatter settlements, arguing, “As they negate the health of the poor they also negate
their right to housing. We are fed up that the neighborhoods of the poorest become garbage
dumps, where no road is ever constructed or paved, or where they never clean a gutter.” 67
The punishment of the asentamientos and of being poor, Pilo continued, is “contamination,
the lack of sanitation, of water.” The asentamientos proliferate each day across Montevideo,
said Pilo who referred to the “Men and women who are forgetting, who are made to forget,
what it was to work.” 68
“They lose the right to be workers,” he said. Jorge Batlle, “that
ridiculous and sinister” President only favors the rich, added Pilo, and his neoliberal policies
are “converting the factories into cemeteries of scrap.”
Pilo’s speech inherently theorizes the second contradiction of capitalism, linking
neoliberal policies, deindustrialization, poverty and the loss of jobs and decent work
conditions to the degradation of the urban environment and its health consequences. The
health of the community is compromised by a dual attack: due to the objective conditions of
environmental contamination, and by the weakened ability to withstand environmental health
hazards due to poverty and the associated difficulties of obtaining adequate health care or
nutrition. Workers have been forced to “forget” what Pilo considers their natural and justified
rights and full humanity, and at the same time have been forgotten by the rest of society,
abandoned and left to suffer the effects of environmental contamination.
67 “Así como niegan la salud de los pobres niegan también el derecho a la vivienda. Estamos hartos que los
barrios de los más pobres sean tiraderos de basura, donde nunca se hace un camino, se asfalte una calle, o se
limpie un caño”.
68 “Hombres y mujeres que van olvidando, que les obligan a olvidar, lo que fue trabajar.”
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Pilo and other members of the CVSP, responding to real or imagined critics, have
always been clear that theirs is not a struggle against jobs or industry. They are neither siding
“with” jobs nor the environment, but rather calling on a healthy integration of decent jobs
with minimal impacts on the environment, or a grassroots vision of “sustainability.” In a
2001 interview in the anarchist webzine Lucha Libertaria, Pilo said they were not in favor of
closing down factories and eliminating jobs. “But what we do not want,” Pilo stressed, “is that
in order to have work they contaminate the neighborhood, that they poison the children”
(Lucha Libertaria, May 2001).
Though Pilo spoke at the Cerro-Teja workers’ column rally, he lamented in an
interview to Carlos Amorín of Brecha the general lack of attention and interest expressed by
the PIT-CNT for the lead problem: “The PIT-CNT, and I say it with the pain of a worker,
never did or said anything [about lead]. In the May 1 st [general] proclamation the lead
contamination problem did not exist. I insist: I say it with pain, but it would seem as though
the contaminated children are not the sons and daughters of PIT-CNT workers” (Amorín
2003).
In the same interview, Pilo explained his frustration over those who argue that the
creation of jobs under the context of a prolonged economic crisis should be supported no
matter what the consequences or “externalities” produced:
It’s like Dirox, in Libertad: 69 what good does it do to give us forty jobs that will wipe
out the productive capacity and health of thousands of people? That’s worthless. Or
like the Gerdau Laisa foundry in Manga [Montevideo]. They’re filling lands with
foundry waste on Repetto Street. There are already people living on that, and even
desperate people who scavenge in the waste, salvaging metals and smelting them
there, in the open air, in the middle of an area of vineyards and small farms, in order to
69 San José Department. The Dirox chemical company had been in the media extensively since 2003 for its
contamination of the surrounding area and a neighbors’ group that emerged to oppose it.
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ecover a few kilos of metal. It is unfortunate that this kind of thing is going on, a new
time bomb in the making that will explode in five, ten years, with hundreds of children
contaminated, agricultural lands smothered with contaminants, productive areas of
rural Montevideo that will succumb to misery, because who would want to live and
produce there? Who would want to consume products that come from this area?
(Amorin 2003)
Pilo claimed things were different in La Teja, where he attributed an emerging environmental
consciousness to the efforts of children and the community media:
This struggle has been raising our conscience about problems we once ignored, such
as environmental problems. Luckily here, in this barrio, consciousness has been
growing, especially in the schools. The children know what contamination is, they
know how much lead they have and they know its consequences. I’d say that the
children are more responsible than the adults; they are the ones who say they don’t
want contaminating industries to come. It has changed considerably, in the schools,
and in the community newspapers and radio (Amorin 2003).
3.2.1 Between Labor and Environmental Protection
Workers find themselves in a difficult position under crisis-hit Uruguay. When they do speak
out against unsafe or unhealthy working conditions, they face the threat of being fired. While
worker repression is not new to Uruguay, the relative position of organized labor vis-à-vis
management has weakened under the neoliberal trends of outsourcing and part-time hiring, in
addition to the economic crisis (cf. Olesker 2001). As an ANCAP state petroleum company
worker said to me, workers in Uruguay are forced to choose between keeping hunger-wage
jobs or confronting their bosses on unhealthy work conditions and risk being fired for
speaking up. They are forced into what this worker explained as the “false” “jobs vs.
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environment” dichotomy, and confront the realization: “if I work I get contaminated,” but “I
need to work.” 70
Unionization has proven difficult at small factories, particularly under the neoliberal
mandates of a “flexible” labor force. Workers are often hired for less than the three-month
period necessary to obtain formal legal status and rights. They are then fired and left to
burden on their own any occupational diseases that develop. In August 2004, metallurgic
workers of the UNTMRA union met at their union hall with community members, CVSP and
CCZ (Central Communal Zone) 15 environment and health commission activists in a session
about lead contamination. 71
The UNTMRA had been trying to organize a “dialogue table”
between Ministry of Work, Social Security (Banco de Previsión Social-BPS) and Housing
(MVOTMA) officials, industrial management, and workers to address workplace health and
safety issues, including occupational lead poisoning. One workers leader, responding to a
discussion that had mostly centered on childhood lead poisoning, implored supporters to not
“forget” the workers, who are “at the center” (en el foco) of the lead issue.
Radesca battery factory workers tried unsuccessfully to get working conditions on the
negotiating table. The workers I spoke with disagreed with the policy of factory closures for
environmental noncompliance. They said that this did not get to the core of the problem.
When Montevideo factories are shut down, they often simply move to Canelones, they said,
where there are lenient or non-existent regulations. 72
Raúl 73 told me about some of the shiftiness involved in lead controls at Radesca. He
said that workers are given lead exams only once a year. They are always scheduled for
70 Interview with ANCAP worker, August 6, 2004.
71 The following information is drawn from participant observation and interviews at the UNMTRA meeting,
August 6, 2004.
72 Canelones Department is adjacent to Montevideo.
73 The names in this section are pseudonyms.
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Mondays, after workers have had an entire weekend for their bodies to eliminate toxins. The
workers never see the results of the tests, and simply get a “pass” or a “fail” as apt for work. 74
Raúl says that as opposed to most of his coworkers, he has the means to pay out of his pocket
for a lead exam at the BPS. Through his own testing, he discovered that he had a BLL of over
45 μg/dl, well above what he considered acceptable.
Another worker, Juan José, noted all of the illegal informal metals smelting conducted
in Montevideo. He said sometimes when metallurgic workers are laid off, since they know
they can make a few pesos with melted down metals, they engage in activities such as “cable
burning” (quema de cables), or the smelting and resale of heavy metals from electrical and
telephone cables, to put food on their family’s tables. Juan José and others also mentioned the
difficulty of getting workers to be concerned about these issues. They are caught between
protecting a miserly income and protecting their health and well-being.
At the UNTMRA meeting, Pilo recounted going to Canelones Department with
Brecha journalist Carlos Amorín in 2001 to investigate lead contamination in the vicinity of
the ALUR metals foundry, a company owned by Austrian capital. Next to the foundry, the
“lead oven” blows toxins through a fan 24 hours a day that is pointed straight at the
neighboring housing, Pilo said. Teresa Jiménez’s family was one of the most affected. They
live in a shantytown with the ironically evocative name of Villa Olvidada (“Forgottenville”).
Teresa’s children are all heavily lead poisoned, and one of their chickens would lay eggs “the
color of lead.” Pilo once brought some of these dull grayish eggs to Montevideo to denounce
the Canelones conditions.
74 Lead and other occupationally related biological exams have long been concealed from workers in a wide
range of industries. See for example Mr. Linardi’s testimony of work at a battery plant (3.3.1). Even at the most
empowered unions such as at ANCAP, Fancap workers have complained of not being shown first-time lead test
results, depriving them of the knowledge of whether their body lead burden increases through occupational
exposure.
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Pilo and Amorín had a difficult time “getting access to” Canelones. They ended up
taking several of the area children to the La Teja health clinic, since the Canelones clinics
were unresponsive to their requests. All of the lead blood tests proved positive. Some locals
paid the price, however. Marta Gutiérrez and her family, for instance, suffered harassment,
attacks, death threats, and arson to their home for speaking out. The perpetrators, most likely
with links to the ALUR factory, were later jailed for these crimes, though as Carlos Amorín
once told me, authorities have been much more efficient at enacting “criminal justice” than
“environmental justice.”
As reported by Amorín (2001: 70), Marta’s husband, Gonzalo, worked at ALUR for
seven years, and their home was a mere 30 meters from the factory. Their daughter Jennifer
suffered years of stumbling, vision and hearing problems, vomiting, weight loss, mood swings
and anemia before they managed, with the assistance of La Teja activists, to get her blood
tested in a La Teja clinic. Marta had been listening to a radio program that was covering the
lead problem in La Teja and recognized the symptoms as almost identical to those of Jennifer.
The results proved positive, showing Jennifer had a BLL of 45 μg/dl (Amorín 2001: 70-71).
Gonzalo spoke out and joined the burgeoning worker and neighbors’ mobilization against the
factory, and his Austrian boss threatened to fire him. Gonzalo’s co-workers threatened to
collectively walk out if he was fired, and management backed down. They refused, however,
to grant the workers’ demand of lead tests for all factory workers (Amorín 2001: 75-76).
Gonzalo, who had worked in close proximity to the open oven of galvanized lead, had
only been tested three times in his seven years at ALUR, and he never saw the results of these
tests. In addition to almost continually running the open-air lead oven, the factory utilizes a
process in which the cables and wires they produce are passed through sand to remove any
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adhered pieces of lead. Once saturated, the tainted sand is dumped behind the factory
(Amorín 2001: 74).
The Fanaesa battery factory in Rosario, Colonia Department operated for almost 20
years before shutting down in 2002, leaving an environmental and health disaster in its wake.
The local environmental group Modear denounced the premature deaths of 24 Fanaesa
workers due to deplorable work conditions, and considered the city of Rosario a “time bomb”
of environmental contamination (La República, October 21, 2002). None of the Fanaesa
workers surpassed 65 years of age, and according to one workers’ leader, average life
expectancy reached only 55 years. 75
Ruth Bentancur, spokeswoman for Modear, reported the
company released a total of 4,800,000 kilograms of toxic substances through its unfiltered
chimneys over 19 years (La República, October 21, 2002). Pilo also told the Fanaesa story at
the UNTMRA meeting, saying that several workers had severe lead poisoning, reaching as
much as 110 μg/dl, with many suffering from hypertension and spontaneous abortions, as well
as elevated cancer rates.
3.2.2 ANCAP and a Leftist Double Bind
Julio López, member of the Industrial Security Commission of the Federación Ancap (Fancap,
or ANCAP workers union), discussed with me the dilemmas of defending his source of work
while recognizing the state enterprise’s role in lead contamination. 76
Speaking of early public
75 Based on a testimonio given during the II Foro Social sobre Contaminantes Químicos Ambientales, November
3, 2005, IMM.
76 The following information is taken from an interview with Julio López, Federación Ancap headquarters, April
21, 2004.
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scrutiny of ANCAP’s leaded gasoline and suspected direct pollution from its La Teja refinery,
he says the mainstream media and politicians of the traditional political parties seized on the
issue in order to “stain” the image of ANCAP and forward a privatization agenda. According
to López, a political campaign “tried to present ANCAP as a negative element for the country
because it was a state enterprise, because it generated costs, well… there you have a whole
war of confrontation between two political models: where one was saying that everything
needed to be private, that this was the best, that it was a panacea; and the other that took the
position that you should keep in the State’s hands certain key [enterprises] without which the
economy would not function.” It got to the point, says Lopez, in which “all of this was fired
this way, showing all the bad things: in addition to being bad, inefficient, expensive for the
country, [ANCAP] was contaminating.”
Fancap began an internal investigation into lead contamination, followed by a partial
acknowledgement of responsibility and an approximation to the neighbors’ movement. Their
actions finally lead them to confrontational stances against the ANCAP directorship and the
state. These events occurred during a campaign over a popular referendum to overturn the
privatization law of ANCAP. On December 7, 2003, in the midst of the lead contamination
controversy, the electorate voted by landslide to overturn the enterprise’s planned
privatization. Most of the anti-lead activists and Fancap workers mediated, with difficulty,
the double bind of defending ANCAP from privatization and denouncing it for its role in
contamination.
Hostilities between La Teja neighbors and ANCAP, including Fancap, reached a
boiling point before eventually subsiding. According to López:
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There were groups of neighbors who were already proposing to go to the refinery and
light it on fire. There was even a plan that was ultimately averted: to take, to start to
carry tires from all over the place, pile them up in front of the doors of the refinery and
light them on fire there. Which was a pretty messed up position because anything
could have happened. Maybe nothing would have gone wrong, just as maybe there’d
have been a situation in which at that particular moment there was a gas leak in the
area around the plant... and goodbye. 77
López said Fancap responded by going to the neighbors to “ask to speak” (pedir la palabra) at
the second neighborhood assembly, which was one of the biggest with perhaps 200 tejanos
attending. “After the first insults and shouting (...) we asked the neighbors for a vote of
confidence to investigate,” López recalled. Fancap shared all the information they gathered
with the neighbors themselves, building trust and allowing Fancap to become “more closely
tied to the neighborhood.” At the 2001 Rural Expo in Montevideo’s Prado Park, Fancap
participated at the CVSP informational stand, and its workers printed 40,000 flyers stating
“No to lead, yes to the remodeling” (No al plomo, sí a la remodelación). This position
supported the elimination of leaded gasoline through the state-financed (as opposed to
privately funded) remodeling of the refinery to accommodate unleaded gasoline production.
López characterizes the relationship between ANCAP workers and the La Teja
neighborhood as unique, and the result of years of shared history and formative experiences.
López asked:
How can we go to the neighbors with lies when it was the neighbors themselves who
put themselves in front of the ANCAP plant when the dictatorship imposed the [1973]
coup d’état and we occupied all of the factories? (...) We said, ok, a coup happened,
we’ll occupy our workplace. We holed ourselves up in our place of work, and when
77 “Había grupos de vecinos que ya proponían ir a la refinería y prenderle fuego. Hasta una acción que se logro
frenar: de llevar, de empezar a cargar cubiertas de todos lados y amontarlas frente a las puertas de la refinería y
prenderles fuego allí. Lo que era una actitud jodida porque podría pasar cualquier cosa. Podría no pasar nada
como podría de repente darse una situación de que hubiese justo en ese momento un escape de gas de las esferas
que están cerca de la planta... y fuiste.”
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we thought that we were alone, we went to the outskirts of the plant and found that
there was a long ring of neighbors assembled who were not allowing the tanks to pass
through. That kind of relationship marks you. 78
The following section discusses the relationship between class, place, and environment
through the perspectives of three men who have lived through devastating socioenvironmental
conditions.
3.3 Labor, Place, and Socio-Environmental Degradation: Three Testimonios
3.3.1 “I’ve buried a lot of friends much younger than me.” Enebé Linardi’s Testimonio
Decades of storage battery production and the dumping of lead acid battery waste from the
Radesca S.A. factory have produced some of the gravest known cases of lead contamination
in Montevideo. The health of the Radesca workers and their families has been devastated, and
the environmental conditions around the factory, in the surrounding community of Peñarol,
and along the areas where most of the waste was dumped, including an extensive shantytown
bordering the Miguelete River, are abysmal. I interviewed longtime Radesca worker Enebé
Linardi at his home in the Montevideo working class area between Cerrito de la Victoria and
Ituzaingó. 79
We sat for over two hours in the dimly lit living room of a modest but nicely
kept home. Linardi wears thick-rimmed glasses, with wrinkled and calloused skin and
78 “Cómo podemos ir con mentiras a los vecinos cuando fueron los propios vecinos que se pusieron frente a la
planta de Ancap cuando la dictadura dió el golpe de estado y ocupamos todas las plantas? (...) Dijimos bueno,
un golpe de estado, ocupamos el lugar de trabajo. Nos metimos en el lugar de trabajo, y cuando creíamos que
estabamos sólos fuimos para los bordes de la planta y nos encontramos que estaba todo un cordón de vecinos que
no dejaban pasar los tanques. Y ese tipo de relación te marca.
79 The following account is taken from an interview with Mr. Linardi in his home, April 9, 2005.
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graying hair, looking every bit of his seventy-six years. Mr. Linardi worked the oven at the
Radesca plant, smelting lead for two decades. He was also placed in charge of dumping lead
waste at various locations in Montevideo, leading to an environmental disaster years later.
Mr. Linardi has persistent bone problems but otherwise said he is generally in good health,
notwithstanding his years of grueling toil with lead and other unhealthy substances. Though
he has survived to old age, he admitted, “At 76 years I’ve buried a lot of friends much
younger than me... from cancer, the liver… and the men just kept dying.” 80
Linardi worked for 20 years at Radesca, his last job before retiring in 1981. He said
the day they told him he could retire he “went out of there flying.” He got his first job among
many when he was only eleven years old, working for a couple of years at the Mercado del
Puerto in the Old City, a time he valorized in what would turn out to be one of his “best jobs,”
allowing him, among other things, to get to know Montevideo. He ended up working over
forty years before retiring at the relatively early age of fifty-two. 81
Before finding his job at the Radesca battery factory, Linardi worked at the fish market
as an eleven-year old, then at various factories, and delivery and stocking jobs. His jobs were
quite varied, and included: a pig farmer, the fish market, working for a photographer on 18 de
Julio Avenue downtown, at an almacen wholesaler (por mayor), and at a linseed oil (lino)
factory. When he entered Radesca, he went “straight to the oven.” Linardi described in detail
the characteristics of the oven and the process of purifying lead for use in batteries.
The process of smelting lead at the plant was introduced during the years of Import
Substitution Industrialization (ISI) policies, when it become prohibitive to import industrial
80 “Con 76 años ya enterré una pila de amigos que tenían mucho menos que yo... del cáncer, o del hígado o... y
los hombres se iban matando”.
81 This is my estimate from the dates Linardi gave me. However, he also mentioned that he had registered
“forty-eight” years of social security, implying he would have retired at fifty-nine years of age, and in 1988.
Either there is some confusion over his actual age and years of work, or perhaps he is older than he lets on.
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products due to bureaucratic hurdles and high taxes. ISI was promoted as a means of reducing
foreign dependency and enhancing national self-sufficiency, a productive strategy pushed by
the Economic Commission of Latin America (CEPAL) that characterized many of the Latin
American national economies of the time (cf. Canak 1989, Cardoso and Faletto 1987). The
Radescas developed a smelting and lead recovery system with the help of the Asturian
González brothers, in a pioneering method and production process for Uruguay. 82
Due in part
to this “homemade” and improvised character, the workers who ran the smelter did so under
what would now to many be considered horrifying conditions.
Linardi says the work hours were “normal” as they worked eight-hour days by taking
four-hour shifts at the oven. The use of protective clothing was minimal, however, until his
final years at the plant. He described the early years when he and other workers would only
wear alpargata sandals and maybe some overalls, stepping in lead oxide and pure lead and
tracking it all over the place and onto their clothes and bodies. Linardi said his nostrils and
mouth would brown and be covered with lead, and most of the workers would smoke handrolled
tobacco at the plant.
To break up the batteries and retrieve the lead, the workers used plant-made axes.
They would dump the contents into a large open oven, by hand, to be melted down. The lead
then went through a two-step process of purification. After the first round, the lead-laced
tailings (escoria) that floated on top of the mixture would simply be discarded and later
dumped at various sites around Montevideo, in Peñarol, in the plant grounds or sold as
landfill. The “cleaner” substance would then be re-smelted, with the floating waste and
82 As discussed in Chapter 4, the González factory was embroiled in a significant, thirty-year environmental
conflict with neighbors of Malvín Norte in Montevideo.
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impurities again discarded, until the lead became sufficiently “pure” to use in assembling
batteries.
The recycled lead was somewhat hard, explained Linardi, as it ended up mixed with
antimony. When the plant needed pure (or soft) lead oxide, they would recur to a separate
oven and process, where caustic soda was used as an agent to separate the antimony from the
lead. A spinning processor beat the molten surface mixture to introduce oxygen, which would
react with the caustic soda and adhere to the antimony. 83
The latter mixture would form a
thin layer at the top that would then be removed by the workers with a long scooping device.
This process would continue for up to 12 or 14 hours, until the lead was sufficiently pure.
Everything was performed by hand in the first years. Later a tractor was bought to
dump the lead mixtures in the ovens. When it did so, explained Linardi, a “large cloud of
[lead] oxide” would fill the air. He and his co-workers would stand next to the open oven,
pushing the lead in with long iron rods in order for it to melt uniformly. The workers never
used any protective facial masks. Hand protection in the early years consisted of rubber
mittens made at the plant itself, and only later were proper work gloves provided. In these
later years, product of union demands, work boots were also provided to replace the thin
sandals worn previously.
Workers bathed at the factory with the same water that was used as a coolant for the
burner. It would sometimes be scorching hot. There was a small room for changing clothes,
and the work clothes would be hauled up on a tin “jimmy” above their heads. In the final
years lockers were incorporated. The workers were given half a liter of milk per four-hour
shift in order to counter the negative health effects of lead.
83 I have read of a similar process used in lead smelting referred to as “froth flotation.” See Lamphear et al.
2003.
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Mr. Linardi told me the pay at Radesca was “like anywhere else.” The benefit was in
the incentive system, he said. The company rewarded workers for production output and for
not missing days, for instance. Linardi admitted, though, that some of the “benefits”
amounted to a “lack of penalties.” The workers would be fined “for any little thing,” he said.
There was a “homemade” aguinaldo consisting of a year-end bonus in which fines for missing
work, arriving late, getting sick, hurt, or for indiscipline would invariably end up reducing the
bonus to the point that, “no one ever cashed their bonus.”
The company doctor did, however, cash in his year-end bonus. Workers would go to
the doctor and he would invariably tell them, “Everything looks fine.” When the problem
looked bad, Linardi laughed as he said the doctor would suggest, “Maybe you should see a
physician.” “He was a son of a bitch,” he added bitterly. The workers would have to get
examinations for their health card every two years, though Linardi does not remember any
other times being tested for anything, including lead poisoning. He said that workers never
saw the results of health exams, but once in a while they were sent to the social security
(Banco de Seguros del Estado- BSE) hospital for days of “de-intoxication.”
Linardi said he was hospitalized once, presumably for dangerous levels of lead
poisoning, but he “didn’t feel anything” and did not understand what was happening. He
suffered several work-related accidents, some of which had long-lasting consequences. His
back, hip and bones are in sorry shape as well. He says his hip is “ready to be thrown away”
and his bones “are in miserable condition.” He was not sure if these ailments were due to lead
exposure or due to a heavy and grueling workload over the years.
I asked Mr. Linardi when he first became aware of the dangers of lead. He answered:
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Now, when they started messing around with the La Teja thing. The truth is that it
was then when I began to find out that it is truly bad. Because I could see the factory,
the filth of the factory, yes. But I’ve worked in other filthy factories too. The pig
slaughterhouse for instance (…) I’d come out much filthier from the slaughterhouse
than from [Radesca]. (…) I was used to working in all kinds of places. I didn’t know
it was as dangerous to health as it actually was, then I found out. 84
The Radesca company employed a clear strategy of worker control through the direct and
selective recruiting of employees. Linardi said he could not think of another worker like
himself who was from Montevideo. He was offered the job through the connections of a
cousin. Everyone else was from remote areas of the countryside. A large group of them came
from rural Tala, Canelones. Others came from Tacuarembó.
When Linardi first started working there was no union. Later one was formed but
remained weak. It was associated with a sub-affiliate of the UMNTRA metals union. Linardi
says the only times the plant would go on work stoppage, however, were in cases of a
widespread, general strike. Otherwise, workers might file complaints but in general were not
willing to risk a strike or work stoppage to force their demands on management. Workers
were offered low cost housing near the factory, and were often taken care of in a paternalistic
manner.
A woman from Tala, Canelones, for instance, was in charge of cooking lunch for
several of her fellow Tala residents. Linardi recalled how one day some of the workers asked
her if she’d give lunch to a friend of theirs from Tala (who did not work in the factory). She
was skeptical, asking how long ago he had moved to Montevideo. When the workers
answered “a couple of years,” recounted Linardi, she refused the man lunch on the grounds
84 “Y ahora cuando empezaron a joder con esto de La Teja. La verdad que ahí fue cuando yo me empecé a
enterar de que en realidad está malo. Porque yo veía que la fábrica, la mugre de la fábrica sí. Pero yo he
trabajado en otras fábricas mugrientas. La chanchería no más... (...) Salía más mugriento de la chanchería que de
ahí. (...) Yo estaba acostumbrado a trabajar en todos lados. No sabía que era tan peligroso para la salud como la
realidad después me enteré”.
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that he was “too localized.” In Linardi’s view, there was a prevalent fear on the part of
management of workers becoming “contaminated” in Montevideo. The contamination
stemmed not from lead, but from the militancy and combativeness that characterized
Montevideo’s working class. As long as the Tala workers could maintain their rural purity,
they would remain appropriately malleable and loyal to management.
Though Linardi said he was “too communist” for the taste of managers, he was
nevertheless a loyal worker who won the trust of the Radesca management. He said he “never
liked to cozy up [to management]” (Nunca me gustó ser alcahuete), but he also never “put the
hand in the jar” to steal from anyone. Linardi contrasted his own honesty to the thievery of
some of his contemporaries. He described the “gauchos pistoleros” 85 who would work the pig
trade. Linardi said that if you looked the other way they would “rob you blind,” and even
switch the pigs on the scale. His loyalty was rewarded with delivery jobs for the Radesca
managers. They bought a small farm (chacra) in the Interior where they would raise some
animals, go hunting and engage in other hobbies. Linardi was sent to bring materials or goods
back and forth between Montevideo and the countryside.
The most infamous deliveries Mr. Linardi was asked to make was his dumping of lead
tailings and other waste in various parts of the city. One of the primary sites was along the
Miguelete River, in front of the La Luz soccer stadium, where the 25 de Agosto squatter
settlement later formed. When former Radesca workers brought these activities to light, on
the wake of the La Teja lead discoveries, they were initially treated with scorn by municipal
authorities. When the IMM finally came to conduct some soil tests, Linardi says they “barely
scratched the surface” of the earth.
85 Could be loosely translated as “six-shooter cowboys.”
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Linardi described how a man who they called el Mulato lived in the area and would
direct the dumping. He said that factories from all over Montevideo dumped in this and other
areas: “[I]t wasn’t just us, they came from all of the factories to dump there. I remember a
chocolate factory, and the kids would go there to eat chocolate.” 86
They would often burn the
waste there too. Linardi suggests that the problems of the present are not so new: “Now
people sometimes become alarmed [with what’s happening]. Now people have less shame
than before, who knows, but things have always been the same.” 87
Other chosen spots to dump were an old abandoned quinta on Aparicio Saravia and San
Martín, and another behind the Danubio soccer stadium close to Cochabamba and Camino
Carrasco. The most toxic spot, however, was the factory itself. Linardi said that there was
already a huge pile of lead waste when he entered the factory, and it grew exponentially
during his twenty years there. The pile was “bigger than this house,” he said.
3.3.2 Growing up in “Auschwitz.” José Radesca’s Testimonio
Workers were not the only ones to suffer from the factory’s contaminating practices. José
Radesca is the nephew of the original owners of the factory. His father was the foreman there,
and José was essentially born and raised within the factory walls. Upon hearing of the lead
contamination problem in La Teja, José started asking questions and linking his own health
problems and those of the company’s workers to the productive activities that had once
86 “Pero no llevábamos nosotros solos, iban de todas fábricas a tirar ahí. Yo me acuerdo la fábrica de chocolate,
y los botijas ahí comiendo los chocolates”.
87
“Ahora a veces la gente se alarma de ahora. Ahora la gente tiene menos vergüenza que antes, yo qué sé, pero
siempre fue igual la cosa”.
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conformed his “home” surroundings. This developing knowledge presented an opportunity to
speak out against his family’s enterprise.
Mr. Radesca claims he can identify a period during his youth when he began his
intellectual and physical decline, coinciding with the opening of the lead smelter and
chimney. 88
He showed me his primary school grade records to “prove” how he went from top
of his class to mediocre, with the dividing point correlated with the inauguration of the
chimney. The opening of the smelter signaled the beginning of in-house production of
virtually every phase of the battery production process.
From his prolonged lead exposure at the factory, Mr. Radesca developed hearing
problems, complicating his communicational ability and the subtleties needed to play his
beloved guitar. He is also prone to depression, which has been severe enough for him to be
hospitalized at least once. Radesca characterizes his childhood in terms of a deep isolation
and loneliness. He refers, dramatically, to his childhood home as a “miniature Auschwitz.” 89
As a child, José and his friends used to play “marbles” with homemade balls of lead.
He says that he always had a sweet taste in his mouth, which he would neutralize by chewing
asphalt or natural rubber. He mentioned growing up around various toxins, including PCB’s
and arsenic. Radesca showed me pictures of the early days of the factory, with plush gardens,
fruit trees, grape vines and thick wooded areas. Another picture taken twenty years later
depicted a desolated landscape, with burned out grass and scarce vegetation. For years,
nevertheless, Radesca affirms that “the whole neighborhood” would buy eggs, milk and pork
from the Radesca’s small farm, unknowingly ingesting devastating poisons. 90
88 Interview with José Radesca (J.R.), September 28, 2004.
89 Interview with J.R., April 5, 2005.
90 Interview with J.R., September 28, 2004.
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The conditions in the factory were “infrahuman,” according to Radesca. He says that
he could not keep pets because they would either die or the cats would “attack” him. He said
his mother used to raise chickens until they literally began dropping off dead to the ground
below, promptly devoured by the pigs. The cows were “crazier than the mad cow,” he
claimed. Peñarol used to be an “Eden,” José recalled, a neighborhood lush in vegetation, with
plots of citrus trees, vegetables, and wine grapes, as well as several native Ombú trees. Years
since the company started smelting lead, however, the area became a great wasteland. 91
Radesca claims he had little idea of the harm that lead exposure was causing. He says
he did not become conscious of the danger until the lead issue broke out in La Teja and he
began seeing Carlos Pilo on television. “If these people have lead then we’re the kings of
lead,” Radesca thought at the time. Some of the workers took action alongside José. Many of
the others had long since died, however, several of cancer, while others did not seem to want
to raise a fuss. Radesca says that some workers maintain levels of lead beyond 50 and even
70µd/dl, even years after retiring from the factory. As for José, he was only recently tested
and was surprised that his BLL was still 16μg/dl, decades since he had moved from Peñarol. 92
Soil tests conducted in the factory revealed levels of up to 90,000 mg/kg, according to
Radesca. 93
He charges the testing was piecemeal and vastly inadequate, however. José was
trying to form an NGO to sue the Radesca company on behalf of former workers and widows
for health damages and suffering, as well as to create a “clearinghouse” of information about
lead contamination and poisoning. Radesca thinks much has been accomplished in the lead
91 Interview with J.R., April 5, 2005.
92 BLLs are only a measure of recent exposure, meaning this worker’s BLL is produced by either ongoing
contamination, or by lead released gradually after being embedded in the bones and tissues.
93 Others have put the figure at over 100,000 mg/kg. Regardless, it represents extreme contamination.
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issue, particularly the consciousness that has been awakened among neighbors and children,
who can “no longer be fooled.”
3.3.3 “I haven’t had a decorous life.” Miguel Cabrera’s Testimonio
In one of my first of several meetings with Miguel Cabrera, one of the original CVSP leaders
and long-time resident of the Rodolfo Rincón squatter settlement, we sat down to drink mate
in the home he, his wife Adriana Lopez and their family had been temporarily relocated to in
La Teja, pending permanent relocation to new collective housing in the Sayago Norte area. 94
Theirs was the second family in Uruguay to discover lead poisoning among their children, and
from one day to the next were thrust into the heart of media attention, visited by prominent
politicians, and took the first steps in the incipient grassroots movement against lead
poisoning in which they would play a prominent role. Their story is the story of lead
contamination and the anti-lead movement of Uruguay, and it is also the story of living at the
losing end of an entrenched socio-economic structure that bottomed out with the profound
crisis of the past few years.
Adriana and Miguel have five daughters from their relationship together, plus one son
each from previous relationships. Only the daughters live with them. The oldest daughter at
17, Graciela had a child of her own in 2002, adding a granddaughter to the Cabrera López
household. The eighteen-month old infant was sleeping when I first arrived, but later woke
up and started crying and coughing. She suffers from asthma and looked very thin and gaunt.
94 The following account is drawn from an interview with the author, June 9, 2004. The names of the children
are pseudonyms.
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Another daughter present was twelve-year old Cindi, a more healthy-looking girl who came
into the room often, offering a quick smiled and an easy laugh. She was sent at one point to
the bakery down the street on her daily round up of bread handouts.
Five-year old Talía was also there. She darted in and out of the room, and gave me
quick glances and often a smile. She is pretty with bright eyes and long hair, wet at the time
from a recent bath. Talía was the first of the daughters to be diagnosed with lead poisoning,
and had the highest levels. Her original BLL of 39.5 had dropped to 14, but Adriana insists
that her daughter suffers more from lead than ever before. Her knee joints weakened, she
suffers from frequent headaches and has developed hearing and vision problems. Little fiveyear
old Talía has also started to develop troubling and aggressive behavior at school. Most
recently and dramatically, she stabbed a fellow classmate in the face with a fork. 95
Roxana,
with a BLL still at 26, has also suffered physical and neurological problems.
When we were conversing alone, I asked Miguel if he had also been tested for lead.
At first he started explaining he hadn’t because it was a hassle for him to go to the hospital,
but then he revealed the real reason. He hasn’t had a check up of any kind in years out of fear
for what they might find. If he were to go, he says, “Imagine it. I’d end up hospitalized for
sure.” Miguel cannot risk being hospitalized because he is the “axis” (eje) of the family, he
says, and his wife and daughters depend on him, placing enormous pressure on him to remain
healthy or at least able bodied. Miguel listed a host of health problems he does know about.
He says his legs are always in pain, he has kidney problems, heart problems, his right arm
goes to sleep from time to time, and he suffers from intense headaches and vision problems,
95 In an interesting comparative and historical parallel, a groundbreaking psychological study by Byers and Lord
(1943) on the behavioral impacts of pediatric lead poisoning includes a description of a child stabbing another
with a fork, an account that impacted the scientific and public policy community at the time.
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which he remedies as best he can with the non-prescription reading glasses he picked up at the
street market.
Miguel said that he used to donate blood for family and friends, and he would
normally go to the Pereira Rossell Hospital to do it, a place that is less strict about blood
screening. 96
Several years ago he gave blood again, but this time at the more scrutinizing
CASMU hospital, for a neighbor’s child. They ran a standard check on the blood and
discovered that Miguel had Hepatitis B. He had actually developed it long before, but some
symptoms remained. He says that this was in the early 1990’s, when the AIDS scare was just
reaching Uruguay, and at first he feared that he had HIV. It turns out it was “only” Hepatitis,
but it forced him to take extra care for his health. He says he used to be a heavy drinker (“I
drank like crazy”) but gave that up a few years ago on doctor’s orders. He still smokes his
tobacco, though, as he “can’t let that go.” He’s also supposed to watch what he eats and
follow a special diet, but after a pause added: “Well, I can’t have that luxury.”
Miguel is 47 years old and has spent 35 of those years living in Rodolfo Rincón. He
has mostly graying hair, somewhat long on the sides and back, and his face, body, and hands
are slender and roughly worn from years of hard work and living. He is originally from
Montevideo, from the northern Los Bulevares area. His parents split up shortly after he was
born, and his mother and her boyfriend raised him. When he was eleven, he left to live with
his father, and together they moved to Rodolfo Rincón. Adriana has lived with him for almost
twenty years now, and he’s vowed to keep his family together so his kids don’t grow up with
separated parents like he did. 97
96 In Uruguay when someone needs blood it is most typical that a family member or friend donates it. Hospitals
have very limited blood banks.
97 Miguel and Adriana did split up in early 2005, with Adriana moving out and Miguel left in their relocated
home to care for the children.
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Miguel has worked all kinds of jobs. He worked in leather and wool tanneries,
metallurgic factories, a meat packing plant, the paint industry, and construction jobs, among
others. He started working the “real jobs” when he was fifteen, after dropping out of school
following the fifth grade. Before then, he had worked as a child selling candy and newspapers
on buses. Of unhealthy jobs (trabajos insalubres), he says he has worked “a thousand.” He
highlighted his work preparing sheep hides as particularly unhealthy and grueling. In a
western area of Montevideo, the company had its workers wash the wool hides directly in the
Miguelete River. The process requires drying the hides in the sun for days or weeks with the
feet and necks still attached. They would quickly rot and fill with maggots, and would be
piled on top of each other on the banks of the river. Miguel and the other workers had to
climb up on these piles of worm-infested hides, sort through them and eventually wash and
chemically treat them in the Miguelete, before repeated drying, stretching, weighing, and
finally selling them to market. The workers didn’t take any special precautions and all of the
waste was washed downstream, but as Miguel explained, “it was what I had to do.”
“I haven’t had a decorous life,” 98 Miguel proclaimed solemnly to me. He went on: “I
had to go out and struggle since I was a kid… and I keep struggling.” It’s hard to gauge what
he was feeling at that moment. His voice was touched with sadness, a bit of resignation, but
also carried a matter-of-fact tone. He had told this story before.
“My life hasn’t been very kind to me,” he emphasized, and perhaps to make sure I
could grasp what he meant by this, he added: “I’ve had to eat out of garbage cans.” Miguel
says that this was his “destiny,” as he was born into poverty: “My parents were poor… they
didn’t give me what they wanted to be able to give me.” He is determined to leave something
better for his own children, who are “his life.” That’s why he was optimistic about the new
98 “No tuve una vida decorosa.”
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government home they were to be given. Even after he dies, his children will at least be able
to say that their father put a roof over their heads, that he left them something of value.
Before he was laid off in 2000, Miguel had worked for eight years “in the black” on a
flour transport truck. After losing his job, he looked in the classified ads for employment. He
found that the only jobs he could apply for stipulated being under 35 years of age. He was 44
at the time. “I didn’t exist anymore,” he said. The only possible work that was available was
as a private security guard. But the pay was terrible at 7 pesos an hour. 99
He decided to
“rummage around” for other kinds of work.
Miguel joined tens of thousands of other jobless workers in the informal economy, in
his case working the street markets (ferias). He says he goes to a Sunday market with goods
people give him or sell to him at half price, with the understanding that he’ll pay back their
share and pocket any small profit he makes. Some Sundays he doesn’t make “a cent,” he
laments (A veces no hago un mango). If he’s lucky, he’ll make enough pesos to pay back the
weekly debts his family incurs through “deferred” (fiado) payments on fruits and vegetables at
the feria, or other items at the corner kiosk (quiosco). It’s hard to make ends meet that way.
Miguel says that his family usually spends about 100 pesos at the quiosco and 150 at the feria,
meaning he has to sell 250 pesos worth of goods at the feria just to pay his debts each week.
Sometimes he makes it, and sometimes he doesn’t.
Miguel says they would not get by without the food assistance they receive from the
State. They get the INDA “tray,” the “lead” food basket (though he said that authorities were
trying to get them off the list), and the vitamins and other supplements given out at the
pediatrician’s office. They also get some bread handouts at the end of the day from the local
baker, and whatever else they can find. On top of that, the Housing Ministry still pays the
99 Perhaps fifty cents at the time.
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family’s electric and water bills. Without these various forms of State and community
assistance, it would be impossible to survive.
3.3.4 Living the Cost Crisis
Mr. Cabrera’s story reflects the experiences of a “lumpen” worker who has always had to deal
with unhealthy and environmentally hazardous jobs, unprotected by any union. Rather than
falling among the ranks of the growing de-proletarianized workforce when much of the
working class was forced into the informal economy in Uruguay as elsewhere in the region
(cf. Auyero 1997), Cabrera has mostly lived and worked as part of the structurally and
permanently marginalized, or “lumpen” sector of society. Mr. Linardi, on the other hand,
represents a more traditional and formal worker, one who formed part of a (albeit weak)
union, working long-term and retiring at the same job, and at a factory that epitomized the
dominant import substitution industrialization model of postwar Uruguay. Cabrera and
Linardi’s stories demonstrate and converge, however, to the extent that each was forced to
work in unhealthy jobs that degraded their personal health and the environment. Together
with Radesca’s story, they suggest that industrial pollution is not merely a result of neoliberal
reform, but was in fact an unacknowledged consequence of nationalist ISI policies as well.
Long-standing polluting practices have arguably intensified in recent years, however,
and have dovetailed with heightened forms of social vulnerability. The rolling back of the
protectionist state weakened its ability to regulate industry and to insure the security of its
citizens. The cost crisis has hit Uruguay, evidenced by the brutal exploitation and work
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conditions of the UMNTRA and Fanaesa workers, the dumping of waste and unfettered
industrial emissions of factories like Radesca S.A. and ALUR, and the growing environmental
contamination of gardens, yards, farms, streams and riverbanks across Uruguay. With many
workers and their families living in the immediate vicinity of the factories that employ them,
and squatters settling on toxic waste sites, work, domestic, and environmental conditions
coincide as never before. The coming together of these conditions has set the foundation for
movements such as the CVSP to develop and call for an integrative defense of the
environment and livelihoods.
Lead contamination has become a vector and a means to denounce both previous and
ongoing forms of unsafe and unhealthy work conditions. The intensification of long-term
practices of industrial pollution and environmental degradation suddenly became
unacceptable, a crime to society, its children and its workers. A result in part of the greening
of Uruguayan society and its place in a neoliberal globalized world, environmental hazards
have now taken on a public face, becoming collectively visible for the first time. Mr. Cabrera
and Mr. Linardi’s experiences, as those of the workers of Uruguay’s foundries, battery
factories, and other unhealthy and contaminating industries, have changed only in degree.
What is different now is that people are listening to their plight.
3.4 Multipliers of Environmental Consciousness: Children and the Grassroots
Children are the central signifiers of the lead issue in Uruguay, as social and political claims
about the impacts of lead are always framed in their name. They are also at the forefront of
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emerging environmental consciousness in Uruguay. The La Teja children are a prime
example of a collective environmental awareness that is growing literally from the bottom up.
Children are at once the targets of grassroots campaigns and environmental education
programs run by the IMM and the national school system, as well as “multipliers” of this
knowledge within their own families and communities.
3.4.1 “It takes more effort even to dream”: La Teja School 212
At the La Teja School 212 for children with disabilities, the teachers there, mostly from other
parts of the city, became aware of the lead problem in 2001 when their students would talk
about “going to the lead,” referring to the clinic, or of the “numbers” they had, referring to
their blood lead levels. The school is located on the western fringe of La Teja, at the
beginning of the Pantanoso River Bridge to the Cerro neighborhood. One can view from
there the Cerro fortress towering over western Montevideo, often fog-laden on a rainy day.
This is an impoverished section of La Teja. Children and young men beg at street corners and
offer to clean the windshields of passing motorists. Cars, buses, and horse-drawn recycling
carriages, and people on foot, bicycle, or pulling recycling carts traverse either side of the
bridge.
Over half of the families of the students live in the La Teja poverty belt of the
Cadorna, Tres Ombúes and La Cachimba del Piojo neighborhoods, and many of them are
unemployed or work through informal garbage recycling. The children at the school are
fraught with behavioral problems, making teaching there a significant challenge. The first
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time I visited the school, director Teresa Sierra introduced me to Eduardo, who was being sent
home early because of his unruliness that day. Ms. Sierra told me, in front of Eduardo, that he
“has lead… lots of it,” along with his six siblings. Eduardo had been fighting with other boys
and was apparently “out of control.” In speaking to me, he was recalcitrant and edgy.
Eduardo is from Tres Ombúes, bordering La Teja to the north. His family was one of the
“emergency” cases of severe lead poisoning included among the ninety-two families relocated
to Sayago Norte in 2004.
Another of the school’s problem children had recently broken through a glass window
in a fit of rage, according to Ms. Sierra. As for Eduardo, this disheveled, small boy who
appeared eight or nine was actually twelve years old. He is one of the “bonsai children” of La
Teja, as Pilo has dubbed the underdeveloped lead poisoned youth of the area. Sierra said that
at the school there was a fourteen-year old boy who is still in the second grade. They have a
total of 136 children who attend the relatively small school, with an impressive waiting list.
Teresa Sierra argues that over 50% of the students at the school are “environmentals”
(ambientales). 100
In other words, their disabilities stem from environmental, rather than
congenital sources. By “environmental,” they mean not only exposure to environmental
contamination, but also factors having to do with “nurturing,” the family, and the community.
Teachers agree “the profile of the child has changed” at the school. In the past, most of the
children who attended had serious disabilities such as Down syndrome or autism. Now most
are only “one or two points off,” just past the edge of “normal,” and in their majority
“environmentals.” As Sierra put it, “these kids shouldn’t be here.”
100 The following information is drawn from an interview with Teresa Sierra, María Ambrosi and Carmen Sanz
at the La Teja School 212, October 18, 2004.
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Students are sent to the 212 because at “normal” schools they “become lost,” and the
“normal system is unable to absorb them,” Sierra said. The teachers say the reports
accompanying each student recommended to the school are entirely predictable. They follow
a pattern with common variables that include problems of adaptation, aggression, lack of
concentration, and writing difficulties. Finding out that lead poisoning contributes to these
bio-behavioral and learning difficulties was an enlightening moment for the teachers.
Carmen Sanz reflected on her previous teaching experience in the notorious and
desperately poor neighborhood Barrio Borro as a means of understanding the difficulties
faced by children who grow up in poverty:
I sometimes say that for the kids from there, everything takes a little more effort. It
takes more effort to be born, it takes more effort to grow up, and it takes more effort
even to dream, and then it takes more effort to get themselves inserted into the labor
market possibilities of society. 101
Teachers’ salaries are miserable and most are forced into multiple jobs (multiempleo 102 ) to
make ends meet. Despite the shortcomings inherent in salaries that average only 4,000 pesos
a month, due to the prolonged economic recession, many of these mostly female teachers have
become the primary breadwinners in their families. 103
Even though the pay is insufficient, in
other words, they at least receive a check, in contrast to the often recently unemployed
husbands laid off from factory work or office jobs. Economic restrictions at the teachers’
level are multiplied at the institutional level. The school, according to Sierra, “receives no
101 “Yo a veces digo que los chiquilines de ahí [barrio Borro] todo les cuesta un poco más. Porque les cuesta más
nacer, les cuesta más crecer, les cuesta más hasta soñar, inclusive les cuesta más insertarse despues en las
posibilidades de oferta laboral de la sociedad.”
102 “Multiempleo,” or multiple employment, has become a neologism in Uruguay and is uttered quite frequently,
reflecting a reality of the recent and ongoing economic crisis.
103 4,000 pesos in 2004 amounted to between $140-160 U.S. per month.
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income.” It depends entirely on donations to get beyond its shoestring government budget.
Most schools in Uruguay have some sort of development donation fund (apoyo de fomento)
financed by parent contributions. For the 212, with parents who live in poverty and many of
which make their living from recycling garbage, the fund is perpetually gutted. Sierra said
that in the March-April period, for instance, they were only able to collect 300 pesos from
parents. 104
The school has a limited budget, but it gives everything to its students, whose families
are even less able to afford supplies and meals. Teachers end up paying out of pocket for
expenses such as photocopies. Notebooks are usually donated, if they can find donors. As for
meals, the State only provides 10 pesos per day per student. 105
This sum is meant to cover
breakfast, lunch and a snack each day. The school has had to cut back on the quality and
quantity of the food offered. They no longer offer milanesas 106 as they once could, and have
cut back on meat in general. They have had to look for ways to “reduce” (achicar) meals, by
offering stews and soups that combine several ingredients and still maintain basic nutritional
levels.
Some of the “borderline” students are sent back to the normal school, but they often
return because in the normal system they face pressure and the constant threat of failure. At
the special school they feel more comfortable and accepted, despite the stigma attached to it
by outsiders. Within the school’s walls, students learn to respect each other and accept each
other’s differences, the teachers claim. Mocking or teasing is strictly forbidden. Students
learn to communicate with each other in ways the teachers often have difficulty
understanding. In cases of students with serious speech pathologies, for instance, other
104 About ten dollars.
105 About thirty-five cents.
106 Breaded tenderized beef, a very popular and traditional food in Uruguay.
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students often act as interpreters for the teachers. They also learn to identify each other’s
needs, often when a teacher has not yet caught on. The children tend to be happy at the
school. The teachers told me of ex-students who would come to visit them, something they
rarely experienced in the “normal” schools, and proof of their success in spite of the serious
material limitations they face.
Further proof of the teachers’ success is evidenced by the creativity with which they
approach their profession. María Ambrosi and Sanz initiated a compost project at the school,
in which they collected yerba mate from parents and would raise worms with their students to
create humus over a period of a few months. They do not use food for compost because most
of the families use food waste to feed their horses, the “motors of recycling.” The nutrientrich
end product would then be used as topsoil for lead contaminated yards, becoming a
grassroots soil remediation tool.
One of the lessons of the project is to teach the students to use and valorize what they
throw away, beyond all of that which is recycled out of necessity. The project was in the
works when the school became aware of the lead issue and Ambrosi contacted Carlos Pilo.
The teachers began looking for a way to create a classroom project on lead poisoning, and
they thought of uniting the two projects. This idea was strengthened when the “lead guys”
(los muchachos del plomo, referring to the CVSP) were invited to speak at the school.
Ambrosi said of using environmentalism as a learning tool: “I think that ecology is the best
means you have to be able to bring a project to the grassroots community level.” 107
Ambosi thought that community outreach through such projects was more feasible in
La Teja than in other areas where she has taught:
107 “Yo creo que la ecología es el mejor nexo que tenés ahí como para bajar un proyecto a la comunidad.”
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Working in the community is rather difficult. I think that this is a pretty open school
for the community- very open. I’ve worked in others with more of a resistance to
working with the community. […] I think that here very important bridges were built,
very important, with the lead people [of the CVSP], with the people of the
[community] radio [El Puente FM], and beyond that, you know? That the parent can
see that you who work in the lead clinic, the face they see over there, that they’re also
working here. That the person who gives you the news is also here and is with you
and with her. In other words they see that in the community there is a support network
[…] They see a unity that goes beyond discourse. They can see it. They can feel it.
And that provides reassurance to the community. 108
In other words, La Teja’s strength in community organizing laid the roots for “outsider”
assistance in solidarity, in this case from schoolteachers or lead clinic workers. The repetitive
enacting of solidarity and the embodied presence of these social actors in the neighborhood,
working together with local groups and promoted by the local media, mitigated potential
mistrust. In other neighborhoods, these same social actors might otherwise drift “in and out”
of the community, leaving little in terms of a lasting impact. A stance of solidarity rather than
“assistance” became key politically. Sierra agreed for instance with Sanz and Ambrosi, who
characterized lead as an issue in which the families’ health and well-being were at stake, but
she added:
Of course, but beyond that their health is under threat, the most important thing is that
the school is taking a position. Meaning the school- together with the parents and
together with the doctors and together with the lead commission and with the radio,
here we are as a school too, worried [about the lead problem]. 109
108 “Trabajando en la comunidad es bastante dificil. Yo pienso que ésta es una escuela bastante abierta para la
comunidad- muy abierta. He trabajado en otras de más resistencia al trabajo con la comunidad. [...] Yo creo que
acá se tendieron puentes muy valiosos, muy valiosos, con la gente del plomo, con la gente de la radio, y más allá
de eso, no? Y que el padre vea que vos que estás en la policlínica de plomo, que te ve la cara allá, que estés
trabajando acá. Que el que te da la noticias en la radio también esté acá y esté contigo y esté con ella. O sea
entonces ven que en la comunidad un sustento [...] Ve una unión más allá del discurso. Lo ve. Lo palpa. Y eso
da la seguridad a la comunidad.”
109 “Claro pero además que los está atacando lo más importante es que la escuela está tomando una posición.
Cosa que la escuela junto a los padres y junto a las doctoras y junto a la comisión del plomo y con la radio acá
estamos nosotros cómo escuela tambien, preocupados.”
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Sierra described the goals of using education for public outreach:
[T]he idea is that our children arrive at their homes and that they can reproduce what
was said here, what was talked about, that the kids become multipliers. That they tell
their mom, their neighbor, and I think [the raising of awareness] is happening. 110
3.4.2 “La Teja shall sing”: A Children’s Vision of the Environment
Children of La Teja have indeed become “multipliers.” They are consistently at the forefront
of spreading awareness about lead contamination and prevention to their peers, teachers,
families and broader community. I heard of many cases, as with the 212, of teachers
becoming aware of the problem through their students’ discussions of the topic. CVSP leader
Milka Pereira’s lead poisoned son learned a great deal about the problems he and other
children face by accompanying his mother to neighborhood assemblies, workshops, the lead
poisoning clinic, ministries and even parliament. Now he teaches his own classmates and
teachers about lead. Milka described her children’s actions:
They talk to their friends about lead, what it causes, they say: ‘Look, let’s not play in
that dirt because the soil is contaminated with lead’. They talk. It’s for that reason
that I always tried to speak clearly with them, precisely so it wouldn’t be a taboo (…)
Why should I hide things from them if it’s something they should know and know
how to handle? 111
110 “[L]a idea es de que nuestros niños lleguen a sus casas y puedan reproducir lo que acá se habla, lo que acá se
dice, que sean multiplicadores los chiquilines. Que le digan a la mamá, a la vecina, y creo que se está haciendo”.
111 “Ellos les hablan a los amigos del plomo, de lo que genera, les dicen, ‘Mirá: no vamos a jugar en esta tierra
porque la tierra está contaminada con plomo’. Hablan. Por eso yo siempre traté de hablar clara con ellos
justamente para que no fuera un tabú. (...) ¿Por qué se las voy a ocultar si es algo que ellos tienen que saber y
poder manejar?
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The CVSP organized in June 2001 a celebration of the United Nations International Day of
the Environment in La Teja, the first of a yearly tradition and the largest of its kind in
Uruguay. Drawing hundreds of schoolchildren, neighbors, and several community
organizations, area schoolchildren wrote essays about how to protect the environment. The
essays reflect a grassroots and integrative vision of what constitutes the environment, as well
as ways to mitigate its problems. Noelia, a fifth grader, wrote: “Today we talk about our
neighborhood, for instance the case of lead… Can you imagine the amount of contamination
we must have in our neighborhood, with the factories, workshops and garbage dumps, which
the people themselves are responsible for? The environment is the responsibility of everyone.
We have to protect it, your environment is your home, your garden, your school, the plaza, the
air, the sunlight, water, earth, the plants, the animals, it’s everything that surrounds us, take
care of it!”
Tatiana, another La Teja fifth grader, eloquently wrote:
Industrialization has increased the contamination of the earth by giant leaps. When we
think about everything people are capable of and the amazing opportunities that are
possible when people really work together, we cannot but help being sadly astonished
in looking at our earth today. It seems as though the dream of what the earth could be
has been transformed into a nightmare. But not all is lost. At least there is a general
consciousness of the serious problem that has befallen us and we still have time to turn
this situation around. For a good while at least, this planet will continue to be our only
dwelling and no one likes to dirty on purpose the place where they live, right?
Noelia and Tatiana conceive of an environment that encompasses both the human lifeworld
and the biosphere. Noelia’s definition is similar to the way environmental justice groups in
the United States have characterized the environment, as “where we live, work, play and
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learn” (cf. Novotny 2000), reflecting an anthropocentric vision. Tatiana’s metaphor of the
planet as a “dwelling” (vivienda) also reflects this phenomenological construction of the
environment as place, understood in reference to human habitation and experience (cf. Ingold
2000).
In another Environment Day related event during my fieldwork, I attended an
exhibition at the IMM main lobby entitled, “Children and the Environment: A vision that is
being heard.” 112
The Environmental Education Group (Grupo de Educación Ambiental-
GEA) of the IMM sponsored the exhibition. This program has been active since 1997 and
among other events and activities, organizes children’s presentations each year in celebration
of the International Day of the Environment.
The mission of the GEA is to promote a “model of the individual and society that lives
in a sustainable manner with its environment.” It positions itself against the forms of
“compulsive consumerism” that dominate current society, and against the view of nature as
limitless and “in the service of man.” The main lobby of the IMM was filled with colorful
panels exhibiting children’s presentations from schools across the city. As the organizers
described in a pamphlet, the idea was to have students present a vision of their neighborhood
based on an investigation of their barrio’s history, an evaluation of its current strengths and
needs, and a vision of its possible future. The goal was to “generate a critical and responsible
attitude” towards the environment, and to promote strategies of sustainability that embrace a
global outlook, while being rooted in a revalorization of the immediate surroundings, as well
as strengthening local affective ties to the neighborhood and its people.
The GEA chose a handful of schools for this project, mostly from the Western areas of
Montevideo. The projects were a mixture of collage, graphic art and photographs, printed
112 “Los niños y el ambiente: una mirada que se escucha,” IMM, June 1-14, 2004.
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poems, thoughts, and messages, and various objects and sculptures, much of it made of
recycled material. A “neighborhood song” written by the schoolchildren accompanied each
exhibit. One verse of the “La Teja” song went as follows: “I want to see your colors/ to
reclaim the clean air/ without gases and without smells/ La Teja shall sing.” 113
The most frequently mentioned environmental problem in this exhibit was “garbage,”
either through individual negligence (littering and dumping) or the prevalence of informal
dumps. Recycling and the use of municipal “glass eaters” and “plastic eaters” (recycling bins)
were suggested as remedies. “Contamination” was also frequently mentioned, and attributed
mostly to industrial negligence. The references to violence were from schools in the
“toughest” neighborhoods, namely the notorious Barrio Borro, as well as Villa Española.
Schools of western rural Montevideo tended to focus on the protection of native flora, fauna,
and marshlands, though they also mentioned garbage and contamination as some of the more
typical aggressors against the environment. Global environmental threats such as ozone
depletion and global warming were also mentioned, but these were in the minority, reflecting
again the locally derived and experientially based environmental frameworks and discourses
developed by these Montevideo schoolchildren.
The environment has taken on an undeniable importance in the value system and
imaginary of Uruguayan children. The children’s predominant messages are of social
solidarity and the hope (and optimism) that social problems will be collectively resolved.
Visions of social life are embedded within a harmonious, healthy and integrated environment.
The children in this sense represent an emerging generation of grassroots environmentalism in
dialogue with other forms developing across society.
113 “Yo quiero ver tus colores/ el aire limpio reclamar/ sin gases y sin olores/ La Teja podrá cantar”.
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3.5 Conclusion: Uruguay’s Environmental Justice
Through a dual process of neoliberal globalization, the intensification of socio-environmental
degradation and social vulnerability accompanied the “greening” of Uruguayan society
through the proliferation of an environmental frame along grassroots, bureaucratic and
scientific spheres. Grassroots environmental movements in Uruguay emerged from this
broader context of new environmental ideologies, a weakened state, the betrayal of industry
and a general rise in insecurity. Mainstream environmentalism in Uruguay, at institutional
and to a great extent NGO levels, responds to a global environmental regulatory framework.
Social movements such as the CVSP, in contrast, promote a popular environmentalism that
contrasts with the dominant institutional and NGO forms found in Uruguay. The rooted
forms of La Teja’s anti-lead activism provide an anchor in an insecure world, filling in the
zones of state abandonment. Illness through environmental disease is used as a counterpolitics
that draws on forms of biological citizenship to advance claims on the state (Petryna
2002; Rose 2001).
La Teja neighbors consciously expanded the scope of the lead problem beyond their
own neighborhood, however, even while drawing strength from existing neighborhood
solidarity and place identity to fuel and inspire the struggle. They framed their cause in the
name of all Uruguayans, and in defense of the nation’s children in particular. In a letter to the
Senate Health Commission signed July 31, 2001, the CVSP expressed their cause in terms of
a “moral obligation” to act in defense of children’s health.
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After presenting a series of demands oriented towards obtaining more information,
transparency and respect in interactions with officials, the letter concludes:
We stress once more, our interest is in health, in total and integral health, that the issue
be studied seriously, without fear, without special interests and taking into
consideration those most affected: the children, who tomorrow will have to lead this
country, from a factory, a store, an office or from the senate itself. (…) [W]hat we
seek to do is to fight for a future country state, for a future people’s country, educated,
informed and healthy: where everyone has the right to access the opportunities that life
presents to them and that they may have the capacity to confront them. We fight then
for a country, for a future for our children... 114
The emphasis on achieving a holistic and multifaceted “integral health” makes fluent CVSP
calls on both health and environmental authorities, addressing the interrelated needs of a clean
environment, adequate housing, stable employment and ultimately a healthy life.
In 2002 the CVSP launched a national movement against lead. It justified its action,
according to a press release, “Because we know how to raise healthy cows, but we cannot
guarantee this right to our children,” and “Because workers have the right to make a living
without dying or becoming seriously ill in factories, as well as to take part in a job that will
not sicken or mutilate its neighbors.” The movement fights, “So that future generations of
Uruguayans may receive a clean earth, and that they be able to exercise the right to a healthy
life, to hope and to sanitary and environmental security,” and “So that the health of the
population is not governed by the laws of the market,” and finally, “So that we provide all
114 “Recalcamos una vez más, nuestro interés es en salud, salud total, integral, en que se estudie el tema
seriamente, sin miedos, sin intereses particulares pensando en los más afectados: los niños, que mañana tendrán
que dirigir este país, desde una fábrica, una tienda, una oficina o desde el senado. (...) [L]o que intentamos
hacer es pelear por un futuro estado país, por un futuro país pueblo, educado, informado y sano: en donde todos
tengan derecho a acceder a las oportunidades que la vida les presenta y puedan tener la capacidad para
enfrentarla. Peleamos entonces por un país, por un futuro para nuestros hijos”.
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children with the opportunity to live with good health, and not only to live through [survive]
contamination.” 115
The reference to the raising of healthy cows implicitly critiques the government’s
claims of lacking money for the lead problem, while the full scope of state resources was
mobilized in the wake of the 2001 discoveries of a livestock hoof-and-mouth epidemic.
Activists were outraged in witnessing how the health of cows could trump that of their
children. The government’s prioritizing of immediate economic concerns in this case
demonstrates how the economy is so often and easily pitted against the environment, even
when the health of workers and children are at stake, suggesting that elites and popular sectors
often hold radically opposed ideas of what constitutes a risk and on what basis security is
defined.
The CVSP’s integrated vision of environmentalism coincides with that of other
environmental justice movements around the world. According to David Harvey (1996),
environmental justice movements place inequality at the top of their agendas, are suspect of
expert discourses and promote forms of counter-expertise. They favor anthropocentric over
biocentric visions of nature, and are made up of people who suffer from multiple forms of
discrimination, for instance based on class, gender, and race or ethnicity. In this way,
environmental justice movements draw together ecological and social justice issues, and work
through highly symbolic and “morally charged” realms of struggle (Harvey 1996: 386-87).
The CVSP draws together poor and working class individuals with professionals and
scientists. It consists of a high participation of women and promotes an anthropocentric
vision of environmentalism. It is suspicious of the expert discourses of the state, while
115 “Para que les demos a todos los niños la oportunidad de vivir con salud, y no solo la de sobrevivir a la
contaminación”.
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evindicating popular or grassroots forms of knowledge (in dialogue with international
science). As reflected in its calls for children’s and worker’s rights and “for life,” the CVSP
has fought for a broad notion of justice, drawing together the three dimensions of justice
discussed by Schlosberg (2003): justice as equity (distribution of social goods), as recognition
(of group identity and difference), and as participation (as a means to achieve distributive
equity and political recognition). Through the highly symbolic and emotive arenas of the
defense of children, motherhood, and workers’ rights, the environmental justice movement
against lead reflects and gives strength to a broader and collective defense of human dignity.
A permanent challenge of environmental justice movements such as the CVSP, however, is to
negotiate the tension between local “militant particularism” (Harvey 1996) and macro
processes of inequality, drawing strength from place-based identity while forging broader
networks and alliances to address the structural dimensions of the socio-ecological crisis.
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CHAPTER FOUR: Between Public Health and Environmental Catastrophe: Localizing
Science and Managing Risk in the Creation of a Lead Poisoning Epidemic
Here science itself, which was designed for deeper realization, experienced a singular failure.
The genius of these evils was their ability to create zones of incomprehension. It was because
they were so fully apparent that you couldn’t see them.
--Saul Bellow, The Dean’s December
La memoria para recordar/ que hay niños en La Teja/ que no pueden respirar/ libres por el
viento.
--Diablos Verdes, “Reciclando la memoria” (Carnaval 2002) 116
4.0 Introductory Vignette: Bioethics and the Inchoate Nature of Lead Poisoning
Dr. Elena Queirolo, Director of the national Lead Poisoning Clinic, invited me to participate
as the social science representative for a twice-monthly bioethics workshop held at the
Catholic University, a stately old former Catholic girls’ school that was turned into Uruguay’s
first private university in 1985. The workshop brings together various medical specialists at
the Bioethics Institute directed by renowned bioethicist Dr. Omar França. The ongoing
working group chooses a medical topic of social importance, studies its bioethical dimensions
and issues a published report at the end of each year. The first year of my fieldwork coincided
116 My translation from Diablos Verdes, along with La Reina de La Teja, the two most popular La Teja murgas:
“The memory to recall/ that there are children in La Teja/ who cannot breathe/ free because of the wind.”
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with the group’s first-ever attention to an environmental health concern, namely lead
poisoning. I joined the group after its two initial meetings on the lead issue, and continued
attending for the next six months. Queirolo described the first meetings of the working group
as “Felliniesque.” Some of the participants, including Elena, had worked together on previous
panels, but she told me that the lead issue had imposed confusion as to how to proceed,
stemming from the inchoate nature of the problem and its lack of antecedents.
We centered our early discussions on what we defined as the two major ethical issues
posed by the lead problem in Uruguay: insufficient information about the problem, for both
the affected population and health professionals; and an inadequate strategy for confronting
the disease. In an early meeting, França pointed out that the issue of environmental
contaminants is one that has historically been missing from medical training at the University
of the Republic, and from the concerns of medical professionals. 117
Ecology and the
environment were only slowly gaining ground as legitimate concerns. Queirolo added that the
multi-causal symptoms and sources of environmental contaminants necessitated more interdisciplinary
approaches and “another mentality” (otra cabeza) reaching beyond the traditions
of Uruguayan medicine.
After months of work, I met with Dr. Queirolo at the lead clinic to discuss and revise
the bioethics document we were collectively piecing together. The next day was supposed to
be our last meeting, though it was doubtful we would finish on time. Our session lasted three
hours, while we toiled sentence-by-sentence and page-by-page to make the appropriate
corrections. It seemed as though every time we worked on the document we were starting
again from scratch. This time we had a breakthrough of sorts, however, jettisoning the work
we had done and restructuring the document in its entirety. As we perused through the
117 The University of the Republic houses Uruguay’s only medical school.
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document trying to fix every detail, we eventually came to the understanding that we were on
the wrong course entirely. I had been arguing for several meetings against the logical
contradictions of laying out “the data” as if it were objective information attainable to anyone,
while at the same time pursuing the argument that the lack of information available to the
public was one of the principal ethical problems posed by the lead issue. In other words, how
are we expected to provide the very information whose absence represents one of the great
contradictions posed by the lead issue?
I argued this point several times during our meetings, which at times grew heated. I
brought up other issues, such as the fact that the information officially published is often false
or manipulated, as proven by comparison to original documents. The problem, however, is
our limited access to these documents. The bioethics project ended up mostly depending on
the information Elena and I were able to dig up ourselves, but large gaps inevitably remained.
Elena finally asked me, “Why do we have to do this, anyway?” We took a step back
from our task and realized we had set off on a wandering path leading to a dead end. Elena,
furthermore, traced the origins of our wanderings to the actions of a Ministry of Public Health
(MSP) representative who had attended the first several meetings and then disappeared. She
continued to send emailed comments, however, arguing that we needed to ground our
exposition in hard facts.
Was this sabotage? Elena seemed to suggest this at first, saying “she knew we’d never
be able to get anywhere with this,” though we agreed it could just be a reflection of the
woman’s academic background and professional training within the MSP. Regardless, she
“threw us a bomb,” Quierolo pointed out. We struggled for months, moving around in circles
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and doing the “dirty work” for the government, distracting from the larger task of identifying
the principal ethical questions and problems at stake in the lead issue.
Months past our deadline, we submitted the document for publication in the principal
journal of the Uruguayan Medical Syndicate, but they turned it down. In fact, the bioethics
report on lead, contrary to previous works on abortion, euthanasia, stem cell research and
other more “typical” biomedical and bioethical issues, was the first workshop document to
remain unpublished. Our collective failure demonstrates the inherent contradictions at the
heart of the lead issue. How can one apply classical bioethical principles to an inherently
environmental health problem, one that transcends the biomedical physician-patient
relationship, that is characterized by “silent” or asymptomatic indicators, and that represented
a disease that remained almost entirely unfamiliar and unrecognized in Uruguay?
Furthermore, how could we piece together the “truth” when its elements were either
intentionally concealed or nowhere to be found?
Our struggles at the bioethics workshop mirrored the tensions and contradictions of
those working to apply scientific understandings and policy recommendations to an
unfamiliar and largely inchoate problem. Following the 2001 lead poisoning discoveries,
public health and other officials widely claimed to have been taken by surprise by an epidemic
that had seemingly “fallen from the sky.” Grassroots and media pressures mandated a quick
and efficient response, and the state responded both through effective interventions and
strategies to downplay risk and minimize political fallout. Science itself took center stage in
the ensuing public debate, and was used both to extend and to downplay awareness of lead
contamination. Science and politics mixed uncomfortably: What were the correct or
appropriate standards to use for the analysis of lead in bodies and the environment? What
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were the primary pathways and causes of lead contamination? How should it be studied and
who should decide? Should lead contamination be considered and treated as a local public
health issue or a broad scale environmental catastrophe?
4.1 Falling on Deaf Ears: Pre-2001 Warnings of Lead Contamination
Lead poisoning as an occupational disease was long known and treated in Uruguay. Previous
instances of pediatric lead poisoning were also reported, including a 1978 diagnosis of lead
encephalopathy through a radiological exam of long bones (Olivenstein et al 1978), the deaths
in the 1980s of two children from acute lead poisoning, and at least two community outbreaks
of widespread lead contamination in the 1990s. 118
These cases failed, however, to draw
extensive media coverage, widespread social movements or integrated state interventions.
As the world’s oldest known and most studied environmental disease, lead poisoning’s
recent “discovery” in Uruguay raises questions about knowledge production at local and
global scales, and the ways universal science is disseminated and selectively appropriated at
the local level. The Uruguayan lead poisoning discovery illuminates the productive
entanglements of science, the state, politics, and society. It evidences how society and the
state struggle over and harness scientific knowledge for often differing ends, how scientists
mediate these political pressures, and how state actors mobilize scientific authority to manage
risk and potential political fallout.
118 The children’s deaths were reported to me through personal communications with Dr. Elena Queirolo,
Director of the Lead Poisoning and Environmental Chemical Contaminants Health Clinic, Pereira Rossell
Hospital. The children and their families reportedly lived in a makeshift shack with walls made from discarded
car batteries. The two community outbreaks occurred in the Malvín Norte neighborhood of Montevideo, and in
Lagomar, outside of Montevideo. These cases are discussed below.
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A Parliament-sponsored survey of the Uruguayan print media only turned up eight
articles on lead contamination or poisoning in the entire decade of the 1990s (Legnani 2002:
10-11). Forewarnings and previous indications of lead contamination remained unarticulated
at the bureaucratic level until intense media coverage and strong social pressures mandated a
response in 2001. Prior to this, Uruguay had established little or no specific legislation,
programs or protocol for the scientific detection and control of environmental chemical
contaminants such as lead. Nonetheless, there were several warnings issued, one prior social
movement against lead, and a handful of previously documented clinical cases of occupational
and pediatric lead poisoning from the 1960s through the 1990s that could have resulted in the
establishing of an integrated public health and environmental protocol, but instead collectively
fell on deaf institutional “ears.” The following sections provide an overview of some the
warnings of lead poisoning before 2001.
4.1.1 “Watching the eclipse”: metals smelting in Malvín Norte, 1960s-1990s
The González Hermanos S.A. metals smelter opened in the 1950s in Malvín Norte, a
neighborhood in eastern Montevideo. Among other functions, the smelter provided lead for
Uruguay’s nascent domestic storage battery industry, taking advantage of the country’s
national development incentives and policies of Import Substitution Industrialization. In
1961, neighbors in the vicinity of the smelter gathered signatures and presented a complaint to
the Montevideo Municipality (IMM) to protest the noxious black smoke emitted from its
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chimney. 119
The IMM ignored the recurrent neighborhood complaints until 1973, when it
ordered the factory shut down. The military dictatorship came to power several weeks later
and promptly reversed the order, allowing the smelter to continue operations throughout
military rule (1973-1985). After the return of democracy, the neighbors once again took up
their complaint. The first grievance was filed in 1987, and in the next several years, the IMM
subjected the factory to a series of mandated shut downs, fines, and rehabilitations. The
neighbors, eventually organized into the Permanent Assembly Against Lead Contamination,
clearly recognized the dangers the factory posed for the surrounding community. In 1988
they denounced:
…the danger of lead, which in addition to endangering the directly exposed workers,
contaminates the thousands of citizens that live in the area (children, men and women)
who slowly and gradually endanger their health, directly from the air they breathe, and
indirectly through food, since butchers, bakeries and small stores surround the factory. 120
Students of the Faculty of Medicine (University of the Republic) engaged in a university
“extension” program in the area in 1990, meeting with neighbors and warning of the negative
health effects from the air and water contamination caused by the factory. The neighbors
demanded access to industrial emissions data, but the IMM refused. The IMM and the School
of Toxicology (CIAT) of the University of the Republic conducted a series of studies in 1991,
including blood tests of children and adults. The IMM contacted Swedish researchers from
Göteborg University to assist in the analyses. Based on the results, mayor Tabaré Vázquez of
119 The following information is drawn from a timeline elaborated by the “Permanent Assembly Against Lead
Contamination Malvín Norte” (Asamblea Permanente Contra Contaminación Por Plomo Malvín Norte), dated
June 1992.
120 “la peligrosidad del plomo, que además de perjudicar a los operarios directamente expuestos, contamina a los
miles de ciudadanos que habitan la zona (niños, hombres y mujeres) que lenta y paulatinamente exponen su
salud, directamente por el aire que respiran, e indirectamente a través de los alimentos, pues carnicería, panadería
y almacenes rodean la fábrica”.
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the Frente Amplio, the center-left coalition which had risen to national prominence for the
first time in 1989 by winning the coveted IMM, finally ordered the factory permanently
shutdown.
The factory continued its operations for several months, however, as vigilant
neighbors monitored activities that became increasingly clandestine and “handcrafted”
(artesanal). IMM officials were skeptical of the neighbors’ claims, according to the
Permanent Assembly, while UNMTRA metal workers union representatives denied the health
dangers of their operations. Agronomist M. Chabalgoity, Environmental Commission
Director for the IMM, dismissively stated in a public meeting about environmental issues in
the area that “the neighbors see smoke from burning leaves and they think that it’s lead.”
The Permanent Assembly sent a letter directly to Vázquez in May 1992 denouncing
the ongoing clandestine activity in the factory. A municipal inspector later that month
confirmed that seven workers were “smelting lead in a hearth.” On June 1 st the IMM passed a
new resolution ordering the physical dismantling of the plant, but by the end of the month
neighbors reported seeing seven workers on the rooftop of the factory shed (galpón),
“watching the eclipse of the sun.” The factory was eventually shut down, and the limited
political attention and medical and environmental studies of the surrounding community
continued, setting an important precedent and practical training for scientists and bureaucrats
in the study of lead contamination.
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4.1.2 The 1992 Environmental Report
In the decade leading up to the Uruguayan lead discoveries, there was a flurry of calls by
multilateral agencies and international NGO’s for the worldwide elimination of lead
poisoning, most of which the Uruguayan government likely had knowledge. These include:
• 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child
• 1992 Agenda 21 of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development
• 1992 World Health Organization declaration
• 1993 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) “Declaration
on Lead Risk Reduction”
• 1994 United Nations Development Program (UNDP) call to eliminate lead;
• 1996 Second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II)
• 1996 World Bank call for a five-year phase-out of TEL
• 1997 Declaration on the Environment by the Leaders of the Eight (on Children’s
Environmental Health)
• 1997 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Children’s Fund
(UNICEF)
The Uruguayan government itself issued a report that included warnings of existing and
impending lead contamination. The 1992 environmental report, jointly issued by the
Organization of American States (OAS), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and
the Uruguayan government warned about future environmental and health hazards associated
with urban industrial contamination, dense traffic and the potential for widespread lead
poisoning (OPP-OEA-BID 1992). 121
The study, conducted in 1990 and 1991, coincided with
Uruguay’s participation in the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environmental
Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, commonly known as the Rio Earth Summit,
the launching of the MERCOSUR (Common Market of the South) in 1991, and the 1990 Law
121 Available online at: http://www.oas.org/usde/publications/Unit/oae10s/begin.htm
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16.112 that created the Ministry of Housing, Territorial Organization and the Environment
(MVOTMA), with the National Environmental Directorate (DINAMA) becoming the nation’s
first environmental regulatory agency.
The environmental report was meant to push Uruguay towards the economic policies
of sustainable development, strategically repositioning Uruguay as a service-based, freemarket
economy distinguished regionally within MERCOSUR through comparative
advantage of its diverse natural resources. This reorientation laid the foundation for the
Uruguay Natural economic strategy and marketing campaign a decade later.
The report identifies lead as one of six sources of air-borne contamination, and
includes it in three of nine hazards listed under chemical production (OPP-OEA-BID 1992:
3.3.1). The report warns of only limited hazards for lead contamination through automotive
emissions due to the small fleet of automobiles in Uruguay, numbering around 380,000
vehicles (OPP-OEA-BID 1992: 3.3.2). The report did not foresee the dramatic increase in
automobile sales that would occur throughout the mid-1990s, when approximately 30,000
new automobiles were bought each year, reaching almost 530,000 vehicles by 2003 (INE
2003; Parliamentary Session 248-389, July 22, 1998). In its concluding predictions about the
future of public health, the report warns of the potential “increase of lead poisoning that
already shows an incidence through point sources of contamination originating in factories
and workshops” (OPP-OEA-BID 1992: 6.11). The report had singled out paint shops and
metals smelters as particularly hazardous.
In 1991, perhaps in relation to the Malvín Norte conflict, Frente Amplio
representatives made a series of short-term inquiries into leaded gasoline production and
consumption in Uruguay. Representative Ramón Legnani of Canelones Department made an
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official inquiry to ANCAP of its importing of tetraethyl lead (TEL) and the production and
consumption of leaded gasoline (Legnani 2002: 9). At a 1991 Montevideo Department
Government session (Junta Departamental), Representative Margarita Percovich denounced
leaded gasoline contamination as an imminent health threat (Matos 2001: 6). Despite these
multiple warnings, the study or prevention of lead contamination never figured prominently
on the agenda of the MVOTMA, the MSP, or the IMM.
4.1.3 Pre-2001 Scientific Studies of Lead Contamination: Toxicology and Industrial
Emissions
Toxicologists have the most experience studying lead contamination in Uruguay. The
University of the Republic inaugurated the School of Toxicology and Environmental Hygiene
within the Faculty of Chemistry in 1981. Since 1986, the Toxicology center (CIAT), under
the direction of Nelly Mañay, has been extensively researching lead. The lab focused early
research and analysis on occupational lead exposure, testing the blood lead levels (BLL) of
workers at battery plants and recycling centers, scrap smelters, printing presses, munitions
plants, auto and paint shops, and other industries (Mañay et al 1993; 1999). By the early
nineties the toxicologists began researching pediatric lead poisoning, supported by funds from
the University of the Republic’s Sectorial Committee for Scientific Research.
Swedish researchers had taken interest in the Malvín Norte case, and later joined with
Mañay’s toxicology team, offering financial and technical assistance through donated lab
equipment. A collaborative study (Schutz et al 1997) analyzed BLLs of the population in the
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immediate vicinity of the González metals smelter as well as control populations in urban,
suburban and rural areas. The researchers measured environmental lead levels, including
soils, dust, air, and tap water, as well as interior paints. The study revealed a mean BLL in
children of 9.57μg/dL (micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood), with 36% above 10μg/dL
(Schutz et al 1997: 19-20). Tap water exceeded the international norm (10μg/L) in 39% of
samples taken, with a maximum level of 230μg/L. The authors found high ambient lead
levels, particularly in central areas of Montevideo, and high soil lead levels, particularly
around factories. Several paint samples showed excessive levels as well. Mañay and Adriana
Cousillas conducted a parallel study of lead contamination among street dogs and other
animals as sensitive biological indicators of environmental lead levels (Mañay et al 1995).
The studies conducted by the Uruguayan and Swedish researchers since 1992 offer the first
data in Uruguay of pediatric and population lead exposure (Mañay et al 1999), setting a
precedent and scientific foundation for the La Teja discoveries a decade later.
There were other warnings of the impending problem of lead contamination. Two
chemical engineers working an internship at Montevideo’s Industrial Emissions Division filed
a report in 1999 on lead contamination in Montevideo’s water systems (Bernardi and Paez
1999). The study, conducted in 1998 and 1999, focuses on environmental lead output from
automotive emissions, and the tannery, paint, chemical, textile, and beverage industries. The
authors measured base levels of lead in water, including Montevideo’s major rivers
(Pantanoso, Miguelete, and Carrasco) and Montevideo Bay, and refer to the Schutz and
Mañay studies of drinking water contamination.
Bernardi and Paez estimate that in 1998, between 82 and 240 tons of lead polluted the
environment through automotive emissions, distributed unevenly throughout the city. The
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study concludes that the two principal sources of superficial water contamination in
Montevideo are automotive emissions and wool tanneries, with significant levels of lead
detected in the soils and sediment of Montevideo’s rivers and Bay. The report states that lead
contamination exists in high levels and presents an “environmental problem of great
dimensions, which places in risk the population and the environment” (Bernardi and Paez
1999: 26). Following media coverage of the La Teja discoveries, the authors reissued their
report (April 2001) with an introductory addendum stating that the discovery of lead poisoned
children in La Teja are “facts that confirm the situation of risk described here.”
Alicia Raffaele, a chemical engineer at the Industrial Emissions Division, said that her
office was never invited to take part in the Inter-Institutional Lead Commission, formed by
the MSP in the wake of the lead discoveries. She explained these were “bureaucratic” and
“political” decisions that her office had no control over. Though Industrial Emissions appears
to have a good working relationship with Montevideo’s Department of Environmental
Development (DDA) and the Environmental Hygiene Laboratory (LHA), I was struck by the
divergence in their respective positions on the lead issue. In contrast to the poverty-centered
discourses of DDA Director Luis Lazo and Chemical Engineer and LHA chief supervisor
Gabriella Feola, Raffaele (and the Bernardi and Paez study) emphasized the multiplicity and
general distribution of lead sources, while highlighting leaded gasoline’s role in
environmental contamination. Raffaele neither omitted the mentioning of leaded gasoline, as
Lazo had, nor quickly and in passing whispered it as Feola had in respective interviews with
me. 122
122 Interview with Luis Lazo, February 3, 2004, and Gabriella Feola, March 18, 2004. Lazo and Feola’s
positions on the lead issue were also repeatedly expressed in the media and in public talks.
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This divergent stance may in part be due to bureaucratic distance. Industrial
Emissions is a “sub-sub-sub” division of the DDA, far down the chain of command and
housed in a building physically located some distance from the IMM. It was not as influenced
by official policies because it was distanced from the source of their creation and oversight.
Its distance allowed more room to maneuver, but it concurrently meant that its troublesome
findings largely fell on deaf ears. Bernardi and Paez’s study, conducted by two young
engineers on an internship represents, in hindsight, a silent scream announcing the disaster
that was to come.
4.2 “We knew sooner or later it would happen/ “We looked the other way”: The Official
Lead Intervention Protocol
The 2001 media “explosion” carried the lead issue, along the backs of grassroots activists,
straight into the offices and agendas of local and national government officials, corporate
boardrooms, and the scientific and medical communities. It signified an unprecedented
practical problem to solve, and a puzzle: how was this not foreseen?
Former MVOTMA Sub-Secretary Luis Leglise declared to the press in 2001:
“Uruguay has had sleeping environmental problems and now they are beginning to appear.
Such is the case of lead contamination that has existed for many years and now it has become
a serious health problem. The country used to tolerate these issues, or, perhaps, we all just
looked the other way” (El Observador, November 6, 2001). The Ambios environmental
quarterly editorialized in the same year about the significance of the lead issue:
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For good or bad, the issue of the environment has acquired a notoriety in the national
press and among the community, in ways unheard of in the memories of Uruguayans,
taking by surprise some sectors with decision-making power, and permitting civil
society to demand an environmentally healthy place (Ambios, September-November
2001). 123
Dr. Eduardo Touyá, the first director of the Inter-Institutional Commission on Lead declared
to Parliament: “In the country there was no policy set up to work with lead contamination”
(Matos 2001: 10). On the other hand, Drs. Burger and Pose (2001), physicians by training
and public health officials by appointment, claimed in an article published in Ambios that the
emergence of the lead problem “hasn’t surprised the physicians (…) we knew that sooner or
later it would happen.” Nevertheless, when it materialized they charge that the Public Health
Ministry “felt overwhelmed, lacking scientifically valid information and also lacking support”
(Burger and Pose 2001: 20).
These statements suggest that officials were both taken by surprise and to some extent
anticipated the possibility of a lead poisoning epidemic. They hoped that the lead problem or
others like it would simply remain “sleeping” or disappear from view. In some cases, as the
Burger and Pose quote suggests, some officials continued to look the other way even while
their colleagues struggled to address the issue.
Public health officials and scientists were taken by surprise by another, crucial
element, however. Through the lead issue, grassroots activists, including housewives,
workers, squatter settlement residents and children, directly contested medical authority.
Armed with information downloaded from the Internet or circulated through activist
123 “Para bien y para mal, el tema ambiental ha adquirido una notoriedad en la prensa nacional y en la
comunidad, pocas veces identificable en la memoria de los uruguayos, tomando por sorpresa a algunos sectores
con poder de decisión, y permitiendo a la sociedad civil reclamar por un lugar ambientalmente sano”.
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networks, citizens challenged the foundations and content of medical science at perhaps a
larger and more systematic scale than ever before. Officials were confronted by a counterexpertise
that claimed to be more valid, updated, and internationally sanctioned than the
learned knowledge of white-tunic authority. The previously established power hierarchy
between the state, science, and society had been upturned and reconfigured, perhaps
definitively.
4.2.1 The Official Protocol
The MSP organized the Inter-Institutional Commission on Lead in 2001 to intervene in the
lead epidemic and to manage risk and political fallout. 124
In the early months of state
intervention, the Lead Commission, responding to grassroots and media pressures, as well as
through the direct participation of the La Teja-based Live Without Lead Commission (CVSP)
implemented the state’s core and enduring set of policies on lead contamination. These
include the opening of a national lead poisoning clinic under the direction of Dr. Elena
Queirolo; supplementary, iron-fortified food baskets to families of severely poisoned children;
and soil remediation and/or housing relocation for the most seriously affected families.
124 President Batlle ordered the creation of the Inter-Institutional Commission on Lead in 2001, under the
direction of the Public Health Ministry. The Lead Commission brought together various ministries, federal and
municipal agencies, industries, banks, and academic programs to address the lead contamination program in an
integrated manner. These include: the Public Health (MSP), Housing and Environment (MVOTMA), Labor and
Social Security (MTSS), Industry, Energy and Mining (MIEM) ministries; the Montevideo Municipality (IMM);
University of the Republic (Chemistry, Medicine, and Sciences Faculties); the petroleum (ANCAP) and water
(OSE) state enterprises; Social Provision (BPS) and Social Security (BSE) banks; local offices of the WHO and
the Panamerican Health Organization; and initially the “community,” represented by La Teja residents and antilead
activists. The “community” split from the Commission after several conflictive months working together.
124 “No nos ha sorprendido a los médicos (...) sabíamos que tarde o temprano iba a suceder”. “...se sintió
desbordado, carente de información científicamente validada y también carente de respaldo”.
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Dr. Queirolo characterized the early Lead Commission work as positive. 125
Under Dr.
Touyá’s direction, the Commission brought together engaged and concerned professionals,
she said, often working in concert with the community and making valuable advances.
Meetings would last six or eight hours at times, forwarding what Queirolo considered serious
proposals and immediate action. Touyá eventually resigned from the Commission, however,
leaving a permanent vacuum and “rift” that was never mended, she said. 126
Against Touya’s
warnings, the Lead Commission dissolved and was institutionalized as a formal commission
with an unwieldy name dedicated broadly to environmental chemical contamination. 127
Dr.
Queirolo concluded the Commission’s institutionalization in effect “killed it off.”
By 2003, the Commission firmly established what I refer to as the “official protocol.”
The official protocol was a set of practices, policies and ideologies that circumscribed the
definition and parameters of the lead poisoning epidemic and lead contamination risk. It
“othered” the problem by displacing responsibility for contamination from the state and
industry to the victims and reductively and causally linking lead poisoning to poverty. The
first and most definitive step in implementing the official protocol was to define lead
poisoning (with consequences for state intervention) in relation only to pregnant women and
children under the age of 15 with a BLL of 20µg/dl or greater, doubling the international
standard set a decade earlier by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
Since the Lead Commission initially identified soil contamination from landfill waste
as the primary pathway of lead exposure in La Teja, a soil-centered model dominated
subsequent analyses and interventions. The Lead Commission ordered the cementing of lands
125 Interview with Dr. Elena Queirolo, May 26, 2004.
126 Others have been more critical of Touyá’s work. Brecha journalist Carlos Amorin, for instance, writes few
kind words about him in his seminal book on the lead issue (Amorín 2001).
127 I met very few individuals who were able to recite the Commission’s name, institutionalized by decree in
2002: the “National Commission of Vigilance and Prevention against Environmental Chemical Contaminants.”
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determined to contain elevated soil lead levels, with intervention occurring at the EPA
residential standard of 400 mg/kg, while the CVSP called for use of the 140 mg/kg Canadian
standard. The MVOTMA and the IMM worked together, with difficulty and not insignificant
tensions, 128 to temporarily relocate families of children with the most severe, acute cases of
lead poisoning. 129
These institutions implemented full-scale community relocation of some
squatter settlements within and outside La Teja by 2004 and 2005. 130
As the Lead Commission and much of the media linked lead poisoning directly to
poverty, the latter frequently slipped into a causative role. The signaled source was typically
“cable burning,” which as noted in Chapter Three, is the practice of melting down usually
stolen electrical and telephone cables for copper, lead and other heavy metals resale. After
2001, the IMM and the Lead Commission dedicated efforts to identifying areas of cable
burning in squatter settlements. This resulted in a conflation of poverty and lead, ignoring the
universal and cross-class dimension of exposure, with the (criminalized) activities of the poor
defined as the principal causal source of contamination. The conflating of disease and poverty
as an othering strategy is common throughout history and across cultures (Armus 2003;
Briggs 2004; Cueto 2003; Das 2006; Farmer 1999; Kleinman et al 1997; Rodríguez 2006),
and is evidenced in the social history of lead poisoning across the world (Fassin 2004a;
McGee 1999; Richardson 2002; Warren 2000; see also Chapter 5).
128 The MVOTMA (Blanco) and the IMM (Frente Amplio) were controlled by rival political parties, a possible
source of tension. One public controversy revolved around the IMM’s ceding of land to the MVOTMA for use
in housing relocation. The land was found highly contaminated with lead and other heavy metals.
129 There does not appear to be a systematic criterion for selecting those who were temporarily relocated. It
usually consisted of larger families with several lead poisoned children, those for whom home soil remediation
was not feasible or effective, or children with BLLs reaching into the 30µg/dl level and higher. Several children
were found with BLLs into the 50-60µg/dl range or more.
130 Relocated squatter settlements include the Primus, Cañada Victoria, Inlasa and Rodolfo Rincón settlements of
La Teja, and 25 de Agosto of Aires Puros, all relocated from 2004-2006.
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Notable when reviewing the IMM’s environmental reports from 2001-2005 is the
progressive shift in emphasis from industry and multiple sources of lead exposure to a soilbased,
point-sourced, and poverty-centered paradigm (IMM-DDA 2001-2005). The IMM’s
2002 Environmental Agenda, which draws from the 2001 and 2002 reports, cites an outdated
WHO lead poisoning threshold of 15µg/dl, halfway between the official protocol and the
current WHO and CDC standards (IMM-DDA 2002). It notes that 33% of drinking water
samples exceeded the WHO limits of 10µg/L and almost 30% of paint samples exceeded EPA
limits. Soil samples taken from La Teja and La Blanqueada, a middle-class control site in
central Montevideo, were virtually identical, indicating consistent baseline urban
environmental lead exposure from vehicular traffic. Despite these figures, no scientific
rationale is offered in the Environmental Reports, official presentations or in interviews I
conducted, for the IMM and Lead Commission’s subsequent and almost exclusive focus on
squatter settlements, cable burning and soil contamination.
The following example highlights the problematic consequences of the use of the
official protocol. During a public talk once again conflating squatter settlements, cable
burning and soil contamination, IMM-LHA geologist Hugo González emphasized the
“surprisingly low” soil lead levels in squatter settlements of the CCZ 17 district of
Montevideo, which encompasses the Cerro neighborhood across the Pantanoso River from La
Teja. González was surprised by the absence of significant soil contamination because
squatter settlements are “supposed” to be places where cable burning is prevalent. If there is
an absence of cable burning, there must be an absence of lead contamination, according to this
framework. This conclusion is belied, nevertheless, by the discovery of at least fifteen
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children with lead poisoning in these Cerro settlements, whose families struggled to get
physicians to grant them blood exams and faced repeated official stonewalling. 131
A more culturally and historically sensitive examination of the Cerro settlements,
however, easily explains away González’ surprise. In contrast to the La Teja settlements, the
asentamientos of this part of el Cerro were only occupied in the past 10-15 years and were
previously small-scale agricultural lands (fincas) rather than industrial areas or plots covered
with toxic landfill. Accepting the assurance of mother and local activist Marianela Garcia
(which many officials dismiss out of hand) that there is no cable burning occurring in those
settlements, it makes sense that soil lead levels would remain low. Dependence on the official
protocol, however, coupled with social distance from the lived experiences of those they
study, has precluded many officials from being able to “see” lead in its multiple dimensions.
The result is an untold number of concerned families who are unable to receive the treatment
or the answers they seek.
By 2004, state agencies only analyzed squatter settlements, and official documents
cited the habit of “pica,” or the abnormal ingestion of inedible substances by children, as well
as “hygiene” as two of the principal culprits that accompanied the “criminal” behavior of
cable burning in the contamination and poisoning of children. 132
Officials tolerated OSE’s
continuing usage of a 50µg/L drinking water standard, as well as the state enterprise’s
assurances that testing remained within “normal” or “established” limits. While only a
handful of ambient air samples have ever been measured in Montevideo, state and ANCAP
131 Interview with Marianela García, Cerro mother, La Cotorra community radio host, squatter settlement
resident and anti-lead activist, August 9, 2004.
132 See chapter 5 for a discussion of hygiene discourses and “pica” as a pathologizing strategy in comparative and
historical perspective.
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officials assure that the “particular characteristics” of Montevideo’s seaside location guarantee
that winds dispersed any existing air pollution. 133
When I asked Gabriella Feola of the IMM-LHA why they did not systematically test
paints for lead, she answered: “People in asentamientos don’t paint their shacks.” 134
In
conflating lead poisoning with squatter settlements, and (erroneously) portraying squatters as
living exclusively in grim and unpainted surroundings, Feola and others employ the old
discourse of pica, but characterize children as “dirt eaters” rather than “paint chip eaters,” as
pica has been portrayed in other contexts (Warren 2000). Officials also systematically ignore
the probable hazards of old paint in dilapidated housing in the Old City and other older and
impoverished neighborhoods of Montevideo and cities of the Interior. As noted above, the
1992 Uruguayan Environmental Report (OPP-OEA-BID 1992: 3.3.2) already identified paint
shops as a significant source of lead contamination, yet leaded paint became institutionally
ignored as a health hazard once the official protocol was in place.
In our interview, Feola’s presentation and narrative of lead contamination began with
squatter settlements, and kept returning to and emphasizing the conditions of poverty, turning
it from context into a causal source of contamination. Her first mention of contamination
sources was cable burning, as she noted that the lead problem was first and foremost a “socioeconomic
problem.” In addition to cable burning, she highlighted the production of lead
fishing weights in which “even children” take part, implicitly associating parental negligence
with lead contamination. Next she mentioned the use of industrial material as landfill and for
housing construction, a practice for which she clearly placed the burden of responsibility on
the people who used this material (the poor) rather than on the industries that produced and
133 This was the position for instance of ANCAP representative Ernesto Pesce (interview May 14, 2004).
134 Interview with Gabriella Feola, March 18, 2004.
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dumped it, or the governing institutions that failed to regulate it. More than once, Feola
assured that it was the lack of hygiene in asentamientos that hindered preventive measures.
For reasons of “culture” and “habitat,” she said, the lead problem is difficult to control.
The CVSP actively publicized the international norms in speeches, declarations to the
press, educational campaigns and advice to worried parents. Schoolchildren often
demonstrated a more sophisticated understanding of the medical science of lead poisoning
than public health officials would choose to admit. After a few months of fieldwork
confronting official stonewalling and misinformation, I was struck by a series of high school
power point presentations on lead poisoning I gained access to through personal contact
Orlando Díaz, a science teacher at a local high school. The presentations were sophisticated
and comprehensive, and generally critical. Commenting on the first actions of the Lead
Commission, (the equivalent of) high school freshmen Ana Aguerrebere and Sofía Fernández
wrote:
The Commission made public a communiqué. Taking the zone as a whole the levels
of heavy metals, including lead, ‘are within the normal limits of an urban area, not
constituting a general situation of emergency’.” (…) “At the date of that communiqué,
the Commission announced that 476 analyses were conducted of children under the
age of 14. But surprisingly the international parameters are not followed, and a
reference is made to 15 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood. They admitted 50
cases with a blood lead level superior to 20 micrograms per deciliter.
That in 2001 high school students could easily locate and report on updated and scientifically
valid information related to lead poisoning underscores the lack of a political will to act at the
highest levels of government, which organized the official protocol designed to downplay risk
and to “other” the lead poisoning epidemic. Officials justified their actions by citing
Uruguay’s developing world status and its lack of adequate funds for implementing a
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preventive environmental health program. In this sense, international science was flexibly
interpreted to conform to local needs. This localizing of science was not usually publicly
acknowledged, however, as officials and many scientists, backed by the traditional authority
bestowed upon them, continued to portray policies as grounded in sound or “pure” science.
The issuance of yearly environmental reports, filled with statistics and charts, lent legitimacy
and authority to the official protocol, while used to deflect public understanding. Scientists
engaged in complex “boundary work” to maintain the appearance of a politics separate from
science (Latour 1993). In this sense, and as noted by various science critics (e.g. Bocking
2004; Tesh 2000), politics were built in to scientific testing regimes and protocols without
being acknowledged as such.
The preceding section has discussed how scientific and state actors tried to keep the
silent epidemic of lead poisoning from turning into a “screaming” one, in Christian Warren’s
terms (2000). Through the enactment of the official protocol, the state clouded lead’s
newfound visibility, as it was unwilling or unable to fully acknowledge and address its
potential societal repercussions. Lead contamination by this point, however, had taken on a
formidable power as an object and a problem. As Mariana Gómez said, lead was a “pot that
was boiling over.”
Why was lead contamination at a boiling point? What are the different circumstances
and conditions in Uruguay at the turn of the millennium that turned lead into a “screaming”
epidemic, in contrast to its silent endurance as chronicled in the fist part of this chapter?
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4.3 “Greening” and Localizing Science
4.3.1 Problematization, Bricolage, and the Environmental Frame
The greening of Uruguayan society is largely a response to processes of neoliberal
globalization, and combined with the increased attention to health and human rights in a
neoliberal world (Nguyen 2005), laid the foundation for the “problematization” (Rabinow
2003) of lead as an object of scientific and medical analysis, of bureaucratic interventions, and
as a basis for rights talk and political claims.
In a rapidly but unevenly greening and globalizing Uruguay, a long-standing public
health issue was largely reframed as an environmental problem. The uneven character of
these processes, however, suggests how lead still took many by surprise and was considered
to have “fallen from the sky.” In other words, lead poisoning remained largely invisible until
key elements and actors of society were prepared to recognize it (e.g. Tesh 2000: 62). It
became recognizable through scientific paradigms, institutional frameworks, and political
ideologies that took on a more holistic, integrated, population-oriented and generally
environmental perspective. Lead poisoning was constituted as a social problem because of
the articulation of key processes that include: the growing influence of toxicology, social
medicine, epidemiology and the environmental sciences in the medical and scientific fields;
recently created environmental institutions, agencies and legislation at the state level; and
growing grassroots forms of environmentalism that connected previously unarticulated realms
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of social life, tying together for instance housing, place, health, the economy, and the urban
environment.
Lead poisoning as a social fact was made possible through the coming together of
these paradigms, institutions and ideologies, or of a robust or dense enough web of social
interests to make its recognition authoritative (cf. Hayden 2003). I find the concept of
“problematization” helpful in understanding how lead became an object and a problem in
Uruguay. “Problematization” refers to the “ensemble of discursive and nondiscursive
practices that make something enter into the play of true and false and constitute it as an
object of thought (whether in the form of moral reflection, scientific knowledge, political
analysis, etc.”; Rabinow 2003: 18). The key to problematization is that something happens to
“introduce uncertainty, a loss of familiarity” in “our previous way of understanding, acting, or
relating” (Rabinow 2003: 18).
The radical transformations associated with neoliberal globalization restructured the
Uruguayan economy and state, bringing about new forms of polarization, vulnerability and
exclusion, introducing new forms of consumption and new productive processes and
technologies, and laying the foundation for the material intensification of lead contamination
exposure. Uruguayans learned firsthand the uncertainties, insecurities and loss of familiarity
neoliberal globalization could engender, and lead poisoning victims became its front line
“collateral casualties” (Bauman 2005: 153). Lead became an object of thought due to these
structural processes, but also due to the symbolic dimensions that made compelling a moral
reflection about lead’s victims and the social conditions that made the epidemic possible.
While fundamental in the creation of the problem, however, the general set of
processes associated with neoliberal globalization also offered the framework for the
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ecognition of lead contamination and its proposed solutions. The “creative destruction” of
neoliberalism (Harvey 2007) dismantled the state and compromised the health and livelihoods
of thousands, while offering new tools of scientific thought and political action, rearranging
preexisting social relations and reconfiguring social actors into new roles and identities.
As the principal medium through which neoliberalism’s creative destruction
articulated with the lead problem, the environmental frame was “good to think with,” in
Claude Lévi-Strauss’ terms. Because the environmental frame has only developed partially
and unevenly in Uruguay, however, another of Lévi-Strauss’ classic formulations can be
loosely borrowed by thinking of newly constituted environmental actors as engaging in a form
of “bricolage” (Lévi-Strauss 1962). In other words, environmental actors in Uruguay across
societal scales creatively adopted a “heterogeneous repertoire” (Lévi-Strauss 1962: 17) of
environmental tools introduced from global institutional and knowledge regimes, translated
and adapted to local conditions and according to local constraints. Environmental bricolage
can be thought of as a form of craftsmanship where actors collect among already existing sets
of materials and tools to “tinker” and engage with the new socio-political object and problem
of lead poisoning. 135
The next sections explore specific ways in which environmental
bricolage was used to engage with lead poisoning by Uruguayan scientists and physicians in
the fields of environmental and social medicine, pediatric medicine, and environmental
engineering, respectively.
135 I intend “bricolage” only as a metaphor, and do not suggest Lévi-Strauss’ dualistic structuralist framework
that opposes nature and culture, and primitive and modern, with the mythical “savage” societies counter-posed to
a rational western science. Indeed, it could be argued that all scientists engage in a process of bricolage in the
production of scientific facts, as others have argued using different metaphors (e.g. Latour 1993).
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4.3.2 Otra cabeza: Chronic Disease and Environmental Medicine in Uruguay
Traditional Uruguayan medicine is derived from the French clinical model. The French
school emphasizes the examination of a patient’s manifest symptoms in establishing diagnosis
and treatment, with the individual body subjected to measured medical analyses and
interventions. Medicine in Uruguay, as was dominant in the United States and the developed
world until the 1970s and 1980s, is focused on curing a patient’s “clinical” signs and
symptoms: those that can be objectively measured through relatively direct observation. In
other words, disease, according to the classic model, is a categorical judgment: you either
“have it” or you do not (Bellinger and Matthews 1998). The environment, broadly conceived
as the individual’s surroundings, is systematically ignored in this model, as are vulnerable
subpopulations and risk groups such as children, the elderly or the poor. Thus the difficulty in
identifying differentially suffered form of environmental disease caused by industrial
contamination or environmental exposure such as lead poisoning.
Bellinger and Matthews (1998) argue that lead toxicity does not fit conventional
medical models and should be “conceptualized in terms of the ‘ecoepidemiological’ view of
disease.” Lead poisoning, they say, needs to be considered in terms of its societal, rather than
solely individual costs, with prevention the primary means of reducing risk. The use of the
classic medical model, moreover, facilitates the placing of blame on the ill individual, rather
than on the environment that is the source of their illness. Herbert Needleman’s breakthrough
study in 1979, associating lead in baby teeth with declining mental capacity, made major
inroads in the understanding of silent or asymptomatic lead exposure (Needleman et al 1979,
1998). From 1970 to 1991, based on developing expertise and changing perceptions among
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public health authorities, the CDC progressively lowered its level of concern for lead
exposure from 60μg/dl to 10μg/dl.
New medical perspectives are slowly developing in Uruguay. Environmental health,
social and preventive medicine, toxicology and epidemiology grew hesitantly as scientific and
medical paradigms in Uruguay following the twelve “frozen” years of the military
dictatorship (1973-1985), a time when these paradigms achieved institutional and academic
legitimacy in the United States and the developed world. During the dictatorship, universities
were placed under siege by the military regime, much of the academic curriculum was
drastically altered or suspended, and scientists and professors were systematically purged,
jailed or exiled. Since the 1980s, Uruguayan universities have been subjected to the legacies
and losses of the dictatorship period, setting back the advancement of new scientific fields.
According to Dr. Rafael Roo, physician, forensics specialist, and professor at the
Faculty of Medicine, Uruguayan medicine exhibits a troubling philosophical and
methodological inadequacy for confronting the lead epidemic. He says the “blinders”
imposed from its own history and traditions limit medicine. 136
Dr. Roo said the Frenchinspired
Uruguayan school would need a massive overhaul and “another vision” to even begin
to address such issues as lead poisoning. This “other mentality” (otra cabeza), he said, is
currently found only among maverick physicians who for one reason or another have sought
different questions and answers to the medical problems they have confronted in practice.
The Toxicology school comes closest to an environmental paradigm, he said, but their
focus is also usually on the measurable manifestations of acute toxic poisoning, such as
carbon monoxide inhalation or arsenic poisoning. These forms of poisoning result in high
death rates, and are therefore more quantifiable and treatable than an asymptomatic disease
136 Personal communication, Dr. Rafael Roo, July 24, 2004.
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such as lead poisoning. Uruguay has much stronger traditions in oncology and infectious
disease, both of which treat clinical manifestations of illness and have higher mortality rates.
Since lead poisoning rarely results in death and is not an infectious disease, in other words,
the reigning biomedical model largely ignores it. Dr. Roo added the focus on children as a
special category of medical intervention is still mostly absent from academic medical training,
notwithstanding the existing field of pediatric medicine. Lead poisoning has been treated as
an occupational disease or hazard, but never as a pediatric one (“niños jamás”).
Two of the academic and bureaucratic actors most involved in the lead issue, Dr.
Mariana Gómez and Dr. Jacqueline Ponzo of the Department of Preventive and Social Health
at the Faculty of Medicine, expressed similar views. Gómez and Ponzo had both been key
participants in the Lead Commission, the former during the early stages and the latter while I
was conducting fieldwork. 137
Both engaged in environmental bricolage by applying
heterogeneous academic training and expertise derived from emerging fields of science and
medicine in their policy work on the lead issue. Dr. Gómez is among the few academic
physicians with foreign research experience. She trained in Mexico out of an “internal
concern” within the Faculty of Medicine that they were falling behind in important trends
such as environmental health. During the dictatorship the Preventive and Social Health
Department, originally formed in the late 1950s, was “emptied,” according to Dr. Ponzo.
Upon the return of democracy, several exiled professors returned to the Department, which
was restructured in 1987. Courses in environmental health are now taught at the Faculty, as
well as an introductory course in environmental epidemiology. The goal for the
epidemiologists is to insert a social dimension to the traditionally bio-centric orientation of
medicine, though they admit this has been hard to achieve.
137 Interview with Dr. Mariana Gómez and Dr. Jacqueline Ponzo, Faculty of Medicine, December 28, 2004.
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4.3.3 “You can’t hide a known truth very long”: Pediatricians and Marginal Medicine
In 2001 the MSP named pediatric specialist Dr. Elena Queirolo as the director of the newly
created Clinic for Environmental Chemical Contaminants, popularly known as the “lead
clinic,” housed in Montevideo’s Pereira Rossell pediatric and maternity hospital (Centro
Hospitalario Pereira Rossell- CHPR). 138
The clinic was meant officially to provide “tertiary”
care for lead poisoning, following preventive primary care and secondary care through
specialized neighborhood clinics. Primary care was never practiced in Uruguay and
secondary care was limited to only a few clinics, so the CHPR lead clinic became the only defacto
center for the medical treatment of lead poisoned children. Because of the elevated
intervention threshold, the clinic “only” treated several hundred children, meaning 700 or so
children represented the official scope of the lead poisoning epidemic and the target of state
intervention, ignoring the potentially tens of thousands poisoned with BLLs over 10µg/dL.
A rickety, jolting elevator takes one to the third floor clinic of makeshift and rather
dismal conditions, as is the case with many public clinics in Uruguay. Inside is a series of
waiting rooms, some with cots set up or folded, perhaps a desk, and windows on the far walls.
During my fieldwork, the clinic’s paint was largely faded or peeling, in white, cream, or light
blue colors. There were some decorations in the rooms, of a cartoon figure or some uplifting
message of health and well-being, but these were infrequent, leaving the walls almost bare.
The main office was small and cluttered with papers and files, an antiquated computer with a
dot-matrix printer. On a given day, one could encounter children running around, perhaps
playing soccer with a can or a toy, or chasing each other playing tag. Others would be crying
138 At the time of my fieldwork, the lead clinic consisted of four members, three pediatricians and a
neuropediatrician, in addition to an administrative assistant. By 2006, the clinic hired two neuropsychologists, a
child psychologist and a nurse, bringing the total staff to nine.
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or would sit comforted in their mothers’ laps. Some would be dreading the imminent needle,
while others, battle scarred, would rub their recent wounds. Their mothers (seldom their
fathers) were usually with them, keeping a watchful eye and waiting for the lead results of
their children.
The pediatricians of the lead clinic are at once physicians by academic training, MSP
functionaries, and political appointees (in the case of Dr. Queirolo). Since the creation of the
clinic, however, they steadfastly advocated for the lowering of the lead poisoning treatment
threshold, denouncing to the press or to officials the poor conditions and injustices faced by
the families they treat, and aligning themselves in solidarity with both the victims and the
CVSP activists, with whom they worked closely for four years. Dr. Queirolo explained how
the “information war” was fought out in collaboration between the community, the lead clinic,
and the media, working together to put pressure on the State. 139
The “mobilized community”
(usually in the form of the CVSP) would use the lead clinic and the media as springboards to
express its interests. Queirolo explains:
In reality it is the people who keep things moving. It is the people who come to us to
tell us things aren’t right. (…) And they come to us continuously (…) consultation
after consultation one of the four physicians that we have at the clinic receives one or
two complaints from a parent who says their other kids who have less than 20
[micrograms] are not attended to… 140
She continues:
139 Interview with Dr. Elena Queirolo, May 26, 2004.
140 “En realidad es la gente la que sigue moviendo. Y la gente es la que viene a nosotros a decirnos las cosas no
están bien. (...) Y nos vienen permanentemente (...) es consulta tras consulta una de los cuatros médicos que
tenemos en la policlínica recibe una o dos quejas de un padre que dice que sus otros hijos que tienen menos de
veinte no son atendidos...”.
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This same community I’m talking about, what do they do? They contact the press, the
press gets in touch with us, and we reaffirm what the community said. (…) We’re not
even protagonists in this. The protagonists are truly the community itself, which
mobilizes through the press, and then the press with us. 141
Dr. Queirolo learned most of what she knows about lead poisoning after 2001. She combed
articles, medical texts and the Internet for as much information as she could find. Together
with her experienced clinical practice and direction of the lead clinic, Dr. Queirolo has
become the foremost Uruguayan authority on pediatric lead poisoning.
The lead clinic’s activism and solidarity resulted in numerous frictions with MSP
authorities and CHPR hospital directors. The clinic was promised several new hires that
never occurred or took years to materialize. They faced the constant threat of shutdowns and
were once subjected to a bizarre looting over the Christmas holiday, when workers returned to
the clinic only to find their medical equipment, furniture, balances and other materials
“redistributed” by orders of the hospital directors. Another mini-scandal revolved around the
discovery of lead and heavy metals smelting occurring in the radiology wing of the hospital
itself, for the purpose of making homemade radiation shields. The smelting was conducted
clandestinely in an open hearth located in a small room with a window leading to the
children’s playground. 142
The lead clinic was also engaged in a pitched battle with the MSP, mediated by the
press, over the ordering and use of the Squalene vitamin supplement. Squalene, derived from
deep-sea shark livers and developed in Korea, is meant to aid in the body’s blocking of heavy
metal absorption. The shipment from Korea, upon orders from the MSP, had been held up for
141 “Esta misma comunidad que te digo, ¿qué hace? Se comunica con la prensa, la prensa se comunica con
nosotros, y nosotros reafirmamos lo que la comunidad dice. (...) No somos ni siquiera muy protagonistas de ésto.
Los protagonistas verdaderamente es la propia comunidad, que se mueve con los medios de comunicación, y
después los medios de comunicación a nosotros.”
142 Both of these incidents occurred during my fieldwork in 2004, and were reported widely in the media.
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months at Uruguayan customs. Both the MSP and the lead clinic accused the other of
compromising the health of the children. In this war of words and positions, Conrad Bonilla,
the Minister of Public Health and Diego Estol, the national Health Director, both accused Dr.
Queirolo and the lead clinic of “experimenting” with children through the use of a supplement
whose value they claimed had not been established. 143
Dr. Queirolo countered that Squalene
had already been approved by Uruguayan agencies, and publicly denounced the ministry of
negligence.
Dr. Queirolo qualified the Ministry’s comments as “ominous and lamentable” (nefasto
y lamentable). She recalled her patients’ use of the terms “experimentation” or “guinea pigs”
before, especially when the clinic was first opened and the parents remained skeptical and
distrustful. She had been building her reputation and trust with the community for over three
years, only to have prominent bureaucrats undermine her status and motives through highly
publicized critiques. I asked Dr. Queirolo why she thought the MSP was making such
concerted efforts to undermine her reputation. In her view, it was due to nervousness and fear
on the part of the Ministry. She said they built up a controversy over Squalene as a kind of
“smoke bomb” to divert attention away from the fundamental issues and responsibilities that
they were skirting, and the fact that over three years had passed and the MSP had little to
show for it.
Despite these differences, however, Dr. Queirolo considered herself fortunate that they
were working under the MSP and not the National University’s Faculty of Medicine. She
described an ongoing struggle with both the academic and professional medical community,
which contrasts to the at least functional relationship of the clinic with the Public Health
143 Dr. Queirolo clarified that Bonilla accused her outright of experimenting with children, stating she was using
them as “guinea pigs,” while Estol only left it as an implicit assumption.
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Ministry. While given to frequent feuds, the MSP officials nevertheless understand that the
clinic is the most prominent manifestation of State intervention in the lead issue. The MSP
has a vested interest in the lead clinic’s work and survival, if only to save face in front of
public and media pressure.
The relationship with the broader medical community, however, is fraught with
tension and conflict. Queirolo would often complain that the private and academic
pediatricians would treat them as second-class practitioners. At times they would deny the
significance of lead poisoning. In one incident, the Dean of the Pediatrics School at the
Faculty of Medicine issued a public warning to Queirolo and the other pediatricians to “Stop
lying to us about this lead business.” Dr. Queirolo says that the medical community had
absolutely no knowledge of lead poisoning when the issue emerged in Uruguay, despite the
voluminous international medical literature on the topic. The continuous conflicts with their
colleagues means that Dr. Queirolo and the lead clinic staff have had to strike a careful
balance between active engagement and dissemination of knowledge, and keeping a low
profile in order to avoid distraction from their ultimate mission of treatment and care. Medical
and institutional ignorance could not last long, Queirolo stressed, as it was impossible to keep
“a known truth hidden for very long.” 144
With unstable institutional support and marginalized from academic medicine, Dr.
Queirolo has been forced to engage in bricolage in a parallel form to the patients she treats,
collecting information haphazardly and forging expertise through itinerant sources. In this
process, the methods of grassroots and scientific knowledge production converge
unexpectedly. Queirolo explained the ways she was forced to “zigzag” through bureaucratic
labyrinths in order to perform her work. She described metaphorically how she had to move
144
“Una verdad conocida, no podés esconderla mucho tiempo. Es imposible.”
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quickly through the openings she would find until she would inevitably come up against a
wall. Rather than stopping there, she would zigzag around to another opening, exploiting it to
the extent possible, and then move on to the next one. This is the only form in which she has
been able to work, and she has simply learned to accept the rules.
Dr. Queirolo is one of the Uruguayan anti-lead crusaders, working through an informal
alliance with the CVSP, lead victims treated at the clinic, journalist Carlos Amorín, ex-
Housing director José Camarda, and a smattering of other allies. An anecdote told by
Queirolo brings to light what has become a Machiavellian staging of the lead struggle. She
described the presence of former national Housing director José Camarda at a meeting with
neighbors over housing relocation as a kind of transformative conversion experience. Put
simply, she described Camarda as moved by the experience of hearing the community’s
plight, forcing him to now be “on the other side” (ahora está del otro lado). “He had to
resign,” she explains, “because he was there and he recognized the nature of the lead
problem.” 145
The story’s moral is that once the “truth” was known and social and affective
proximity to the people established, Camarda had no choice but to follow the “correct” path.
For Queirolo and the other crusaders, lead has become more than just another medical
problem. It is an ethical and moral issue that obliges those who bear witness to lead’s
suffering to wage an often-epic battle against it. 146
145 “Que ahora está del otro lado- tuvo que renunciar, porque estaba y reconocía la problemática del plomo.”
146 I heard similar conversion experiences from many, if not most, of those involved in the anti-lead movement,
including Camarda himself.
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4.3.4 “That’s how Uruguay is”: Localizing Environmental Science
Pablo Gristo and Ana Salvarrey are two young chemical engineers contracted with the
Dangerous Substances Department of the National Environment Directorate (DINAMA). 147
Gristo and Salvarrey were sent by the DINAMA to investigate the causes and scope of lead
contamination in La Teja in 2001. They conducted multiple visits to individual homes,
searching for the sources of contamination through a process of investigation and deduction.
They were limited by the lack of previous experience or knowledge on the issue at the
national government level. The engineers attempted to make up for this dearth of knowledge
by orienting their search through the international literature, but they determined that the
experiences of lead contamination in the North were not entirely helpful for illuminating its
nature in the South. Lead contamination from the use of leaded paint, though proven to be a
factor in some specific cases in Uruguay, did not constitute the primary risk, they said, in
contrast to experiences in the United States, for instance. Contamination proved to be multicausal
and from multiple sources, and was compounded by the problems of extreme poverty.
Gristo and Salvarrey are the listed coordinators of a DINAMA project entitled:
“Inventory, characterization, and classification of sites contaminated by metals.” The project
consists of three phases, with a pilot study in a selected area conducted simultaneously with
the first “inventory” stage across the national territory. After surveying all of the actual and
potential sites contaminated with heavy metals, and upon evaluation of the pilot study, the
second phase of “characterization” included an inspection, evaluation, and environmental
assessment of each site. In the final “classification” phase, each site would be classified
according to potential risks to the environment and/or human health.
147 The following is drawn from an interview with Pablo Gristo and Ana Salvarrey, July 26, 2004.
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The pilot study was conducted at a site in the city of Rosario, Department of Colonia.
The nation-wide inventory and evaluation could not be conducted, however, because funding
ran out and the engineers essentially lost their jobs. In the meantime, Gristo said, the
“problems kept on accumulating.” The original purpose of the three-phase project was to
measure the extent of metals contamination throughout Uruguay. Since funding was
eliminated, the engineers continued their project under a different guise. Uruguay had ratified
the U.N. Stockholm Convention on Dangerous Substances, meaning the government was
obligated by law to follow the measures stipulated by the Convention, including the
evaluation of toxic environmental contaminants, the dissemination of information among the
population, and remediation efforts. The Convention does not specify heavy metals, as its
focus is on other chemical contaminants such as PCB’s and persistent organic compounds.
Gristo and Salvarrey applied the Convention to the problem of heavy metals contamination in
Uruguay, thereby continuing their previous work. Gristo said that six months passed between
losing their other jobs and winning (through an open competition) the Stockholm Convention
project. During that time, nothing progressed in the study and evaluation of metals
contamination in Uruguay, at least through the DINAMA.
The nature and goals of the work became less ambitious, however. Whereas the
original project outlined a comprehensive study of the entire national territory, their new
positions were more oriented to an informational campaign to raise awareness among the
various city and department officials across the country of the dangers of metals
contamination, and education in prevention and remediation strategies. The basic message of
the engineers was “what happened in La Teja could happen anywhere.” They also wanted to
reach the various officials and NGO actors around the county before another metals
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contamination outbreak was identified, and before media and grassroots “subjective”
information tainted “pure” scientific knowledge.
Gristo and Salvarrey had somewhat ambivalent opinions of the role of the media and
civil society in the lead issue. While raising awareness and placing social and political
pressures on the state to act, the engineers also expressed resentment towards these sectors.
The practice of raising awareness carries inherent risks, according to the chemical engineers.
When civil society joins forces with an “opportunistic” and “sensationalist” media, they warn,
the result is the dissemination of “impressionistic” and irrational ideas that only obscure
objective truth. Gristo and Salvarrey argued there were in general two types of press: a
“good” one and a “bad” one, the former objective and the latter opinionated. Some
newspapers irresponsibly mixed fact and subjective opinion, according to Gristo, a practice
motivated by underlying political interests. Salvarrey added that the press tends to “embellish
what one tells them” (dibujen lo que uno dice).
Salvarrey and Gristo gained their expertise through a mixture of formal professional
training and independent, ad-hoc research. As everyone else involved in the lead issue in
Uruguay, they found a dearth of established knowledge directly related to lead, and very little
about environmental contamination in general. They told me that there were only two elective
courses in the chemical engineering program at the University of the Republic that had
anything to do with environmental issues, and one of them was on occupational health. To
build expertise in the field, they enrolled in workshops or short courses offered at the
University. Gristo admitted, however, that he had to mostly train himself. Salvarrey added
that personal initiative is a necessary element to gain an adequate preparation, much of which
ends up developed through Internet research.
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Even when environmental institutions, laws or projects are established, however, there
is often a gap between form and practice. As was the case with DINAMA’s national
inventory and classification project, there are well-designed decrees and laws on the books
that face considerable difficulty in getting implemented. The battery presidential decree
signed in September 2003 is a case in point. 148
The decree mandates industries register and account for their present and past
production and disposal activities; produce an annual report submitted to the DINAMA;
include warning and instructional labels in all battery products; coordinate distribution and
sales components; and implement an environmentally sound system of recycling and/or
discarding of all battery components, as well as in all phases of the production process. The
decree calls for the drawing up of master plans within six months of its passage (or February
10, 2004), and full compliance with the standards issued in the decree within one year’s time.
It also draws up an extensive list of fines and sanctions for non-compliance.
The Radesca battery company posted a master plan on the DINAMA website. The
plan makes no mention of the company’s responsibility for decades of environmental
contamination (see Chapter Three), but appears comprehensive in complying with the terms
of the decree. I asked Salvarrey and Gristo for an update on the battery decree and its
compliance, and they said it had yet to be enforced. I noted that the compliance deadline had
long since passed, and Gristo answered, laughing: “That’s how Uruguay is!” (Así es el
Uruguay!).
Gristo and Salvarrey’s story underscores the crucial role that State financing and
political will plays in the advancement of science and in the acknowledging and treatment of
environmental problems. Their work was suspended for six months after funding was cut to
148 Decree 373/003: Regulation of used or discarded lead acid batteries. September 10, 2003.
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their original program. Later they picked up where they had left off, as no one else was
equipped or trained to investigate in the area. Another key element to this case is the role of
individual initiative. Gristo and Salvarrey are self-motivated individuals who found the
problem of lead and other heavy metal contamination compelling and urgent enough to find
ways to investigate it. Much of what has been accomplished has been due to their personal
convictions and creativity through environmental bricolage. They continued where they left
off after losing their jobs, only by creatively interpreting the mandates of the Stockholm
Convention to include heavy metal contaminants.
The importance of national and international law is also evident. Uruguay’s
ratification of the Stockholm Convention means that funds and programs have to be dedicated
to its mandates. At the same time, the State also uses laws and decrees as showpieces or
“green washing” to feign environmental stewardship while leaving a vacuum between form
and practice.
The chemical engineers hold fast to a notion of pure science that is easily corrupted by
the alien influences of society, notably the media, civil society, and political pressures. While
they are very aware of these influences, rather than accepting them as a normal or inherent
part of the production of knowledge, they reserve a notion of purity and objectivity that
becomes eroded from the outside (cf. Bocking 2004; Latour 1993). Their efforts in holding
workshops across the country can be seen as preventive measures, not only in the sense of
preventing future events of metals contamination, but also in terms of preventing the seepage
of alien influences in the production of knowledge. They are preparing technicians and
officials on how to act before social pressures appear (in other words on how to think purely;
Latour 1993).
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4.4 Conclusion: Localizing and Purifying Science in the Creation of a Lead Poisoning
Epidemic
Disputes over scientific expertise extended to competing claims over rationality. State and
everyday actors claimed activists responded emotionally and were pursuing other interests
such as “free” food or housing. They accused activists and the media of promoting
sensationalistic and unscientific claims. The feminization and infantilization of lead
poisoning (through its symbolic association with women and children) allowed for the
production of state discourses attributing social movement claims to “hysterical” and
irrational concerns, with a feminized public counter-posed to a masculinized rational and
sound science. Activists, on the other hand, argued they were applying sound science derived
from internationally respected organisms, claiming it was the state that adopted irrational and
arbitrary scientific and intervention norms.
The various sides charged other camps with promoting a politicized science, and
engaged in “acts of purification” and “boundary work” to bolster their own claims (Bocking
2004; Latour 1993). As Sylvia Noble Tesh (2000) argues of the environmental movement in
the United States, the struggle was never about a unity of state and science acting against a lay
grassroots public grounded in experiential and non-rational truth claims. Rather, scientists
and scientific knowledge assist in grassroots struggles, as is the case in Uruguay, and
environmental conflicts become debates between “two groups of experts” (Tesh 2000: 93).
The lead conflict, then, is largely between competing scientific models and paradigms, each
side laden with its own social values and ethical claims. Although experts inform and actively
participate in the anti-lead movement, however, they do not do so on equal footing with the
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scientists of the state. Power is very much tied to knowledge, and the ability to disseminate
expertise and put it into practice depends on one’s access to resources, including the media.
Acts of purification abound in Uruguay. Toxicologist Mañay was adamant about not
making “political” statements. In policing the boundaries of science (Bocking 2004), she
claimed the data the toxicologists produced stood alone. Yet when the toxicologists published
articles on lead poisoning in Uruguay, they referenced antiquated WHO lead poisoning
thresholds and referenced their data accordingly. They were ceding to strong political
pressures to downplay the potential scope of lead exposure among the population. Following a
pragmatic rationale that was quite common among scientists and officials, Mañay and Alvarez
recognized that following the current CDC and WHO guidelines would mean that “we are all
contaminated,” a recognition that the state and much of society was unprepared and unwilling
to make. More recent published material (Cousillas et al 2005) has begun to recognize the
international standards, but in many respects this comes too late, as the elimination of leaded
gasoline in 2004 guarantees that blood lead levels- a measure of recent exposure- will never
reflect the true dimensions and scope of Uruguay’s lead epidemic.
The pediatricians of the lead clinic sided with the social movement in calling for
adherence to current international intervention norms. They claimed a privilege to truth
through social proximity to the victims of lead poisoning. As they bore witness to the
suffering caused by the disease, they were obligated to side with “the people.” The social
proximity that granted their claims a moral foundation, however, was also the source of their
marginalization from dominant academic medicine. Academics trained in pure science did
not trust the pediatricians’ knowledge, perhaps because it was tainted by social contact, and
therefore susceptible to “contamination” from other interests and concerns.
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State-contracted scientists used the authority and purity of science to back their claims,
but often dismissed alternative models without offering a scientific rationale. Despite the
frequent recognition that lead contamination is a multi-source and multi-causal pollutant,
political interests and dominant scientific models pressured scientists and technocrats to
isolate “the” underlying source of lead contamination.
Scientific analysis progressively conformed to the official protocol. Despite early
efforts by some scientists and bureaucrats to more rigorously monitor and intervene into the
lead epidemic, competing demands on the state tied to the deepening of the economic
recession and other pragmatic criteria won out in the end. The “othering” of the lead problem
through its association with the extreme poor also served as a product and contributing factor
to the state’s (and academy’s) distancing from the epidemic.
It is clear that political pressures and interests played a fundamental role in the
downplaying of risk and the circumscription of the scope of analysis and intervention.
Characterizing political interference in science as a “lack of ethics” on the part of the state, the
Faculty of Sciences in 2001 withdrew from participation in the Lead Commission. A oncestrong
Uruguayan state faced a loss of legitimacy as it inadequately addressed the epidemic
and grassroots political demands. The instituting of the official protocol was meant to
mitigate political fallout and maintain the state’s “lived fiction” (Trouillot 2001) of
competence in spite of its quickly eroding credibility and authority. In 2003, following lead
discoveries across Montevideo and the country, the relationship of the state with the anti-lead
movement and the lead clinic reached bottom. According to Dr. Queirolo, the MSP attempted
to eliminate food supplements and free transportation to the lead clinic, it concealed relevant
data, and it even tried to raise the medical intervention threshold to 45µg/dL, which would
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have reduced the officially recognized lead victims to a handful of children and would have
effectively shut down the clinic.
Beyond politics, however, inadequate state intervention can also be attributed to
scientific models that remain dominant in Uruguay and across the world. As discussed above,
environmental and epidemiological perspectives are only slowly emerging in Uruguay, but
they are also far from hegemonic in the United States and the developed world. A recent
article by Laidlaw et al (2005) proposes a predictive model for lead exposure of children in
inner-city centers of the United States using climatic variables, and argues for the recognition
of the multiplicity of lead sources, old and new, that result in soil and dust lead contamination.
In a rebuttal to a critique of their study, they argue (2006: 19):
We are concerned that people working at agencies that should champion the reduction
of lead exposure do not appreciate the fact that multiple sources of lead have
accumulated in urban environments and that all major sources and reservoirs need full
attention (…) Our work suggests that, to fully address the childhood lead exposure
problem in the United States, a paradigm shift is required that includes all major
reservoirs of active lead dust.
In the United States, point sources from leaded paints play the role of the dominant onesource
hypothesis that cable burning represents in Uruguay. Ironically, researchers have
acknowledged the multiplicity of lead sources in the developing world, but erroneously
dichotomize the North and South, attributing point sources and “legacy pollutants” to the
former (e.g. Schell et al 2003), while emphasizing “folk practices” and the informal economy
in the latter (e.g. Hernandez-Avila et al 1999). A more accurate assessment would take into
account the multiplicity of sources in both North and South, through both legacy and ongoing
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forms of contamination, with similar patterns of vulnerability structuring lead poisoning risk
throughout the world.
Lead poisoning holds a curious status in the world of environmentalism and
environmental health. The oldest of the world’s environmental diseases, its sharp reduction in
the developed world is considered one of the success stories of public health. Its stubborn
lingering in the North is explained (misleadingly) in terms of old sources of contamination
differentially affecting the poor and racial minorities who face constrained choices in housing
and health care. Perhaps unsurprisingly, despite years of attention from international agencies
and NGOs, lead poisoning in many ways has fallen off the policy map of global health.
Nevertheless, lead poisoning does not go away. It appears and reappears, fades from
view and is rediscovered and reinvented anew (Fassin and Naudé 2004). As lead researchers
David Bellinger and Julia Matthews (1998) observe of the past 2000 years: “A curious pattern
is evident whereby the toxicity of lead was seemingly discovered, forgotten, then rediscovered
in a different context or with respect to a different risk group.”
For social scientists and international environmental NGOs, who often follow the
health and environmental agendas of the global North, lead’s disappearance from public view
there lessens its visibility in the global South as well. Lead poisoning, in short, does not draw
the public health, environmental, political or anthropological attention that new infectious
diseases or “emergent” and “breakthrough” biotechnologies have recently drawn. The lead
poisoning case in Uruguay suggests the need to further expand social scientific studies of
science and technology (STS) to the global periphery, rather than its predominant focus on the
scientific vanguard. An STS of the periphery would be attuned to the uneven geopolitical
trajectory of global information flows and how information is selectively appropriated and
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edrawn at the local level according to local constraints and political interests. There is no
futures market in lead detection technologies, nor does it lend itself to new forms of
biocapital. Lead is old and mundane, as gray as its hue. Nevertheless, as in other
environmental disasters and epidemics (cf. Armus 2003; Oliver-Smith and Hoffman 2002),
lead poisoning acts as a “prism” (Fortun 2001: 354) refracting broader social, environmental,
and political processes, and reveals key social values, meanings, and the workings of power in
the social creation of vulnerability.
The character of lead as an object external to global health and environmental agendas
helps explain its uneven trajectory in Uruguay. As I have argued in this chapter, the greening
of Uruguayan society, or Uruguay’s insertion into a global environmental ideological and
regulatory regime, has opened channels and provided a lens for the recognition and
problematization of lead poisoning. Uruguayan environmental NGOs, however, often funded
through European parent organizations, mostly ignored the lead issue while focusing on the
more trendy international environmental themes of the day. Contrary to global trends (e.g.
Ferguson and Gupta 2002; Riles 2001), the anti-lead movement did not coincide or intersect
with an NGO organizational or funding structure. It was mostly ordinary citizens who took
up the anti-lead cause, using tools made available through neoliberal globalization to gain
expertise and publicize their plight.
New information technologies such as the Internet facilitated unprecedented
opportunities, for citizens and scientists alike, to access and distribute information on lead
poisoning. The political implications of this process led journalist Carlos Amorín to write
(2001b) that environmental issues such as lead poisoning in Uruguay reveal how we are at a
crossroads in which, “societies advance politically more rapidly than their institutions and
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epresentatives.” One could add, however, that some of this slow state advance amounts to an
ignorance by design.
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CHAPTER FIVE: “No Somos Marginados.” Culturalism and Othering Strategies in
Montevideo’s Squatter Settlements
No olvidará nunca el color de esa postal/ Del cantegril está bordeada mi ciudad
--La Reina de La Teja, 2002 149
...Acá hay todo, acá hay nada/ de seguro no hay parada/ que detenga a este tren/ otra vez ya
lo vez/ working class ya no da más
--“Afuera,” La Teja Pride, 2003 150
5.0 Introductory Vignette: Living in “shacks of tin and misery.”
I set up a late afternoon interview with social worker Ema Menoni at the decentralized
Communal Zone Center 14 (CCZ 14) headquarters to discuss the CCZ 14’s response to the
lead contamination issue in La Teja and surrounding areas. The CCZ 14 headquarters at the
time was modest in architectural style and furnishing. 151
It was a medium-sized brick
building along busy Carlos Maria Ramirez Avenue in La Teja, with a small courtyard, a
cement wall for sitting, and some small shrubs along the outside entrance. Inside, the long
149 Song verse by the La Reina de La Teja murga. My translation: “He will never forget the color of that
postcard/ of slums my city is surrounded.”
150 Verse from the La Teja Pride hip-hop group. My translation: “…Here there’s everything, here there’s
nothing/ there’s no stop for security/ that will hold this train/ once again you see it/ working class can’t take it
any more.”
151 In 2005, the CCZ 14 moved its headquarters to a larger, more elegant building in the Prado neighborhood.
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ench I was sitting on was set against a wall plastered with CCZ 14 business and
announcements. On one side of the room was a computer system set up by the Montevideo
Municipality (IMM) for basic public information, with a keyboard, colorful graphics, and a
slogan indicating the IMM is “with the people always.”
After about a twenty-minute wait, a woman walked in with a small group of people,
eyed me over and asked if I was “the anthropologist.” She introduced herself as Ema, and
asked me to wait a minute while she took off her coat and got ready. Because of
organizational activities for the upcoming local Consejo Vecinal elections, we had to conduct
the interview in the busy entrance to the CCZ 14, so I decided not to record it, but rather to
take notes as best as I could holding my notebook on my lap.
Menoni was a woman in her forties, slightly overweight, with large engaging eyes and
a pleasant smile. She was quite friendly, and apologetic about the interview setting. Menoni
was very animated as she spoke, moving her hands around and often placing them on my
forearm or shoulder for emphasis. She emanated a storyteller’s conviction, dramatic flair, and
tone. We spoke for about fifty minutes, and I started the twenty-five minute walk home just
after sunset.
We spoke of CCZ 14’s early role and the surprise of officials when the lead issue first
“exploded,” and before the federal government took primary responsibility in addressing the
issue, and the relationship of La Teja civil society to the CCZ. Menoni had the most to
comment, however, on the living conditions of the poor who dwell in La Teja and the
surrounding area’s squatter settlements. They were signaled both as the most “serious”
problem facing the CCZ 14 in general, and as the primary focus of the lead issue. Menoni, as
many others I met throughout my fieldwork, treated asentamiento residents with a
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combination of fascination and disgust, and as a highly charged signifier of more abstract
concepts and meanings.
Menoni portrayed the living conditions of squatter settlements as exceptionally
unhealthy and “backward.” In comparing Uruguay’s asentamientos to Brazil’s notorious
favelas, she claimed that the latter were “more dignified,” and that a Brazilian reporter she
once met had seconded this opinion. The “slums” (rancheríos) of Uruguay consist of “dirty,”
“cold,” “disease-ridden” “shacks of tin and misery,” according to Menoni. The lack of
adequate sanitation provokes an “astonishing level” (un nivel brutal) in both the number of
cases and the variety of intestinal parasites affecting the people of the asentamientos, for
instance. Menoni told me of a worm that was removed from a one and a half year old boy,
thick as her pinky, and which almost filled a plastic soft drink bottle. They took the bottle and
worm “all over the place” as shock value to emphasize this serious problem affecting
Montevideo’s poor. In telling this story, she lamented the “level of backwardness we are
reaching” (el nivel de atraso al que estamos llegando).
The IMM had recently completed the third phase of its Inter-American Development
Bank-funded sanitation project, extending the sanitation lines to 90% of the city’s territory. 152
The problem, for Menoni, is that people have not necessarily invested in connecting their
homes to the city network. The lack of adequate sanitation has become one of the city’s
“grave problems.” In the best of cases, she says, these families have a latrine (pozo negro).
Menoni emphasized the intestinal parasites, as well as general conditions of
inadequate health, housing, and nutrition, the garbage problem, and poverty as the major
concerns affecting people living in asentamientos, and therefore the priorities of the CCZ 14.
152 The IMM in 2007 was engaged in the fourth and final sanitation phase, with the goal of becoming Latin
America’s “most sanitized” capital city.
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She tended to downplay the lead poisoning problem, considering it just “another serious
problem among many.” She also insisted that the lead problem was one that only affected the
squatter settlements. When I asked her whether working or middle class families needed to be
concerned about lead contamination as well, she seemed puzzled by the question. For
Menoni, lead was without a doubt a problem of the poor, intimately associated with the brutal
conditions of extreme poverty.
Menoni claimed the poor have lost the ability to think of the future, and are only
capable of what she dubs a kind of “nowism” (inmediatismo). The capacity for thinking
through the abstract conceptualization of “tomorrow” and the more distant future is something
only working, middle and upper classes have the “luxury” to do, she claimed. Menoni said
that she would often hears claims that the poor have become “dumbed down” (gente
enbrutecida). Rather than presenting a defense of the vulnerable populations she had worked
so closely with for years, this social worker answered the anonymous charge by replying: “I
say yes, it’s true.”
Menoni’s thoughts on the problems facing squatters, the values and characteristics she
associates with the extreme poor, and the positioning of lead poisoning within this broader
context of poverty and “backwardness” are reflective of some of the dominant discourses
circulating in Uruguay regarding the relationship between lead and poverty. This relationship,
the discursive strategies used by elites, the working class and the poor, and the responses of
the poor themselves to these constructs conform the thematic and analytical content of this
chapter.
The first section of the chapter historicizes and contextualizes the rise of squatter
settlements in Uruguay, relating the growth of economic and housing informality among the
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“new poor” to the processes of social exclusion and marginality they reflect and engender, and
drawing together the relationship between urban informality, ecological degradation, and
political mobilization. The relationship between poverty and ecology is conceptualized
primarily as ecological conditions structuring health risks for vulnerable sub-populations.
This formulation counters hegemonic understandings in Uruguay and around the world of
poverty as a primary causal force in environmental degradation.
The second section focuses attention on the strategies those in power have used to
downplay the significance and risks of lead poisoning and to shift responsibility and blame
onto its victims. This is made possible, I argue, first through the use of “flexible”
international norms, and secondly through strategies that define the origins and dynamics of
lead poisoning primarily in cultural terms, specifically in relation to the “culture” of the poor,
while ignoring or downplaying its structural causes. Linking lead poisoning to the perceived
cultural values and behavioral patterns of the poor serves to essentialize, particularize, and
naturalize the disease, and reflects a recurring pattern in the global history of lead poisoning.
The chapter’s third and final section analyzes the responses from various grassroots
actors to these hegemonic forms of culturalism and othering. These responses include, firstly,
the “refracted” or displaced othering of some lead poisoning victims of squatter settlements,
who internalize hegemonic culturalist constructs and redirect them onto those living in similar
socio-economic situations. Secondly, the “strategic othering” employed by working class
activists of the Live Without Lead Commission (Comisión Vivir Sin Plomo-CVSP), who
negotiate the collective anxiety of potential downward mobility by distancing themselves
from the experiences of the “non-worker” poor while promoting discourses of solidarity that
emphasize the structural vulnerability of the poor to environmental hazards such as lead
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contamination. And thirdly, the emphatic denial of otherness by some of the squatter
settlement lead victims, who at once refuse their attributed status as “marginals” while
drawing on their symbolic, embodied, and bureaucratic status as lead victims to assert
personhood and claim rights through forms of “biological citizenship.”
5.1 Joining the Two P’s: Ecological Marginalization in the Free Market City
The conflation of social, economic, and environmental risk factors in Uruguay’s squatter
settlements, and the grassroots political responses they have engendered reflect the sociopolitical
realities of urban Latin America in neoliberal times. The slums and squatter
settlements of Latin America have been theorized as significant and growing sites of
grassroots collective mobilization against the exclusionary dynamics of the “free market city.”
Roberts and Portes (2006) argue that structural adjustment programs and decentralization
policies in Latin American cities have led to increased unemployment and job insecurity,
urban segregation, the rise of labor and housing informality, and worsened crime and
violence. Urban social movements, furthermore, are increasingly made up of the informal
proletariat mobilized through territorial or community based, rather than strictly class based
demands, according to the authors.
In the case of Montevideo, Ruben Kaztman identifies collective action over housing
and infrastructure as the most “emblematic” form of recent grassroots mobilization in the
capital city (Roberts and Portes 2006). Kaztman (2003) refers to an emerging “negative
synergy,” where Uruguay’s “new poverty” and social exclusion become entrenched through
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the three processes of labor, education, and housing fragmentation and homogenization. This
triple process acts as a distancing mechanism and generator of social fissures, furthering the
socio-economic polarities of Uruguayan society by limiting interaction between social classes,
and eclipsing what Kaztman refers to as the “society of proximities” that characterized 20 th
century Uruguayan welfarism. As asentamientos become the new sites of collective action,
the place of residence increasingly displaces the place of work as the principal source of
mobilization, with neighborhood identity taking on renewed importance as a symbolic and
material basis of struggle (Kaztman 2003).
Squatter settlements in Uruguay have grown at an annual rate of 10% and now
comprise almost 15% of Montevideo’s total population (Avila et al 2003; Olesker 2004).
Whereas Uruguay once prided itself as Latin America’s “model Republic,” the deep economic
recession at the turn of the millennium punctuated decades of socio-economic decline.
Unemployment rates hovered around 20% and labor insecurity reached two-thirds of the
country’s labor force (Laborde 2004). Poverty doubled from 1998-2003, affecting roughly
one-third of the total population, a previously unheard of number (Laborde 2004). Economic
exile compelled at least 85,000 Uruguayans to emigrate in only a three-year period, and of
those who could not leave, almost as many became indigent, as the national economic debt
ballooned to a suffocating $13 billion (Kirichenko 2004; Papa 2004; Renfrew 2004).
The explosive growth of the asentamientos in recent years has been due to a process of
urban re-territorialization rather than absolute demographic growth (Olesker 2004). With
sharp rises in the cost of living and a 30% loss of income for workers in only five years,
families were no longer able to afford rents or property and were gradually expulsed from the
city center into peri-urban squatter settlements (Corboz 2005; Papa 2004). The difference is
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significant, reflecting a “push” dynamic rather than the “pull” of industrialization or the
promise of a better urban life for rural migrants that characterized the growth of Latin
American squatter settlements for most of the twentieth century (Perlman 1976).
The expanding asentamientos differ in character from the long-standing urban slums
of Montevideo, known locally as cantegriles, which Avila et al (2003) characterize as
“pockets of marginality” in the city center that corresponded to the structural limits of the ISI
model that dominated state economic policies from the 1930s to the mid-1980s. 153
The
cantegriles grew rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s as the ISI model slowly unraveled, and
consisted predominantly of landless rural migrants to Montevideo (Avila et al 2003; Corboz
2005). The asentamientos of the capital, on the other hand, grew in the 1980s and 1990s in
the city’s peripheral and marginal spaces, with 70% of their population drawn from
Montevideo itself. As Avila et al argue (2003), the asentamientos reflect new local forms of
social exclusion that correspond to the global neoliberal economic order.
The rise of informal housing arrangements coincides with a concurrent increase in
activity in the informal economy. The number of informal garbage recyclers (hurgadores),
for instance, who sift through municipal waste for scrap, has grown into the thousands in
Montevideo alone (Varoli 2004). In many cases the asentamientos and hurgadores have
become intimately associated and superimposed symbolically. As one Montevideo social
worker put it, “people live from garbage, and they live as it lives” (Renfrew 2004c).
The downwardly mobile middle and working classes have found themselves on the
losing end of an economic system that has simultaneously rewarded the reduced professional
workforce of the finance, business, and tourism sectors. Housing and education have been
153 The term “cantegril” originated in the 1950s as an ironic reference to the Cantegril Country Club in the
exclusive resort city of Punta del Este, along the Atlantic coast.
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increasingly homogenized, with the proliferation of urban ghettoes of marginality in the
northern and western areas of Montevideo, coupled with the emergence of gated communities
and wealthy enclaves in the eastern coastal band (Alvarez-Rivadulla 2007).
The dynamics of the lead poisoning discoveries are better understood if placed within
the general context of social exclusion and dissolution of the free market city. Environmental
conditions largely coincide with socio-economic ones and are subjected to the same general
forces of fragmentation and homogenization. Contaminated communities are superimposed
upon polluted landscapes in poor sections of the city, inversely mirroring the relatively clean
living and environmental conditions of the wealthy sectors. While the Uruguay Natural
national marketing campaign calls for the beautification of Montevideo’s eastern coast and
central parks and plazas for tourist consumption, the rest of the city largely suffers from the
fumes of industrial emissions and the wastes of clandestine dumps, a process amplified in
wealthy Atlantic coastal resorts such as Punta del Este (Renfrew 2004). The ecological or
environmental dimension of marginality, then, should be incorporated as a fourth key element
to the “negative synergy” of labor, housing, and education fissuring that Kaztman (2003)
describes as leading toward a downward spiral of urban exclusion.
Urban environmental degradation, which includes lead contamination, other forms of
toxic pollution, inadequate sanitation, or the proliferation of “clandestine” garbage dumps,
further stigmatizes the already out-of-place residents of the asentamientos by linking them
symbolically to their environmental surroundings. This symbolic denigration is coupled with
the serious negative health outcomes of living in proximity to pollution with little means of
reducing exposure or mitigating its impacts. Exposure to potent neurotoxins such as lead
feeds into the negative fragmentary synergy by furthering a cruel spiral in which behavioral
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problems, reduced intellectual achievement, and attention deficits impact school performance
and further stigmatize poor children as unruly and destined for failure.
5.1.1 Cantegriles and the Culture of Poverty
While sociologists, some government officials and other observers posit clear historical and
demographic dividing lines between the asentamiento and the cantegril, these lines on the
ground are often blurred. Some asentamientos are entirely new or recent settlements, and
their residents may consist in the majority of formerly unionized, unemployed construction
and other skilled workers, as the typology suggests (cf. Kaztman 2003). Other settlements,
however, consist of a mix of long-term and recent squatters, and housing type and makeup,
occupational type and status, and point of origin are heterogeneous. Neighbors, the settlers
themselves, the media and other commentators often alternate between the terms “cantegril”
and “asentamiento” to characterize irregular housing settlements in Montevideo. The
difference in terminology often reflects differences in signification. While “asentamiento” is
a term born from the sociological imagination and suggests at least a more technical,
bureaucratic etymology, “cantegril” is infused with more specific meanings. 154
To live in a cantegril, according to a common discourse, is thoroughly “cultural,” and
implies sharing a specific set of values and attributes that approximate what in other contexts
has been referred to as a “culture of poverty.” Following a culture of poverty model, cantegril
life would consist of widespread anomie, general social disintegration, impulsivity, and a
154 In this chapter I alternate between usages of “asentamiento” and “cantegril.” I generally follow the common
social science, media and government preference for “asentamiento,” but use “cantegril” when settlement
residents themselves refer to it in this way.
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predominant sense of resignation and fatalism, while governed by authoritarian social
relations (Lewis 1966). People living in cantegriles are popularly thought of as pertaining to a
more entrenched, self-referential and autonomous life, in contrast to those of the
asentamientos who have been temporarily and recently displaced from the mainstream of
society. They are asentamiento dwellers, not cantegrileros, who are characterized by
Kaztman and others as the most emblematic of contemporary grassroots activism in Uruguay.
Those of the asentamientos have agency, according to this model, while those of the
cantegriles supposedly passively experience their fate in life. Furthermore, the future of
asentamiento dwellers still holds the possibility of transcendence from their condition of
informality. The danger, of course, is that they eventually become cantegrileros themselves.
Some dwellers of lead contaminated squatter settlements and sympathetic members of
the CVSP invert the pejorative associations of the “cante” and attribute positive meanings to
it, as pertaining to a place, or a meaningful point of origin. Arguably, the term
“asentamiento” is itself in the process of developing its own specific significations, perhaps
not so distant from the stigmatized meanings of the cantegril. Many, however, choose to use
the term “cantegril” when referencing the lead victims in order to promote forms of
culturalism that point to the perceived entrenched values and behaviors pertaining to cantegril
“culture.” They will continue to sicken themselves because they know no better. Their
“adaptation” to dirt and filth precludes educational and other intervention measures, the
argument goes.
With the lead discoveries, images of out-of-place urban squatters were reframed as
diseased bodies emerging from a degenerative “culture of poverty.” The spatial location of
squatters on polluted riverbanks, abandoned industrial brown fields and once-empty lots of
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toxic landfill facilitated their framing as diseased and dangerous bodies. They became
“matter out of place,” blurring the boundaries between the natural (urban ecology) and the
cultural (the cityscape; Douglas 1966). State and professional actors presented environmental
disease as the result of the conflation of endemic poverty and ecological degradation, or as
several commentators put it, the coming together of the “two p’s” of “plomo” (lead) and
“pobreza” (poverty). The equation of the “two p’s” undermines social movement tactics that
attempt to “democratize risk” by promoting an awareness of lead as a cross-class and
geographically ubiquitous environmental hazard, and to thus broaden the scope of concern,
and presumably of state intervention.
5.1.2 Marginality Myths and the New Social Exclusion
Oscar Lewis’ original culture of poverty concept gained currency in academic and policy
circles throughout Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s. First formulated in 1959, the
concept delineated the conditions under which the poor, specifically rural migrants who settle
in urban slums, perpetuate a “subculture” with its own structure and rationale, conceived of
generally as a “way of life which is passed down from generation to generation along family
lines” (Lewis 1966: 68). The concept was part of an attempt to theorize how the poor adapt to
or remain marginal from the modern institutions and civic life embodied by the Europeanmodeled
Latin American city. This preoccupation can trace its intellectual origins to
sociological and anthropological debates since the 19 th century theorizing the perceived
differences between “tradition,” embodied by rural life, and “modernity,” associated with the
city. The sociological literature on the topic originates with Durkheim’s discussion of
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mechanical versus organic solidarity, and Tönnies’ Gemeinschaft (community) and
Gesellschaft (society) duality, channeled through the urban sociological theories of
“marginals” and “dual cultures” of the Chicago School (Al Sayyad 2004: 8-9; Perlman 1976:
108). Anthropological contributions include Lewis Henry Morgan’s societas and civitas
concepts, and the folk-urban continuum of Redfield. According to Perlman (1976: 111),
social psychological theories of “attitudinal modernity” derived from the Weberian tradition
were the final major component of culture of poverty and marginality theories.
Though Lewis (1966) attributed both negative characteristics (social disintegration,
dependence, authoritarianism, anomie) and positive attributes (spontaneity, a functional
coping strategy) to the culture of poverty, its pejorative connotations are what gained the
widest currency in academic and policy circles. Squatters were widely portrayed as lazy,
dependent, hypersexual, and potentially criminal members of a “seething, frustrated mass.”
Their housing was characterized as a parasitic “social cancer” taking the form of “filthy and
disease-ridden shantytowns” (Perlman 1976: 1-2). Child abandonment and irresponsible
parenting, drunkenness, prostitution, lack of control, apathy, and sloth were some of the
behavioral and personality characteristics attributed to the squatters’ “way of life.” As echoed
by Ema Menoni in Uruguay, squatters were thought of as exhibiting a “present-time
orientation” and as incapable of “deferring gratification,” planning for the future, or generally
thinking beyond their immediate social worlds and time (Lewis 1966).
Other theorists critiqued the dominant culture of poverty trope. Manuel Castells,
Janice Perlman (1976), and Latin American theorists such as José Nun (1969), Gino Germani
(1980) Alejandro Portes and Aníbal Quijano (1977) formulated theories of marginality in the
1960s and 1970s largely derived from neomarxism and dependency theory. Some Latin
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American theorists framed social marginality in terms of Marxian concepts of surplus labor
and the industrial reserve army (Nun 1969; Quijano 1977). They argued that along with the
development of an increasingly complex and technologically advanced international division
of capital, the system became unable to absorb the surplus population and labor it created.
Populations became part of a structural “marginal mass” and a “permanent structural” and
unabsorbed feature of the economy (Auyero 1997: 509; Quijano 1977: 21). and the gradual
elimination of “pre-capitalist” relations of production in Latin America. Perlman (1976) and
others questioned the functionalist “myths of marginality” that posited squatter settlements as
homogeneous and bounded units of analysis (dys)functionally integrated into a broader social
order. According to Perlman (2004: 121), the myths of marginality were “empirically false,
analytically misleading, and insidious in their policy implications.” Perlman found in her
study of the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, for instance, that squatters were in fact well organized,
cohesive, institutionally integrated, hard working and optimistic: “…they have the aspirations
of the bourgeoisie, the perseverance of pioneers, and the values of patriots,” she wrote
(Perlman 1976: 243). The squatters simply do not have the opportunities to fulfill their
aspirations, according to Perlman, due to their structurally subordinate, culturally stigmatized,
and politically vulnerable position. 155
Critics recognize the marginality myths as instruments of social control of the poor, a
means of simultaneously blaming the poor for their condition and exonerating the dominant
classes from social responsibility and a more equitable distribution of resources and wealth
(Al Sayyad 2004; Perlman 1976). The poor of the shantytowns were not “marginal” or
excluded from the rest of society, but were in fact fully integrated, only on economically
155 It should be noted that Perlman’s critique of marginality myths regarding the favelas would most likely
extend, as I do in this chapter, to the Uruguayan cantegriles or asentamientos, contrary to Menoni and her
Brazilian counterparts’ understandings, as discussed above.
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exploited terms, according to these critics. In other words, they were “politically repressed,
socially stigmatized, and culturally excluded” by the dominant groups and classes of society
(Al Sayyad 2004: 8).
By the 1970s and 1980s, the “informal sector” concept drew on dualistic framings of
labor in addressing the economic activities of squatters in Latin American cities. Structuralist
theories influenced by neo-Marxist and dependency theorists argued that informality was a
“status of labor” and an expression of uneven capitalist development (Al Sayyad 2004: 12).
“Legalists” including Hernán De Soto countered, according to Nezar Al Sayyad (2004: 13),
that the “inefficiencies” and excessive regulations of the bureaucratic state, not the dynamics
of the labor market, were responsible for the rise of informality. The legalist perspective
promoted micro-enterprise initiatives that would act as an entrepreneurial “survival strategy”
for the urban poor, a project later taken up by multilateral institutions (IMF, IDB, World
Bank) and various development NGOs (Al Sayyad 2004: 13).
Restructuring reforms associated with neoliberal globalization since the 1990s
reorganized production and urban spatial forms in Latin American cities as in other parts of
the world. Intensified socio-economic inequalities have pushed greater numbers of people
into poverty and into the ranks of the informal economy and irregular housing settlements.
Slums and squatter settlements in the region now include a greater number of the downwardly
mobile urban middle and working classes and are no longer the predominant domain of rural
migrants (Bayat 2004: 80), and as evidenced by the differentiated origins of the Uruguayan
cantegriles and asentamientos. As economies are reorganized away from national
industrialization models such as ISI and towards renewed export sectors, urban
deindustrialization coupled with deregulation and the scaling back of welfare policies have
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esulted in the growing vulnerability of both rural and urban populations, leading to
reconfigured forms of marginalization and social exclusion.
According to several authors, the new forms of social exclusion brought forth by
liberalization are characterized by a blurring of the formality/informality dualism, questioning
the cohesiveness of the “informal sector” concept. Informalism is spreading to the once
“formal” sphere, people increasingly belong to both at the same time, or family members are
split between “sectors” (Al Sayyad 2004: 26; Gilbert 2004: 36; Gregory 2007). Several
governments of the region, including Uruguay, have turned to “formalizing” or legalizing
existing squatter settlements by granting land titles and extending municipal services,
initiatives that are often financed by multilateral development banks (Gilbert 2004: 57). In the
case of earlier policies of relocation of squatters into public housing, as Perlman (2004: 121)
notes revisiting Rio, marginality ideologies became “self-fulfilling prophecies” with the
residents of old public housing becoming ghettoized and “truly” marginal.
The socio-spatial landscape of neoliberal Latin America is characterized by a dynamic
of expulsion and re-territorialization, reconfiguring subjectivities associated with new social
spaces and actors, and bringing about new forms of political organizing and protest (cf. Bayat
2004). Mexican peasants are expulsed from their lands by the liberal export policies of
NAFTA that undermine small-scale and subsistence agriculture, and they turn to migration to
cities or the United States, or to armed rebellion (Collier 1999). Unemployed Brazilian
urbanites return to rural areas and engage in land takeovers with the Landless Workers
Movement (MST). Former Bolivian tin miners turn to coca growing and are caught up in the
U.S.-led war on drugs and terror (Gill 2004). Factory takeovers and the piquetero movements
of the urban unemployed in Argentina reconfigure the political and social landscape, and
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follow years after the so-called “IMF riots” threatened to destabilize various countries of the
region (Auyero 2002; Coronil and Skurski 1991). A “new marginality” characterized by
deproletarianization, informalization, and structural underemployment has taken hold in Latin
America. According to Auyero (1997: 510-11)), the “functional links that used to tie slumresidents
to the functioning of larger society through their intermittent participation in the
labor market and in the school system have drastically deteriorated or, even worse, have been
severed.”
Squatters and the urban poor have taken on renewed significance politically and in the
Latin American social imaginary (cf. Olesker 2001). They continue to be the “vessels” of
more abstract meanings, coming to represent or challenge the broader processes, ideologies
and values circulating within societies. The return of the “dangerous classes” is marked by an
increased fear of crime, widespread residential gating, death squads, and popular vigilantism
across the Americas (Caldeira 1999; Goldstein 2004; Low 2004). Culture of poverty and
marginality myths endure and thrive, and continue to be used as a means of social control and
to further a politics of blame that places responsibility for poverty and inequality on a
pathological and criminalized poor. Squatter settlements once again become central to an
ideological and political battleground that debates whether the urban poor are representative
of apathetic, “permanently redundant” (Harvey 2000) and disease-ridden communities, or are
perhaps incubators of radical politics and at the vanguard of the coming revolution.
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5.2 Culturalism, Marginality, and the Politics of Blame
Children are the central signifiers of the Uruguayan lead issue, and they usually take on the
role of innocent victims. Those who surround the children, however, namely the family and
the community, take on altering forms of signification, ranging from fellow passive innocents
to active vectors of disease. In the latter formulation, the burden of responsibility is shifted
from the polluting industry to the irresponsible parent, and from the legal actions of the state
and private industry to the illicit activities of the informal economy. This discursive strategy
employs what Didier Fassin and Anne-Jeane Naudé (2004: 1859) refer to as “practical
culturalism,” or a “common sense theory that essentializes culture and overemphasizes the
understanding of social reality by its cultural aspects.” The authors note its efficacy in
providing an “acceptable” form to prejudices, and in its avoidance of the political and
structural dimensions of social problems (Fassin and Naudé 2004).
Officials in Uruguay emphasize the role of education in shaping the vulnerability of
poor families. Reasons of “culture” and “habitat” hinder prevention and remediation
measures in the asentamientos, and encourage children’s proclaimed ingestion of soil. As
noted in Chapter Four, those employing culturalist discourses often emphasize the practice of
pica, or the abnormal ingestion of non-edible substances, as one of the primary causes of
children’s lead poisoning. As Hugo Lucas, a company lawyer for the ANCAP state oil
refinery explained to me, children of poor families who “sleep together with horses” also
“nourish themselves with dirt.” 156
Squatters are portrayed as intimately associated with dirt,
156 Interview with author, January 20, 2003. The charge of “sleeping with horses” refers to the informal garbage
recyclers of Montevideo who often work with a horse-drawn cart. An advantage to living in informal housing
settlements for these workers is that it allows them a place to keep their horses. Nevertheless, these individuals
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oth literally and symbolically. Their houses are surrounded by dirt, their children
(supposedly) eat dirt, and they are thus unclean, polluted and defiled (Douglas 1966). The
backward “cultural” practices of using horses for work and their embodied proximity to
pollution place squatters closer to tradition and nature, according to this view, and distance
them from the cleansed and civilized urban core (Douglas 1966; Hoffman 2002).
The emphasis on behavioral remedies and culturalist arguments is repeated along a
broad range of institutional actors. Geophagous or “dirt-eating” children, as well as those
who participate actively in the informal economy, lose their status of passive and innocent
victims and become active agents of their misfortune, with the complicity of “backward”
parents socialized within an intractable culture of poverty. Some of these ideas are drawn
directly from dated scientific articles that continue to circulate in Uruguay of lead poisoning
in North America, where pica was considered a behavioral abnormality disproportionately
affecting the poor, or even as a cultural “survival trait” from Africa that would differentially
lead to the poisoning of poor children of color (Warren 2000).
Officials and everyday actors have frequently questioned the motives of anti-lead
activists. Gabriella Feola of Montevideo’s Environmental Hygiene Laboratory (LHA)
charged that “many people jump on the bandwagon” of lead contamination to seek “other”
interests. 157
Activists of slum settlements only want “free” housing or food, according to this
argument, and are ultimately unconcerned about their children. When families are relocated,
some charge, other poor families come in immediately to occupy the vacated terrains,
sometimes with the complicity of the moving families. Others illegally sell the new houses to
which they are relocated. In a conversation one day at the lead poisoning clinic about a rumor
and families usually do not sleep in the same quarters as their horses, and the majority of asentamiento families
do not have horses.
157 Interview with Gabriella Feola, Environmental Hygiene Laboratory, March 18, 2004.
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that some families had sold their new houses, the driver who transports families to the clinic
retorted angrily: “They are born bums and they’ll die bums. You have to just bury them all in
a sewer.” He went on to complain about the poor’s lack of moral standards, arguing they “sell
everything: their houses, food baskets, even the medicine that’s given to them.” 158
These comments reflect the ways hostile discourses are reproduced across society,
resulting in the othering and stigmatization of lead victims in their everyday lives.
Particularly in the early days following the initial lead discoveries, children suffered
discrimination in schools from teachers and fellow students who feared contagion from the
“lead disease” (cf. Amorín 2001). Residents of asentamientos also regularly accuse fellow
residents of ulterior motives behind their anti-lead activism, while emphasizing the noble
intentions of their own actions. Other people are “lazy,” “apathetic,” “backward,” or
“dependent,” while those who make these claims hold themselves up as exceptions.
5.3 “Cover the world”: Lead Poisoning in Geo-historical Perspective
A brief examination of the global history of lead poisoning illuminates how responses to the
Uruguayan epidemic have followed a familiar trajectory. The use of culturalist frameworks in
explaining the existence and distribution of lead poisoning is a recurring story and part of the
reason the epidemic has time and again been “reinvented” (Fassin and Naudé 2004).
The poisoning of children from the ingestion of lead-based paint flakes or dust was
first reported in Australia in 1892 (Montague 2004). In 1922, the League of Nations called
158 Lead poisoning clinic (Pereira Rossell Hospital), March 18, 2005.
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for a worldwide ban of interior white lead paints, and several countries followed suit
(Markowitz and Rosner 2002: 16). The United States ignored the call and did not ban lead
paints until the 1970’s, with disastrous health consequences for millions of children that last
to this day.
In the early twentieth century, paint companies, physicians, and hygienists in the
United States promoted white lead paint as a symbol of purity, cleanliness, and renovation
(Markowitz and Rosner 2002: 75). Paint companies such as Little Dutch Boy and Sherwin
Williams denied the dangers of lead products for decades. As a response to public critique,
the lead industry turned to blaming the children themselves for eating the sweet-tasting lead
paint, referring to the “pathological” behavior of pica, and drawing on culturalist and racist
arguments (Warren 2000: 181).
Industry scientists representing lead paint and the tetraethyl lead (TEL) gasoline
additive argued that lead was “natural” to humans and the environment, and there existed a
“normal” body burden of around 20 μg/dl (Hernberg 2000: 252). In tautological reasoning
similar to the dismissive “we are all contaminated” assertion in Uruguay, industry
representatives argued that since lead was found everywhere and in all bodies, it must be
“natural” (Warren 2000: 208).
Lead poisoning was portrayed by the industry, and often echoed in the public’s
perception, as associated with poverty, race, and a particular geography, though the politics of
blame shifted through time. During the 1930’s, lead poisoning was considered a “Depression
disease,” associated with the ignorant, the deviant, “the poor, the culturally deprived, or the
‘foreign’” (Warren 2000: 141). Lead poisoning was considered a disease of poverty, “another
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troubling problem among the myriad others that blighted the nation’s growing population of
urban poor,” and therefore “as intractable as poverty itself” (Warren 2000: 136).
By the 1950s, the politics of blame for lead poisoning shifted to inner-city blacks of
the East Coast. Culture of poverty arguments supposedly explained how the racial and
cultural inferiority of African Americans “naturally” made them more susceptible to lead
poisoning (Warren 2000: 195). Rational choice theories, meanwhile, offered the explanation
that the poor “choose” to live in hazardous housing for the low rents and are therefore
somehow accepting of the risks involved (Markowitz and Rosner 2002: 289).
As in the United States before and Uruguay later, these same patterns and arguments
were reproduced in France in the late 1980s and in Australia in the early 1990s. When lead
poisoning cases were discovered in Paris in 1985, as Fassin and Naudé (2004) argue, medical
authorities and policymakers at first refused to accept the evidence of a widespread epidemic.
It took five years for activists and advocates to convince authorities that the high incidence of
lead poisoning among African immigrant families was due to the structurally subordinate
position that forced them into old dilapidated urban housing with peeling lead paints, and not
the product of so-called “bizarre” cultural practices and behaviors (Fassin and Naudé 2004).
In the Broken Hill mining community of New South Wales, Australia, lead poisoning
became a public issue in the early 1990s as the mining companies started reducing their
workforces and severing ties with the community (McGee 1999). Tara McGee argues that
lead failed to become more of a political issue, however, due to the successful strategy
employed by the mining company and public officials of fostering an “environmental stigma”
associated with the lead poisoning victims. Medical and public health interventions
reinforced this stigma, according to McGee, by focusing on behavioral guidelines to modify
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house cleaning and child rearing practices, in addition to altering the perceived deviant child
behavior of “dirt eating.” In this way, the lead problem was effectively particularized and the
potential of collective activism against lead poisoning was undermined (McGee 1999).
In recent years, scientific and policy attention to lead poisoning has increasingly
turned from the global North to the South. In the 1990’s there was a flurry of calls on behalf
of multilateral agencies and NGO’s for the worldwide elimination of lead poisoning, as the
popular Sherwin Williams slogan “cover the world” became an inconvenient truth.
The sources of lead contamination across the world are multiple, but leaded gasoline
plays the primary role in world exposure (Landrigan 2002). In 1996, as the World Bank
called for a phaseout of leaded gasoline, 93% of gas sold in Africa contained TEL, along with
94% in the Middle East, 30% in Asia and 35% in Latin America. The World Bank estimated
at the time that 1.7 billion urbanites around the world were in danger from leaded gasoline
exposure (Kitman 2000). By 2000, nearly 100 countries still used leaded gasoline (Tong et al
2000: 1074).
While many researchers, multilateral institutions and NGOs acknowledge the dangers
posed by leaded gasoline to the world’s people, others, including medical anthropologists,
have explicitly or implicitly de-emphasized universal sources and have concentrated on “folk”
practices and the traditional (or informal) economies of the developing world (cf. Hernandez-
Avila et al 1999; Trotter 1990). The developing world is portrayed by this approach as
existing in geo-historical isolation, with the lines between “developing” and “developed” too
neatly drawn. Informality’s supposed cultural roots are emphasized, rather than macroeconomic
factors, structural violence, institutional forces or North-South relations. Universal
sources and practices that link the South to the North in a shared web of experience and
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complicity, such as the tetraethyl lead that British Octel supplied until recently to Uruguay,
are downplayed while “cultural patterns” and “cycles of poverty” are given priority for lead
exposure in the South (cf. Hernandez-Avila et al 1999). Familiar tropes of geophagy and
“cultures of poverty” that explain lead exposure among the disenfranchised in the North are
repackaged and reinvented in the form of ignorance born from the traditions of timeless
cultures. In this way, the “strange” cultural practices of the foreign, the poor, and the
racialized other cited in 1930s United States or 1980s France are once again unearthed and
dusted off at the turn of the millennium in the developing world.
5.4 “You’re acting like someone from the cante!” Refracted Othering and the Internalizing
of Culturalist Discourses
How and towards what ends do grassroots and other actors who oppose hegemonic constructs
of the lead poisoning epidemic mobilize discourses of poverty? How does the lead poisoned
poor, the “object” of culturalist discourses, respond to hegemonic othering strategies? One
common response of the poor is to reproduce hegemonic culturalist discourses. In these
cases, othering strategies are either directed inward or are more commonly “refracted” upon
others of similar socio-economic condition. The poor of squatter settlements I spoke with
often described their neighbors to me as driven by “envy” and self-interest. Another frequent
assertion is that their neighbors “constantly complain” and demand things be “given” to them
by the state. The most frequent negative characterization I heard was of other squatters as
“dirty” or unhygienic. These assertions reproduce hegemonic constructions of a base, self-
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serving, individualist, impulsive and irrational poor that only organize collectively or act
politically when demanding “handouts” from the state.
Circulating stories, gossip, and anecdotes reinforce these perceptions of the “other”
amongst the poor. Sometimes the stories are supported with graphic evidence. After
attending a housing ceremony for residents relocated from the Rodolfo Rincón settlement of
La Teja, I was walking with Adriana and two of her children at the site of the old cante, on the
verge of being razed. 159
We passed the house of a man I had repeatedly seen with only one
leg who walks on crutches. The man is an unruly character, foul-mouthed and always jostling
with others. He tends to violently thrust his crutches to the ground when he is about to sit,
and later proceeds to take off his prosthetic leg and wave it around at people. He is both
amusing and somewhat frightening to watch. I asked Adriana how he lost his leg, and she
quickly replied, “out of filthiness” (de mugriento). She said he had developed some kind of
fungal infection years ago on his foot but left it untreated, until it spread into a more general
infection and they had to amputate his toes. The doctors later discovered, however, that his
leg was gangrened and so they cut it off at the knee.
Culture of poverty discourses regarding the values inherent to cantegril life are often
interwoven with the discourses of its residents. Adriana and Miguel told me about the
common problems faced by residents of Rodolfo Rincón such as diseases spread from
improper sanitation, intestinal worms in children and adults, hepatitis, and rat infestations. 160
Many of these problems are due to a lack of municipal and state services and to the life
conditions forced onto families who live on forty dollars a month. But Adriana argues, “The
people are at fault as well.” Echoing Ema Menoni’s discussion, Adriana takes the problem of
159 Field visit, July 3, 2004.
160 The following account is drawn from an interview at Adriana and Miguel’s temporary home in La Teja, June
9, 2004.
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sanitation as a case in point. She says she has lived in the cante for nineteen years but that she
always made sure to have her bathroom and shower. She says that some other families “have
a 20-inch color T.V.” but they still “use a little bucket for their necessities.” They leave this
bucket (latita) in their home or out back until it gets filled, she recounts, becoming
“fermented,” and then they throw it into the trash bin. Sometimes the smell is so repugnant
that you cannot go near the bins, added Miguel.
Another older couple without children lives in a home with about twenty dogs. They
take in and feed strays from the streets. Miguel and Adriana recognize street dogs as “dirty”
and as vectors of disease, and that some of them are “mean” and dangerous to have around in
an area full of children. “Old Eva” and her husband do not want to be relocated, however,
because the MSP has put a limit of one dog per family in the new homes and they do not want
to lose their dogs. Miguel laments that they “do not understand that they’re endangering other
people.” He says that this is a major problem in the asentamiento: “People look after
themselves, but don’t see what’s at their side” (la gente se miran ellos, pero no miren al
costado).
Adriana told me about another family whose older kids have all served time in the
Comcar prison. 161
She described the little ones as “full of flies” and “always rustling and
climbing through the garbage bins.” She argues that part of the marginality lived by these
families is something that is taught to the children as well as being forced upon them by
circumstances. “People need to look forward” (hay que mirar para adelante), she says.
161 The Comcar prison is located in the community of Santa Lucía, on the northwestern periphery of Montevideo.
It is a notorious, overcrowded prison that has become part of the popular lexicon in Montevideo. To “go to
Comcar” or similar phrases are widely recognized and draw deep meanings across classes, but in obviously
different ways.
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Otherwise, “parents marginalize their children” (padres marginan hijos) and foment a chain
that is difficult to “deal with” and to break.
One day I visited Adriana and her family after they were relocated to their new
government home in the Sayago Norte neighborhood. 162
Her granddaughter Yoana (Fanny’s
daughter) briefly woke up and smiled, but mostly remained sleeping in her carriage next to the
door. Later on Adriana’s daughters Lola and Fanny arrived. Their sisters Talía and Roxana
also came in from playing with some neighborhood girlfriends. Talía was acting aggressively
and resembled more the “fork wielding” girl than the sweet one who had held my hand on the
day of the housing ceremony. She was demanding things from Adriana, and speaking to her
in brutish ways, such as: “Give me some water, you old stupid bitch.” 163
She also frequently
bothered Yoana, putting things on her nose as she slept or making her cry by grabbing her too
hard. Apparently earlier that day or some other day since they moved, Talía had grasped a
younger girl’s head with both hands and started to squeeze it hard. After one of her frequent
misbehaviors or tantrums while I was in their home, Adriana admonished her: “You’re acting
like someone from the cante!” To which Fanny responded: “What do you want, she was born
in one.”
The reproduction of culturalist discourses through the use of refracted othering is
frequently translated to the hardships and dilemmas of living with lead poisoning. A young
teenage mother of the 25 de Agosto settlement I met named Ema, whose severely poisoned
son was hospitalized with a blood lead level of 64 µg/dl, expressed her bewilderment and
frustration that other children of her asentamiento “eat dirt” but “do not have lead.” She, on
the other hand, claims to keep strict hygiene in the home yet was unable to avoid her child’s
162 Field visit, July 9, 2004.
163 Loosely translated. In Spanish: “Traeme agua, vieja de mierda!”
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poisoning. 164
In reproducing the hegemonic culturalist trope, Ema and others reflect the
moral perplexity of trying to attribute meaning to their suffering. Through refracted othering,
circulating discourses of poverty and blame are channeled and displaced onto other,
neighboring families of the asentamiento, or onto residents of other asentamientos. The
condemnatory gaze is displaced from themselves onto similar but distanced subjects: “they”
are dirty, lazy, or ignorant, not “us.”
5.5 “They don’t live like people”: Perverse Realities and Strategic Othering
Working and middle class activists of the anti-lead movement struggle to come to terms with
the extreme forms of poverty in their midst. They have referred to lead poisoning in the
asentamientos as resulting in a series of “perverse” logics, exemplified for instance through
stories of mothers of children just under the 20 µg/dl action level who knowingly encourage
their children to eat contaminated food or even dirt in order to qualify for state assistance.
Social worker Menoni also referred to the “perverse situation” in which some people will
avoid caring for themselves and their children in order to maintain “sufficient” levels of lead
poisoning to gain government benefits, reinforcing Menoni’s view that Uruguayan society is
“moving backwards.” 165
Though it is difficult to judge the veracity of these claims, their
prevalence is socially significant. Movement leaders have used these perceived perversions to
highlight the forms of structural violence that force individuals and families into morally
questionable acts. According to this tactic, the poor are strategically “othered” by placing
164 Interview at lead poisoning clinic, Pereira Rossell Hospital, May 26, 2004.
165 Interview with Ema Menoni, CCZ 14, May 11, 2004.
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emphasis on the structural and systemic origins of poverty, rather than its essentialized,
cultural origins.
I first started piecing together this strategy while speaking to anti-lead activists at a
toxicology conference we had attended. 166
Two of the activists were discussing the living
conditions of the asentamientos, and characterized the squatters as “living like animals,”
(viven como los animals) or as “beasts” (bichos). They discussed the “infrahuman” conditions
(condiciones infrahumanas) confronted by the settlers, concluding they “don’t live like
people” (no viven como la gente). I was at first surprised to hear a characterization of
squatters that seemed to converge with those of officials.
On the surface, the activists appear to reproduce culturalist discourses. The goal of
strategic othering, however, while also based on negative imagery, is not to negate the
humanity and subjective agency of the poor, but rather to present the poor as victims of a
systemic and structural violence that has forced them into a situation of dehumanization.
Structural violence denies these individuals the basic principles and rights of modernity:
entering into the labor-capital relation, living in a dignified dwelling, being able to adequately
procure food, or avoiding preventable disease. In other words, they have been rendered “subhuman”
and “pre-modern” by an unjust socio-economic order.
Those in power “other” the poor in order to “naturalize” their misfortune, turning it
into a permanent state rather than a temporary setback. By placing the burden of blame for
poverty and disease on the shoulders of the victims, they absolve themselves of responsibility.
Through strategic othering, on the other hand, the “sub-humanization” process is one that
occurs historically through the subjugation and exploitation of workers by capitalists. Once
dignified workers have been beaten down, forced into a state of sub-human existence.
166 The III Uruguayan Congress of Clinical Toxicology, Montevdeo, Uruguay, May 9, 2004.
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Presumably, this state of affairs can be reversed. There is a space left open for agency and
change, in contrast to culturalist frameworks that render the poor passively and permanently
surrendered to their fate.
Fancap union leader Julio López, for instance, employed strategic othering in
describing to me what he referred to as the “unnatural” conditions that led to such extreme
levels of lead contamination in La Teja. He described the proliferation of informal metals
recycling: “There wasn’t a neighborhood where someone wasn’t messing things up. The lack
of jobs, the crisis that we’re suffering, makes people look for means of survival that are not
normal. Garbage collection is one of them.” A union-led investigation discovered dozens of
clandestine recycling centers across La Teja, many of which smelted the metals within their
home plots, releasing lead oxide into the air and soil. The results of these activities were that
people got “messed up” (la gente estaba hecha pedazo) even “to the point of collapsing” due
to “living in those conditions,” argued López.
López positions the poor in opposition to union workers and formal laborers,
presenting the conditions under which poor people live and work as “unnatural,” and thus
engendering a different human “nature.” Through a dialectical construction, a binary matrix
between “worker” and “non-worker” is created, whereby the worker represents full humanity,
dignity, rationality, solidarity, and historical agency, and the non-worker represents its
negative inversion. 167
The “worker,” which can also be denominated by “the people,” the
“common man,” or “the neighbors,” is portrayed as exhibiting solidarity, strong family and
community ties, as hard working and self-sacrificing, and bearing boundless creativity and
resourcefulness. In this form of strategic essentialism inspired by Marxist and anarchist
167 My discussion of the worker/non-worker matrix is inspired by Don Kulick’s formulation of the man/non-man
matrix among transgendered prostitutes in Northeast Brazil (Kulick 1998).
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ideology, the worker epically confronts a restraining or repressive force that can alternate
between representatives of “the state,” the “capitalist class,” “the elite,” “politicians,” “the
rich,” or “the powerful.” The “constellation of values” associated with the ideal type of the
former conforms the mirror opposite of the latter (Alvarez Pedrosian 2002).
In twentieth century Uruguay, as in the advanced capitalist nations, work was
relatively plentiful and the principal internal conflict of the worker’s self-identity could be
characterized as mediating the double image of work as the “principal source of valorization”
of existence, and work as a vehicle of exploitation and therefore the cause of hardships and
evils (Alvarez Pedrosian 2002: 49). Under a crisis-ridden Uruguay, however, where labor
itself has become a privilege, a formidable lumpen-proletariat symbolically threatens from
below and from outside the traditional worker-capitalist equation to become the possible
future path of degradation of the modern worker. Work in a precarious and decadent Uruguay
becomes “a lucky destiny, a prize of fate, or a divine blessing (Alvarez Pedrosian 2002: 70).
The worker/non-worker matrix reveals a tension within the anti-lead movement
between working class actors and the poor of the asentamientos. Even while expressing
solidarity and concern for the plight of the extreme poor, workers evince an uncomfortable
aversion to what is considered the depths of desperation and depravity that poverty may
engender. In order to maintain separation between the working class and the destitute,
complex gatekeeping and boundary work becomes necessary. The “refracted othering” of
individuals like Ema described above represents one form of boundary work. Strategic
othering can represent another, holding up the dehumanized “other” living in extreme poverty
as the potentially dreaded fate of the worker.
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While the category “worker” draws on universalist, essentialist, and abstract
constructions of an ideal type, anti-lead activists of the CVSP ground this construction by
rooting it in a specific and meaningful place, namely the barrio La Teja. They draw together,
among other things, the barrio’s anarchist origins and cultural legacies from the old world,
and local histories of militant resistance against the dictatorship. These place narratives
provide a history and destiny for workers and neighbors to share.
Strong place identity allows local residents to present lead contamination as an
“invasion” of the neighborhood by a harmful force emitted externally. The agents behind this
invasion are variously construed as irresponsible industry, the state, and to a lesser extent,
local residents engaging in cottage industries. In this latter case, local residents are partially
absolved of blame through their status as victims (or ex-workers) who have been forced into
this position through the structural conditions of unemployment and socio-economic crisis. In
a way, these ex-workers have themselves become “outsiders,” because they no longer fit into
the identifiable equation of worker and place.
In other words, La Teja is at its core identity, a place where workers live with dignity,
and no dignified worker with a decent job and housing would purposely poison his/her
environment and community. The responsibility for lead contamination, suffered collectively,
shifts towards the external actors associated with the dominant power structure: the
government, capitalist interests, or corrupt politicians. Through their actions, they take away
the very creative essence of workers, along with their dignity, and worst of all, as CVSP
leader Carlos Pilo would frequently warn, their hope.
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5.6 “No somos marginados.” Othering’s Denial
In December 2004 I attended a street protest organized by squatters of the Inlasa settlement in
La Teja. They were blocking the road and bridge passing the old metals smelter in their
demand for the long-promised housing relocation, and a reprieve from their conditions of
squalor. They were living in Inlasa without sanitation, with massive levels of lead
contamination, and with a constant risk of crumbling walls. Over sixty families were
squatting at the time in this old smelter, living on layers of lead, dirt and concrete. They
either occupied the open grounds of the ex-factory or creatively re-appropriated its former
spatial functions. 168
Around thirty children and adults were assembled on the street behind a set of ribbons
hung across the road between two posts and a hand painted sign announcing their demands.
The children loudly banged on pots, pans and lids in a mix between caceroleo protest and
candombe rhythms. 169
The adults drank mate or smoked cigarettes. Some middle-aged and
older women sat on overturned plastic cans or empty crates in the shade next to the building.
Some men were seated on the curb in the sun and many of the children sat on the street or
walked around with their protest instruments. A few babies were strolled around in carriages.
I walked up, nodded hello or shook hands with a few of the men, crossed the roadblock and
joined the protest. I ended up spending over three hours at Inlasa, where I met several of its
residents, observed the anticipated and celebrated arrival of a television crew, and was hosted
to a “reality tour” of this bleak urban settlement.
168 The following account is drawn from a field visit to Inlasa on December 20, 2004.
169 The caceroleo is an Uruguayan derivative of a popular form of protest in Latin America that consists of
people banging on pots and pans. Candombe is an Afro-Uruguayan drumming rhythm popular during Carnaval.
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Protestors sewed a large banner and hung it across the street at car-level, which read in
bold letters: “S.O.S. MINISTER SAUL IRURETA, 61 FAMILIES OF INLASA FEAR
STAYING STUCK (UNDER RUBBLE). PROMISES OF RELOCATION THAT WERE
NEVER HONORED: 61 FAMILIES CONDEMNED TO MARGINALIZATION: DESIRE
FOR A BETTER LIFE (WE FIGHT FOR DECENT HOUSING).” 170
I met Rubert, an Inlasa resident who had been living there with his family for eleven
years, who showed me around the settlement and told me about its history. He said there
were over sixty families and 105 children living in Inlasa. A faded graffiti on the side of the
building suggests there were once more, as it read: “75 FAMILIES IN THE STRUGGLE
AGAINST LEAD.” Rubert told me Inlasa was a metals foundry that worked for decades, at
its height employing 400 workers. By 1990, the workforce had been cut to 200, and the
factory was promptly shut down, leaving all of the workers on the street. Squatters soon
settled inside. The former owners of Inlasa amassed an “enormous debt,” so the property was
taken over by the Uruguayan Mortgage Bank (Banco Hipotecario del Uruguay- BHU) and the
IMM.
Inlasa was reminiscent of a bombed out building in a war zone. Its most defining
feature was a large chimney that towered over the two-story building and was viewable from a
distance. The front doors of the factory were removed long ago, leaving the opening as a
window to the lives of the inhabitants inside. Most of the rows of windows along the
Miguelete River side were without panes and covered with plywood, bricks, or sheets of tin.
The edges of the concrete wall were in a process of advanced decay. An exposed staircase
170 “S.O.S. MINISTRO SAUL IRURETA, 61 FAMILIAS DE INLASA TEMEN QUEDAR (BAJO
ESCOMBROS). PROMESAS DE REALOJOS Y NUNCA FUERON CUMPLIDOS: 61 FAMILIAS
CONDENADAS A LA MARGINACION: DESEO DE UNA VIDA MEJOR (LUCHAMOS POR VIVIENDAS
DECENTES)”. Saúl Irureta was the Minister of Housing (MVOTMA) at the time.
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wound up to a second floor in the middle of the inner courtyard. There was no banister of any
kind and the bricks and tiles had crumbled as well, leaving the climber to a precarious and
unpredictable journey. The large chimney tower stood next to the staircase with formidable
chunks of its concrete and brick structure missing.
This inner courtyard area was completely destroyed, with falling bricks and gaping
and crumbling holes. Underneath the deteriorating tower was a small enclosure full of tall
grass, bits and pieces of concrete, and garbage. Several families occupied the peripheral twostory
building. Lines of clothes were hung in the courtyard outside these units, and within
areas fenced off by wood, demarcating the separation of households. A large iron structure
loomed overhead, connecting the peripheral building to the inner (crumbling) tower.
Other families built dwellings from scratch within the courtyard itself, out of concrete
and brick, or in the case of the dwellings along the peripheral Cid Street, mostly out of tin and
wood. Wooden fences were used to functionally separate the close quarters. The ground was
mostly covered in concrete, a product of the soil “remediation” efforts of the Interinstitutional
Commission in 2001, to reduce exposure to lead-laced dirt. In a few spots
concrete chunks littered large gaping areas that used to house the lead poisoned families who
had already been relocated from Inlasa. Rubert said that the neighbors themselves took down
the abandoned dwellings for fear that others would squat in them. He says neither the IMM
nor the Housing Ministry lent a hand in the demolition.
As is typical of most asentamientos, the settlers used an eclectic mix of materials to
build, separate, and decorate their living units. Fences could consist of two-by-four wooden
beams mixed with chicken wire, plywood boards, a rusted piece of gate and tin siding.
Bricks, concrete blocks, wood and tin would often coalesce in the construction of the actual
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house, and various odds and ends decorated the yards and walls of the dwellings. Some of the
houses had glass panes and iron gratings on their windows. Others were simply covered by a
cloth sheet. Washbasins were set next to some of the units, with the ubiquitous clotheslines
hanging nearby. Some places had been set aside as dumping areas for scrap recycling.
Rubert invited me into his home. He unhinged a thick chain lock on a door at ground
level, shrugging and lamenting, “you have to lock things up around here.” We took a flight of
stairs to the second floor. Rubert’s family was comparatively lucky, as they occupied the
former managerial office space of the Inlasa factory. It was fairly large, consisting of a long
room converted into living and dining room, and a bedroom that the entire family shared. He
showed me some large holes in the ceiling where dust and building material consistently fell
practically on their heads. Rubert’s family had a large television, a stereo player and a small
refrigerator. Their dining room table was in good shape, and a medium-sized artificial
Christmas tree decorated the living room.
Rubert said that as a baker with a steady job he makes a decent living and can provide
food and some material comfort to his family. What they haven’t been able to afford is a
decent house. All of the windows in his home were boarded shut, and Rubert told me that he
forbade his children to play outside. They are only allowed in the house or on the corner
outside Inlasa. Rubert said he would not leave until the new government houses were ready.
He said that he put too much work and investment in this home to see it simply occupied by
another family “for nothing.” He commented that not long ago someone approached him with
an offer to buy half of his home, with the idea of dividing it in two, but Rubert refused.
A popular kitchen (comedor) served food to the settlement’s children from Monday
through Friday, sometimes their only meal of the day, according to Rubert. While
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acknowledging the need and destitution of the families in the complex, Rubert also had some
unforgiving things to say about some of them. He said that some took advantage of the INDA
food baskets delivered to them, turning around and selling the goods rather than giving them
to their children. “These aren’t bums, they’re sons of bitches” (son hijos de puta, no son
pichis), he declared.
The lack of sanitation caused a myriad of health problems, and household waste would
simply be redirected to the Miguelete River. Water was administered through an arrangement
between the IMM and the State water company (OSE). Electricity, on the other hand, was
pirated from the street power lines through a process Rubert referred to as “parachuting”
(paracaídas). Rubert showed me where the power lines had been spliced and routed through
the settlement in a complex web of cables.
Though all of the squatters were poor, there were a variety of jobs and professions
among its residents. Rubert singled out one young man who was walking by us at the time,
and told me he plays professional soccer for Cerro F.C. Rubert has worked the “graveyard”
shift in various bakeries around the city for around fifteen years. His job at the time was in
Pocitos. 171
He said, however, that there are a limited number of residents with steady jobs
(somos contados). Of the others, many recycle garbage, work odd jobs (changas) or are
unemployed. A number of single mothers lived in Inlasa who were either unemployed or
struggled to work and raise their children.
Rubert’s discussion of living conditions in Inlasa straddles a line between a refracted
othering that reproduces tropes of the poor as criminal, lazy, and morally negligent, and a plea
to be recognized as fundamentally human and as workers who have simply fallen on hard
times. The latter part of this equation constitutes a denial of otherness that recognizes the
171 Pocitos is an upper-middle class neighborhood and shopping district on the eastern coast of Montevideo.
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structural violence to which people have been forced to endure and adapt, but that negates that
this violence has forced them into a state of permanent marginality. The banner stretched
across the street suggests the same. Families have been “condemned to marginalization,” but
they “desire a better life” and will fight to see it come true.
Carmen Techera, the principal spokesperson for the Inlasa protesters that day,
employed a similar strategy. As we conversed, Techera explained to me the harsh conditions
endured by the settlers. She said that you used to lift up a little bit of dirt and lead scrap was
revealed everywhere. All of the settlement’s children are poisoned, she said. One was found
with a BLL of 69 μg/dl. The lead has settled in the bones of the ten-year old and he “does not
grow.” One of Techera’s own sons has 36 μg/dl. “My son was left bald,” she declared.
Another son started off with 10 μg/dl and now has 20 μg/dl, suggesting the problem is getting
worse, not better.
Ten of the worst affected families were relocated. But as noted about other
settlements, the children and families have other things to worry about in addition to lead.
Due to a lack of sanitation, a host of diseases afflicts the neighborhood. Chronic diarrhea,
skin infections and parasites like scabies (sarna), intestinal worms, boils (forúnculos), and
hepatitis are some of the many ailments the community faces, recounted Techera. To
compound their problems, the Inter-institutional Commission officials covered up the drains
in the settlement when they cemented the area.
Carmen and her family have lived in Inlasa for fourteen years. “We are not
marginals,” she said, but “they marginalize us” (Nosotros no somos marginados, nos
marginan). The term “marginados” carries a double sense of being “marginalized,” as a
subject made marginal from (and by) the rest of society, and “marginal” as a state or condition
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of being. The latter sense often carries a criminalized undertone. This essentialized and
naturalized category carries the significations associated with culture of poverty discourse,
and it is what settlers such as Carmen emphatically deny. To state “no somos marginados”
represents an assertion and a plea, in short, that others recognize their fundamental and
underlying dignity and humanity. The undeniable, sometimes brutal and even “perverse”
hardships they are forced to endure are signs of how they are marginalized and othered by a
dominant power structure. In this sense, their assertion is similar to the strategic othering
employed by working class activists that points to the ways structural violence marginalizes
the poor. The difference, however, is in the denial of otherness that accompanies these
hardships. They are humans forced into inhumane conditions, but they are still human.
Miguel Cabrera of Rodolfo Rincón argues a similar point in discussing the fine line
between marginalization and “being marginal.” He brought up an example of a man who
becomes too old or tired to push his garbage recycling cart by foot for so many blocks each
day. 172
“It’s sometimes easier to break open a door and rob what you can from a house,” he
says. So people sometimes resort to taking the kind of measure that they otherwise would
never think of. In this case, “society forces you to learn things you shouldn’t learn,” and “to
do things that maybe you don’t want to do.” 173
The problems of individual families are exasperated by a lack of social support in the
neighborhood on the part of the State, argues Miguel. There should be NGO’s and educators
who come to the neighborhood to try to teach and convince the people to follow different
lifestyles and values, he says. Miguel, in contrast to the more typical forms of demonization
of the poor on the part of the privileged, is clear that he does not believe that the people are
172 Interview with Miguel Cabrera, June 9, 2004.
173 “La sociedad te obliga a hacer cosas que de repente no lo querés hacer.” “La sociedad obliga a aprender cosas
que no tendrían que aprender.”
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incapable of leading different lives, but that they are merely in a “hole” that they are finding
difficult to crawl out of: “There are people who become submerged in a hole, and there they
stay,” he says, “Instead of climbing out, they sink.” 174
Miguel tries to teach his children “not to be marginals” (no ser marginados). He tells
them that we all have the same basic human rights, and to stick up for and defend these rights.
He does not want them to go through their lives treated like second-class citizens, or to end up
years from now living in the cante with their own families. He says there is nothing to be
ashamed of, that it is “not a dishonor” to live in one, but he hopes they will have better
options. There are many people, he told me, who “never thought they’d live in one.”
5.7 Lead Poisoning, Dignity, and Biological Citizenship
There is no doubt that some members of the urban poor engage in crime, drug abuse, violence
and other various social ills with which they are so often associated. The goal of this
discussion, rather, is to trace the trajectory of competing and overlapping discourses of
poverty, to understand their socio-political origins and consequences, their relation to class
position and power, and what this all means practically for those who have had to live and
struggle with poverty and lead poisoning.
Squatters have long resisted the “techniques of erasure” (Briggs 2004) by which they
are symbolically rendered “invisible” by the dominant classes. Those I spoke with often
evoked the notion of a threatened “dignity” in arguing, rather quixotically, for their very status
174 “Hay gente que se sumerge en un pozo, y ahí quedan. En vez de salir, se hunden.”
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as humans and citizens. Lead poisoning has for the first time, for most of the squatters in
question, offered a public face to their suffering. Newspaper accounts have documented the
plight of mothers concerned about the health of their children, names and identities are
published in print, and television cameras broadcast a newfound “fame” for people who were
all too forgotten. In spite of the harsh and long term suffering implicated by the disease, lead
poisoning has also served as a “nobilizing” tool, a respite from the demonization and stigma
associated with the urban new poor, and a means by which the public image of squatters could
be de-linked from the crime, violence and ignorance that have accompanied hegemonic
discourses of marginality. Drawing from the affliction of embodied suffering and structural
violence, squatters attempt to assert personhood and rights. They declare they are full persons
not “others,” and a part of, not apart from, society.
With parallels to the “biological citizenship” of the Chernobyl victims discussed by
Adriana Petryna, lead poisoning victims have used their damaged bodies, or more specifically
those of their children, as a means for staking citizenship claims, and resisting political and
symbolic erasure by turning to “illness-as-counter-politics” (2002: 16). Lead poisoning status
provides access to social welfare in the form of food baskets, medical care and even housing
relocation, relative luxuries for the urban poor in the context of a quickly dismantling welfare
state. Achieving the officially recognized status as “lead poisoned,” however, is subject to
debates and struggles at various levels. Debates ensue between doctors, pediatricians and
public health officials over the criteria by which to measure risk and disease. Municipal and
national government officials alternate between cooperation and mutual finger pointing in
establishing responsibility and jurisdiction over the lead problem. The “material limits”
(Briggs 2004) of circulation of information are continuously redrawn between the commercial
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and community media. Medical and scientific knowledge claims at the local and international
levels are defined and disputed, and information downloaded from the Internet by officials,
journalists, physicians, students, anti-lead activists and squatters alike underscores the
potentials of the Information Age for both emancipation and new forms of governance.
5.8 Conclusion
The new poor of the asentamientos present a paradox in Uruguay. The asentamientos, and in
particular the squatters who dwell in them, are sources alternately of bewilderment, horror,
and fascination for many Uruguayans. They embody the extremes of its social problems, and
their perceived intractability. They are treated as “other” to the mythic middle or working
class Uruguay of relatively shared values, goals, and worldviews, a country that for many has
largely disappeared, or is in danger of extinction. As the most representative of the Uruguay
nobody wants, the squatters simultaneously draw one’s attention and avert one’s gaze.
Through their intimate association with and embodiment of misery, they become ineluctably
intertwined with it, thus easily slipping into a causative role, becoming society’s targets for
blame, all the while being pitied for their misfortune.
Squatters are largely situated “off the map” or urban grid, occupying green spaces,
riverbanks, abandoned factories and once-empty lots. Their recent colonization undermines
their ability to draw from traditions of place identity. Their working class neighbors, such as
those of La Teja, engage in uncomfortable distancing mechanisms, with the suffering of the
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poor attributable to the extreme “other” with which they hope to never identify. Added to the
equation of environmental degradation and disease, the temptation is to conceptualize the poor
as diseased bodies, occupying an immoral geography of exclusion.
In response, some poor choose a form of refracted othering that displaces the
condemnatory gaze from themselves onto otherwise similar subjects: “their” children eat dirt,
not “ours.” Another, more complicated and slippery tactic is to rely on a strategic othering,
one that seemingly reproduces some of the widely circulating negative images of the poor, but
instead emphasizes the economic and historical forces that structure risk, thereby drawing
from external and structural, rather than internal and cultural, mechanisms.
What is at stake in large part is the place of the poor in the Uruguayan social
imaginary, with very real consequences for the ways the state responds through intervention
policies and programs. Whether the middle or working class represents the foundational core
of the nation, the irruption of extreme poverty has shattered the long-standing myths of
exceptionalism of Uruguay’s “model Republic.” Society is forced to come to terms with its
new danger zones and “urban pariahs” (Wacquant 2001), while the socially excluded
challenge the very grounds and basis of their supposed marginality. The anti-lead activists of
Montevideo’s squatter settlements struggle for recognition and justice, and against the
exclusionary practices and denigrating discourses that conflate social and environmental
degradation. A key arena of struggle has emerged around their ability to contest culturalist
frameworks that attempt to naturalize their suffering.
If members of the new poor residing in squatter settlements have become key actors
and sites of collective mobilization in the free market city, the case of lead poisoning in
Uruguay suggests the importance of incorporating an analysis of the often neglected
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environmental dimensions of urban poverty, both in terms of its structuring effects on health,
and as a new arena of political struggle. The coming together of class, place, environment and
bodies in La Teja, however, also points to the difficulties in identifying the boundaries and
limits of community, and the inherent inter and intra-class conflicts and tensions that form a
part of most place-based social movements (cf. Harvey 1996). The development and
unfolding of struggles such as these, however, may represent the emergence of new forms of
collective mobilization with important political consequences for Latin American societies.
The enactment of “biological citizenship” offers an avenue of relative empowerment
for those who can demonstrate their status as lead poisoning victims, but it comes at the cost
of inherent conflicts and exclusions. Children are the principle avenue of constituting a
biologically-based citizenship, with geography and class conforming the other key elements.
Those without children, or with children too young or too old to qualify for blood lead
examinations are excluded. Children of the “correct” age but with lead levels that are “too
low” are also disqualified, setting the stage for the moral dilemmas and perversions alluded to
by CVSP activists and others. While biological citizenship may present an avenue of
empowerment for some, it is perceived by others as a pretext or a dirty trick, resulting in
rumors of various abuses committed to attain other, seemingly unworthy ends such as “free”
food or housing.
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CHAPTER SIX: “Reality Overwhelms Us”: Social Misery, Green Capitalism, and
Environmental Governance
-¡La celulosa es muy buena para el medio ambiente!
-¡Sí señor! El ecosistema está en su esplendor. Es un caldo de cultivo. Ni se sabe la cantidad
de animalitos nuevos que van a surgir gracias a la celulosa.¡Semejante contribución pa´ la
biología! ¡Miles de especies nuevas! ¡Fauna y flora en plena mutación!
-¡Que lo parió!
Se da cuenta, Finlandio, tamo´ siendo testigo´e´ la evolución!
--Agarrate Catalina, “Esperando el Fin del Mundo,” Carnaval 2006 175
6.0 Introductory Vignette: The Second Social Forum
The CVSP, the Rel UITA (International Union of Agricultural Workers), and the Goethe
Institute co-sponsored in November 2005 the second Social Forum on Environmental
Chemical Contaminants and Popular Participation, held at the elegant Gold Room of the
IMM. I participated as an invited speaker, and came back to Uruguay for one month to attend
this forum, the MERCOSUR anthropology conference in Montevideo, and to do some follow
175 From the 2006 performance of the Agarrate Catalina murga. The excerpt is drawn from a sketch involving an
Uruguayan and a dead fish named Finlandio (who is described as so happy and relaxed he was floating
peacefully and belly up in the river). They are discussing the pulp mills and the Uruguayan is trying to convince
the audience that they pose no hazards to humans or the environment. My translation: “Pulp is very good for the
environment! – Yes, sir, the ecosystem is at its splendor. It’s a cauldron of creation. We don’t even know how
many new little animals are going to come out thanks to the pulp. Whatta contribution to biology! Thousands of
new species! Fauna and flora in full mutation! – Holy shit! Do you realize, Finlandio, we’re witnessing
evolution itself!” Agarrate Catalina won first prize in the 2006 murga competition.
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up research. I had helped organize and plan the first Social Encounter on Lead, held the year
before at the IMM, which drew together various social actors, organizations and institutions
that had been engaged with the lead issue individually but were largely excluded from the
official Lead Commission and policy circles. In contrast to the first Encounter, sponsored
exclusively by the CVSP, the second Forum was co-hosted by the UITA, an international
organization that works with agricultural labor-related environmental issues, in particular
agro-toxic chemical exposure. The UITA sponsored the visit of Sebastian Pinheiro, a
charismatic and seductive Brazilian intellectual and activist. The Goethe Institute of
Montevideo contributed, among other things, by sponsoring the visit of Dr. Gerhard Winneke,
a prominent German researcher of the neurological and health effects of lead, PCB’s and other
environmental contaminants.
The two-day Forum gathered 120 registered participants, and brought together
academics from the CIAT (Toxicology), including Nelly Mañay and Mabel Burgher; Daniel
Panario of the Sciences Faculty; activists from grassroots organizations fighting pesticide
contamination in Bella Unión, Artigas Department (northern Uruguay); worker and union
representatives of industrial, chemical, and agricultural activities, including the Fanaesa
battery factory, the Dirox chemical plant, and the Minas cement factory, as well as the PIT-
CNT Health and Environment Commission; representatives of some Ministries of the new
Frente Amplio government, including the Livestock, Agriculture and Fishing Ministry
(MGAP), and Miguel Fernández Galeano, the former IMM health official-turned second in
command of the MSP; new IMM officials in the health and environmental hygiene divisions
(IMM-DDA), and IMM mayor Ricardo Ehrlich; “green prosecutor” Enrique Viana; Carlos
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Amorín, Milka Pereira, and Carlos Pilo of the CVSP, and several students, La Teja residents
and other citizens.
Mayor Ehrlich officially opened the Forum, keeping a promise made to the CVSP
following an initial meeting months earlier (see Chapter 1). “It is natural that you are here- it
is the house of everyone,” said Ehrlich. He called for and praised the development of an open
and organized civil society able to train citizens in risk detection, though he warned of
differentiating between “real” and “perceived” environmental risks. After acknowledging the
responsibility of local government in the safeguarding of the environment, Ehrlich critiqued
the dominant model of sustainability that posits people should leave the earth in the same
condition they received it. “We need to instead improve on this world we have,” Ehrlich said.
Fernández Galeano continued on this vein, arguing to go beyond talk of sustainable
production and incorporate notions of rights and environmental justice: the “environmental
face of social exclusion” needs to be addressed, he said, including issues of unequal risks,
socio-spatial segregation and habitat. The environment is gaining ground in evolving
paradigms of health, he noted, and the State must offer primary care and prevention as an
organizing principle.
Jorge Ramada of the PIT-CNT said that workers are at the front lines of environmental
hazards, but they face repression for speaking out against unhealthy work conditions. Though
labor only represents perhaps one-third of a person’s life, the consequences of occupational
and environmental hazards affect children in the home and workers for the rest of their lives.
Other workers gave compelling testimonies, with informative and inspired commentaries by
Dr. Winneke and Pinheiro. I presented a comparative history of lead poisoning in the United
States and across the world, showing the parallels of experiences, recurring strategies of the
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powerful to downplay and other the problem, and “formulas” for successful activism and
intervention.
Towards the end of the second day of talks, two representatives of the IMM-DDA
gave a presentation that emphasized the link between lead poisoning and informality and
poverty, attributing a causal emphasis on the latter. They consistently evidenced a profound
lack of knowledge of the people they were referencing and downplayed information of which
many in the audience knew better (see Chapter 4). Carlos Pilo followed and closed out the
forum. He was visibly irritated. Amorín, in introducing Pilo, made reference to the IMM
Environmental Citizenship Prize he had received for the second time. Pilo said the prize
should be eliminated, that in a healthy society it should not have to exist. He then launched
into a critique of the previous speakers: “I’m sick of seeing pictures of poor people intermixed
with pigs,” “You won’t see this picture here,” he said.
Moving on Pilo asked, as he had many times before, not to be associated exclusively
with lead: “I like the trees, the air too.” His speech was charged and spirited. He denounced
that the remaining trees in La Teja are being cut down because it is cheaper than pruning and
maintaining them. The trees are part of the patrimony and social life of tejanos, he said.
“Now people can’t even drink mate under the shade to get away from the sun,” he denounced
incredulously, “They’ve taken even that from us!”
Pilo’s powerful voice started to shake. “We live in a desperate situation,” he began,
followed by several of his customary “facts from reality” of the rampant factory pollution and
hardships of tejano life. He described a tour we had taken the day before with “the German,”
Dr. Winneke (I had served as the English interpreter). He said we were going to the same
places they had gone five years before, and “nothing has changed.” The only difference now
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is that people no longer mobilize. They are desperate and hopeless, Pilo said, and the soup
kitchens are overflowing with hungry children. The CCZ 14 (including La Teja) is losing too
much of its population to emigration, he lamented, saying it was the area of Montevideo that
had lost the most people in recent years. He described the girl with Down syndrome we had
met the day before at the 212 School, who the teachers had taught to dance candombe. “It
makes me want to cry with rage,” Pilo said, visibly emotional, as he reflected on the girl’s
simple joy as she danced for us. The conference room was moved and silent. “The furthest
I’ve ever made it is the Libertad Prison,” Pilo concluded, distraught and reduced to tears. 176
Amorín, tears welling in his own eyes, put his arm around Pilo’s shoulder to console him.
This chapter deepens analysis of the dynamic linkages between the structuring effects
of neoliberal globalization, exemplified by the social misery and embodied suffering of the
ongoing economic crisis, and the greening of Uruguayan society, discussed in terms of rising
forms of green capitalism and environmental governance. It argues these processes represent
some of the major challenges facing grassroots environmental politics in Uruguay and affect
some of its recent transformations. Despite the CVSP’s demonstrated success in putting
environmentalism “on the map,” its activists faced burn out, frustration and an uncertain
future following five years of struggle. I attribute some of their frustration and confusion to
the rise of the Frente Amplio to national power, as most of the activists identify as leftists but
have become ambiguously positioned in the face of FA power. CVSP activists have called for
cooperation and direct participation with local and national officials while attempting to
safeguard their political independence, treading a difficult and fine political line. The
continuing and entrenched social crisis presents another major challenge. Most of the core
activists of the CVSP have “day jobs,” working in health clinics and hospitals, with
176 “El lugar más lejos que he llegado es al Penal Libertad”.
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community or commercial media, laboring in working class or menial jobs, in academic fields
or living through retirement. Many confront firsthand and on a daily basis the embodied
misery of Uruguay’s poor. There is no sign of poverty’s letting up with the Frente Amplio in
power, despite its prioritizing of the “social exclusion” question and its immediate instituting
of the Emergency Plan. 177
In the face of the ongoing crisis, movement organizational
meetings turn into sessions of collective “catharsis,” where participants release their anxieties
and stress, and find solace and inspiration in each other’s company.
Large-scale industries in Uruguay have successfully incorporated environmental
concerns, norms, public relations and management offices in recent years. The new PR
campaigns and environmental management follow international trends, but are also a
response, I argue, to growing popular pressure and the strength of grassroots
environmentalism in Uruguay in recent years. Increasing green sophistication in the largescale
industries is accompanied by environmental negligence in smaller-scale industries,
however, conforming a dual or two-tiered productive system where I argue the presence of the
former serves as a “green veil” to cover up and distract from the existence of the latter.
The malleability and variations of environmentalist ideology within and between
grassroots, industrial, NGO and State spheres is further analyzed in the final section of the
chapter. I discuss important environmental conflicts that developed following the lead issue,
focusing in particular on large multinational investments including the Dirox chemical
industry and the pulp mills along the Uruguay River. The scale of these investments is
unprecedented, and they are positioned as potentially transforming not only the biophysical
177 The Emergency Plan was one of the policy pillars of the Frente Amplio government. It consisted of a census
of Uruguay’s population of extreme poor, followed by economic assistance to the needy through wages in return
for “volunteer” labor on public works and infrastructure maintenance. The Emergency Plan was instituted
through the newly created Ministry of Social Development (Communist Party), and holds similarities to the
Hunger Zero program of the Brazilian Workers Party.
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environmental landscape and socio-environmental conditions, but also the terms and character
of environmental ideology and politics in Uruguay.
6.1 “Reality overwhelms us”: Social Misery, Collective Catharsis, and New Directions for
the CVSP
What was accomplished in the five years from the creation of the lead epidemic to the end of
my fieldwork? Both the CVSP and the State lay claim to a similar set of successes, with the
CVSP activists arguing the State would not have acted without grassroots pressure, and that
many of the policies implemented were ideas originally formulated by the CVSP itself. The
successes claimed by the CSVP include: the identification of the epidemic, the accumulation
and dissemination of relevant information, and suggestions for remediation and preventive
measures; the opening of five neighborhood health clinics and the blood lead analyses of over
10,000 children and pregnant women, providing an unofficial epidemiological mapping of the
risk population; the opening (and continuing defense) of the lead poisoning clinic in the
Pereira Rossell Hospital, and free transportation to the clinic for poor families; the passing of
relevant legislation and decrees at the local and national levels; the phase-out of leaded
gasoline; the distribution of 20 kilo food baskets to affected families living in poverty; soil
remediation measures in La Teja, other Montevideo neighborhoods, and Rosario, Department
of Colonia; the relocation of around 500 families from contaminated squatter settlements into
government housing; and raising and disseminating awareness of lead contamination across
society (CVSP 2005; La Plomada 2005 (1), September).
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Although claiming a positive balance, the CVSP admits many limitations and failures
as well. Participation in the movement has waned over the years as activists faced burnout,
political pressures, and frustration. Many of the laws passed around lead and environmental
contamination remain unimplemented or un-enforced. The long-promised MSP national
epidemiological study was never conducted, and the true scope of the lead epidemic will
likely never be known. Furthermore, perhaps hundreds of affected families in need of
relocation still live in contaminated squatter settlements, and the lead clinic faces chronic
shortages in funds and support and persistent threats of closure. Perhaps most disturbing for
the CVSP, lead poisoning continues to be associated exclusively with extreme poverty and the
bulk of society continues to ignore it as a universal hazard, and the real and potential risks for
lead poisoning remain understudied and institutionally ignored.
In response to the remaining deficits in action and the CVSP’s internal need for
reorientation and revitalization, activists drew up a strategic plan entitled the “Local Antenna
of Socio-Environmental Risk Detection and Prevention.” The goal of the Antenna is to
reproduce and multiply the organizational and social experiences of the CVSP into a
nationwide network of grassroots organizations (including neighborhood commissions,
housing cooperatives, unions, social clubs, and small businesses) that monitor and detect
socio-environmental risks (including, but not limited to lead contamination) before they are
manifested. The Antenna, taking advantage of expert and technical assistance and archived
information, would provide a transmission, coordination and advisory role for groups across
the country, and a link to government officials and other institutions. If the official response
proves inadequate, the CVSP’s media contacts and organizational skills mobilize public
pressure. They would also continue public dissemination of information and educational
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campaigns to raise awareness of environmental problems. To achieve this model, the CVSP
gained for the first time in 2006 a legal status as a “civil association” (asociación civil).
The CVSP has maintained regular meetings, and continues to organize the La Teja
Environment Day celebrations each year. With the coming to power of the FA, the CVSP
began outreach and grassroots education activities in neighborhoods across Montevideo, in
partnership with the newly created Ministry for Social Development. In 2005 it began
publishing a small newsletter (La Plomada) of free dissemination. It has also sought, without
success, external funding from various national and international organizations. CVSP
activists are wary of external ties and jealous of their independence, however, and are thus
positioned precariously between grassroots autonomy and institutionalization. They have also
mediated a somewhat ambiguous relationship with the national Frente Amplio government, a
political opening that offers new opportunities but also represents continuity with the previous
IMM administration and its perceived shortcomings in lead intervention. Through all of this,
activists confront a continuing social crisis that shows no signs of abatement in La Teja and
other working class and poor neighborhoods of Montevideo.
Following the second Social Forum on Environmental Chemical Contaminants and
Popular Participation, the CVSP, UITA and other participants issued an open letter
announcing a “Citizens’ Initiative for a Space of Participation and Social Cooperation.” The
letter calls on social organizations, academics, and local and national officials to establish an
arena of “cooperation, participation and coordinated action, as well as mechanisms and
procedures of communication and the exchange of information and ideas”:
Our experience as social organizations shows us that neighbors and workers are almost
always the best informed regarding what is happening in their places of living and work, and
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many times the most willing to offer timely, simple, reasonable and always economically
viable solutions.” (…) “The community then is the inspiration of laws and regulations,
institutions and entities that protect its rights; the social and community organizations,
therefore, should participate in the instances that give rise to these norms and in the system
that guarantees their application in practice . . .
Noting “just now we are beginning to recognize the importance of environmental issues for
health, work, security and the quality of life of society,” the letter announces:
Today it seems the time has come to instrument change, to open new spaces forged
through the expectations created by history, through the past experiences of those who from
local and national governments, and from social organizations, fight for a better world, but not
only in statistics, between bars and graphs, but most of all in the sidewalks and streets of our
cities and settlements, among the small farms and crops of our countryside, in the health
clinics, medical centers and hospitals of Uruguay.
“Participation is the guarantee of good governance,” the letter concludes, “or at least the
avoidance of grave errors.”
The letter was a call for action and cooperation between mostly leftist social
movements and organizations and the center-left Frente Amplio government. Though the
CVSP, while maintaining a stance of political autonomy, had taken similar initiatives to the
Batlle administration, many CVSP and social movement activists, as the letter implies, share a
sense of common cause with the longtime militants and “brothers in arms” of the FA. Indeed,
as is the case with Pilo and Fernández Galeano (as noted above, former IMM health official
and now Sub-Secretary of the MSP), they fought side by side in revolutionary movements and
the underground before and during the dictatorship. While Pilo has maintained to this day his
fierce political independence and anarchist ideology, Fernández Galeano joined the
government. Divergent political careers or trajectories such as these are not an insignificant
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source of tension within the left, and they result in a sense of ambiguity on the part of social
movements in a context of “left” governance.
The following section provides an account of the final CVSP organizational meeting I
attended during my fieldwork, when the idea of the Antenna was being formulated. 178
Activists debated some of the themes later developed in the Social Forum and the open letter.
Debates reflect the identity crisis (or challenge) of a leftist social movement as it confronts
both the rise of the Left to national power and the continuing and unyielding social crisis,
whose mitigation the Left took up as its campaign and policy pillar. The meeting reveals the
continuing organizational and political difficulties faced by the heterogeneous CVSP activists,
the social misery they constantly engage with, and internal debates over organizational
direction and identity. 179
6.1.1 CVSP Strategizing and Collective Catharsis
The mood at this meeting turned quickly into a collective funk. Elena Queirolo arrived
looking tired and frustrated. Pilo was almost moved to tears by what he described as an
overbearing burden facing the daily struggles of the poor in La Teja. “I feel overwhelmed”
(Me siento superado), he said at one point as he lowered his head. Carlos Amorín and José
Camarda sought to bring order to the meeting and direction to the CVSP, with Milka Pereira
offering suggestions. 180
I left with my head in a fog. Though few concrete objectives were
178 The meeting was held May 18, 2005.
179 I was by this point an established member of the CVSP, so the following ethnographic account alternates
between referencing “the CVSP” and using the self-referential and inclusive “us,” “our” or “we.”
180 See Chapter 1 and others for a description of these activists.
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eached, I nevertheless felt this meeting, as many others, served as a type of “factory of
ideas,” with participants churning out and debating grassroots strategy, methods, and ideology
to address Uruguay’s socio-environmental crisis.
La Teja community radio journalist Javier pointed out that existing organizations and
NGO’s have been “overtaken” by children in need (desbordado de niños). Pilo commented
on the “cultural issue” of the people. He said that people facing these conditions “turn into
animals” and “lose their humanity” (la gente se convierte en bichos). Camarda concurred,
reflecting on the “enclosed misery” of the slum tenements. “What is not seen,” Camarda said,
“is what is truly troubling, and it covers the city.”
Pilo said that the various NGOs were useful for “containing” problems, but people
have no future. “What do you offer them afterward?” he asked. Pilo brought up the
dysfunctional relationship people have with the police. “The cops want to see a black guy
with drugs, snot-nosed and with a mangy dog,” he said, as they conform to and reinforce
stereotypes of poverty and misery. 181
He said everyone was afraid of the “bigger corruption”
of the police, and of having drugs planted on them (el botón). Violence has gotten out of hand
though, Pilo cautioned, and now “anyone can shoot you.” Meanwhile, young people have
nothing to do. “There are no longer soccer fields in La Teja,” Pilo offered as an example, and
educational prospects are bleak.
Camarda and others tried to shift Pilo’s tragic discourse into something productive for
the CVSP. The mood throughout the meeting remained charged and passionate, though, and
laced with sadness. Camarda reflected on how the CVSP meetings often turn into sessions of
relieving the accumulated stress and anxiety of each member’s daily engagement with social
problems in other areas of work and activism. The meetings offer a space for “catharsis” that
181 “Los milicos quieren ver un negro con drogas, mocoso y con un perro sarnoso”.
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while valuable should also be channeled productively. Amorin talked about forging networks
“from below.”
“We have to emerge from this perverse intellectualism that does not allow us to see the
reality, the people suffering,” Camarda argued, “We need to be able to detect this suffering on
a spatial plane, to map it and link it to existing services. We are an alert and we should not
lose sight of this objective.” “We should be aware,” though, “that we are ultimately unable to
resolve the complex and penetrating social problems we see each day.”
“Reality overwhelms us,” Milka concurred somberly, “The people are broken
down.” 182
She characterized the current situation as one of a social “catastrophe,” adding,
“We will discover atrocities and we will not be able to do anything about it.” 183
She agreed
with Camarda in that focusing only on one area would lose sight of their larger objective,
which has always been to demonstrate that lead contamination has a national scope. In a
reaffirmation of political independence, she argued to “shake up and bother” (sacudir y
molestar) those in power, “because we do not have power in our hands.”
Amorín was listening attentively but in silence during much of this collective
catharsis. Perhaps showing that he too is aware of the tragic stakes involved, he brought up
the ongoing situation of PCB’s and hyperthyroid disease in Minas, an environmental health
conflict he investigated for Brecha. He described speaking to a breastfeeding mother: “I knew
that through this act she was almost certainly killing her child.” He too confronts perverse
realities and tragic suffering, but said some level of professional distance was needed or
nothing would be accomplished and “everyone will go crazy.”
182 “La realidad nos supera”/ “La gente esta hecho pedazo”
183 “Vamos a encontrar atrocidades y no vamos a poder resolver estos problemas”.
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Offering an evaluation of the CVSP and where they stand, Amorín said that through
coming together we have “expanded our diaphragm of consciousness” but are struggling to
achieve concrete results. We need to learn how to set emotional boundaries, he said, “leaving
aside our chat group” (dejemos de hacer una tertulia) and to start contributing our minimum
quotient to “change reality.” Most of all, he said, we need to make sure we do not become
like other organizations and NGO’s that do the bidding of the IDB and World Bank. This
organization is necessarily different, he argued metaphorically, because the foundation of the
Antenna will be placed on the ground.
Camarda said the ultimate mission should be to establish the Antenna across the
territory. “This group is not the Antenna,” he said, “but we should rather stimulate the
creation of and identify already-existing small antennas across Uruguay,” as a network of
resources to coordinate and tap into when socio-environmental problems emerge. In La Teja,
“a large antenna is already in place,” he added. Camarda also agreed with Amorín: “We
should try not to think with the head of the IDB, the enemy.”
Amorín said he was convinced he would die before ever seeing the kind of society he
would like to live in, one where “fathers and mothers are of all the children.” He said that as a
group it is impossible for us to act at the “first level” or to substitute public services. As
individuals inserted in various institutions we may play a role, but as a group it is beyond our
means and scope. Amorín reiterated that diversity is the CVSP’s greatest asset. They need to
draw together a “little model of articulation between society, and the public services that
belong to us, the people.” The people’s “reality” should be connected to existing resources
that are currently misused, Amorín said. The new FA administration has promoted
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“participation” as a central tenet of governance, a programmatic stance that the CVSP should
exploit to the fullest, he argued.
Elena made clear that she needed this kind of work and engagement (with the CVSP)
to be separate from her institutional role at the Pereira Rossell. It is a question of sanity for
her, she said. She wants to be able to respond directly to problems and to give something
back to the community, working directly with it. Camarda suggested going around and giving
public talks on lead poisoning modeled after the ones given previously by Elena. They could
train others to give those same talks, creating “a hundred, a thousand Elena’s.” Elena said that
first they should take advantage of the Communal Zone Centers and their institutional
structure. Javier said it was important to go with something concrete and organized. I added
that it would be important to provide clear and concise written materials for people to take
back with them to their respective communities. “It is time to put things together,” Pilo said
(Es la hora de concreciones), adding, “If you control information you control power.” Pilo
suggested going to the CCZ’s to obtain data on soil and air quality samples and information
on industrial production conditions.
I told the group what I knew about the Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste
(CCHW) in the United States, the history of Love Canal, and the various methods and
strategies of the environmental justice movement. These include centralizing information
with the assistance of key scientists and professionals, and making it available to anyone who
needs it. Another strategy is popular epidemiology, where activists conduct house-to-house
surveys of health and keep a database for comparison to toxic emissions and other
environmental hazards. It is quite similar to what the CVSP is proposing for its Antenna, I
suggested. No one had heard of the CCHW or other U.S. environmental justice groups. In
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this case, similar environmental hazards bred similar responses in parallel situations without
any explicit exchange or intercommunication. It reflects rather a convergence of conditions
and responses across geographic scales to a broadly construed socio-environmental crisis.
As noted above, the CVSP debated methods and strategy in a context of a continuing
socio-economic crisis, the rise of the Left to national power, and an internal reappraisal of its
direction and identity. The debate also followed in the wake of arguably the highest profile
and most successful environmental social movement in Uruguayan history. The environment
was largely placed on the social map and made relevant to ordinary people because of the
actions of the CVSP. So why does it remain difficult to sustain and endure grassroots
environmental politics? What forces are at work to hinder or deflate movement activism? In
what ways are its goals co-opted or made redundant? Part of the answer lies in the
malleability of nature and environmentalism. While the CVSP used the environment as an
emancipatory politics, the State and industry, as well as NGOs and other social organizations,
use the environment in sharply divergent ways, at times as a means of social control and
governance.
6.2 The Green Veiling of Industry
As Uruguayan society greened in the past decade, many industries followed suit. Taking cues
perhaps from the forms of “green washing” of parent companies based in Europe or the
United States (Brosius 1999: 286), these industries marketed discourses of “eco-friendly”
production practices and the minimizing of the ecological “footprints” left by their activities.
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Large industries have for the first time dedicated resources to hiring public relations
operatives and have formed environmental quality divisions in an attempt to offset or preempt
scrutiny from environmentally conscious citizens and newly instituted state and local
environmental regulations. The consequences of these practices, I argue, has resulted in the
draping of a broad “veil” of green over productive activities and government policies that
transcends the actions of individual industries. Green veiling expands on the “green washing”
concept that characterizes industrial PR campaigns (cf. Brosius 1999; Stauber and Rampton
1995). It hints at the broader impacts across society of industry and government-promoted
green discourses. The draping of a green veil around productive activities is at once
consciously produced and an unintended consequence of the widespread production and
circulation of green discourses. Both the “conservationist” and the “exploitative” forms of
capital (Escobar 1996) coexist in a complementary relationship that serves explicitly or
implicitly to draw a green veil over industrial degradation of the urban environment.
6.2.1 Managing Nature: The ANCAP Refinery
In May 2004 I interviewed Ernesto Pesce, environmental engineer and Director of the
Environmental, Industrial Security, and Quality Management Division of ANCAP. 184
I
arrived a little early at the ANCAP refinery, getting wet from a heavy rain that fell as I walked
the ten blocks from Plaza Lafone to the La Teja refinery. I had to register at the entrance
checkpoint, where an armed guard took down my name and reason for visiting, made sure I
184 His title in Spanish: Ingeniero Ernesto Pesce, Gerente, División Medio Ambiente, Seguridad Industrial y
Gestión de Calidad. Information is drawn from an interview with Pesce, May 14, 2004.
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was not carrying a cellular phone, and kept my cedula ID card in exchange for a visitor’s card
I clipped to the front pocket of my jeans jacket.
The ANCAP La Teja refinery is a very large complex nestled between Montevideo
Bay and the mouth of the Pantanoso River. The river section is lined with trees and
vegetation, with little or no garbage present, in sharp contrast to nearby sections of the
Pantanoso dividing La Teja and Cerro, which are more obviously polluted and littered. Some
of the buildings, including the Environmental Division office, are lined with green ivy, and
carefully kept lawns have signs asking to “please keep off the grass.” Attractive flowers,
shrubs, and tall trees line the walkways and shelter the administrative buildings. Everything is
very well cared for and orderly, with signs everywhere exhorting employees to care for their
workplace.
This stage-managed mastery over nature veils a largely barren “assault on nature”
section spatially located immediately beyond the administrative area. I followed a covered
path that wound its way towards the back of the refinery grounds. Along the sides were
garden plots and tall leafy trees, and some workers with hardhats were busily pruning trees
and shrubs when I walked by. The end of this tunneled path opened onto a small parking area
leading into an altogether different landscape. Here, open “avenues” are bordered on each
side by rows of large oil storage tanks, processing units, and what looks (to the lay person’s
eye) like an ultra-modern, futuristic landscape, with large complexes of interconnected steel
tubes, glass, and lights. An old burnt chimney with “ANCAP” written along its side loomed
over one section, looking like it had long been shut down, a reminder of the plant’s more
modest beginnings. A larger and more imposing, perennially lit petroleum tower,
recognizable from many corners of Montevideo for its large plume of fire, was only
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smoldering and releasing a white cloud of smoke on this day. Several workers passed by in
forklifts and other industrial vehicles.
I conducted a short, frequently interrupted interview with Mr. Pesce in his office.
Pesce’s ideology reflects a technocratic sustainable development discourse, the privileged and
preferred brand of environmentalist thought among world policy circles, some mainstream
environmental organizations, multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and the IDB,
and corporate green marketing strategies (see Chapter 2). The creation of a special
environmental office and division at ANCAP dates to 1992, the same year as the Rio
Biodiversity conference, and marking the boom of environmentalist discourse and politics in
Uruguay as well as regionally. Green discourse parallels the greening of the built
environment at ANCAP. Both serve as a distracting mechanism of the more destructive and
predatory capitalist interests lurking behind. As Arturo Escobar (1996) argues, this brand of
sustainable development discourse is more about sustaining capital than sustaining nature.
Pesce’s role, it can be argued, is essentially to provide a public relations foil of, as discussed
in chapter 2, “the Uruguay that we have.” His task as an environmental manager is to keep
the environment from interfering with ANCAP’s corporate agenda. By applying and
dedicating discourses, infrastructure, and resources to the environment, the company
effectively manages and controls an otherwise antagonistic force, one whose defense has
concurrently gained the interest of the public at large.
Pesce’s green environmental discourse posits a distinct separation of people from
nature. I was initially puzzled by Pesce’s insistence, for example, that catalytic converters are
a technology that truly protects the environment, while lead contamination is irrelevant to the
environment. During the interview, there was some confusion between us as Pesce insisted
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that the elimination of leaded gasoline was done for environmental reasons, but he was
referring to carbon gas emissions, not lead contamination, and he even seemed confused by
the way I referred to lead contamination as an environmental issue. “Greenhouse” gas
emissions affect the global biosphere, and indirectly animal and human life, while lead
contamination affects humans directly as an embodied health problem, constituting little
damage to a purified “nature,” and thus not of “environmental” interest, according to this
particular version of green discourse.
Pesce’s environmental ideology and the environmental debate over leaded gasoline
highlight one of the primary dividing lines within Uruguayan (and global) environmentalism.
The green agenda of environmentalism places biotic nature first, with human communities
posited either as a source of Malthusian population pressure on (and degradation of) the
environment, or as an afterthought to the needs and conditions of a purified nature. According
to this framework, nature is about exotic animal species, global warming, tropical forests or
endangered whales. In “brown” or anthropocentric versions of environmentalism, on the
other hand, human communities are the starting point, and nature is conceived of as
encompassing both human and non-human life (cf. Novotny 2000; Peña and Mondragón-
Valdez 1998). Much of mainstream environmentalism in Uruguay follows the green agenda.
Editorials in the conservative El País daily, for example, often refer to environmental issues in
the abstract or as a global phenomenon, associating it with Northern concerns and agendas,
but rarely discussed in terms of its relevance to everyday lives. 185
When framed in this way,
185 As discussed below, El País and other media outlets have continued to associate the environment with the
foreign, but now in terms of the menacing Argentine neighbors, who are using environmentalism to contest the
construction of large pulp mills in Uruguay along the Uruguay River. The environment becomes relevant to
Uruguayans, according to this discourse, but only as an alien ideology and political threat.
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the environment remains suspect for grassroots activists and ordinary citizens, who construe it
as an elitist concern associated with a foreign agenda or the rich.
Turning back to Pesce, he believes lead contamination is not an environmental issue
because lead does not harm the environment per se. The CVSP and its allies argue, in
contrast, that lead contamination is an environmental issue because lead, although
anthropogenic in origin, is a chemical transmitted through environmental pathways. Leaded
gasoline is combusted and emitted to the air, settles in soils and waterways, and then enters
human bodies (and other animals). The difference in perspective highlights debates over
environmental ideology in Uruguay with important repercussions for policy, research, and
politics (see Chapters 3-5).
6.2.2 Ecology in the Upper and Lower Circuits of Capital: The Story of Two Factories
About one year after my visit to ANCAP, I was invited to come along with CCZ 13 and CCZ
14 environmental commission volunteers, including Carlos Pilo, for a tour of a newly
revamped cement factory in Sayago that took the place of the old cement factory shut down
by the city upon sustained protest by Germinal Azaretto and the TEBELPA cooperative
workers’ environmental movement (see Chapter 3). 186
The new ownership and management
of the Cementos Artigas factory are proud of the changes they have instituted in technology,
environmental safeguards and working conditions. As part of their new policy, and most
likely reflecting a desire to heal old scars with the community, the managers promoted a
transparent, “open door” initiative at the factory. On this occasion, they decided to invite for
186 The following account is drawn from field notes based on the factory tour on May 12, 2005.
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the first time the volunteers of the environment commissions of CCZs 13 and 14, representing
the radius of influence of the factory, for a tour of their state-of-the-art facilities and as a “first
step” towards “open dialogue” with the community.
We toured the grounds in hardhats, guided by factory representatives. The property is
new and modern, impeccably clean and ordered. The guides repeatedly pointed out the nowempty
spaces where the buildings of the former (“dirty”) factory once stood. The style was
typical of a modern corporate or factory grounds in the global North, and similar to what I had
seen at ANCAP: abundant trees and gardens, shapely shrubs and quarries turned into large
ponds, complete with ducks, birds and other wildlife. The potentially polluting factory is in
this way veiled by a green curtain of nature, aesthetically and sensuously neutralizing its
artificial and technological opposite. What was once a threat has become benign. The
message suggests a grateful nature welcoming the responsible and orderly (read “sustainable”)
incursions of human society.
The cement factory buildings are very modern, and the guides pointed out the areas
where human workers do not typically enter, due to the amount of dust or noise in the
enclosed buildings. They showed us large fans and vents used to suck up the dust at various
stages of the production process, and the layers of smart architecture designed to minimize the
industrial noise of the plant. A centralized control area monitored operations via state-of-theart
computer programs. Indeed, for a factory of this size, it was a surprise to learn that only
29 workers were employed at the plant.
The tour concluded in an open grassy area next to one of the quarry ponds. A
ceremony included the collective planting of a tree with the neighbors. A couple of workers
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were holding the small native Tarumán tree over an open hole. They let Pilo along with a
neighbor from CCZ 13 to plant it, and everyone smiled for the company rep’s camera.
In a power point presentation following the ceremony, company representative Adrian
presented the history of the Cementos Artigas plant and their environmental policies. The
company has roots that go back to an original plant in this same location in 1920. It was
owned and run by the American company Lone Star until 1991, when a Catalan company
bought the firm, in association with Argentine capital. The company now runs the Sayago
and Minas plants, as well as one in Argentina.
Adrian was careful to point out that the production conditions under the previous
ownership were “totally different.” He added that environmental conditions at the previous
factory, were “perhaps more apt for a rural setting than for the city.” The Minas plant makes
the “clinker” base material for the cement through their smelting oven. The Sayago plant then
does the final processing into cement. The new managers attained the ISO 14000
environmental quality certification. Adrian stressed they had no obligation to seek this norm,
but once they agreed to it, they were subjected to strict internationally recognized
environmental regulations, with the Uruguayan technological laboratory (LATU) conducting
inspection and oversight.
Adrian said the company complies with all environmental legislation at the municipal,
national and regional levels. He added that they sought to comply with regional Mercosur
standards as well because in Uruguay there is a “fairly limited scope of environmental
standards,” and in the Interior these are “practically nonexistent.” Adrian said that
environmental issues were “new for everyone in this country.” With ever-changing
legislation, the company makes sure they are complying with all valid norms by hiring
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lawyers updated on the local, national, and regional standards who produce monthly reports
for the company. Adrian said that he imagined the neighbors’ commissions had similar
difficulty in keeping up with the rapidly changing laws, and announced that the company
would make available the reports issued by their lawyers.
The company presented a video summarizing the environmental policies of the
factory. A friendly and cheerful female voice narrated the video, providing descriptions of the
various policies associated with the recycling of paper, plastics, cardboard, and toner ink
within the plant’s offices, and their promotion of a clean and eco-friendly working
environment. The toner cartridges, along with small and large batteries, are incinerated at the
Minas plant. In fact, everything that cannot be recycled, due either to the absence of a
recycling center in Uruguay or to the contamination of the product, is incinerated in Minas.
These include solid waste, various oils, and other potentially toxic substances. Scrap metal
waste is sent to a smelter, and other solid waste is taken to the municipal dump.
During the question and answer period, I raised some concerns about the recent
outbreak of hyperthyroidism in Minas neighborhoods close to the plant, asking whether the
incineration of toxic materials had any relation to these health problems. Pilo added that
contaminated wood was reportedly burned at the Minas plant. Adrian admitted that a
shipment of around fifteen tons of wood boards had been contaminated in port by a fuel oil
spill, and that the DINAMA had asked the company to burn the wood at their smelter. They
burned it little by little over the course of months.
This sparked a debate between Pilo and one of the company bosses. The boss argued
that “you can’t just shut down production,” implying that Pilo’s environmental position was
inherently anti-production. Pilo contested this accusation, and then explained how factories
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install in an area, and then the workers tend to settle in the immediate surroundings, thus
altering the environmental and health risk factors associated with production. This is
precisely what occurred at the original plant in Sayago, as has happened with residences in
proximity to polluting industries in neighborhoods like La Teja and Nuevo Paris.
After the meeting, the company representatives invited us all to another building to
have some refreshments after “such a long afternoon.” In the reception area the company
employees served us Coke, coffee, and water, along with platefuls of sweet masitas.
Industries such as Cementos Artigas have learned quickly from recent environmental
conflicts. Wooing neighborhood representatives helps ensure harmonious production
conditions. The factory owners and representatives are all too aware of the potential power of
organized resistance, evidenced through the preceding factory being successfully forced out
by the community in alliance with the municipal government.
Meetings such as these have the potential of becoming spaces of staged inconformity.
The function then becomes not one of the community’s active participation in the decisionmaking
process, but rather a space and moment to “let off steam.” The danger of this type of
“participation” and “exchange” is that the community takes an active part in the company’s
strategy of green washing their own image. Members of the environmental commissions of
the surrounding community give their stamp of approval, guaranteed through a lack of
dominance of technical expertise and through more mundane efforts such as planting a tree
together and being fed tasty treats. Approval from the human representatives of the
environment adds volume and scope to the biophysical veil of green that already cloaks the
factory.
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Quite a different story was evidenced through a fortuitous exchange with an
acquaintance who is the chief of production at a plastics factory in east-central Montevideo.
Esteban and I chatted about work and production conditions at his factory while riding in his
car. 187
Esteban makes a healthy wage by Uruguayan standards, at around $1,000 dollars a
month, and as evidenced by the sharp suit he was wearing and the “supped up” car with tinted
windows and booming stereo in which we were riding. Esteban had been working at the
factory for nine years. They produce the plastic signs used everywhere for political
propaganda for local and national elections. They also specialize in the export of plastic
asparagus storage cases to the United States, particularly California. Esteban admires the
business mentality and culture of the United States, and feels comfortable in the production
cycle that distributes work and production around the globe, based on “competitive” wages
and production conditions. He is proud of what he considers the high-standards of production
at his factory.
There are around 160 workers employed at the factory, making it respectable, if not
large, in size, though dwarfing in workforce the spatially and productively larger cement
factory in Sayago. The workers do not drive the same cars as their bosses, however. “Almost
all of them live in asentamientos,” Esteban said. He recognized the meager earnings they
make: 10 pesos per hour, or about 35 U.S. cents. If they work an eight-hour day making 80
pesos, Esteban calculated, most would spend 30 pesos of this for the roundtrip bus fare, plus
at least 20 pesos for “bad” food, he conservatively estimated, leaving “almost nothing” to take
home at the end of the day.
I asked if the workers’ wages approached the national minimum and Esteban
responded, “I have no idea.” To make ends meet, most work overtime, as many as 12 hours
187 The following account is taken from field notes based on our encounter on April 23, 2005.
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per day, thereby being entitled to overtime pay and bringing home about 180 pesos daily
(rather than 120 on the straight 10 peso/hour wage).
I asked Esteban about environmental conditions at the factory, and whether any
municipal or national agencies conducted inspections or other forms of regulation. He
laughed and said that in his nine years there, no official from the DINAMA or the IMM has
set foot in the building to inspect environmental conditions. It is a relatively “clean” factory
nevertheless, Esteban assured me: “99% is recycled within the plant.”
The factory does not produce the first stages of plastic, but rather imports the small
plastic pellets that are then melted down for various uses. I asked whether they had chimneys
to release gases and steam, and Esteban said that they were not necessary. “A few vapors”
were released, but they cause no problem (no pasa nada), he claimed confidently.
We continued on the topic, and Esteban finally admitted that outside the “99%”
recycling, there is a “small” portion of the production process that produces liquid waste.
“What happens to that waste?” I asked, adding that the plastics industry is notoriously
hazardous. Esteban responded frankly and dismissively: “Tsk, we just dump it in the canal
behind the factory.”
Esteban’s factory story is closer in kind to factory conditions that have contaminated
western Montevideo with lead and other chemical agents. Analyzing the apparently
environmentally “responsible” ANCAP and Cementos Artigas industries in conjunction with
the polluting plastics and chemical factories, leather tanneries, and smelters of Montevideo
that more or less fully ignores both environmental regulations and oversight as well as
sidestepping green discourse altogether, reveals the complementary processes that coexist
within a broader productive system in Uruguay. There is a (discursive) greening in the upper
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or large-scale circuits of capital that coincides and coexists with degradation at the lower and
small-scale circuits. Work conditions and levels of unionization generally mirror this dual
productive process.
As large-scale factories green, smaller ones are accused of contaminating and
degrading the environment, communities and bodies. Industrial greening strategies and
grassroots environmentalist critique are both new to Uruguay, reflecting and setting the stage
for a new language, new legitimating tools, and new forms of contestation oriented around
nature and the environment. Taken together, they form a complementary relationship in
which officials and industry representatives may point to the actions at the upper echelons of
capital as evidence of official and corporate environmental responsibility and compliance
(“the Uruguay we think we have”), distracting from “the Uruguay that we have” occurring at
the lower circuits of capital. The Uruguay Natural discourse remains intact, and the country
maintains its veil of green.
6.3 Post-Lead Conflicts in Uruguay
The CVSP has worked together with several long-term anti-toxics struggles, including
mobilizations against the Dirox chemical plant in San José, chromium contamination from the
Paycueros leather tannery in Paysandú, a neighbors’ movement against the negative health
effects from cement factory emissions in Minas, and the movement against agro-chemical
pesticides in northern Bella Union, all in the interior of the country. Some other recent
significant environmental conflicts in Uruguay, to provide a partial list, include: opposition to
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the installation of a hospital waste incinerator; the debates over the creation of an industrial
waste facility in the central Uruguayan city of Durazno; the approval in parliament in 2004,
ceding to Monsanto and other multinational pressures, of importing transgenic seeds; repeated
instances of industrial contamination in Montevideo and in the interior; opposition to
infrastructure development projects such as the proposed massive bi-national bridge from
Colonia to Buenos Aires, a proposed private port in Cerro and another in coastal oceanic La
Paloma; the water plebiscite campaign that resulted in a 64% electoral mandate in 2004
against privatization of the state water company and for the protection of the nation’s
freshwater resources; and the complex transnational movement against the installation of two
large paper pulp mills along the Uruguay River bordering Argentina. The following
paragraphs focus on the Dirox and pulp mill environmental conflicts in order to briefly
illustrate how they reflect some of the themes developed in this dissertation, the
characteristics they share, and the new directions in which the Uruguayan environmental
movement may be heading.
The Dirox conflict has a long history, with neighbors opposed to the planned
construction of the plant as early as 1992. The Italian multinational group Stoppani
eventually built the Dirox chemical factory in 1997, becoming Italy’s largest-ever investment
in Uruguay. Following repeated protests by neighbors and workers, including highway
pickets and tractor blockades, it was shut down and fined on several occasions from 2001 to
2003 for environmental noncompliance on the orders of local San José or national DINAMA
authorities. Pollution from liquid chromium is the principal concern, with ecologists and
neighbors citing among other things threats to local agricultural production and the
vulnerability of the Raigón aquifer, second in size in the region to the Guaraní (Amorín
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2002). 188 Fifteen workers occupied the plant in September 2005 to protest unhealthy work
conditions, citing high levels of chromium in their urine, and calling for reduced work hours
under the stipulations of the national Unhealthy Industries Act (El País, September 6, 2005).
Dirox workers in 2005 charged that Stoppani was responsible for the deaths of
fourteen workers in Italy and worker repression in Uruguay. 189
They said 20% of Italian
Stoppani workers developed cancer over the past twenty years. The workers accused the
company of provoking deep social rifts within the San José community, and described the
ways they financed youth soccer clubs and gave donations to buy the public’s confidence.
Dirox imports raw materials from Russia, and later exports the finished products to the United
States. The company is of enough value to the Italian government that the Italian ambassador
to Uruguay visited the plant to try to “corrupt” the workers during their strike, the workers
charged. “We all want a Natural Uruguay,” one of the workers said, but “we are not taking
care of it right now.”
The two giant pulp mills approved for the Fray Bentos region of western Uruguay,
through the multinational investments of the Spanish Ence and Finnish Botnia corporations,
sparked the highest-profile environmental conflict ever in Uruguay, causing diplomatic
upheavals with neighboring Argentina and involving multilateral institutions and actors at the
highest level. Ence had years ago proposed the building of a pulp mill in this area, and
neighbors and environmental groups have long questioned or opposed the project, with
several environmental NGO’s working with the issue on both sides of the river, and legal
188 The Guaraní aquifer is a massive underground freshwater reserve spanning parts of the territories of Uruguay,
Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, and is one of the largest in the world. It has been the focus of speculation over
its strategic importance in a global context in which water is becoming positioned as the “petroleum of the 21 st
century” (c.f. Ferradás 2004).
189 Workers speaking at the II Foro Social sobre Contaminantes Químicos Ambientales, November 3, 2005,
Intendencia Municipal de Montevideo.
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action in Uruguay led by Enrique Viana. The Argentine government has resolutely opposed
the projects, provoking a diplomatic conflict between the neighboring countries since 2003,
with the Argentine government denouncing the project to the Inter-American Commission on
Human Rights, the World Bank, and the International Court of Justice at The Hague, and the
King of Spain periodically mediating the conflict.
The Batlle administration, with much fanfare, had inaugurated a private port in
November 2003 at M’Bopicuá, located twelve kilometers to the north of the city of Fray
Bentos along the Uruguay River, with the purpose of serving the planned Ence plant. The
project was financed in part through World Bank and Inter-American Bank loans. On the day
of its inauguration, the Finnish multinational firm Botnia announced a proposed project to
create an even bigger pulp mill, through a one billion dollar investment, duplicating the size
of Ence’s proposal and projected as the second-largest private investment in Uruguayan
history (after the Salto Grande Dam project in northern Uruguay). The two projects have
been highly criticized by environmentalist and neighbors groups and a handful of politicians,
while receiving the support of most political representatives of the left and right and many of
the citizens of the area, with polls in late 2005 showing over 85% approval by Fray Bentos
residents (Contreras 2005). Approval of the pulp mills among Uruguayans was fairly uniform
across the political spectrum, reaching 76% in 2006, with 14% opposed, 49% believing the
mills will not pollute considerably (and 15% not at all), and a majority “favoring” economic
(52%) over environmental (35%) interests (El País, March 6, 2006). Despite this popular
support, and most likely ceding to pressure from Argentina, ENCE in 2006 announced the
relocation of its plant south to Colonia Department along the River Plate.
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A “jobs versus environment” debate has taken hold in Uruguay, with accompanying
debates over risk and scientific (un)certainty waged between environmentalists, the powerful
multinational PR firms and lobby, and the Uruguayan national and local departmental and
municipal governments, including the DINAMA. Transnational activist alliances have
formed on either side of the Uruguay River, with several large demonstrations drawing tens of
thousands of people. The three international bridges in the area have been cut off to traffic for
months at a time, and blockades led by the Argentine Gualeguaychú movement continued into
the 2006-07 tourist season, during which thousands of Argentines use the bridges to drive to
their vacation destinations along Uruguay’s coast.
The Argentine government, through its foreign relations minister Rafael Bielsa, argues
that the proposed mill violates the 1971 Uruguay River Treaty, because the negative
environmental impact on Fray Bentos and Gualeguaychú (Argentina) is, according to one
ecologist, “inevitable” (Kovacic 2004). Jorge Busti, governor of Argentine Entre Rios
Province, and President Nestor Kirchner have also raised objections to the project. Both the
Batlle and Vázquez administrations, the media, and several political leaders, in turn, accuse
Argentina of hypocrisy given the presence of pulp mills and widespread environmental
contamination on their side of the Uruguay River.
Activists opposed to the project have pointed out the negative environmental impacts
of the monocultivation of pines and eucalyptus. They question the claims of job creation,
arguing that most will be highly specialized jobs mainly for Montevideans or foreign
technicians, and other than the jobs created during the period of construction, there will only
be left a handful of permanent jobs for local fraybentinos. Environmentalists also warn of the
possible loss of up to 1,200 jobs in the nearby resort city of Las Cañas due to water and air
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pollution. They have highlighted the lawsuits and controversies surrounding Ence’s
operations in Spain, where they were successfully sued for contaminating the Pontevedra
River, and as a company that has been embroiled in corruption scandals, with one of its
directors, Alberto Cortina, serving prison time. A Finnish pulp plant in Valdivia, Chile
utilizing a similar technical process to the proposed Botnia mill has also been embroiled in
controversy, with area tourism affected by the foul odors emanating from the plant. The
factory was shut down in 2005 for contaminating a highly sensitive ecological area that led to
a large wild swan kill (Rodrigo and Rosales 2005).
Botnia’s billion-dollar investment began with the purchasing of Forestal Oriental SA,
responsible for much of the commercial tree plantations of the area, which was followed by
the initiation of environmental, social, and economic impact assessments. Botnia has played
all of its cards carefully and exhaustively, assuring the “widest possible support with the least
possible resistance” (Amorín 2004a). Botnia contracted engineers and academics from the
Universidad de la República, the Universidad Católica, and the CLAEH research center.
They hired one of the savviest PR companies, and contracted a “militant ecologist” 190 to give
the opening remarks at the seminar. Botnia is in a privileged position, as its operations in
Uruguay are exempt from most of the taxes paid by national industries, it has not invested in
most of the tree plantations it will exploit, it will not have to pay for the use of water, and it
will not be responsible for the repair of roads and infrastructure. The question of who would
pay for any future environmental disaster remains open though it is likely this responsibility
will fall on the shoulders of the State (Amorín 2004a).
With the pulp mill mega-projects came sophisticated public relations campaigns. The
Finnish Botnia corporation provided all-expenses paid trips for politicians, union
190 Danilo Antón, who has written several books on ecology in Uruguay and Latin America.
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epresentatives and community leaders to tour their state-of-the-art facilities in Finland. Both
Botnia and Spanish Ence have also financed community development and social programs in
Fray Bentos, the closest town to the projected sites. The companies have sponsored sports
clubs, brought presents to area schoolchildren, sponsored an ecological children’s television
program, and signed a deal with the school system to create “ecological schools” that include
the maintenance of “nature” reserves of native flora and fauna (Contreras 2005: 14). There is
also discussion about building a “green barrier” to shield the Botnia plant from “visual
pollution” (Rojas 2007; Rossello 2007).
Ecologists have mobilized through three major groups: the Environmental Citizens’
Assembly of Gualeguaychú (Entre Ríos, Argentina), and the Guazubira and the “Movement
for Life, Work and Sustainable Development” 191 (MOVITDES) groups in Uruguay. Both
Ence and Botnia spent considerable time “wining and dining” various legislators and
journalists, paying for trips to Europe for tours of their facilities, in an effort that seems to
have paid dividends, as the project ended up supported across the political spectrum.
Enrique Viana told me he had predicted the Frente Amplio would back Botnia after
expressing suspicion about the PIT-CNT union leaders being flown to Finland and of alleged
links between Carlos Faroppa, the Uruguayan engineer and Botnia company spokesman who
had been trained in Sweden, and the Uruguayan leftist exile community in that country. 192
Viana charges that Botnia’s strong ties with the Frente Amplio eclipse those of the National or
Colorado Parties, or of former President Batlle, who signed the agreement in the final days of
191 “Movimiento por la Vida, el Trabajo, y un Desarrollo Sustentable”. The “Movement for Life…” theme may
have some connection to the various “Commissions for Life,” and “Against Lead” that have arisen in the lead
case, though this is merely speculation based on Pilo’s accounts of assistance to environmental mobilizations
across the country, and the mass media’s coverage of this conflict nationally.
192 Interview with Enrique Viana, November 22, 2005.
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his presidency. These close ties have led to what was for many a surprisingly brazen support
for the project on the part of the Vázquez administration.
By 2006 the bi-national conflict over the pulp mills escalated further, with several
political leaders and sections of the Uruguayan media turning the issue into a question of
national sovereignty, calling on Uruguayan independence from what they perceive as the
bullying of its larger neighbor. With the international bridge near Fray Bentos cut off by
Argentine protestors in January, calls for a boycott on Argentine products circulated on the
Internet and call-in radio shows, and stand-offs ensued between Uruguayan truckers and
Argentine environmentalists (Risso 2006). Chile later lodged a formal protest when its own
international commerce was disrupted by the bridge blockades (El Observador January 30,
2005). Greenpeace’s Argentina chapter “invaded” Botnia’s dock via helicopter and ship and
activists blocked the construction site (El País, January 18, 2006). Military maneuvers on
either side of the river and rumors of possible “terrorist” sabotage fueled bellicose posturing.
One rumor circulated of an elderly Argentine woman who was reportedly prepared to engage
in a suicide bombing of Botnia if the construction continued, and others spoke of possible
“Bin Laden’s” scheming from the other side of the river. The conflict briefly escalated at the
end of 2006 through Vázquez’ order to the military to guard the Botnia construction site,
though he later withdrew the order (Werner 2006). Both the national government and the
opposition media have taken up the mantle of sovereignty, claiming that all political forces are
unified against what is presented as a homogeneous Argentine position. One op-ed piece in
the Blanco Party-affiliated El País newspaper dismisses the neighboring country’s actions as
“hypocritical,” with a politically motivated stance based on protecting its own strategic
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commercial interests behind the cloak of a “politically correct” defense of ecology, thereby
covering up official acts with the “simulation of popular spontaneity” (Posadas 2006).
One of the Uruguayan government’s most steadfast promoters of the pulp mills and
one of its most virulent anti-environmentalists is the Sub-Secretary of the MVOTMA himself,
Jaime Igorra, who has been at the forefront of launching insulting jabs at the Argentines and at
environmentalists generally (Waksman 2006a). Repeatedly lost in the mainstream media
coverage are the numerous Uruguayan organizations and individuals who are also opposed to
the projects and who have joined the protests or held their own. In addition to the Fray
Bentos-based environmental organizations working with the Argentine Gualeguaychú
association, they include most if not all of the Uruguayan environmental organizations, some
sections of the PIT-CNT, the so-called “radical” sectors of the Frente Amplio, other
independent leftist and anarchist political groups and media, rural agriculturalists, and many
rank-and-file citizens.
The existence of a home-grown opposition has not been lost on the former Tupamaro
guerrilla and political prisoner-turned senator Eleuterio Fernández Huidobro (MPP), however,
who in an op-ed article in the officialist La República newspaper blasted the “picturesque and
clownish Uruguayan left” that opposed the pulp mills, while the straight-talking senator José
“Pepe” Mujica (MPP), the most popular politician in Uruguay, has referred to
environmentalists as “retards” (Fernández Huidobro 2005). 193
Fernández Huídobro reiterated
his thoughts on the Senate floor, characterizing the cholula left as “lovers of little birdies and
white whales, daughters of idiocy, separated from reality but quite properly financed by the
NGOs of each of the major blocks and global hippiedom” (Grupo Guayubira, December 23,
193 Huidobro’s phrase: “la pintoresca izquierda cholula del Uruguay”. Mujica apparently used the phrase
“mongólicos” to characterize the environmentalists.
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2005). 194 The content of this attack from one of the Uruguayan left’s most representative
figures reflects the old left’s dismissive suspicion of environmentalism, which it has portrayed
as eco-centric, foreign, and irrelevant.
As the Argentine government announced they would for the first time employ the
legal recourse of bringing the pulp mill controversy all the way to the steps of the
International Court of Justice at The Hague, and amid dire predictions of a disintegrating
MERCOSUR (Waksman 2006b), it was announced that the Swede-Finnish multinational
Stora Enso was planning the construction of another pulp mill along the Rio Negro in central
Uruguay (El País, January 10, 2006). Sub-Secretary Igorra justified this move by appealing
to the environmental “margin” available for a third major plant in Uruguay. Stora-Enso
already owns 50,000 hectares of forested land, with plans to reach 150,000 (El País, January
10, 2006). Departmental governors of central Uruguay were reported conducting flyovers of
prospective sites along the Río Negro with Stora-Enso representatives and jockeying for a
favorable position in the company’s final choice of a site.
6.4 The Chimney Dreamers and Green Governance
How far has Uruguay really come in its concern with and protection of the environment? The
institutionalization of environmental management tools can rightly be hailed as an important
progression in Uruguay’s protection of its environmental conditions and quality, but these
same tools can also be used as a broader managing device for resources and populations (cf.
194 Quoted by the environmental group Guayubira: “...la izquierda cholula, amante de los pajaritos y de las
ballenas blancas, hija de la bobeta, apartada de la realidad pero debidamente muy bien financiada por las ONG
de cada uno de los bloques y la cholulez planetaria...”.
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Ferradás 2004), or to veil the very processes they are meant to mitigate. Citing the signing of
various international treaties and agreements, or even more specifically, that a particular
development project has been subjected to the EIA evaluation process, may become a way to
legitimize existing local production processes without fundamentally altering the conditions
of production. The employing of green discourse in this case serves as a “displacing
narrative”: an aestheticized, non-political discourse that distracts from the actual productive
processes underway while maintaining close ties to an orthodox development agenda (Brosius
1999: 286).
The EIA protocol has been used by both the Batlle and Vázquez administrations as a
way to justify the construction of the multinational pulp mills on the Uruguay River. Vázquez
has repeatedly assured skeptics that the EIA approved the construction and that the DINAMA
office will conduct “rigorous” monitoring of the plants’ effluents. Appealing to the existence
of an EIA protocol or of an environmental office is often used as a stand-in for real scrutiny.
They act as rubberstamps of approval on proposed projects, justified because they respond
ultimately to “international” standards of science and regulation. What is meant specifically
and what is addressed by these standards is seldom discussed, such as the bases of regulation,
how much pollution is “acceptable,” or what constitutes a risk or hazard. International
protocols become artifacts, reified as stand-alone objects that trump critical questioning, rather
than the processual, information-sharing and openly “democratic” tools they claim to be.
Trust is to be placed in the protocol itself, in the naming and conjuring of the regulation, and
in the technocrats and experts who manage them and respond to a “higher call” of
international regulation.
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The EIA process is a form of “administrative rationalism” that turns political
controversies into “technical puzzles” (Bocking 2004: 21). Science and politics work
together, even while complex “boundary work” portrays an authoritative science as
objectively neutral and interest-free. As with other forms of risk science, the EIA process
“enforces a particular way of looking at risks, channeling power in society, ruling out other
ways of thinking about hazards” (Bocking 2004: 148). The standard of proof to determine a
hazard through risk assessment is usually very high, variables are measured independently
rather than synergistically, and differential risk according to subpopulation is usually ignored
(Tesh 2000: 66). By monopolizing information about a potential hazard, the State can use the
EIA process for political advantage. As Bocking states (2004: 211), “When an agency or
industry is the principal source of information, it is able to shape issues, to release or withhold
information, or to choose to pursue or foreclose certain lines of research.” Information, in
other words, very much translates to power.
Eduardo Gudynas of the CLAES environmental research center warned in a 2004
essay about the return of the “chimney dreamers” (los soñadores de chimeneas), by which he
meant those who would return to a classic development model of favoring investment through
smokestack industries while displacing environmental concerns. The argument, which
Gudynas traces to what he characterizes as the typical 1960s and 1970s position of the left, is
that given the state of poverty and economic inequality the “luxury” of environmental
protection cannot be afforded. Environmental regulation itself, according to this argument, is
nothing but a tool of the imperialist North to hinder development in the South (Gudynas
2004).
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Despite Gudynas’ warnings of the return of the “chimney dreamers,” he fails to
recognize the extent to which Uruguayan political discourse, including that of the left, has
greened in recent years. The Vázquez administration has fully embraced the Uruguay Natural
campaign and an ideology of sustainable development. In his inauguration speech, Vázquez
spoke at length about his valorization of rural ecology and his passion for fishing. Both the
Batlle and Vázquez administrations have followed in general terms the tenets of ecological
modernization, attempting to reconcile economic growth with an environmental protection
directed by scientific management (Harvey 1998: 336). Ecological modernization is a
corollary to the sustainable development discourses of the 1987 Brundtland Report and the
Rio Earth Summit of 1992, which posit technocratic solutions to the perceived global
environmental crisis, along the lines of an “objectivist, physicalist, and fully naïve realism”
(Lash et al 1996: 6).
In another piece, Gudynas (2001) argues that EIA norms rely too exclusively on expert
input and causal proof, leaving out community-based perceptions of risk while drawing from
scientific studies that promote a narrow view of risk without taking into account the
uncertainty inherent to complex ecosystems. Gudynas charges the government has weakened
and “selectively interpreted” existing environmental regulations and norms such as the EIA
law: “We have many laws and decrees,” argues Gudynas, “but they are applied seldom and
poorly” (Gudynas 2004).
Pierri echoes Gudynas’ analysis of the EIA system in hypothesizing that the State,
after initial hesitation, favored the systematization of the EIA process as a means to reinforce
its hegemony and social control in the face of opposition from the growing environmental
movement, and to legitimize development projects that carried negative environmental
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impacts (Pierri 2002: 317). The State limited the EIA’s purview and obstructed its
preventative dimensions, while promoting a limited technocratic and biophysical view of the
environment, according to Pierri, ignoring social and historical dimensions (2002: 401-02). It
was able to accomplish this, she argues, due to a relatively weak environmental movement,
the lack of a political opposition that would take up the environmental cause, the
environment’s absence from organized labor and popular sector concerns, and the
technocentric and de-politicized stance of the academy (Pierri 2002: 402). The State’s
favoring of narrow economic interests over social and environmental concerns, furthermore,
makes it highly unlikely that it would negate an environmental authorization for an industry,
converting the EIA system into a formal transaction more than a true evaluation process. The
consultative and information sharing dimension of the EIA, Pierri continues, is meant to
control and neutralize potential opposition. In the rare instances that public consultations are
held, citizens are faced with narrowly technical descriptions of the project in question, and the
public forum serves as a way to channel and diffuse grievances (Pierri 2002: 401-04), much in
the same way I observed at the Sayago cement factory. Pierri concludes that the government
and industry at first vehemently opposed a public consultation component of the
environmental evaluation process, but soon realized its functional dimension as a way of coopting
or preempting environmental and political critiques while improving the image of the
State and the EIA process (Pierri 2002: 404), in short, of green veiling industrial practices.
Public prosecutor Enrique Viana argues there are “too many laws” in place, leaving
room for manipulation (Bacchetta 2005), and that the existing environmental laws have in fact
become a “trap.” 195
Viana characterizes the present as the third stage of the modern
195 Enrique Viana, public presentation at the II Encuentro Social sobre Contaminantes Químicos Ambientales,
IMM, November 3-4, 2005.
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environmental process in Uruguay. The first stage was initiated with the creation of the
MVOTMA Ministry in 1990. The second ranged from the mid 1990s to 2000, with the
creation of the Environmental Impact Law, the reform of Article 47 of the Constitution
declaring the environment of “general interest,” and the passing of the Law of Protected
Areas. The third and current stage consists of what Viana refers to as the “arrival of the
monsters,” or the multinational industries. The following stages of Viana’s model would
potentially include a fourth stage of “conflict” against the multinationals and the Uruguayan
government, and a fifth stage of organized “reaction” to these conflicts. If development takes
this course in Uruguay, Viana predicts, neither the precautionary nor the polluter pays
principals will have any applicability or relevance, as he asserts is currently the case.
Viana’s hypothesis is that the arrival of the “monsters” would not have happened had
the first and second stages not been in place. These first two stages effectively produced a
“landing strip” for the arrival of the multinationals, as he characterizes it. Viana argues that
given the “lessons learned” in Europe from decades of addressing the environmental crisis,
the European electorate and stockholders would not have allowed their corporations to settle
under just any conditions, or in a country without any environmental regulations. I would add
that in a post-Rio, Johannesburg and Kyoto world, blatant and public disregard for the
environment has become politically incorrect, particularly in Europe. Uruguay has
constructed a significant legal framework to regulate and manage the environment, but
without the capacity or resources for true oversight, leading to the “perfect scam,” in Viana’s
words. The Uruguayan State, through what Viana refers to (in a double pun) as its
environmental “paper Ministry,” does not have the capacity to manage environmental
emergencies, as he says became evident through the lead issue. Free trade and other
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multilateral investment agreements, meanwhile, set a host of guarantees for industries that
invest in Uruguay.
As noted in Chapter 2, Viana first became engaged in environmental issues with the
lead contamination lawsuit against Ancap, but it was the Dirox suit, he said, that changed his
way of thinking: 196
(Dirox) [i]s in my opinion the first industrial establishment, if not a huge industrial or
productive establishment, but something totally removed from what Uruguay was
accustomed to receive, that comes from Europe, that is introduced in a sense through
diplomatic channels that include international contractors from Italy… What I am
saying is I believe it was in some way a kind of pilot program for what would later
take place with the pulp mills. 197
Viana argues that the arrival of the multinational pulp mills represents a “before and after” for
Uruguayan environmentalism. The projected scope and volume of these industries dwarf
anything Uruguay has ever experienced, he said. These multinationals seek out large
expanses of land where in addition to tax exemption and other benefits, a desired isolation can
be guaranteed: “over there where Botnia is established, that’s Finland in Uruguay. They’re
not going to let anyone in if they don’t go through 400 doors and produce 400 forms of
identification.” 198
Any actually imposed conditions or limitations on production, furthermore,
would result in the industries’ departure: “The condition for arriving is precisely that they are
not asked for those [conditions].” 199
Once these industries leave, Viana stressed, the
196 The following comments are drawn from Enrique Viana, interview with author, November 22, 2005.
197 “A mi juicio es la primer establecimiento industrial, no es un gran establecimiento industrial, ni tampoco es
una gran producción pero es una cosa totalmente ajena a lo que Uruguay estaba acostumbrado a recibir, que
viene de Europa, que se introduce de alguna manera a través de gestiones diplomáticas incluso con contratados
internacionales respectivos con Italia, o sea que en alguna medida fue una especie de experiencia piloto digamos
para lo que a mi juicio se vendría después con las celulosas”.
198
“Ahí Botnia adonde está instalada, eso es Finlandia en el Uruguay. Ahí no van a dejar entrar a nadie si no
pasa 400 puertas y muestra 400 documentos”.
199 “La condición para instalarse es justamente que no se les piden esas cosas”.
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Uruguayan government (by law) will be responsible for the cleanup, a task it has neither the
means nor the capacity to manage.
Viana has an admittedly “paranoid vision” of the environmental processes underway
in Uruguay. He draws together the 2000 Law of Environmental Protection with the still
unregulated Law of Protected Areas and the drafted Law of Territorial Planning (Ley de
Ordenamiento Territorial) in what he says is a designed division of the country into
“productive” and ecologically-devastated areas on the one hand, with what he calls
“environmental museums” of protected areas left over to show what “Uruguay once was.”
The east coast tourist goldmines will be left relatively untouched, but the center of the country
will be transformed into a receptor of industrial waste from the large-scale industrial
establishments in the central and western parts of the country, as well as the capital. There
have already been several attempts to set up industrial waste facilities near the central town of
Durazno, he said, all of which have been rebuked by local residents (cf. Rodríguez 2004).
The more recent projects are to create municipal treatment facilities close to central cities, on
the surface a necessary endeavor to better manage domestic waste, but one that Viana warns
will leave the door ajar for constructing hazardous industrial waste plants.
The suspicions expressed by Viana transcend the Uruguayan government and the
multinationals. He charges that UN agencies such as the UNEP (PNUMA) 200 are “in a sense
playing the game for the European Community. In other words, to alleviate the contamination
problem for the European Community, in some way they are opening doors for them to
200 United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), or Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Medio Ambiente
(PNUMA).
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establish themselves here.” 201
Uruguayan officials receive these investments with open arms,
even justifying anticipated environmental degradation as falling within a reasonable “margin
of contamination,” given Uruguay’s relatively unindustrialized territory:
Some authorities from here have said that Uruguay has to give itself a margin… that
Uruguay has a margin for contamination. In a way there’s a comparison being made
with Europe. We can still cover that margin, instead of valorizing that margin, of
trying to maintain it as it is… 202
Viana considers this a “tragedy,” and equates this practice to “importing contamination.” 203
European countries are able to export contaminating industries beyond their pollutionsaturated
midst, while benefiting from the cheaply available land and water resources
Uruguay has to offer, which will inexorably become polluted and degraded.
The Uruguayan government under the Vázquez administration has fully promoted this
process, though as Viana put it: “I don’t know to what extent the State has been fooled, and to
what extent it has let itself be fooled.” The government at once offers assurances of
environmental respect and vigilance, while promoting an available “margin” of contamination
that is offered for the taking. Both positions are directed internally and externally, as a
justifying mechanism and marketing tool for civic compliance and foreign investment.
201 “…le están haciendo un poco el juego a la Comunidad Europea. Es decir, para aliviarle el problema a la
Comunidad Europea de contaminación, en alguna medida están abriendo las puertas para que se vengan a
instalarse acá”.
202 “Algunas de las autoridades de acá han dicho que el Uruguay tiene que darse un margen... que Uruguay tiene
un margen para contaminar. En cierta manera se está comparando con Europa. Ese margen todavía lo podemos
cubrir, en lugar de valorizar ese margen, de tratar de mantenerlo quieto...”
203 As noted above, Sub-Secretary Igorra later utilized this very argument in justifying the Stora Enso
development project.
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6.5 Conclusion
The rise of the Frente Amplio to national power and the intensity of the pulp mill controversy
have altered the terms and balance of debate on the environment in Uruguay. The significant
backlash against environmentalists directed by the highest echelons of the left, reveals a great
deal about Uruguayan society at the present. On the surface, it seems ironic that a major
campaign issue of the 2004 national elections regarded the water plebiscite to defend the state
enterprise OSE against privatization and to defend the nation’s hydrologic resources. With
64% of the vote, and through a campaign co-directed by the REDES environmental NGO,
pronouncements of environmental sensibility were made across the left political spectrum, by
the PIT-CNT, and by citizens alike (Santos et al 2006). Months later many of the same actors
were launching virulent attacks on environmentalists and defending the “right to pollute” the
waters of the Uruguay River.
What this apparent about face reveals, however, are the ways nature and the
environment are intricately intertwined with social and political processes, and how they are
used as vehicles for expressing “non-environmental” matters as well. The relationship of
ecological thought to other forms of social and political thought is complex. As David
Harvey’s writes (1996: 372), “All environmental-ecological arguments… are arguments about
society and, therefore, complex refractions of all sorts of struggles being waged in other
realms.” The water campaign was tied to questions of national sovereignty and was built on a
strong foundation of popular opposition to neoliberalism. The accompanying expressions of
environmental sensibility were in many ways seemingly innocuous and politically correct
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positions to take. This does not necessarily make this sensibility insincere, but its limits have
become evident in light of the pulp mill controversy.
Environmentalists have once again been coded as foreign, elitist, and trivial. One
satirist characterized the popular viewpoint that environmentalists’ primary interests are
“picking daisies by the highway” (Domínguez 2006). Prominent politicians have been less
kind, with José Mujica declaring “those who scream have never bent over the earth (…) They
scream and write on walls, and then they consume the sweat of others.” 204
Or of MPP
Representative Carlos Gamou who said environmentalists need to “listen a little more to the
insufferable sound of hungry children and stop fucking around with the sounds of little
birds.” 205
Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano summed up in a public act against the pulp
mills some of the difficulties in transcending the jobs versus environment debate:
In these days, in these times (…) we are living I think, not only the Frente and the
government but the entire country, very difficult times in which the government has
without a doubt inherited a mortgaged country, indebted up to its neck, whose margins
of sovereignty have constricted, have become ever more narrow. Therefore we are
living in a climate in which it is very difficult to say certain things. I understand it, I
understand that there could be sectors of the population like what’s happening with
those sectors of Fray Bentos who are happy with the idea that they are going to work.
This is a dismantled country, where work has unfortunately been transformed into a
privilege of the few. So the ecologists’ defense of the environment, of the earth, of the
water and also of human health seems to be of Martian origin. 206
204 “...los que más gritan jamás se han doblado sobre la tierra. (...) Gritan y escriben paredes, y después consumen
el sudor de otros”. Cited by REDES, email communication, February 10, 2006.
205 “les haría falta escuchar un poco más el ruido insoportable de niños con hambre y dejarse de joder con el
ruido de los pajaritos”. Cited by REDES, email communication, February 10, 2006.
206 Eduardo Galeano, public speech in the Plaza Libertad, Montevideo, May 27, 2005.
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Both the virulent attacks and the popular confusion over the motives and goals of
environmentalism have underscored the ultimately limited scope and fragile footing of
environmental thought and practice in Uruguay. The lead issue made environmental concerns
relevant for ordinary Uruguayans, and Uruguayans were “all” environmentalists during the
water plebiscite campaign. Now environmentalism for many is something foreign, best
represented by the “invading” Greenpeace activists who dared tread on sovereign territory.
Environmentalism has transformed from an innocuous and politically correct discourse to a
dangerous and subversive threat (an irony given the parallel between the official left’s
portrayals of environmentalists with right wing military discourses used during the
dictatorship to dismiss human rights activists as “subversive” and “foreign”).
Uruguayan political leaders and the elite are visibly nervous of environmentalism’s
radical and subversive potential. Newspaper editorials on the environment have become
commonplace, reflecting its “discursive explosion.” On the El País editorial pages, writers
repeatedly invoke the environment and promote visions of rational development and
sustainability. They warn, however, of the clash between “reason and irrationality” provoked
by environmental concerns, differentiate between a “healthy ecological spirit” and a “sick
environmentalism,” or continue to attribute to poverty the environment’s “principal enemy”
(El País, April 25, 2007; Stemmer 2007). These writers attempt to displace the relevance of
the environment from the everyday concerns of citizens, turning ecology into the defense of
aesthetic scenery or abstract global campaigns.
Looking beyond this debate, the anti-lead movement poses as perhaps a viable model
for building an environmental politics with broad popular appeal. The CVSP leaders are
mostly working class citizens and recognized as quintessentially Uruguayan. They became
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leaders organically, rising from popular assemblies and democratic consensus. Their lack of
economic ties to funding agencies, political parties or any other external financing source
underscores their independence and their popular image as genuine and altruistic activists.
For the CVSP and other grassroots environmental groups, the environment is of central
importance to social life, and the socio-economic and ecological crises are intimately
interconnected. Society and the environment will be degraded or improved together,
according to this thought. Environmental conflicts in this way have become a means to
protest neoliberal restructuring, deepening inequalities and the socio-political order. But the
potential strength of environmental immediacy is also a source of vulnerability, as shown in
this chapter. It is difficult to mobilize “broken” and dispirited people, and difficult to locate
hope and dignity amid unconscionable and perverse social misery.
Critics of anti-lead activists have said the squatters use environmentalism as a
convenient vehicle for pressing “other” demands (and are then presumably less “pure” in their
environmentalism). The critiques reveal profound differences in the ways nature is
conceptualized, its inherent malleability, and the continuing gulf in understanding between
grassroots activists and Uruguayan officialdom. Not all social movements can make the same
claims as the CVSP, but to the extent that other grassroots environmental justice movements
develop following similar models and are drawn from similar demographics,
environmentalism could further its grasp on Uruguayan social thought and political action.
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CHAPTER SEVEN: Conclusion: Environment, Crisis, and Fear
Uruguay el país de las posibilidades: exilio económico o carcel
Nuestros niños hoy están envenenados con plomo de las fábricas. Mañana con plomo
policial. Resistir
--Anarchist graffiti 207
Te tocó nacer en un rincón del fin del mundo,
en el medio de un banquete de serpientes y chacales.
Te tocó crecer en este tiempo, en este inmenso montón de soledades
Niño hijo de niños recién grandes, que el mundo envejece a los golpes.
Niño candilcito en la tormenta, puerta clandestina en la muralla.
Niño del fin del mundo te traigo los abrazos que precises,
mis últimas y pobres barricadas, todo un mundo por cambiar y el corazón en esta
retirada.(...)
Un niño nació/ En la ciudad/ De un cielo gris/ En tempestad/ un barrio, un país/ una gota en
el mar/ una latitud/ cuestión de azar/ un poco al sur/ un poco atrás/ un mapa al revés/ un
edén sin lugar
--Agarrate Catalina (2006) 208
207 “Uruguay- the country of possibilities: economic exile or prison”/ “Today our children are poisoned with lead
from the factories. Tomorrow with police lead. Resist.” I saw the first graffiti along Agraciada Avenue, and the
second down the street and around the block from my home in Nuevo París, both in 2004.
208 “You ended up being born in some corner of the end of the world/ in the middle of a banquet of serpents and
jackals/ You had to grow up in these times, in this immense mountain of solitude/ Child son of children barely
grown up, who the world hardens through blows./ Child little beacon in the storm/ hidden door in the wall/ Child
of the end of the world I bring you the embraces you need, my last and poor barricades, all of the world to
change and the heart in this farewell. (…) A child was born/ In the city/ Under a gray sky/ Stormy/ a
neighborhood, a country/ a drop in the sea/ a latitude/ a matter of chance/ a little to the south/ a little behind/ a
map upside down/ a placeless Eden”. The stanza is drawn from Agarrate Catalina’s retirada during Carnaval
2006. The retirada is the last movement of a murga performance, a summarizing conclusion that transmits the
essence of the message, and the promised hope of a future return.
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7.0 Journal entry: December 29, 2002 209
In the plane flying over Montevideo, I contemplate the landscape, the rooftops, the streets,
looking for clues - of the crisis, of the depression - material, spatial evidence. Can anguish be
projected through concrete? The “crisis-centric” discourse frames the thoughts of everyone I
talk to. It affects the poor, the rich, the middle class - and beyond the material-economic it is
found in sensibility, in beliefs, a life through the lens of crisis, omnipresent. Rafael tells me
there is a generalized consciousness that Uruguay has definitively changed, that the old
models and paradigms are bankrupt- the old nationalist-modernist model as well as the
globalizing model. McDonald’s is bankrupt. Ten restaurants closed in Montevideo, all of
which were ones that had expanded to the working class neighborhoods during the 1990s
phase of expansive globalization and triumphant consumerism. In Buenos Aires I see the
brightly lit and immaculate gas station with its smiling Tony the Tiger rip off spitting a
grotesque and impossible consumerist utopia in the face of insufferable misery; consumerism
as an invitation to steal, to echo Eduardo Galeano. This is the “post-globalization” erasomething
new, more tragic is happening. The illusory, fetishized future is gone. The magic
of consumerism dissolves - but into what?
The people do not see a way out. They see it worsening - it will get worse. Those
who can leave migrate - to Spain, to the United States - while others return from an even
worse off Argentina. Those who seek illicit means to survive sow fear among the population
and swell the ranks of the overcrowded prisons. Others find new paths and means to help
209 I wrote this a few days after arriving to Montevideo to visit family over the winter holiday, a year and a half
following the lead discoveries, and at the height of the economic crisis. I translated it from the original Spanish.
Rafael Bazzino is an anthropology colleague and dear friend. Years of conversations with Rafael about
anthropology, Uruguayan society, and radical futures have actively shaped my thoughts, reflections and analysis.
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themselves and each other. Rafael tells me that the crisis in Uruguay and Argentina has
sparked an effervescence from below (una fermentación)- by necessity, for lack of options.
The conditions have been created for a new space and a new reality, one distanced from the
system. The crisis has become a giant social laboratory. Anthropologists in both countries
are engaged (comprometidos), militant. They work with the needy, the poor, through NGOs,
through “action” anthropology (beyond “applied,” it represents a political strategy, a practice
of militancy). They are in solidarity with those suffering the crisis- they suffer it themselves.
They become apprenticed to alternative emerging models- innovative social movements, the
urban organic self-sufficient farms (huertas orgánicas), the popular kitchens (comedores), the
bartering networks, community radio, popular education, the Social Forums. Rafael says the
media speaks of “solidarity” as if it came out of nowhere, but it is the popular movements that
created it.
7.1 Crisis as a Social Laboratory
In this dissertation I have examined the creation of the lead poisoning epidemic and the socioeconomic
crisis under the same analytic lens. Neoliberal globalization fostered environmental
conditions that created a dual urban ecology of marketed sand beaches and ecological
splendor in eastern Montevideo and coastal Uruguay, while plunging vast sectors of the
population of western Montevideo and the forgotten hinterland into polluted landscapes of
poverty and marginality. Environmental practices and mechanisms have been used for both
social governance and grassroots resistance. In Montevideo, workers faced unemployment
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and informality. De-industrialization decimated entire neighborhoods, and families became
increasingly desperate. Popular environmentalism addressed the embodied suffering of
structural exclusion. It became one of the creative outlets of the “effervescence from below”
and the great social laboratory of crisis.
Carlos Pilo often said that “since the lead issue, environmentally things will never be
the same” in Uruguay. Indeed, since the lead issue, several high-profile environmental
conflicts have erupted in Uruguay. They have drawn widespread media attention, political
debate and popular concern. They have sparked environmental movements and in the
ongoing pulp mill case resulted in a bitter international diplomatic dispute. The CVSP has
helped some of these movements in strategizing and information gathering, or has been drawn
together with them in social forums. For others it has expressed solidarity with their
struggles. But its legacy may very well be more indirect. Though hard to gauge empirically,
it is likely that the public, media and political sensitization to environmental issues following
years of high profile attention to the lead conflict has served as a catalyst for other
environmental movements as well as a political and communicational foundation from which
to build. No groups need to start from “scratch,” as the environment is now being taken
seriously in Uruguay. There is a growing pool of “environmental” journalists, politicians
have been forced to engage with environmental issues, and public and private environmental
offices and organizations have built real life experience in engaging with environmental
concerns.
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7.2 Five Hypotheses about Environmentalism
Writing in the early 1990s, German environmentalist Wolfram Klein (1993) proposed five
hypotheses about the state of the environment and environmental consciousness and action in
Uruguay. Klein was writing in the wake of the Rio Earth Summit, and on the eve of the
broader greening of Uruguayan society. His first hypothesis states that the environment draws
a secondary or even tertiary interest in Uruguay. Klein observed the relative lack of
Uruguayan media coverage of environmental issues, with an emphasis on a global vision
“almost completely divorced from local reality.” He noted environmental dimensions were
almost entirely absent from radio or television commercials. Klein mentioned the lack of
environmental concerns in labor contracts and collective bargaining, the environment’s
absence from political party and electoral agendas, the limited resources dedicated to an
“environmental budget” at the state level, and the ignoring of the environment in education
programs (Klein 1993: 49). Klein’s second hypothesis was that Uruguay had serious
environmental problems, but that they were not yet as visible or tangible as in other countries.
The third hypothesis was that Uruguay was neither too poor nor too dependent to take
important environmental measures. The fourth stated that it was not only development but
also underdevelopment that led to serious environmental problems. The fifth and final
hypothesis argued that without significant state and societal reforms, it would be difficult to
make advances in the environmental arena (Klein 1993: 51-54).
Observing a decade and a half since Klein formulated his hypotheses, there have been
both important changes in Uruguayan environmentalism, as well as continuities with his
earlier observations. As discussed in this dissertation, Uruguayan society has in various ways
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“greened” over the past several years, leading to extensive media coverage, green corporate
marketing strategies, emergent environmental paradigms in science and medicine, the
inclusion of environmental concerns among labor unions and collective bargaining
agreements, the addition of the environment to political party platforms, and the creation of
municipal and state-level environmental institutional frameworks. Some of the greening has
taken the form of green veiling, however, as demonstrated in the previous chapter’s analysis
of corporate and political strategies of governance. The lead issue was both a reflection of
and a catalyst for these changes, forcing corporate and political responses and leading to what
until recently was the most extensive media coverage of a local environmental problem.
While environmental education initiatives have increased in recent years, much progress
needs to be made in terms of incorporating environmental sensibility in teacher training and
school curricula. As for the “environmental budget,” despite the expanding bureaucratic
frameworks, actual resources dedicated to the environment remain seriously deficient.
Klein’s second hypothesis of submerged and “invisible” environmental problems was
definitively eclipsed by the “explosion” of the lead issue, turning a once-invisible problem
into a tangible and embodied environmental catastrophe for Uruguayan society to reflect
upon. The third hypothesis of Uruguay’s ability but unwillingness to deal with environmental
problems was evidenced through the government’s initial swift action on the lead issue,
followed by its displacement one year later by the more strategically urgent hoof-and-mouth
epidemic affecting its cattle industry. The subsequent economic crisis buried effective State
action on the lead issue. The fourth hypotheses, as I have shown in Chapter Five, is true to an
extent but should be tempered given the tendency to causally conflate the lead problem with
poverty.
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As for Klein’s fifth hypothesis, calling on a reform of both the state and society in
order to achieve environmental advances, two comments are warranted. The first is that while
the State has significantly reformed and expanded in the environmental arena, we must be
mindful of the ways a “discursive explosion” (Foucault 1990) directed toward the
environment can be used as a managing and governing device of populations and social
conflicts. The second is to paraphrase Carlos Amorín’s observation in his early book on the
lead issue (2001), that in environmental struggles such as the lead conflict, civil society often
finds itself at the vanguard of political consciousness, leading the way and ahead of state
actors and the professional academy. In other words, society has in many ways “reformed”
itself environmentally in Klein’s positive and hopeful sense, but the state lags behind.
Uruguayan society has advanced environmentally by eclipsing some of the longstanding
barriers to achieving collective environmental action. Inter and intra-class alliances
have been formed along environmental issues, with the lead case presenting its most visible
and advanced form. The lead issue inspired solidarity among popular sectors and much of the
middle and upper classes. The CVSP and other anti-lead activist initiatives have been able to
successfully integrate labor and environmental concerns, making the protection against lead
contamination a bread and butter issue intimately tied to housing, health, quality of life and an
expanded notion of human rights. They have drawn together women and men, workers and
the unemployed, adults and children, and are engaged in an ongoing project to eclipse the
NIMBY and “militant particularist” (Harvey 1996) origins of the La Teja anti-lead movement.
For these advances to continue, environmental movements in Uruguay must promote an
integrative vision that is able to incorporate health, housing, economic conditions and quality
of life, along with biotic protection. Local struggles must be transformed into national and
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even transnational ones, drawing the support of NGOs, academic institutions, and political
representatives, as well as a sustained and sympathetic media exposure. These are not easy
tasks.
7.3 An Attack on Life Itself: The Socio-Symbolic Dimensions of Lead Poisoning
The lead poisoning epidemic in La Teja was always more than a health issue. CVSP activists
drew connections between economic conditions and the consequences of structural violence.
Lead contamination for La Teja activists and other residents symbolized the perceived
betrayals by the state and industry of the welfare of their families and community. Eclipsing
La Teja, lead contamination was able to encompass a myriad of processes and problems
concerning Uruguay in the new millennium: unemployment and poverty; deproletarianization
and informality; social exclusion, criminality and violence; 210 the
privatization of state enterprises and the bankruptcy of welfare services; 211 de-industrial urban
restructuring, environmental degradation, and socio-spatial inequality; crises in the housing,
health and education spheres; 212 the erosion of medical authority; 213 questions of political
210 Criminality and violence are widely considered a possible outcome of social exclusion, but in relation to lead
poisoning, the disease has been correlated with increased aggression, violence and criminal delinquency (cf.
Needleman et al 2002, 1996). This understanding was promoted in Uruguay among activists and some
professionals and officials.
211 The Batlle administration and several Colorado and Blanco factions supported the privatization of the OSE
(water) and ANCAP (oil refinery) state enterprises. A referendum in 2003 successfully blocked ANCAP’s
“association” with private foreign investors, and the 2004 plebiscite protected OSE from privatization.
Nevertheless, some politicians used the lead issue as a lobbying point for privatization, while most of the antilead
activists, as shown in Chapter Three, were caught in a “double bind” of wanting to protect state enterprises
from privatization while denouncing their role in contamination.
212 In addition to deficits in housing and critiques of the public health response to lead poisoning, many activists,
officials, and teachers realized the education system’s perpetual budget crises precluded an adequate attention to
the special educational needs of lead poisoned children. As a neurodevelopmental and neurobehavioral disease,
lead poisoning presents a broad range of problems and needs in children, from attention deficits, hyperactivity,
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epresentation and accountability and the rise of the political Left; and the consequences of
Uruguay’s economic insertion into a neoliberal capitalist world order. On a symbolic level in
La Teja and beyond, lead contamination served as a powerful metaphor, vehicle of protest,
and synthesis of everything perceived to have “gone wrong” in Uruguay.
Lead poisoning in this way acted as a “prism” (Fortun 2001: 354) refracting broader
social, environmental and political processes. As Anthony Oliver-Smith writes of
environmental disasters, the “fundamental features of a society and culture are laid bare in
stark relief,” posing existential questions and highlighting the workings of power in the
“social creation of vulnerability” (1996: 304, 314). In contrast to many natural disasters and
socio-environmental hazards, however, chronic lead poisoning is largely a “silent” disease.
Its subclinical manifestations often overlap with the symptoms of other diseases and
developmental problems, rendering it ambiguous and malleable as a political tool and social
metaphor.
The silence and “invisibility” of lead also acted as a powerful source of anxiety.
Although no population-wide epidemiological studies of lead poisoning were ever conducted
in Uruguay, much of the urban population understood that lead contamination could at least
potentially affect anyone. Lead contamination for many would provoke the “anthropological
shock” theorized by Beck, or the collapse of everyday knowledge and the assault and “loss of
sovereignty” over the senses (1995: 66). No one was entirely safe from this invisible hazard,
and its scientifically undetermined scope reinforced and assured its lurking potential. It was
aggression, lowered IQ, and other, often irreversible, cognitive effects (cf. Canfield et al 2004; Chiodo et al
2004).
213 The erosion of medical authority is arguably a long-term process in Uruguay (e.g. Belenguer 2004), but it
became salient in the multiple cases of people questioning their doctors and pediatricians over interpretations of
risk for lead poisoning, or in the demand for blood lead examinations. See below for more detail.
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feared yet unknowable, graphically portrayed by media images of destitute and sickened
squatters, but dangerously and uncomfortably proximate.
Anxiety extended to officials and scientists as well. Since the universal sources of
lead exposure from gasoline, consumer products and diffuse industrial emissions meant that
the base lead level of the urban population hovered around the CDC and WHO lead poisoning
threshold, officials engaged in strategies of denial, risk displacement, and dismissive
resignation. In the most consequential move to delimit the parameters of risk, the Inter-
Institutional Commission on Lead established an official protocol, as discussed in Chapter
Four, raising the threshold defining poisoning and the pathways of exposure, the socio-spatial
mapping of risk, and causally linking lead poisoning to poverty.
As discussed in this dissertation, officials and scientists repeatedly expressed to the
press and in interviews the problem we “would” have if the lead poisoning threshold were
aligned with that of the WHO and CDC. The underlying argument was that the constraints of
Uruguayan “reality” meant it could not afford the strict controls exercised in the United States
and other countries. Officials would state to concerned parents, “we are all contaminated,”
dismissing the risk and consequences of lead exposure for the general population by making
its experience routine and banal. An often-accompanying statement imagined what the
consequences “would” or “could” be if the standards were set lower. “We would all be
contaminated,” officials said, thereby displacing the scope of risk from certain strata (the
middle and upper classes) or rendering it meaningless through the whim of linguistic choice
and the pen of bureaucratic decree.
Because lead poisoning had never been publicly acknowledged as an epidemic or
serious environmental health problem in Uruguay, its “discovery” in 2001 for La Teja
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esidents and others gave it the character of an invasive force, a material-symbolic object with
agency. Newspaper headlines reported of lead contamination “arriving to” or “reaching” new
areas of the city and country. Contagion fears prompted schoolteachers and parents to keep
their children away from their “infected” peers. As living conditions deteriorated in Uruguay,
bodies fell under attack by the menacing invasion of lead. From the human body, lead’s
potential effects spiraled outward to the family, the community and the body politic. Altering
human bodily integrity and its nature (by significantly modifying health and behavior), it
threatened to undermine other social forms from within. The invasive character of lead
heightened the anxiety of officials and everyday actors, provoking either defensive responses
or calls to action. In contrast to the host of long-term problems suffered by Uruguayans, lead
poisoning was a “new” disease that seemingly “fell from the sky.” Added to the familiar list
of grave problems afflicting Uruguayan society and the working class and poor in particular,
lead contamination represented a “last straw” that enhanced its shock value and provoked a
visceral response.
The universal and gendered dimensions of lead poisoning’s pattern of victimization
intensified its symbolic violence. Activists, the media and officials alike identified children
and mothers as the primary victims. Women played fundamental roles in the leadership and
rank and file of the anti-lead movement, and women and children were prominently cast as
protagonists in media coverage of lead poisoning. The deep symbolic meaning attached to a
violation of children’s innocence and “sacred” motherhood, the very fabric of the family and
the future of society, served as stand-ins for a nation gone astray. The anti-lead movement
strategically appropriated this symbolism in calls for public solidarity and government action,
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in similar ways to the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo in Argentina (cf. Navarro 1989). 214
The
CVSP’s call to action was rooted in the “overload of possible meanings” associated with
place, with its power of drawing together “all the ways of knowing (sight, sound, smell, touch,
and taste)” (Hayden 1995: 18). The assault on the senses provoked by a metal poison that
could potentially contaminate the very air we breathe, the food consumed, and the milk of
mothers represented symbolically the nation’s lost innocence and an attack on life itself.
This dissertation draws from and contributes to the environmental, critical medical,
urban, and political anthropology sub-fields, in addition to the interdisciplinary fields of urban
studies, science and technology studies, social movement studies, political ecology, and Latin
American studies. Sylvia Noble Tesh (2000: 48) argues that environmental events have “no
intrinsic social or political meaning,” “Nor have they any intrinsic relation to one another.”
“Culture,” in a broad sense, affects what science and society “sees” (Tesh 2000: 62). The lead
poisoning epidemic became visible in Uruguay due in large part to the development of an
environmental frame across social and scientific realms, or the greening of Uruguayan
society. The coming together of these various processes and social interests laid the
foundation for the “problematization” of lead as a social problem and object of concern
(Foucault 1990; Hayden 2003; Rabinow 2003). Lead, exhibiting a non-human agency,
became a new “object of calculation,” created new expertise and provoked the transformation
of existing social arrangements, knowledge regimes, and institutions (Mitchell 2002: 4, 83).
Lead poisoning in Uruguay produced what Sheila Jasanoff refers to as a “civic
dislocation,” or the “breakdown in trust between authorities and the public” (cited in Bocking
214 Some important differences, however, are that the Madres are an all-women organization that first mobilized
for human rights by turning the military’s gendered ideology (sacredness of the mother and family) against them,
whereas the anti-lead movement is made up of both women and men and draws from more generalized, and
probably slightly different, ideologies of gender and the family in Uruguay.
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2004: 156). My dissertation contributes to critiques of science that discuss the way politics
are built into scientific testing regimes, and how risk analysis tends to reflect the needs and
values of powerful interest groups, “enforces a particular way of looking at risks,” and rules
out “other ways of thinking about hazards” (Bocking 2004: 148; see also Jasanoff 2005; Tesh
2000). As I showed in this dissertation, Uruguayan state scientists engaged in complex forms
of “boundary work” and “acts of purification” to maintain the fiction of a disinterested, valuefree
science, even while supporting an official intervention protocol based on highly
politicized and pragmatic criteria (Bocking 2004; Latour 1993). I sought to go beyond
critiques of the politics of scientific knowledge production, however, in analyzing
ethnographically the ethical dilemmas of scientific actors as they creatively adapted tools and
paradigms to what was construed as a largely inchoate problem (Fortun and Fortun 2005). In
analyzing the way state, scientific and grassroots actors employed trans-locally circulating
discourses and expertise to engage a disease that is at once ancient and “new,” the dissertation
complicates notions of an evolutionary and “diffusionist” science that travels neatly from the
developed world to the global South (Armus 2003). Knowledge instead is dynamically
engaged with and embedded in power and circulates in complex ways within and between
borders. The dissertation contributes to a science studies (STS) with a starting point in the
global periphery, addressing a partial deficit in an otherwise promising field that tends to
focus on vanguardist, cutting edge biotechnologies and “emergent ethnographic subjects”
based in the global centers of power (e.g. Haraway 1991, 1997; Jasanoff 2005; Maurer 2005;
Ong and Collier 2005; Rabinow 1999).
Disasters and environmental crises lay “bare in stark relief” the workings of society
(Oliver-Smith 1996). They make explicit the “operating myths” of social institutions (Harper
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2005: 221) and the “deeper social grammar of a people” (Oliver-Smith and Hoffman 2002:
10). Environmental health disasters like lead poisoning should be analyzed as “processual
phenomena rather than events,” in other words, as characterized by a past, a present and a
future (Oliver-Smith and Hoffman 2002: 3, 12), rather than as “falling from the sky” as lead
poisoning was so often characterized in Uruguay. Disasters also tend to “reinforce existing
social fault lines,” intensifying or aggravating inequalities and vulnerability (Das 2006), and
drawing boundaries between “sanitary citizens” and “unsanitary subjects” (Briggs 2004).
Chapter Five addressed how lead poisoning provoked contagion fears and channeled
“othering” mechanisms, often formulated in terms of essentialized, “cultural” attributes. This
“culturalism” is reminiscent of “culture of poverty” discourse (Fassin 2004a; Lewis 1966),
and revisits debates about urban marginality that were prevalent in Latin America during the
1960s and 1970s (e.g. Germani 1980; Perlman 1976; Quijano 1977). Culturalist discourses
such as those employed in Uruguay to characterize the victims of lead poisoning further
stigmatize the already “out of place” and symbolically polluted extreme poor living in squatter
settlements. Linking disease to “culture” facilitates the placing of blame on the behaviors and
values of the poor and on their essentialized cultural attributes (Douglas 1966).
But disasters also “create community” (Fortun 2001: 10). In Uruguay, a new
arrangement of actors and institutions mobilized around the lead issue. Individuals claimed
rights based on bureaucratically determined health and medical criteria. Those who state
actors and health professionals deemed as “lead poisoned” could claim welfare rights, thereby
drawing on a “biologically” grounded form of citizenship (cf. Fassin and d’Halluin 2005;
Nguyen 2005; Petryna 2002; Rose 2001).
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The coming together of a “community” of lead victims was made possible in large part
by the strength of La Teja place identity and its rich histories of struggle. La Teja place
identity has arguably been established for over a century, but there are particularities to the
contemporary world that reinforce place and other forms of identity politics. Early (and much
ongoing) theorizing of globalization effaced the significance of place, characterizing it as
anachronistic and static, a bounded space of tradition and authenticity. Global forces and
“flows” were to result in processes of “deterritorialization” where place (and the state itself)
would inevitably melt into the background (cf. Appadurai 1996; Hannerz 1996; Ong 1999) or
be substituted by the proliferation of anonymous “non-places” (Augé 1992). Critical
geographers and anthropologists have turned attention back to place, however, complicating
dualistic constructions of place and space, and the local and the global, and arguing instead
that both “place-making” and global “force-making” are mutually constituted (Gregory 2007;
Gupta and Ferguson 1996; Swyngedouw 1997; Tsing 2000, 2005).
7.4 Conclusion: Environmentalism and the Politics of Fear
The anti-lead movement has responded to, built upon, and led the way for a growing wave of
grassroots forms of environmentalism in Uruguay. The CVSP has promoted an integrative
vision of the environment, one that fuses ecological and social forms of justice in the realms
of work, home, and public space. At the vanguard of the movement in many ways are the
children themselves, who are acting as “multipliers” and promoting new definitions and
consciousness of environmental issues in La Teja and across Montevideo and the country.
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Workers are also forging new arenas of struggle, transcending the jobs versus environment
dichotomy, despite the significant challenges of an ongoing economic crisis, continuing
worker repression, and the environmental backlash from the pulp mill conflict. Carlos Pilo in
his speeches and media interviews promotes and theorizes a grassroots vision of sustainability
in which employment and environmental protection are no longer antithetical. Germinal
Azaretto evocatively spoke of his “inevitable” path towards environmentalism after years of
working class militancy, envisioning an alliance of environmental and labor concerns within
the popular sectors of society.
These workers, children and neighbors have acted within a context of prolonged
economic decline, deindustrialization, and the complex processes of “double polarization”
that have afflicted Uruguay in recent decades (Friedman 2003). The cost crisis of capitalism
has hit hard in La Teja and elsewhere, resulting in various and painful forms of structural
violence and embodied suffering. The workers of Fanaesa, Radesca, ALUR, tanneries, and
cement factories evidence the deleterious health impacts of massive industrial pollution and
environmental neglect. Multinational corporations such as Stoppani, Botnia, Ence and Stora
Enso have become players in this environmental picture as well. They have taken advantage
of a formal environmental legal and political framework that hides or veils the lax
enforcement of regulations, with the granting of generous incentives and a guaranteed cheap
pool of labor and resources, to establish themselves in Uruguay and present new
environmental health risks through their massive and unprecedented investments. They
threaten the Uruguay Natural project (at least in its stated goals) by converting the vast
undeveloped expanses of countryside into a toxic “sink” for Northern waste. Polluting
industries are increasingly facing resistance from organized civil society, however, as
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evidenced in the multiple and burgeoning environmental conflicts of the past fifteen years and
the emergence of more comprehensive environmental justice movements, with the CVSP
perhaps at the forefront of these struggles.
The anti-lead and other environmental grassroots movements have operated within
recently established environmental frameworks while serving as a catalyst for the expansion
of municipal and state environmental bureaucracies and environmental spaces across society.
Part of the broad appeal of these environmental movements has been their steadfast political
independence. That the majority of activists have left-leaning political ideologies is no secret,
however. The ability to maintain their independence under conditions in which the Frente
Amplio has amassed political hegemony will pose a severe test. Grassroots environmentalism
may also be positioned, however, to become one of the few spaces of left criticism against the
government. Many environmentalists voted for the Frente Amplio and celebrated their
landslide victory in the 2004 national elections, hoping among other things that a
“progressive” victory would translate into progressive environmental policies. Since the
“chimney dreamers” of the old left took power, however, environmentalists have faced a
series of disenchantments and betrayals.
Referring to the ongoing Dirox case, Prosecutor Viana said that people currently are
very afraid:
The people picketed, made a bunch of noise against this and that, but when they
thought that the Frente Amplio was going to take power, they would say ‘when the
Frente comes they’ll be on our side, we’re going to get what we want’. It turns out
that the change in government happened and the Frente placed itself on the other side,
on the side of industry. (…) And when I realized this I saw that I had the industry
enemy that is already powerful and moves a lot of money and interests, and on top of
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that I had the State that I thought would be behind me. That’s the situation that
provokes fear in people. 215
Under this scenario, no one is left to protect the dissenters. Viana emphasized the social
proximity inherent in a small country like Uruguay: “Here we’re so few, it’s so easy to pick
out someone and point a finger at them and put them on a blacklist. The people are very
afraid of that. They’re afraid of remaining let’s say out of focus, of remaining isolated in
what’s already a very solitary struggle.” 216
Two developments in early 2006 anticipate the challenges and conflicting tendencies of
Uruguayan environmentalism. On the one hand, a pair of editorials in the El País newspaper
dusted off the long-buried specter of nuclear energy (El Páis, February 18, 2006; Maggi
2006). Employing what might be termed a “post-environmentalist” line and taking advantage
of a political climate in which environmentalists have been pushed onto the defensive, one
editorial argued that given the global crisis of nature and the threat of the loss of sovereignty
posed by fossil fuel dependency, the use of alternate and “clean” sources of energy should be
seriously explored. Wind and solar energy are appropriate and promising technologies for
Uruguay, the editorial stated, but nuclear technology, the “lesser evil,” could provide energy
self-sufficiency and environmental security (cf. Ferradás 2004). The editorials draw from the
language of global environmentalism, arguing for “clean fuels” to mitigate the global
215 “Que la gente hacía pancartas, hacía bochinches contra esto, contra el otro pero cuando se pensaba que el
Frente Amplio venía como gobierno, entonces “cuando venga el Frente nos van a dar la razón, vamos a
conseguir lo que queremos”. Resulta que se produce el cambio de gobierno y el Frente se coloca del otro lado y
se coloca al lado de la empresa. (...) Y cuando me doy cuenta de eso veo que tengo de enemigo a la industria
que ya es poderosa, y mueve plata y mueve una cantidad de intereses, y encima tengo al Estado que yo pensé que
iba a estar atrás mío. Esa situación es la que provoca miedo en la gente”. (Interview with Enrique Viana,
November 22, 2005).
216 “Acá somos tan pocos, que es fácil señalarlo con el dedo y apuntarlo y ponerlo en una lista negra. La gente
tiene mucho miedo a eso. Tiene mucho miedo a quedar digamos fuera de foco, a quedar muy solitaria en una
lucha muy solitaria que en los hechos lo es”.
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warming crisis. They play down the potential of a devastating nuclear reactor accident,
arguing to keep faith in the experts and the advance of new and safe technology. They do not
mention the unresolved problems of nuclear waste disposal, or what communities in the
vicinity of the reactors and the disposal sites would think of this plan. Perhaps the authors
have in mind Uruguay’s “environmental margin,” or the possibility of using its countryside as
a permanent storage basin for toxic waste.
Another news flash in early 2006 on the other hand perhaps serves as a harbinger of
the undermining of the state’s attempts at green governance. The new world sustainability
rankings were published, with the Vázquez administration expectant of a repeat 3 rd place
performance. It would have served yet again as an effective political tool, in the midst of the
diplomatic standoff with Argentina, to emphasize world recognition of the environmental
stewardship of the “natural country.” Instead, Uruguayan officials were left searching for
explanations at the news that Uruguay had dropped out of the ranking entirely. The media
reported the Earth Institute researchers had not received all of the requested information for
the survey. Specifically missing was information related to the forestry industry (El País,
January 25, 2006). Perhaps it was only a “mix up,” as Environment Sub-Secretary Igorra
stated to the media, but perhaps it represents something more significant: that the carefully
constructed and marketed image of a green and natural Uruguay rests on contested principles
and exhibits a vulnerable side as well.
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APPENDIX A: Time Line of Lead Poisoning Epidemic
2000
August First case of lead poisoning detected in La Teja
November Two lead poisoning cases in La Teja formally denounced to the CCZ 14.
December Spreading of lead alert among neighbors of La Teja; popular assemblies draw
hundreds
2001
February
March
April
May
June
Amorín publishes Brecha articles; “explosion” of lead issue in national media
Founding of the CVSP (ad-hoc, non-legal status); weekly Sunday meetings at
Club Artigas, La Teja
Uruguayan Network of Environmental NGOs calls on State to declare lead a
“general emergency,” denounces State’s slow response to problem, lack of
support for victims, calls for serious measures
New cases of lead poisoning in La Teja: child found with BLL of 47 µg/dl,
State offers relocation for family; another 9 year old with 55 µg/dl
CVSP denounces position of State to not declare a general emergency
Armed forces provide aerial maps of La Teja spanning 54 years; search for
land and soil movements.
Inter-Institutional Commission on Lead formed by MSP, with Dr. Eduardo
Touyá as chair; CVSP invited to participate; six specialized mobile lead
poisoning clinics set up across Montevideo
Lead poisoning clinic opens at Pereira Rossell Maternity Hospital,
Montevideo; transportation provided for patients by IMM, INAME and SAEE
Vice-President Luis Hierro López denounces 6,822 cases of lead poisoning,
400 “critical”; promises housing relocation for affected families
MSP epidemiological study of La Teja reveals 65% of children tested with
“elevated” blood lead levels; 40% (4,430) 10-14 µg/dl, 16% (1,080) 15-19
µg/dl, 7.6% (200) 20-44 µg/dl; 2 children > 44 µg/dl
New cases of lead poisoning discovered in Canelones Department; links to
ALUR metal cable and wire factory
IMM prohibits use of pipes, solder, and other water connections made with
lead in domestic and public places
Senate Environmental Commission calls on funds to conduct a national study
of blood lead levels (June: Economy Ministry answers funds are insufficient)
Housing Minister Carlos Cat announces the construction of 100 new homes for
relocated families, 50 families to be relocated form Rodolfo Rincón settlement
A break-off sector of the CVSP aligned with the radical Corriente de Izquierda
party of the Frente Amplio initiates hunger strike
Leticia Cabrera, one of the early founders of the CVSP, renounces
involvement following accusation she was seeking personal political gain
First Environment Day celebration in La Teja at the Club Artigas, La Teja;
children’s poems, article on lead published by writer Eduardo Galeano,
chemist’s report all read; Reina de La Teja murga sings; popular kitchen offers
food to children and families; CVSP issues open letter to the nation
CVSP begins working with State Prosecutor Oscar Peri Valdez; information
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July
August
September
October
December
2002
January
February
requested about 40 industries in La Teja, Nuevo Paris and Belvedere
EP-FA Representatives present 3 legislative acts to combat lead: requiring a
lead exam as mandatory to receive a health card; umbilical cord tests on all
newborns; prohibition of leaded gasoline, other lead products
Senate calls on Execute Branch to lower unleaded gasoline prices to stimulate
consumption
College of Sciences withdraws from the Inter-Institutional Commission, citing
lack of seriousness and commitment on the part of the Commission, and $US
100,000 debt from MSP for blood analyses
CVSP installs stand for the Semana Criolla rural exposition, Montevideo;
participation in neighborhood assemblies dwindling
CVSP meets with Senate Public Health Commission
Lead contamination detected in soils of Primus settlement, two La Teja
schools, and (over several months) the Paso Molino, Belvedere, Nuevo Paris,
Maroñas, Villa Viarritz, Paso de la Arena, Camino Maldonado, and Tres
Cruces neighborhoods
Former Radesca S.A. battery workers denounce years of dumping of battery
waste along Miguelete River banks, decades of illness and deaths from
occupational exposure, and contamination of Peñarol neighborhood
surrounding factory
CVSP abandons Inter-Institutional Commission, citing disrespect, paternalism,
lack of information sharing, few concrete results
Prosecutor Enrique Viana files lawsuit against ANCAP, MVOTMA, and IMM
CVSP, neighbors of Rodolfo Rincón and Cañada Victoria propose plan to
clean up and recover river bank areas and settlements with aide of the military,
MVOTMA and IMM; Inlasa cannot be cleaned because army equipment is
either too large or has been shipped to UN peacekeeping mission in the Congo
Rodolfo Rincón: 24 (out of 120) families declare refusal to be relocated
ANCAP offers voluntary phaseout of leaded gasoline by 2004, in exchange for
dismissal of lawsuit (Viana refuses); ANCAP maintains it has no
responsibility in contamination
Chamber of Commerce declares opposition to Nora Castro legislation to make
lead exam mandatory in health cards of workers of relevant industries
First two families relocated from La Teja; 46 families of the Primus settlement
are promised relocation
Agronomy College (University of the Republic) announces partnership with
IMM for soil remediation pilot program in La Teja utilizing phosphorousbased
treatment
Colorado Party municipal Representative (edil) Cristina Ferro denounces
contamination in Malvín Norte (eastern Montevideo) at cooperative housing
site close to former foundry, claims IMM negligence.
New cases of lead poisoning in Montevideo: 25 de Agosto squatter settlement
highly contaminated, 400 blood lead exams conducted; 20 month old girl with
65 µg/dl, 2 year old girl with 55 µg/dl; principal source is battery waste from
years of dumping by Radesca S.A.
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March
May
June
July
October
November
2003
January
March
April
Colorado ediles propose creation of office with IMM to centralize complaints
and inform and advise those concerned about lead, EP-FA supports initiative
CVSP proclamation marking 1 year anniversary of lead poisoning discovery;
launching of “National Movement for Life and Against Lead,” coordinating
actions with groups of the interior (short lived project)
128 families of lead contaminated squatter settlements in Montevideo
promised relocation to government housing
Civil suit filed against Radesca S.A. battery factory in Montevideo for
responsibility in contamination of 25 de Agosto squatter settlement
2 nd Annual Environment Day celebration in La Teja, “For the kids, for life,
and against lead.” Transmitted live on El Puente FM community radio, with
music, informative texts, workshops and food. Representatives Nora Castro,
Martín Ponce de León (both La Teja) and Ramón Legnani (Santa Lucía,
Canelones Deparment) of the EP-FA explain lead-related legislation; Legnani
publishes and presents pamphlet, “Uruguay: with lead in your body”
Prosecutor Enrique Viana initiates proceedings in public lawsuit against
ANCAP, MVOTMA and IMM
Lower Chamber of Parliament approves umbilical cord lead testing bill (never
approved in Senate)
Environmental group Modear denounces 19 years of environmental
contamination, including lead, from Fanaesa battery factory in Rosario,
Colonia Department, attributes 24 worker deaths to contamination.
Executive decree creates the “National Commission of Vigilance and
Prevention of the Adverse Effects on Human Health from Chemical
Environmental Contaminants.” Former Inter-Institutional Commission on
Lead formally disbanded; specialized mobile lead poisoning treatment clinics
reduced in Montevideo from six to two.
MSP announces national epidemiological study of lead poisoning, definition
of parameters and sampling protocol (never conducted); calls on ANCAP to
cease leaded gasoline production and OSE to lower allowable lead levels in
drinking water; declares norms to control paints and toys containing lead;
establishes a protocol of “deep intervention” for children under the age of 15
with BLLs of 19.5 µg/dl or higher, other forms of intervention for “everyone”
with lead; reports 375 houses were examined for lead contamination in 2001;
recommends “global” solutions for Primus, Rodolfo Rincón and Inlasa
settlements
107 of 343 children tested at 25 de Agosto confirmed with BLLs between 15-
34 µg/dl; 5 > 35 µg/dl
Aramis Latchinian becomes new National Director of DINAMA, denounces
“nothing” had been done about lead for months, announces audits of
industries, suspends operations at Dirox plant, San José Department for
chromium contamination
Ediles of Colonia Department request information from DINAMA on
contamination in Rosario
Only 25 of 128 families promised relocation have been moved; MVOTMA
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June
July
August
2004
January
March
April
June
July
September
October
November
Minister Saúl Irureta promises compliance within the next month; Housing
Director José Camarda pushes for action, meets with La Teja residents and
CVSP; Carlos Pilo denounces difficulties in transportation to lead clinic; new
families move in to Inlasa settlement after several are relocated
Conflict between MVOTMA and IMM over latter’s purchase of land for
housing relocation when it is discovered with high levels of lead
contamination
Executive decree to regulate production and disposal of car batteries (still
unapplied)
La Teja 3 Environment Day celebration, with increased participation of social
organizations, unions and community media, over 600 children attend
José Camarda resigns as Housing Director
Lead contamination discovered in Villa Española neighborhood (CCZ 7),
foundry and factory emissions suspected
New lead poisoning cases: Cerro neighborhood settlements (12 cases), child in
Cantera del Zorro settlement with 49 µg/dl
Child in 25 de Agosto discovered with 56 µg/dl
Lead poisoning clinic pediatricians threaten strike over threats of closure and
lack of institutional support
Controversy hits media over use of Squalene dietary iron supplement at lead
clinic (for assistance in removal of heavy metals from body); shipment from
Korea held up at customs, accusations leveled on clinic of “experimenting” on
children
ANCAP eliminates leaded gasoline production and distribution
La Teja 4 Environment Day celebration
Prosecutor Oscar Peri-Valdez suspended indefinitely, inquiry into corruption
charges at behest of Education and Culture Minister Leonardo Guzmán
National Commission chair Jacqueline Ponzo of MSP announces national
epidemiological study within six months (never conducted)
First major collective housing relocation: over 90 families from Rodolfo
Rincón relocated to government housing in Sayago Norte; R. Rincón razed
1 st Social Encounter on Lead: “Impacts and Responses to Lead Contamination
in Uruguay,” held at the IMM, sponsored and organized by lead poisoning
clinic (CHPR) and CVSP; over 200 people attend
Lead contamination in La Manchega settlement next to Presidential Palace;
total of 19 Montevideo squatter settlements confirmed with lead contamination
College of Chemistry announces end of blood lead exam analyses due to lack
of funds and back pay owed by MSP; action supported by lead clinic and
CVSP
New public scandal over discovery of informal metals smelting in the
radiology section of the CHPR, close to lead poisoning clinic and next to
playground; homemade x-ray shields use alloy containing 30% lead
New lead poisoning and contamination discoveries in Santa Lucía, Canelones
Department; metallurgy and battery factory emissions and dumping suspected
ANCAP acquitted in lawsuit over lead contamination in La Teja; Judge José
326

December
2005
January
March
June
July
August
November
Lobelcho overturns earlier ruling
Lead poisoning clinic and CVSP denounce “looting” of clinic; missing
furniture and equipment; formal complaint filed
Lead clinic and CVSP organize Christmas Party held at clinic, celebrate four
years of partnership, over 100 children and parents attend
CVSP plans “Local Antenna of Socio-Environmental Risk Detection and
Prevention” project; initiates legal transformation into formal “civil
association” status
Latchinian resigns as DINAMA Director, citing “personal reasons”; Andrés
Saizar takes post
New lead poisoning cases in Paso de las Duranas settlement (next to 25 de
Agosto): children with 64.8, 41.5, 40.7, and 30.5 µg/dl.
President Tabaré Vázquez (EP-FA-NM) takes power; CVSP meets with
representatives of newly formed Ministry of Social Development, later
collaborate on popular environmental education initiatives
La Teja 5 Environment Day celebration: Local Antenna project officially
launched by CVSP
Rift between lead poisoning clinic and CVSP: CVSP asks pediatricians to
“step aside” from direct involvement, citing personal and methodological
differences
2 nd major housing relocation phase completed: 25 de Agosto settlement razed
and residents relocated to government housing on land across the avenue;
Inlasa settlement razed and residents relocated
2 nd Social Forum on Environmental Chemical Contaminants, held at the IMM
and co-organized by CVSP, Goethe Institute and Rel-UITA; lead clinic does
not participate, over 200 attend
327

APPENDIX B: Environmental Legislation in Uruguay
National laws:
• The Fauna Law of 1895 and 1906
• National Park System Law of 1927 and 1937
• Municipal Law of 1935 protecting Native Flora
Decrees:
Several issued during the 1960s and the 1970s, protecting water resources (1967, 1978, 1979),
national areas of “interest” (Cabo Polonio, Aguas Dulces, Laguna Castillos 1966, and the José
Ignacio, Garzón, and Rocha Lagoons in 1977), and to control pesticide use and
commercialization (1968, 1977; Mangeney 1993).
Other important laws and codes since the 1970s include:
• The Water Code of 1978
• Conservation of Soils and Water Law of 1981
• Environmental Impact Law of 1994
• Dangerous Waste Law of 1999
• Protected Areas Law of 2000
International Conventions and Treaties:
• Washington Convention of 1969 protecting flora, fauna and natural areas in the
Americas
328

• The United Nations Climate Change Convention, an extension of the 1972 Stockholm
convention (ratified by Uruguay in 1991)
• 1974 CITES convention on the commercialization of threatened species
• 1982 Ramsar convention protecting humid zones
• 1988 Vienna Convention against ozone depletion
• 1989 Bonn convention on the conservation of migratory species
• Rio Earth Summit of 1992 convention (ratified in 1994)
• United Nations Convention on Climate Change (1994)
• Kyoto protocol (Uruguay was the 32 nd country to sign in 2001)
• Basil Convention on the transportation of dangerous toxic substances (1989); Uruguay
selected as a “coordinating center” for Latin America and the Caribbean
• Rotterdam Convention of 1998 regulating information on chemical products (signed
but as of 2001 still not ratified by Uruguay)
• 2001 Stockholm Convention on persistent organic compounds (ratified in 2001)
Sources:
Agostini 2001; Cousillas 2001; Manganey 1993
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