Sacrifice zones and invisible sufferings. The case of Nonogasta, La Rioja Province, Argentina

Abstract

The notion of “sacrifice zone” is an interesting theoretical category to address the new face-forms of inequalities caused by socio-environmental disasters such as the one we observed in Nonogasta (northwestern Argentina), where a leather industry is producing a real socio-environmental tragedy. As a “witness case”, in that community, and in a double movement of modern institutions, the sacrifice and suffering of the inhabitants and territory are legitimized, while they are made invisible.

We appeal to critical thinking to address this category, inscribing it in the global-extraterritorial and institutional logics that, in Nonogasta, are expressed in the invisibility of the suffering of its inhabitants and territory, as happens in other places in the Global South, where we locate Latin America. From critical thinking, we propose to extend the notion of “sacrifice zones”, reinterpreting it from the logics of invisibility of sacrifice and contested by the resistance of local inhabitants.