“A slow death”. Violence and care in the context of sacrifice zones for banana exploitation

Abstract

We analyze the territories of banana exploitation in Ecuador as zones of sacrifice, which operate as a palimpsest of multiple violences deployed on the bodies-territories (Barreda and Navarro, 2022) as a result of the processes of capitalist accumulation on an expanded scale. In such a territorial framework, dynamics of “slow violence” (Nixon, 2011) overlap with forms of direct violence that interweave generating destruction and devastation of the labor force and nature, at the same time as care practices that gather community and ancestral knowledge and tend to reconstitute them. From the processes of agroindustrial advancement in Ecuador, and especially the banana industry, which reinforces the primary character of the economy and the colonial territorial legacy of the plantation model, it is possible to identify a dynamic of repatriarcalization of the territories that is in permanent configuration. The devastation of the environment and of the labor force are two processes of historical dispossession that intertwine, generating palimpsests of violence towards the body-territories, but at the same time, generate practices of care and attention through new community networks that tend to rebuild the fabric of life. This research was conducted on the basis of a qualitative and ethnographic methodology that articulated both field work through interviews and tours of the territory as well as secondary sources. The information gathering focused on the province of Los Ríos, which is considered the new banana capital of “Una mUerte lenta”. Violencias y cUidados en contextos de zonas de sacrificio por explotación bananera329 Ecuador because it is the center of operations of most of the banana companies operating in the country. We conducted 25 in-depth interviews with banana workers, family members, union leaders and specialists in the field.