The temporalities of asbestos mining and community activism

In ancient times, asbestos was believed to be a magical mineral; its Greek etymology recalls eternity. The bio-persistence of asbestos fibres represents a crucial factor of asbestos toxicity and the long latency period of asbestos-related diseases. There is a “fragmented eternity” embodied by people exposed to asbestos through fibre inhalation and lived by community members in contaminated sites. This “fragmented eternity” influences both their suffering and activism. This article addresses “multiple temporalities” of mining (D'Angelo and Pijpers, 2018, this issue) based on ethnographic research on the social and environmental impact of asbestos extraction in São Felix (Bom Jesus da Serra, Bahia, north-eastern Brazil), a mine in operation from the late 1930s to 1967. In this setting, the landscape and the bodies of the exposed are the “places” where the division between past and present disappears and disaster processes that began decades earlier continue. I argue that through activism, people suffering from the effects of asbestos contamination use the traces of the past inscribed on their body and landscape to legitimise their struggle in the name of social justice, and make sense of the “temporal dissonances” affecting their lives.