Bénédicte Boisseron, The University of Michigan

When people fled the disaster zone after the 1986 explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, many left their dogs behind. The abandoned animals had to fend for themselves in the deserted radioactive zone. Remarkably, they managed to survive and even reproduce in this no man’s land. Through successive generations, the former pets morphed into a breed of their own as they adapted to their environment and defied the odds of survival. It was just a matter of time before scientists turned to those wunderkinds to understand genomic resilience to contaminated environments. In March 2023, analysts published a study of the Chernobyl dogs that offers hope for cancer research.¹ Because canine and human genomes are relatively similar, the Chernobyl dogs’ DNA may yield some answers to what it takes for not only dogs but also humans to survive in a toxic environment.

What it takes to live in a contaminated environment is also the question that Jessica Oublié raises in her 2020 graphic novel, Tropiques toxiques: le scandale du chlordécone, which addresses the ongoing environmental disaster in the French Antilles sometimes known as “The New Chernobyl.” Here, however, it is humans, and not just dogs, who are left to fend for themselves in a toxic environment. The disaster arises from the use of a non-biodegradable pesticide in banana plantations in Martinique and Guadeloupe that spanned two decades. Poisoned by a toxic chemical far more persistent than the weevil it was meant to kill, the two islands have become contaminated zones like Chernobyl. But here there are no plans for evacuation. The story feels like a modern Huis Clos (No Exit) in which environmental hell is not just les autres, but specific actors in the local agri-food system and the French government.² In spite of the Sartrean twist, the chlordecone scandal feels like something straight out of a slavery-era play.

The story began for Oublié in 2018, when she moved from Paris to Guadeloupe to be close to her family. In hexagonal France, the author had never heard of the so-called chlordecone affaire, despite the magnitude of the crisis. Between 1973 and 1993, a pesticide named chlordecone (known in America as ‘kepone’) was sprayed on banana plantations to fight an invasive weevil. The general population was not aware at the time that this pesticide was composed of a toxic molecule highly resistant to degradation which, once soaked into the soil, would infiltrate the food chain to contaminate most of the people of Martinique and Guadeloupe. It is now believed that, if left untreated, chlordecone could remain in the soil and waters of the French Antilles for the next seven hundred years. Oublié considers the why and how of this contamination as, with illustrator Nicola Gobbi and photographer Vinciane Lebrun, she exploits the genre of the graphic novel to its fullest to retrace the main actors of this environmental scandal. The easy-to-follow illustrated narrative reminds us that coping with the ramifications of an environmental disaster of such magnitude should not be left to scientists alone. The author invites us all to reckon with the urgent question of what it takes for humans not just to survive but to flourish in a toxic environment.

In Tropiques toxiques, Oublié chronicles the disaster by blending accounts of industrial greed and colonial afterlives with Watergate-style intrigue. Her questions revolve mainly around who knew what, and when. Despite the complexity of the cross-Atlantic political maneuvers and cover-ups, the intrigue is easy to follow because the visuals help readers keep track of the storyline. For example, refracting the roles of local and metropolitan officials through a tennis match is an efficient way to map the complex web of actions and decisions that led to the catastrophe. The tennis match pictures depict each official dodging the bullet of accountability by vigorously sending the ball to the other side of the net. The book also keeps track of chronology with color, using a blue tint for flashbacks. Key dates zoom in and out of the narrative, underscoring the asynchronous timeline between the knowledge of toxicity by a select few and the poisoning of an unknowing population.

The chronology in the chlordecone affaire is what turns a story of a disaster into a story of a scandal. It was therefore crucial for Oublié to move backward and forward through time to give readers a sense of what was known and when. America started producing the pesticide kepone in the 50s but, because of its toxicity, banned its use in domestic food production and saved only a small portion for use as an insecticide in cockroach and ant traps. The remaining production was meant for export. In 1975, an environmental catastrophe erupted at the kepone chemical plant in Hopewell, Virginia, when loose regulation and lack of oversight permitted waste to be dumped in the nearby James River. Workers and people in the area began exhibiting signs of illness caused by blood contamination. The plant was eventually shut down, fishing and recreating in the river banned for thirteen years, and a plan to monitor the level of contamination in the river was put in place for decades. The Hopewell disaster represents a turning point in the history of environmental awareness in America. The scandal was widely publicized, containment measurements were swiftly taken, and the culprits were duly sanctioned. In light of Hopewell, one may wonder why France did not follow suit and ban the use of kepone/ chlordecone in the French Antilles. Instead, France turned a blind eye to its toxicity for two decades. Then, after finally banning the pesticide in 1990, the French government granted a three-year exemption to banana plantation owners so that they could liquidate their stock. The three stages of the scandal are clearly laid out in the book: 1950s, the pesticide is banned in food crops in America because of its known toxicity; 1975, the environmental scandal is widely publicized and no longer known only to a small group of experts and officials; 1990, the French government grants an exemption for another three years of poisoning. According to Science Times, from 2013 and 2014, blood results showed that 93 percent of the population in Guadeloupe and 95 percent in Martinique had traces of chlordecone in their blood.³ Chlordecone is believed to be neurotoxic (attacking the nervous system), reprotoxic (causing adverse effects on reproductive functions), and cancerogenic (inducing cancer). The French Antilles have the highest rate of prostate cancer in the world.

Back in 2007, Creolist author Raphael Confiant and ecologist Louis Boutrin had sounded the alarm on chlordecone contamination with the publication of Chronique d’un empoisonement annoncé: Le scandale du chlordécone aux Antilles françaises 1972-2002.⁴ Their book underscores the role of what they call the “ethno-class”of the Békés. Békés are White Creole descendants of slave owners. Oublié follows suit in her graphic novel, laying out in simple terms the colonial and plantational logic of this contamination. As she explains, the banana monoculture is key to the import-export agri-food business of the French Antilles, 90 percent of which is controlled by the Békés. According to the French newspaper Libération, Békés comprise only 1 percent of the population but own 50 percent of the land.⁵ Békés also control the banana monoculture and, through their close ties with French officials, are believed to be at the heart of the chlordecone scandal. The irony of the scandal is that, because of the contamination, eating anything that grows in direct contact with the soil is not recommended. Even eating from one’s own garden can be harmful if the soil has not been tested for traces of the toxic molecule. Vegetable roots, growing underground, are believed to be particularly toxic, yet they are the traditional food of the French Antilles. Bananas, on the other hand, are less affected by the contaminated soil because they grow on trees. In other words, the banana monoculture is left relatively unscathed by this disaster while local gardens and local food are most affected. Malcom Ferdinand, in Decolonial Ecology: Thinking from the Caribbean,⁶ refers to this irony as the “masters’ chemistry.” The pesticide (chemistry) reinforced the power of the master, as the plantation system of monoculture run by former masters remains intact, while the local population must rely even more heavily on French imports also controlled by former masters.

Tropiques toxiques is the perfect book to introduce students to environmental justice in a French Caribbean context. Students will see how the colonial and post-colonial blend with the ecological, initiating conversations essential to the field of environmental justice. This graphic novel will help high school and university students address important concepts in the combined field of colonialism and environmentalism, including plantationocene, food sovereignty, and decolonial ecology. The book is a must-read for anyone interested in the French Caribbean and environmentalism in general and black ecologies in particular. With the English translation of Tropiques Toxiques (Toxic Tropics) recently published, the story of this ecological scandal is poised to reach an even wider audience. 

Jessica Oublié, Gobbi, Nicola, Lebrun, Vinciane, Tropiques toxiques: Le scandale du chlordécone (Paris: Steinkis/Les escales, 2020)/ Toxic Tropics: A Horror Story of Environmental Injustice, translated by Irene Vazquez (Brooklyn, NY: Streetnoise Books, 2024).

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1. J. Gabriella Spatola, Buckley M. Reuben, Dillon Megan, Dutrow V. Megan, “The dogs of Chernobyl: Demographic insights into populations inhabiting the nuclear exclusion zone,” Science Advances, Vol. 9, Issue 9 (May 2023). Last retrieved, April 15, 2024. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ade2537 ↩︎
2. Jean-Paul Sartre, Huis Clos: Pièce en un acte (Paris: Gallimard, 2019 [1947]) ↩︎
3. Sieeka Khan, “Islands in the Caribbean Poisoned by Pesticides,” Science Times. Nov. 8, 2019. Last retrieved, April 15, 2024, https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/24223/20191108/chemicals.htm ↩︎
4. Raphaël Confiant, Louis Boutrin. Chronique d’un empoisonnement annoncé: Le scandale du Chlordécone anx Antilles françaises 1972-2002 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2007). ↩︎
5. “Des familles riches qui trustent les terres,” Libération, March 13, 2009. Last retrieved, April 15, 2024. ↩︎
6. Malcom Ferdinand, Une écologie décoloniale: penser l’écologie depuis le monde caribéen, (Paris: Seuil, 2019)/ Decolonial Ecology : Thinking from the Caribbean World, translated by Anthony Paul Smith (New York: Polity Press, 2022). ↩︎