| Infant mortality rates have decreased in all industrialized countries, including Puerto Rico. Yet in Vieques' municipality this rate has increased by 12 percent. This and other dramatic changes in public health have taken place within the last 20 years. Recently, the inhabitants of Vieques have massively organized around issues of health, mobilizing collective actions unheard of in Puerto Rico. This social movement, which has captured international attention, has cut across religious and political lines never before traversed within Puerto Rican history. What are the factors triggering this social movement? How do the people of Vieques experience and make sense of these changes in public health? How have these changes affected people's perceptions of health, illness and self?;I suspect that by exploring the interplay between (1) changing perceptions of health risks and (2) shifting notions of self as (3) experienced by being and dwelling-in-a-world of environment crises, we can get insights into these questions. By situating at the center of the analysis the relationship between illness and identity we can gain insights into the emergence of environmental movements as processes of identity formation. This project explores how shared experience of illness can generate new questions, knowledge and understandings within communities experiencing critical health problems. I sustain that peoples embodied understandings of the relationships between environment and disease trigger---within militarized or industrialized landscapes---powerful cultural critiques that offer insights into both modernitys failures and the emergence of social movements. |
