“ Sa zyé pa vwé ” [What the eyes don't see]

The cover image of Tropiques Toxiques depicts a globe-like tropical island whose vegetation, inked in pale greens, yellows, and dark magentas, at first glance evokes the lush and vibrant natural world that we associate with the Antillean archipelago.2 At the summit, a cluster of banana plants reaches toward a pale pink sky while the bunches of ripening bananas, following magenta inflorescences, point downward to the ground, littered with fallen fruits and leaves. As the viewer's gaze moves from the top of the cover toward the bottom, the bright image of tropical abundance takes on darker shades: Taupe and tan rocks at the island's base turn blue and brown as they approach the waterline. There, three openings onto a flooded cavern form the outline of eye sockets, and beneath the water, the nasal bones of a face. Along the left side of the island a drainage pipe discharges a green liquid that surrounds the coast as a purple octopus with an anthropomorphic face looks upward in apprehension. Seen as a whole, the island takes the form of a skull, an ecological memento mori reminding us that the apparent superabundance of the Caribbean environment camouflages long histories of human exploitation and extraction that, hidden behind images of paradisical beaches and verdant jungles, remain invisible to the outside world.In the 2020 documentary comic Tropiques Toxiques, Jessica Oublié and her collaborators tell the story of the chlordecone scandal in Martinique and Guadeloupe: a toxic catastrophe that has contaminated the soil, waterways, food chain, and the population of Martinique and Guadeloupe. Dramatic environmental catastrophes such as wildfires, deforestation, or oil spills often prompt the creation of astonishing photographs, videos, and more that circulate across legacy and social media to galvanize public outcry and political response. Unlike these kinds of disasters, toxic contamination events like the chlordecone scandal do not manifest in instantaneous and spectacular ways, making the task of visualizing and publicizing them challenging for both the scientists who study them and the activists who seek to mitigate long-term harm to their communities. In light of this challenge, Oublié's choice to tell the story of the chlordecone scandal in the visual medium of comics, known in French as bande dessinée or BD, compels attention. How might documentary comics, understood as an intermedial form, visualize and narrativize what the camera cannot? Moreover, if, as Finis Dunaway argues, spectacular images of disaster often make “environmental crises visible to a mass public” while masking “systemic causes and ignored structural inequalities,” how might comics harness the environmental image as a medium for seeking environmental justice?3The chlordecone crisis was not caused by an accident or by oversight on the part of French authorities: It resulted from a deliberate decision to prop up a foundering export-agriculture economy despite the danger to the majority Black population of the French Caribbean. In 1972, the French Ministry of Agriculture granted struggling banana growers permission to use chlordecone, a neurotoxic endocrine inhibitor in the same family as DDT, as a pesticide, despite clear risks to the health of agricultural workers, the environment, and the general population.4 Although French president Emmanuel Macron has described the scandal as “the fruit of collective blindness,” the records of the French Ministry of Agriculture show that chlordecone was approved for use despite its documented hazards to health and safety.5 Requests to sell chlordecone, sold under the names Kepone and Curlone, had previously been denied in 1969 due to the toxicity and the persistence of the molecule in the environment before being approved in 1972.6 During the twenty-one years that banana producers used chlordecone, the molecule spread through the environment and the biosphere: 90 percent of the inhabitants of these two French départements d'outre-mer (overseas departments) face continued exposure to this highly persistent chemical, resulting in serious and long-term health problems such as cancer, pregnancy complications and premature births, and child development issues such as cognitive and motor development disorders.7 Despite the clear danger to the health of agricultural workers and the environment, the French Ministry of Agriculture approved its use from 1972 to 1990, when the banana industry successfully acquired a special dispensation to continue chlordecone applications in Martinique and Guadeloupe until 1993.8 The French government did not begin collecting the unused pesticide until 2002, the same year that regulators discovered that a shipment of sweet potatoes from Martinique destined for continental French markets was contaminated with the “ultra-toxic” pesticide.9 In 2008 the French government began the first of four Chlordecone Action Plans, programs intended to assess, research, and mitigate the effects of Chlordecone contamination. 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Visibility · Caribbean and African Literature and Culture · Comics and Graphic Narratives · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature