Crude residues: The workings of failing oil infrastructure in Poza Rica, Veracruz, Mexico

Abstract

Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in and around Poza Rica—an emblematic oil town that flourished in the aftermath of the nationalization of the Mexican oil industry in 1938—this article looks at how the material and social visibility and invisibility of failing infrastructure is constantly being renegotiated and achieved by those living amid it. Rather than a given physical quality, I demonstrate how (in)visibility is the outcome of everyday corporate practices, toxic mundane encounters, air technologies, as well as affective attachments that illuminate or obscure the harmful presence of oil and its infrastructure in this industrial town. I suggest that the ways in which different contours of perceptions and imperceptions are negotiated are central to understanding how people living in and on oil endure risk, precariousness, and suffering.