Take responsibility and fix what you started, oil companies; Comparisons between chemical incidents in India and Mexico and who should be claiming responsibility
Disasters can be horrific and most times occur with little to no warning. They can reign terror on people’s’ lives and fundamentally change a place forever. In this article I will be discussing how Animal’s People by Indra Sinha relates to the recent chemical explosion in Mexico that resulted in twenty-eight deaths and 136 injuries, not including those that were forced to evacuate their homes. On April 20, 2016 in Coatzacoalcos, México a large vinyl petrochemical plant explosion occurred resulting in the aforementioned injuries. Toxic fumes filled the surrounding area as dark chemical clouds blocked out the sun. The oil company that owned the plant, Pemex, had slow progress cleaning the area afterwards and left many people displaced because of it. Chemical events that go unregulated are so dangerous because they can affect large areas with vast amounts of people all from airflow. Disasters such as these are horrific and can often be exemplified through many pieces of literature since individuals can be changed forever by these events.
In Indra Sinha’s prize winning novel Animal’s People, he writes a historical fiction account through the eyes of a victim of a chemical spill that happened in Bhopal, India. On the night of December 2, 1984, a disaster occurred at the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, and leaked at least 30 tons of extremely toxic and poisonous gases. 600,000 people were exposed to the fumes that night causing serious long and short term effects. The gases stayed low to the ground causing many children and sleeping people to choke and die. Estimates of the death toll vary from as few as 3,800 to as many as 16,000, as it is hard to tell what was directly caused by the disaster and what would’ve happened without it. Toxic material remains, and 30 years later, many of those who were exposed to the gas have given birth to children with birth defects showing long lasting effects of one night. This inspired the writer to write about the character of Animal and show his daily struggles living with a deformity caused by that night that only allows him to walk on all fours. The text sheds light on how even after many years later the people of the town are still suffering the consequences and what they go through dealing with getting justice for that night from the company. It then tackles the distrust the town has for foreigners since the incident. Showing the text through his eyes somewhat accurately shows what it would be like to live with the deformity and constantly have to get interviewed and prodded by journalists that don’t really care.
Some similarities between the novel and the disaster that took place in Mexico are that they were both chemical incidents that affected many people and that could’ve been prevented. If more regulations and checkups were made by these large oil companies then so many lives would’ve been spared. These large companies tend to not care about the land they incorporate and wreak havoc on those merely trying to live their lives. Although these disasters are similar in many ways there are some key differences. The main one being the incident in India was on a much larger scale than the one in Mexico. Also the companies handled the disasters they caused slightly differently, even though neither of them handled it well. Both were slow to response but the India incident still hasn’t taken full responsibility.
Overall, these disasters are strangely similar in how they were dealt with and what occurred in general. In Animal’s People Sinha highlights what it’s like to be a victim of one of these chemical incidents. Even though it focuses on what took place in Bhopal it can be applied to the Mexico disaster as both had victims suffering long term effects.
