They call it “Cancer Alley” because it’s got a reputation. The hundred-mile stretch between Bvlbancha (New Orleans) and Istrouma (Baton Rouge) was named in the 1980s, but today a more accurate accounting would expand it to include the roughly 255 miles from Baton Rouge to the Gulf of Mexico. The long colonial experiment began on the banks of the lower Mississippi River centuries ago with the clear-cutting of ancient bottomland hardwood forests and cypress swamps, making way for indigo and sugarcane plantations. Petrochemical plants have since replaced them, surrounded by deteriorating wetlands and communities plagued by and dependent upon the boom-and-bust cycles of petro-economics for employment and restoration efforts.
Cancer Alley, also known as “Death Alley,” is where the Port of South Louisiana reigns as the largest tonnage port in the Western Hemisphere, the United States’ second most active Foreign Trade Zone and its largest energy and grain transfer port. But supply and demand comes with a cost. Refineries and waste pits and toxic byproducts, seen and unseen, pockmark the landscape. Along the banks of the Mississippi River, a neglected part of the United States is bearing the brunt of the shale boom as a wildfire of new construction and the expansion of single-use plastic facilities and export terminals assault an environment with long-term investments, facilitating a pattern of violence against communities for the sake of carbon profits.
This series of Cancer Alley collages layers evidence found in the public record with what I have witnessed as a photographer, reconstructing a history of the lower Mississippi River through the manipulation of US Geological Survey maps. The collages illuminate how these sites are variously represented or simply erased, and how the challenges of today are founded in colonialism, with rapacious multinational corporations and international financing fueling violations against basic human rights like clean water.
ISTROUMA: BATON ROUGE
Istrouma is both a place and a symbol, a red stick, le bâton rouge, used to mark territorial lines, acknowledging the Houma nation’s hunting grounds to the north and the rights of the Bayou-goula tribe to the south, or thus it was recorded in the journals of colonizers. Earthen mounds, built by Indigenous peoples between six thousand and 11,300 years ago, hold their sacred ground near the entrance of Louisiana State University’s Tiger Stadium, known as “Death Valley” and one of the largest college football stadiums in the country. Less than four miles away, in the shadows of Baton Rouge’s art deco capitol, Exxon-Mobil’s refinery sprawls as far as the eye can see.
