Setting up the dig: derogatory humor and mining in the Global South

While much of toxic coloniality focuses on the physical, baleful remnants of extractive practices by colonial interests, this article explores the term of “toxicity” from a different perspective. It examines the toxic legacies of humor and corporate colonialism in the extractive industry of vanadium mining. With its purchase of the Mina Ragra in Peru in 1906, the Vanadium Corporation of America (VCA) gained a foothold on the vanadium market for nearly 50 years. Feeding the demand for vanadium alloys in the steel industry, the company searched for different sources of the metal, including Argentina and Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Thus, this project asks: what are the legacies of this extraction, beyond the environmental? How does extraction shape perceptions of the Global South? How do toxic behaviors and corporate colonialism embed themselves in the environment? Using company records and newsletters, this project argues that extractive companies not only remove ore from communities but also contribute to active oppression, mockery, and derision of human and non-human laborers to justify their actions. In underscoring that toxic coloniality is a poisoned sphere where harm comes from sources in soil, air, water, dispossession, and racism, this project emphasizes how toxicity, in the environment and in behavior, is mobile and without borders by examining local workers, nonhuman actors, and corporate colonial projects.