ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the coproduction of the Spanish pesticide treadmill and the early Francoist regime. I move away from dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT)-centered narratives by paying attention to other sociotechnological products (arsenic pesticides), human and nonhuman protagonists (agricultural engineers and Colorado beetles), toxic hazards (poisoning of workers and food consumers), and geopolitical contexts (fascist and autarky policies in Spain during the 1940s). I discuss how the politics of autarky offered new opportunities for developing new agronomic programs, chemical industry, and autarkic policies. These circumstances were behind the making of the Register of Pesticides in 1942. In the last part of this chapter, I discuss the consequences of these regulations in invisibilizing the risks of pesticides for farmers and food consumers. Pesticides have become sources of slow poisoning and tools for social control while reinforcing the alliance of agricultural engineers and fascist politicians in their autarkic/authoritarian dreams.
