ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on fieldwork author conducted in Ciudad Sandino between 2006 and 2011 to discuss the relationship of household waste to global dengue prevention strategies. During the fieldwork, author witnessed dozens of campaigns led by the Nicaraguan Ministry of Health (MINSA) in which doctors, garbage collectors, and community health workers exhorted homeowners to discard the plastic, rubber, and scrap metal piled in their homes. The garbage trade is a frequent target of Nicaragua's national dengue control policy. In 2008, an ongoing political struggle over waste management in Ciudad Sandino became entangled with an ongoing dengue fever epidemic. By tracing this entanglement, the chapter argues that the relationship between local populations and global health initiatives might best be seen not as one of binary domination and resistance but of multidirectional "parasitism". In Ciudad Sandino's urban waste controversy, global dengue prevention policy was certainly at issue, but it was almost never directly addressed by the actors involved.
