ABSTRACT
This chapter explores human–mosquito relations in the context of public health policies for epidemics in Brazil. Although such control programmes have been updated with new biosecurity technologies, there are recalcitrant political frameworks that must be considered. Since colonial times, governments have maintained tools and technologies both to expose and to hide tropical epidemics, working within the tropical unconscious. Risks and uncertainties have been repeatedly fabricated or exaggerated, and new discourses, institutions and technologies are then triggered in attempts to contain them. Efforts to eradicate or control mosquito epidemics cost lives and bring suffering since people and mosquitoes alike resist top-down political machinations. As can be seen in the case of Brazil, relations between humans and mosquitoes go beyond eradication and control, producing complex political encounters and negotiations.
