The Fall and Rise of Screwworm

Lifecycle of the Screwworm

From Construction Physics:

The Fall and Rise of Screwworm by Brian Potter

On June 3 of this year, a flesh-eating parasite, the screwworm, was found in a three-week-old calf near the Texas town of La Pryor. Since then, dozens more cases have been discovered in Texas and New Mexico. Outside of a screwworm outbreak in the Florida Keys in 2016 (which was contained), this marks the first screwworm infestation in the US since the 1980s.

Until now, the US has been free of screwworm not due to luck, but because of a decades-long program to eradicate the parasite by breeding it out of existence. By dropping millions of sterile male screwworm flies in an infested area, agricultural agencies can overwhelm the native, fertile male screwworms. Female screwworm flies, who only mate once in their life, will mostly mate with sterile males, producing no living offspring. Drop sterile flies for long enough, and eventually there will be no viable offspring at all, and the pest will be eliminated.

Over the course of several decades, this “sterile male technique” was used by the USDA to eliminate screwworm from the US, Mexico, and Central America. Since the early 2000s a joint US-Panamanian organization, COPEG, has maintained a “screwworm barrier” at the Darien Gap between Colombia and Panama. Every week, millions of sterile male screwworm flies are dropped over the gap, preventing the screwworms from spreading north from South America (where it remains endemic).

Sometime around 2023, the barrier at Panama failed, and for the last several years screwworm has been marching north. It’s now reached the US. Efforts are underway to eliminate screwworm from North and Central America once again, but it will likely be years before they succeed.

The screwworm eradication program was so effective at eliminating the parasite that we’ve collectively forgotten what an enormous problem it used to be. It’s worth understanding the costs inflicted by screwworm prior to its elimination, how a program emerged for eliminating it, and how control was allowed to lapse. 

Previous posts on the subject:

• Screw You, Screwworm
• Screw You, Worm

Screw You, Worm

Why the US Drops 14.7 Million Worms On Panama Every Week
Half as Interesting

The trouble with the news is you only hear about disasters, you never hear about the systems that are working properly. It's like the politicians and anyone who wants to influence policy gets up and starts screaming about something and 'the people', being easily panicked, panic and run screaming in whatever direction they are being herded, kind of like sheep. Huh. Psychopaths and morons, that's the way it's always been and likely the way it will always be.

COPEG N62V Beechcraft A90 King Air

N62V Recent Flight

The Atlantic has the same story, but it's a little calmer.

Yes, We Have No Bananas

A little banana history lesson, stolen entire from Joe Pastry.

The Banana as Post Colonial Neo-Imperialistic Metaphor

The primary port of entry for bananas coming into the US from Central and South America in New Orleans. Why? Because New Orleans is at the mouth of the Mississippi River, which is a terrific distribution point if you’re selling bananas to consumers in the American interior. No wonder then that the fabled (and infamous) United Fruit Company was headquartered in New Orleans from 1933 to 1985.

Now, mention the United Fruit Company to anyone with much knowledge of Central American history, and they’ll either a.) engage you in a lively discussion on the socioeconomics of fruit growing in Latin America, or b.) launch into a tirade about American economic imperialism. The United Fruit Company was that sort of outfit. One of the first major economic powers — and it was a power, not just a company — to exploit the agricultural resources of Central America, it polarizes people in the same way Cecil Rhodes polarizes scholars of African history. Either Rhodes was a visionary modernizer who brought infrastructure, jobs and growth to underdeveloped territories, or he was a vainglorious, racist exploiter of virgin lands and peoples. It all depends on how you feel about the relative blessings of modernity, and/or which side of the great Western cultural/political divide you happen to stand on.

The United Fruit Company was founded in 1899. Yet what that “founding” actually represented was a great merging of various banana interests that had been thriving in Central America and the Caribbean since the 1870’s. At its height, the United Fruit Company’s land holdings sprawled over huge swathes of Cost Rica, Panama, Colombia, Cuba, Nicaragua and Jamaica (it was known to many as el pulpo, “the octopus”). Yet the country that UFC is most frequently associated with is Guatemala. Guatemala was responsible for producing at least 25% of UFC’s banana crop at the turn of the century. Conversely, UFC was responsible for a gigantic portion of Guatemala’s fledgling economy. It had a hand in virtually everything that happened in Guatemala, from the building of roads, schools and hospitals right up to foreign policy. UFC even delivered Guatemala’s mail. When, in 1944, “spiritual socialist” Juan Arevalo was elected president following the ouster of dictator (and UFC puppet) Jorge Ubico, UFC was displeased to say the least. They lobbied heavily in Washington for American intervention, especially when Arevalo’s successor, Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, threatened to nationalize UFC’s plantations and strategically align Guatemala with the Soviets. By that time Eisenhower and the CIA were only too happy to oblige, and in 1954 toppled the Guatemalan government via covert action.

Yet even then, the writing was on the wall for UFC as a power player in Central America. As the economies it helped to found grew and diversified, it held less and less sway over what went on within them. Today UFC is just another large multinational known as Chiquita Brands International. Where do you come down on an enterprise like the United Fruit Company? Kinda hard to say. On the one hand you have monopoly, political repression and economic exploitation. On the other commerce, transportation, education and healthcare. I dunno, you be da judge.

Oh, and what do you call a small, underdeveloped, politically unstable country whose masters are foreign agricultral and/or business interests? Why, a Banana Republic, of course.

The Last Thing He Wanted

THE LAST THING HE WANTED Trailer (2020)
Intrepid girl reporter trying to report on what's going on in Central America back during the Reagan years, basically the Sandinistas, the Contras and the CIA. Anyway, she gets roped into an arms deal to bail out her near psycho father. It's pretty great, though you kind of wonder who some of these people are, but that's kind of the way it is out in real world where you don't have a script. The ending is a little disheartening, but it's a grim little story all around. I kind of expected it to be 'based on a true story', but no, it's from a novel. Still, the basic story is true: we were shipping arms to Central America.

I looked for a decent review but I didn't find one. It seems to have been universally panned. I thought the movie was pretty great, thoroughly engaging, totally realistic, and yes, top level government officials could very well be cold blooded killers. The ending was a little disheartening, but realistic. Do you think Putin is only world leader who kills reporters?

P.S. Spell check doesn't recognize Sandinistas or Contras. Could it be we're not allowed to talk about that anymore and that's why the reviews were all bad? Right now I wouldn't put anything past any of the powers-that-be.

The Football War

A Vought F4U-5NL Corsair – at the Museo del Aire, Tegucigalpa (Honduras). This aircaft was sold to Honduras in 1956. In the so-called “Football War”, Cap. Fernando Soto in FAH-609 shot down a Salvadoran air force Cavalier F-51D Mustang and two Goodyear FG-1D Corsairs on 17 July 1969 during the last known air combat between piston-engined aircraft.

While we were in Vietnam, Central American banana republics were having their own troubles. My Daily Kona has the story.

Cap. Fernando Soto has a page in the Spanish language Wikipedia.

American Made

American Made - Official Trailer [HD]
The story of Barry Seal has been kicking around in the fringes of polite society for a long time. It's good that it's finally seeing the light of day. As a movie, it's great, lots of action, lots of crazy. The only problem is there is just so much crazy crammed into it. Was the CIA really doing all that shit? It kind of looks like they were. When you live in Disneyland it's easy to forget that just outside the park, crazy is the norm and chaos is the order of the day.

On HBO

Nicaraguan Canal, Part 2

Who is Wang Jing? Man behind Nicaragua's canal project is as dodgy as they come.

Did a little checking and came across a post on Alek Boyd's blog from July of last year, which contained this little bit:

Furthermore, reports in Chinese media warn that the project is fraught with risks, and most likely unviable, given its geopolitical significance. The argument, in short, goes that the US government is not about to allow China to build and control an interoceanic canal in Nicaragua.

Now, a year and a half later, they are talking about starting construction next month.  Huh.

Construction of Nicaragua canal to begin December 22

Russia's President Vladimir Putin (L) speaks to Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega after arriving at the international airport in Managua. This is from July of this year. This photo could be real, but Putin looks photo-shopped. Guys in the front row have their jackets buttoned. Guys in the second row don't. Huh. Wonder why that is. Actually, no I don't.

China has signed a deal to build a canal across Nicaragua. It sounds like it could be a real deal. Russia might be involved. It makes sense that they would want their own canal across Latin America instead of being dependent on American's 'friend', Panama. Who is in charge of our foreign policy? Does it involve anything besides pissing on everyone else?