ON CHAINSAWS AND ACOUSTIC VIOLENCE: Sound and Deforestation in Ajusco-Chichinautzin, Mexico

Abstract

This article explores distinct practices of sounding and listening that have emerged in a context of severe deforestation in Ajusco-Chichinautzin, a region south of Mexico City. It applies the concept of acoustic violence to this setting, as part of wider attempts to build constructive responses to climate breakdown through sound and music scholarship. As the first indication of occurring logging, the sound of chainsaws proves vital in attempts by forest guards and police to detect and halt deforestation. Equally, attentiveness to acoustic violence allows us to cut through sensationalist media presentations of the problem of deforestation, to perceive how local populations—often blamed for complicity with loggers—are in fact direct victims of environmental loss. The concept of acoustic violence can also illuminate how, in a context not just of environmental loss but of dispossession, modalities of listening may become simplified, instrumentalized, or lost.