Garbage Out: Space, Place, and Neoimperial Antidevelopment in Gioconda Belli’s Waslala

Gioconda Belli’s Waslala criticizes the concept of “anti-developmental neo-imperialism”: the novel’s fictional Central American nation's development is cancelled by a form of neo-imperial conservation that forces the preservation of rainforest to supply breathable air to oxygen-starved nations that will cut off electrical power for non--compliance. The theoretical approach engages with the idea of a global expansion of the sense of place, but I argue that the novel rejects this notion when it comes down to an “anti-developmental neo-imperialist” political ecology of forced conservationism that is as guilty of environmental injustice as the ecological practices it seeks to prevent.