In the Americas, mosquitoes played an especially deadly role during the European conquest, spreading diseases that aided in the genocide of indigenous people throughout the continent, and they continue to kill record numbers of people throughout the continent, especially in cities close to the equator.
A rise of just one degree in temperature increases the spread of dengue by 13 percent.
During the mid-1900s, a US-supported plan to wipe out the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the principal carrier of disease, especially dengue, was carried out in eighteen countries on the continent (precisely at the same time as the United States was training and funding paramilitary mercenaries to wipe out all communists and communist sympathizers). Although initially mosquito-borne diseases were held in check by DDT and other chemical killers, from the 1970s to the ’90s, thanks to extreme population booms and massive migrations into urban areas, and due to mosquitoes’ ability to adapt and survive, the insects flourished, and the diseases they carried became a serious health problem.
The twenty-first century has seen the greatest expansion of Aedes aegypti, bringing with it an alarming increase in the number of outbreaks of dengue. The dengue epidemic of 2024 was the worst ever recorded worldwide, with more than thirteen million cases and 8,500 reported deaths, more than triple that of any previous year.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has classified dengue outbreaks in 2025 as a grade G3 global emergency, with more countries under attack than ever before. Climate change, caused by the destruction of the environment, favors certain species, such as cockroaches, rats, and mosquitoes. In areas above 1,500 meters above sea level, mosquitoes were once rarely to be found, but today with global warming cities and towns that are as high up as 2,200 meters are under attack. This increased range of mosquitoes, due to…
Auteur: Kurt Hollander
