For the past half century, anglophone toxicologists and environmental activists have used the term “body burden” to describe the accumulation of harmful substances present in human and non-human bodies. In recent years, these burdens have been incorporated into a popular narrative in Martinique about the origins of gender transgression and same-sex desire, which has shifted to include a story about their relationship to bodily contamination by a pesticide once used widely on the island’s banana plantations. This talk investigates the relationship of racialized and gendered bodies to their environment in Martinique via a theorization of the accretive effects of colonial violence.