In order to know the meaning of the term infrahuman that concerns us, it is necessary, first of all, to discover its etymological origin. In this case, it must be indicated that it derives from Latin, which can be translated as "not worthy of people" and that it is the result of the union of two lexical components of said language such as these:
-The prefix «infra-«, which is equivalent to «below».
-The noun "humanus", which is synonymous with "man".
The adjective infrahuman refers to what is inferior to what is considered typical of a human being . The subhuman, therefore, belongs to a lower category than that which is designated as appropriate for people.
Among the synonyms of the term in question we can highlight inhuman, cruel, ruthless, heartless, atrocious , brutal or miserable. On the contrary, among its antonyms we find words such as human, compassionate, sensitive, kind or even charitable.
For example: "Due to economic necessity, many individuals are forced to accept subhuman jobs that put their health at risk," "Millions of children live in subhuman conditions around the world and no political leader seems to care too much," "In the "In prisons in this country, prisoners suffer inhumane treatment by the guards."
Take the case of patients in a neuropsychiatric hospital who are locked in a gloomy environment. These subjects are poorly nourished, suffer from various untreated diseases and are mistreated by doctors and nurses. For all these reasons, these individuals are in a subhuman state , being forced to live in an undignified manner.
It is common for the subhuman to be associated with poor living conditions. In an irregular settlement such as a slum, a favela, a cantegril or a shanty, where the inhabitants do not have sewers, drinking water, electricity or natural gas, the streets are not paved and there is no security , people subsist in an environment subhuman .
In the realm of fiction , subhuman beings sometimes appear: creatures with certain characteristics that make them similar to humans, but with others that place them on a lower step or level. HG Wells , to cite one case, introduces the Morlocks , a subhuman race , in his novel "The Time Machine" .
In the field of culture, we find different works that have the word in question in their titles. This would be the case, for example, of the book "Humanizing the subhuman." It is subtitled "The formation of the integral human being: evolutionary homo, praxis and solidarity economy", it was published in 2005 and is written by Marcos Arruda Sattamini.
Likewise, we cannot forget the film titled "Infrahuman." It is a film of Canadian origin that was officially released in 2004. It takes as its protagonist a strange man, with alcohol problems, who has escaped from a mental asylum and who has a great power of conviction, so much so that He is able to convince others of the existence of vampires.