News from the Collective

Interview with Ezequiel McGovern.

The introduction of Digital Tribulations, a series of intellectual interviews on the developments of digital sovereignty in Latin America, can be read here. 

I met Ezequiel at the first meeting of IT workers in Argentina, held in Buenos Aires in March 2026. Esteban—a friend from the Argentine IT workers’ union, whose interview will be published next—pointed him out to me as someone especially worth speaking to. Ezequiel was wearing an ARSAT T-shirt, which, as I soon learned, referred to the Empresa Argentina de Soluciones Satelitales Sociedad Anónima, Argentina’s state-owned telecommunications company.

Founded in 2006, ARSAT was created at a moment when Argentina risked losing control over key orbital positions assigned to it for satellite communications. From that starting point, it grew into a central actor in the country’s technological infrastructure: developing and operating geostationary satellites, expanding the federal fiber-optic network, supporting digital television, and building domestic data-center capacity. As such, it has become one of the clearest institutional expressions of Argentina’s attempts to build a measure of technological and digital sovereignty.

Ezequiel is an engineer who has been working on these issues since long before “digital sovereignty” became a fashionable term in policy circles. My impression was that he has seen many of these debates come and go, and that he has a particularly clear sense of what should—and should not—be done if Argentina is to achieve technological autonomy under its specific conditions. 

The interview took place online. In it, we discuss the history and role of ARSAT; the relationship between public infrastructure, digital sovereignty, and national development; the material constraints behind data centers and AI infrastructure; the strategic importance of satellites, fiber optics, and cloud systems; finally, Latin America’s dependence on foreign hardware and software and the possibilities and obstacles for regional technological cooperation.

***

What do you do, and how did you get involved with the issue of digital sovereignty?

I’ve been working in this field for 15 years. My specialty has always been industrial and high-availability IT. From there, I worked for Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF), Argentina’s main energy company, for many years, overseeing its automated lubricant warehouse. I also worked for Telefónica, always on large-scale projects where there were problems to solve or particularly complex systems that had to be integrated.

That’s how I started working with data centers, initially from within the public sector. I first worked for the City of Buenos Aires, then for the National Office of Information Technologies (ONTI). As I saw the challenges we were facing, I began advocating for the idea of having a national-level data center with world-class capabilities. We couldn’t continue relying on many small data centers that lacked proper budgets and qualified personnel and eventually ended up underfunded and plagued by problems.

I brought that vision to ARSAT during a meeting where the board invited me to explain the project: what a new data center would be useful for, what business opportunities it could enter, and what possibilities it offered. I gave a presentation of roughly half an hour to the board. They were interested in the range of potential businesses that could emerge, at a moment when cloud computing was just beginning. Amazon had only recently started investing heavily in the cloud, but the idea of building something similar was already taking shape.

After that meeting, the company’s president at the time, Pablo Tognetti, said to me: “Well, when are you going to start working with us to make this project happen?” So, I began with a part-time contract for six months, and then I joined full-time. We built the data center. I was responsible for the infrastructure design: everything related to servers, connectivity, and all the procedures—together with the networking team—to become an internet service provider, obtain IP address allocations from the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry (LACNIC), create the autonomous system, start announcing our addresses on the internet, and, in general, develop the entire project needed to create our own cloud platform, which is what we ultimately achieved.

When was ARSAT founded, and what does it do?

ARSAT was founded on May 20, 2006, in response to a need Argentina had at the time. There was a geostationary satellite operated by Nahuelsat, whose use had been outsourced and privatized. The company was required to launch another satellite to preserve Argentina’s orbital slot, but it failed to fulfill the contract and announced that it was leaving the country.

To avoid losing those orbital positions, the national government submitted a proposal to the ITU to continue the process through a national company. That was how ARSAT was created. From there came the ARSAT-1 and ARSAT-2 projects, the geostationary satellites that are currently in orbit. That was the original reason for its creation. But there was also recognition of the need for communications infrastructure in a country as large as Argentina—which I believe is the eighth-largest country in the world by area—where connectivity is extremely challenging and had been severely underinvested. To give you an idea, at that time there were fewer than 8,000 kilometers of fiber-optic cable in the entire country, counting all providers combined. Private companies were unwilling to make the necessary investments to deploy high-quality fiber-optic infrastructure across the territory.

That concern led the government to act, and ARSAT took responsibility. The Federal Fiber Optic Network was created, which today consists of 35,000 kilometers of fiber operating throughout the country. Alongside the Federal Fiber Optic Network, it became clear that we also needed a data center, which was exactly what I had been advocating for. That’s why they called me: to take advantage of those services and build an internationally competitive data center inside Argentina, with the data remaining in Argentina.

So the process began with nationwide telecommunications and the satellite segment. Then came the Federal Fiber Optic Network and the data center. Alongside that, there was also the rollout of Digital Terrestrial Television, which was tied to telecommunications because spectrum had to be freed up: frequencies used for analog television had to be reassigned to mobile networks and other technologies. That’s how the project to transition all television broadcasting to digital began. ARSAT also took on that task, and digital terrestrial television coverage eventually reached almost 85% of the country, with the remainder covered through satellites.

I think it’s great that a public company plays such an important role in developing technology. But it also seems that the government has changed significantly. President Milei has recently declared that Argentina will become an artificial intelligence hub. What would be the role of digital sovereignty, or of an actor like ARSAT, in relation to this shift?

The key issue that governments always forget when they make these kinds of announcements is that these are extremely large investments. These are highly complex systems, and they also require enormous amounts of energy to operate. Today, all of those conditions—combined with ongoing wars and disruptions to global supply chains—are wreaking havoc on the data center market.

In fact, I was reading that many of the data centers planned for this year in the United States will not be built because the necessary transformers cannot be manufactured. Electrical infrastructure doesn’t expand overnight; it’s not like software. Building infrastructure is extremely complex. And given the current geopolitical situation and supply-chain disruptions, for example, copper is hard to obtain, there is a shortage of specialized steel for transformers, and trade routes are being disrupted.

In that context, having your own data center and technological sovereignty means having something smaller and better suited to the country’s needs, rather than depending on investments that we know are unlikely to arrive—especially in the current international environment. That’s why we always envisioned relatively small data centers of around two megawatts, nothing extravagant. If there were a need for artificial intelligence or intensive computing, then we could consider building a larger facility. But the investment required is enormous. To give you an idea, a single AI server costs millions of dollars and consumes around 30 kilowatts. To build something reasonably capable, you need to think in terms of 35 megawatts. That means well over one billion dollars in investment between equipment and construction.

Those are figures that are far beyond the current model of the Argentine economy. And globally, I don’t think that investment is going to come to Argentina under these circumstances. If even in the United States the number of data centers planned for construction this year has already been cut in half, all of this is going to be delayed. That is also encouraging companies to make better use of the infrastructure they already have. Google and other companies have managed to run models four to six times larger using the same amount of memory. So they no longer need to expand as rapidly as they originally planned. That affects the entire production chain. On top of that, we now face external constraints that nobody anticipated. No one expected a war with Iran this year. And that directly affects one of the most important variables in the economy: the cost of energy.

In that regard, Chile developed a system to assess the environmental impact of data centers. What do you think about that? Can it help determine where data centers should be built?

We have always envisioned locating data centers within industrial hubs that already have environmental conditions clearly defined. Places where water management has already been addressed, where any water used can be recycled, where electricity supply is guaranteed, and where the facilities are located away from urban centers.

In fact, one of our earliest plans was to build a facility in the Bariloche technology park. We had a World Bank loan of 200 million dollars approved for that purpose. But after a change of government, the loan was redirected elsewhere and was not used for the data center. Even so, the project remains active. We are still in discussions with the World Bank, and when the political context changes, the idea is to move forward with construction. But we have always approached it this way: locating data centers in places already designed to host businesses or industries with high energy and water consumption.

Fortunately, in Argentina we do not have a shortage of space. We have many possible locations for building data centers, unlike Chile, which faces much greater geographic constraints as well as limitations in energy availability.

So what Milei said about building data centers in Patagonia would be more difficult to implement?

Yes, at the moment it is much more difficult. We also have a connectivity problem in the south. We would need more submarine cables landing there, as well as a connection through the Pacific. We had planned a trans-Pacific fiber-optic link together with Chile, but the current government halted the project. That would have given us direct internet access, through dark fiber, to Asian markets via Australia and the broader Asia-Pacific region. It would have allowed services to be provided to those markets from southern Argentina. Today, by contrast, all traffic has to pass through Miami, which adds nearly 300 milliseconds of latency. And latency is another factor that companies examine very carefully.

But the biggest issue with the investment figures being discussed—the 25 billion dollars often mentioned—is that, globally, that level of investment is no longer expected to go into AI servers. OpenAI, for example, failed to follow through on its most recent memory-chip purchases from Samsung and SK Hynix. So the growth projections they had previously announced have already weakened. They had claimed they would consume nearly 60% of global memory-chip production for three years. This month, however, they bought nothing. As a result, those projections are now considered unreliable, and people are waiting to see how purchasing trends evolve. Because if companies continue buying memory, that means they are still buying servers and still building new data centers. If those purchases stop, it suggests that the projected number of data centers will not materialize as expected.

And given the infrastructure limitations we have in southern Argentina, the challenge looks even greater. To give you an idea, today ARSAT is the only company with fiber-optic infrastructure along Route 40. Along Route 3, we are building what would become the Atlantic coast segment. The Andean region already has fiber, but a data center without connectivity is useless, especially for this type of service.

As for energy for data centers in the south, there are several projects that use gas turbines capable of generating enormous amounts of power. Mining companies are already using this approach. So energy could be available through on-site turbines powered by flare gas. In fact, that is much more environmentally friendly than simply burning the fuel, because if that gas is not used for electricity generation, it still has to be burned or vented into the atmosphere. But these are very remote and inhospitable locations. Where you place the facility matters a great deal. There is also very limited water availability, which means those data centers could not rely on water cooling. They would have to use direct-expansion cooling systems, which completely changes the design.

Despite the cold climate, you cannot rely on the weather itself, because it is also an arid environment with a great deal of dust. And you cannot have a data center exposed to dust. You can install multiple layers of filtration, but then those filters have to be maintained, and that introduces additional costs that work against you.

When we talk about governance of the technology stack, satellites seem to be something that receives relatively little attention, even though they are extremely important. What are the advantages of having your own satellites rather than relying entirely on private companies?

The most important advantage, in a country like Argentina that struggles with balance-of-payments constraints and foreign currency shortages, is that with two national satellites you can provide communications across the entire country while paying in local currency. Argentina spends roughly between 60 and 80 million dollars a year on satellite communications. Of that amount, around 60 million is absorbed by ARSAT. Without ARSAT, those dollars would flow abroad. So from a balance-of-payments perspective, it is enormously beneficial. ARSAT is a profitable company. You can pay for its services in pesos and continue receiving them; otherwise, you need hard currency available to pay foreign providers.

That is the economic side. From the perspective of sovereignty, you are also developing an industry that improves the quality of production at every level: electronics, engineering, metalworking, propulsion systems, systems integration. It allows you to create a network of SMEs that INVAP can contract, and those companies begin to gain international recognition for other satellite projects because they have developed expertise and high-quality processes.

In the satellite industry, quality has to be guaranteed from beginning to end. It is not like other products. There are insurance requirements, verification procedures, and extremely demanding standards. All of that helps create new industries and higher levels of quality. And in a country as large as Argentina, satellites are essential. There are many remote areas—the foothills, the Andes, the northern regions with ravines and valleys—where installing fiber-optic infrastructure is extraordinarily expensive or simply impossible. Sometimes you can build it, but then a flood destroys it and cuts the entire line. So you cannot rely solely on fiber. You absolutely need satellite capacity.

Satellites are also critical for strategic purposes: border control, communications for the Armed Forces, the fishing fleet, and Antarctica. All of these functions require satellites if you want to exercise sovereignty. Moreover, satellites also shape symbolic and territorial sovereignty. With ARSAT-1 and ARSAT-2, we provide coverage over the Malvinas/Falkland Islands and Antarctica, territories over which we claim sovereignty. Providing communications through those satellites is another way of reaffirming the country’s rights, by saying: we made the investment, we are providing coverage, and we are guaranteeing services throughout Argentine territory and for all its inhabitants. And the costs are competitive as well. It is not as though we are losing money to achieve that. The company is profitable.

Of course, we do not have the most advanced communications technology today, because these satellites have been in orbit for more than ten years. When they were launched, having five megabits of internet bandwidth was considered very good. The challenge is that geostationary satellites last between 15 and 18 years, while technology evolves very quickly. We will need to consider how to improve services, perhaps by launching ARSAT-SG, which is designed to help close the digital divide and provide high-quality coverage across the Andes, the foothills, and northern Argentina. That would allow us to offer bandwidths of around 50 megabits per second.

It makes me think a bit about the postal system: the advantage is not only that it works and connects everyone, but that it also functions better when it is public. In that sense, what do you think about interpreting infrastructure lack in Latin America as a form of digital dependency?

Yes, absolutely. That is one of the things we try to avoid whenever possible. For example, in choosing the cloud management platform software we use, we selected Apache CloudStack, which belongs to the Apache Foundation. That gives us access to the source code and ensures that no company can suddenly change the licensing model or prevent us from using it.

We have already seen that happen with VMware. VMware, which was widely used for virtualization services, changed ownership, dramatically increased prices worldwide, and forced many European SMEs to migrate to open-source solutions. Excessive cost increases push the market toward concentration, where only the major cloud providers can survive while smaller companies can no longer offer the same services. Fortunately, on the open-source side we have KVM, which provides essentially the same capabilities for virtual machines and cloud services and remains available.

Where Latin America truly remains dependent is in computing hardware. We depend on technologies developed by American, Asian, or European companies. We do not have chip fabrication plants, and we do not manufacture memory. We do have the human talent needed to design these technologies, but building a world-class semiconductor fabrication plant requires billions of dollars in investment and an industrial ecosystem that simply does not exist here. That is why those facilities are in Taiwan, and why the issue is so sensitive.

In fact, on April 18 we will be giving a talk in Avellaneda about the need to think seriously about rebuilding a microchip and microcontroller industry in Latin America. Not with the goal of competing at the cutting edge with three-nanometer technology, but by starting with 90- or 45-nanometer processes. For example, you should not have to wait for a chip for a washing machine to arrive from China. Nor should a military drone depend entirely on foreign suppliers. These are not highly complex technologies, and they could be produced with those manufacturing capabilities. We are talking about much smaller investments—less than one billion dollars—compared to the 60 billion dollars that a cutting-edge fabrication plant can cost.

For regional needs, that would be extremely important. Brazil is already far ahead in this area. Brazil clearly understands that the world is organized around strategic resources and acts accordingly. Unfortunately, Argentina at the moment is, I would say, functioning like an occupation government. It is a government focused on dismantling the country’s technological and developmental capacities. If you look at the sectors they have targeted, they are precisely the ones that allow a country to differentiate itself, grow, and integrate. This government will clearly attack all of those areas. We have always looked to Brazil. Brazil has long had an imperial vision of itself as a global actor and behaves accordingly, even at the level of its elites. In Argentina, when I studied our elites, I found that they have largely been rent-seeking and extractive elites. They see themselves as the owners of Argentina, while the rest of us are merely tenants. And that is how they treat us, both politically and economically.

Brazil is an interesting case. Digital sovereignty is discussed there quite extensively, both among the public and within the state. For example, the development of payment infrastructure such as Pix has transformed people’s lives, especially those of poorer citizens. But at the same time, despite all that discourse, American companies are still contracted for certain services. That can also become a trap, because state-led innovation can end up being captured and put at the service of foreign corporations.

Yes, absolutely. Here in the Province of Buenos Aires we have Cuenta DNI, which aims to become something like an Argentine version of Pix. It is a locally developed system, and that is very important. The Province of Buenos Aires also has its own data center and its own development teams. In many cases, these solutions emerge because of budget constraints. There simply is not enough money to hire Accenture or some international consulting firm. That necessity forces you to develop capabilities locally.

In ARSAT’s case, for example, we developed Cine.Ar Play, which allows people across the country to watch Argentine films from the National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts (INCAA) free of charge. We also developed local content delivery network solutions. For example, that is the infrastructure used by the Official Gazette to publish government documents. So solutions already exist that address specific needs and that, if they did not exist, would make us dependent on companies elsewhere in the world. And they can be built using open-source technologies—good, effective, and affordable, as we like to say—precisely because we do not have the budget for anything else.

Do you think there is something to learn from a more popular Latin American tradition when thinking about digital sovereignty? 

I think there is. We have a fairly good understanding of where we can add value and which costs would not be justified. That is why we focus on software development and infrastructure solutions based on our own engineering capabilities, without relying on third-party engineering, while trying to make everything as maintainable as possible.

For example, when we built the data centers, we did not buy a turnkey solution. We became deeply involved in the project itself. We tried to ensure that each component had the lowest possible level of complexity so that maintenance would be easier. I always say that one of the main enemies in engineering is complexity. Sometimes it is unavoidable, but in many cases it leads to larger problems when unexpected behavior appears—which it always does.

Black-box solutions are attractive because they provide something that is already solved. But when a problem arises, you no longer have visibility into what is happening inside. We try to avoid that. Even if it is not always the most efficient approach, we prefer to keep everything separated, understand the system as a whole, reuse components, and know exactly which part is causing which problem. And if there are things that cannot be avoided, then so be it—but at least we want them clearly identified.

We do not think in terms of building the entire technological stack in Latin America or manufacturing everything locally. But we do believe in developing the areas where we can differentiate ourselves, where we can add value, and where foreign companies would charge enormous sums to adapt solutions to our needs. Because otherwise you become dependent on their development roadmap.

A clear example is Oracle databases, which are still used extensively throughout Latin America. We have always advocated moving toward PostgreSQL, which is open source and offers virtually the same performance for normal use cases. But fashions and managerial fears carry a lot of weight: “I don’t want to move away from this because it already works.” The problem is that these technologies are extremely expensive, and they can also leave you vulnerable to situations where a company suddenly says: “We are no longer selling licenses to Argentina.” Then, overnight, you lose access to updates. That happened to Russia, it happened to Cuba, and it is happening to Iran right now. In the long term, the risks are much greater if you depend on those technologies.

I’ve spoken with people across Latin America, and everyone tells me the same thing: yes, we need more cooperation at the Latin American level, but it’s very difficult. What can be done to strengthen cooperation among countries?

The most important thing is creating spaces for people to meet. Those spaces do not exist, deliberately so. There are no regional technology forums, even though there easily could be. Brazil, for example, could host them. Europe has many more of these spaces: user groups, regional conferences, and so on. We have often been invited to conferences organized by the KVM Foundation and to regional technical conferences in Europe. Obviously, we participate mostly online because we are not allowed to travel, but we still contribute in our own way. And everything we develop ends up being used around the world.

I think that is the direction we should pursue. But there are always what I call “agents of chaos,” people who actively undermine opportunities for communication. That happens even within Argentine universities, where research groups working on exactly the same topics often do not even know each other exists. Right now I am very focused on energy issues, and I keep finding universities carrying out similar analyses without realizing that other groups are doing the same work. So I often end up acting as a kind of matchmaker between research teams: “Look, this faculty is working on this topic—go talk to that other group,” and I put researchers in touch with one another. That is when synergies begin to emerge. But we have built a model of isolated islands. And those islands are a major obstacle to scientific and technological development. We need to start breaking them down and creating larger collaborative communities. There is also a very Latin American problem, which is the “me first” mentality: “I do it better, everyone else does it worse.” These ego-driven competitions also work against us. Egos can sometimes be useful for driving projects forward, but when we need to pursue a common cause, they become a major obstacle. And many projects ultimately fail because of that. There is also a cultural element, if you like: we are more expressive, and disagreements can become irreconcilable very quickly. And that happens not only across Latin America but also within individual countries.

And what about Uruguay? What do you think of ANTEL, which seems to have a somewhat more public-oriented approach?

We have had two meetings with ANTEL because we have many things in common. They do not have satellites or satellite capacity, but they do have fiber coverage throughout Uruguay and they operate data centers. Their situation is somewhat mixed, though: they have data centers with their own equipment, but they also purchase capacity from Amazon and other major providers. It is a hybrid model.

That said, Uruguay has a major advantage: it is a very small country. That means the cost of building and maintaining high-quality infrastructure is much lower. Our challenge is that Argentina is a very large country and infrastructure costs are astronomical. Uruguay has a system that works very well. What they lack is professionals, because Uruguay loses many highly skilled workers. A great many people end up moving to Argentina or to other countries due to economic conditions and quality-of-life considerations. If those conditions improved, they could retain that talent and advance much further, because their infrastructure and expansion costs are significantly lower.

Brazil, by contrast, has strong integration between industry and universities and has always maintained an industrial focus. Petrobras is also a giant company that drives much of the country’s scientific computing, data center development, and communications infrastructure. They have a very clear understanding that these capabilities are necessary if they want to continue developing and growing.

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About

Duckrabbits Talk Back is a podcast about postartistic antifascism, hosted by Aria Spinelli, Kuba Szreder, and Sepp Eckenhaussen. The series is inspired by the comic treatise Duckrabbits Unveiled: A Sneak Peek at the Postartistic Theory and Practice (2025).

Production: Anielek Niemyjski
Cover art: Kacper Greń
Jingle: Olka Dąbrowska

Published by the Institute of Network Cultures, 2026

The introduction of Digital Tribulations, a series of intellectual interviews on the developments of digital sovereignty in Latin America, can be read here. 

For the last interview in Mexico, we dive into the more institutional perspective with the work, value and activities of the newly created Agency for Public Innovation of Mexico City. After attending a public consultation on the 20-years digital sovereignty plan, I managed to talk online to the head Angel Tamariz on February 20, 2026. The Agency is currently led by Emiliano Calderón.

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What does the Agencia Digital de Innovación Pública (ADIP) do?

The Digital Agency for Public Innovation is an entity of the Mexico City government that was created under the administration of Claudia Sheinbaum, who is now president. The agency’s aim is to bring together, in a single entity, not only the use of technology in public service and in the relationship between government and citizens, but also the authority to facilitate that communication and interaction between citizens and government.

This goes beyond simply digitizing services; it has to do with simplifying procedures and citizen services. That is why we have the authority to evaluate any proposal for regulatory improvement. Normally, we propose something, and it is always implemented, but if we need the authority to require procedures to be simplified, we have it. And then, where appropriate, comes digitization. Our goal is to be a technological arm of the government, but we are not an internal technology department. Our main priority is a policy for leveraging technology within the relationship between citizens and the government, which carries implications across the board.

What is the concept of digital sovereignty that you use?

For ADIP, digital sovereignty means being able to make decisions independently, without influence or interests external to the government. It means having the freedom to make digital changes, strategies, and implementations while thinking only of the general interest of citizens. We have applied this in many ways. A very clear example is software development: practically all the systems we build at the agency are developed by our own team of developers, with the goal of knowing the code, understanding the structure of what is being developed, and having governance over the data that is generated, which is also one of the key priorities.

Now, this does not mean that if we hire a company for a development project, we are violating this principle, as long as the rules are very clear regarding delivery of the code, ownership of the code, and governance of the data. Right now, several ministries are suffering from a kind of technological lock-in, a software lock-in, where in order to make modifications or updates, payment is required; if payment is no longer made, the source code is unavailable, making updates complicated. There is a need to strengthen this area, and we are doing so. Over the past seven years, it has been increasingly reinforced.

But this policy of digital sovereignty in software development entails major responsibilities. We, as public officials, are temporary; we are passing through, ephemeral. Software does not necessarily have to be. Therefore, the interest in technological sovereignty in software development carries with it the responsibility to ensure that the survival of the software does not depend on individuals, but on the documentation that has been left behind. As for the sovereignty of the infrastrcuture, ideally we would build our own servers, but that capacity does not yet exist in Mexico. However, we do have our own data center. The administration of the servers where the information is stored is in Mexico and belongs to the Government of Mexico City. The agency has two very important data centers where we manage everything.

So, what we want to maintain in terms of sovereignty is the ability to make decisions about the software, own the source codes, have the ability to update the systems, have absolute governance over the data we manage, and ensure that the systems live on servers administered by the city government itself.

In this discourse, is there a distinction between Mexican companies and foreign companies? Is there also an open-source dimension?

Yes, we always review the use of free software, or at least open-source code, in everything we use. Sometimes it is not possible. As much as we have fought to have alternatives to instant messaging, we know that social networks exist, as do commercial messaging systems that everyone uses.

And here comes a very interesting discussion: our principles are in favor of free culture and free software, but what is also fundamental is what is practical for the population. If we wanted to use another messaging system but only a small percentage of the population had it, we would not be fulfilling our main function, which is to govern for everyone. So we use commercial messaging systems that, unfortunately, we have not been able to replace with open-source alternatives. And the other level is that when we hire companies, we ideally seek companies that are based in Mexico City, but if not, at least in Mexico, because this also has to do with how far the data goes and who has it.

The other day I participated in the public consultation for the digital sovereignty plan, and I thought the idea of a long-term 20-year plan was very important — something I did not find in other countries. Could you explain some concrete projects and implementation challenges?

A very clear example is that, amid this entire wave of artificial intelligence, we are developing citizen-assistance chatbots and chatbots for tourists and cultural assistance. They are very nice projects because people receive information very quickly. But we have faced very significant challenges. The tourism-cultural chatbot, which we also want to launch for the World Cup, is intended to be conversational, using generative artificial intelligence. That requires very powerful natural language engines and very powerful servers.

We have explored the possibility of installing language models on our own servers, but there we face an infrastructure challenge: if we install them on our servers, they are less powerful and have fewer capabilities. So in recent months we have been balancing the need for something functional without necessarily contracting all services from commercial companies. How do we strike a balance between strengthening sovereignty and investing in servers that are very expensive — and that are currently rising in price because of scarcity — and determining to what extent we pay for services from these language models in order to balance functionality with sovereignty? We have already made a decision: a balance between paying for some APIs and installing certain parts on our own servers, with the perspective of depending less and less on those services over time.

Another challenge is strengthening the agency’s own knowledge in these areas, because the research and innovation department is new. One of its main tasks is the use of artificial intelligence in public service. As we generate that knowledge and explore at the pace at which the field is advancing, we are caught in that dilemma between functionality and the constant challenge of pursuing technological sovereignty.

Another issue that interests me a lot is digital public infrastructure. The case of Brazil with PIX seems revolutionary to me. Is the agency or the Mexican government doing anything in that regard, including on digital identity?

Yes, PIX is very important. Here in Mexico, similar efforts have been made by the federal government together with the Bank of Mexico, which is autonomous. DIMO exists, and so does CoDi, but in reality they have not achieved the level of adoption among the population that we would like, in order to stop depending on cash and be able to carry out more transactions digitally. What has worked best is SPEI, which is another transfer protocol where you enter the other person’s bank account, but I feel it is still not as fluid or agile as PIX. That is why DIMO was created, which works with your phone, but like CoDi, it has not achieved mass use.

As for digital identity, at the federal level, the most official form of identity today is the INE voter card. However, it has several disadvantages; the most obvious is that in order to vote you have to be 18 years old, so all children lack that identity. The other thing that exists — and this is for all citizens regardless of age — is the Unique Population Registry Code (Clave Única de Registro de Población, CURP) which is an 18-character number. The federal government has a project to turn the CURP into an identification document and also link it with biometric data to guarantee that it is unique for each person. This is intended to facilitate government procedures and avoid relying solely on the INE credential.

In Mexico City, we have made some progress in terms of digital authentication for procedures: Llave CDMX. It is a way to authenticate yourself, but it is not a digital identity, because it cannot guarantee that the person behind the user account is who they say they are. What we are implementing this year is Llave Plus or Llave Verificada, which is strengthened and linked to biometrics on an optional basis. It is not that everyone has to have it, because there is a universe of procedures where it does not matter who is behind the screen. If you are going to pay the water bill, whether you are Marco or Ángel does not matter. But there are procedures where I do have to make sure that the person claiming to be someone is really that person — for example, applying for a driver’s license. So we carry out remote biometric verification: from home, you can complete a verification process to confirm that it really was you who created that identity.

And there would be a third level, not only when you create the Llave account, but when you are going to carry out the procedure, where there would again be biometric validation. With Llave Verificada, we believe this is the first concrete step toward digital identity at the Mexico City level, while at the federal level it will be the biometric CURP.

Is there dialogue between the agency and other Mexican institutions, and between the Mexican government and other Latin American countries?

With some organizations, yes, but perhaps less than desired. We have engaged especially in discussions around the digital divide. But on issues of sovereignty, more dialogue is needed; and with other Latin American countries, definitely much more is needed. There have been some exchanges to discuss issues such as artificial intelligence or accessibility of digital portals for people with disabilities, but these are more practical matters, not as deep in terms of the philosophical and political aspect of what technological sovereignty implies.

I think those dialogues would be worthwhile. One of the problems is that I believe we are in the process of internally strengthening the sovereign aspect of implementations within Latin American governments. But I think this will happen quickly, so that once it is more or less resolved — in terms of data governance, software development, and our own servers — we can turn toward other Latin American countries and think about how, as a region, we can strengthen the region’s sovereign dimension, especially in areas such as infrastructure or language models for artificial intelligence.

Do you think there is more discourse around digital sovereignty in this government compared with previous governments?

I think that starting with the previous government, greater relevance was given to the issue of digital sovereignty, without a doubt, here in Mexico City. Before, it was not an issue that mattered. All primary and secondary schools in the city, if they acquire a computer lab, what operating system do those computers have? Well, they have a proprietary operating system installed, which will later depend on paying licenses in order to use it — and nobody questions that.

The first challenge is for there to be computers, internet, and electrical infrastructure; and only then do we begin discussing free software and sovereignty. However, we are launching the Mixtli Digital project in Mexico City, which means that over six years, starting last year, all public primary and secondary schools will have a digital classroom with computers, tablets, digital screens, Arduinos, and robotics kits. We, as the agency, were technically responsible for determining what would be acquired and under what conditions. And although the computers do not run only Linux, all public primary and secondary schools in the city will have both Windows and Linux.

That is already a minimal platform so that different organizations and associations can promote the use of Linux in schools and reduce that dependency. So I believe this government represents a deepening of the concern for digital sovereignty that began in the previous six-year administration.

What would be a pragmatic outlook for the coming years? What are the areas where more work can be done?

I think one of the most relevant issues for this government, and one that we have begun to take responsibility for, is combating the digital divide. All reflection on sovereignty must go hand in hand with guaranteeing access for everyone, because that remains a problem in Mexico City. One might think that here everyone already has a cell phone, everyone has internet, everyone knows how to use it — and that is not the case. It is definitely not the case. Perhaps we have the lowest levels of digital divide in the country, perhaps; but today I can affirm that any digital solution made available to people does not guarantee that everyone will be able to use it. It is not a democratic solution, and therefore there must be a proactive stance from the government to guarantee those rights.

The head of government told us that, as a digital agency, we should not remain “in the cloud”; we have to go out into the territory to see what people’s reality is, so that the use of technology does not reach only some people and, even worse, does not generate greater inequalities or new inequalities. Our perspective for the future is that the agency should take a leading role in analysis, proposals, and actions to combat the digital divide, making it possible to guarantee digital rights and access to government services for the entire population.

Duckrabbits Talk Back is a podcast about postartistic antifascism. It gathers thinkers, activists, artists, and postartists to discuss the global rise of fascism, ask questions together, and formulate possible responses. Duckrabbits — those wonderfully ambivalent creatures that can be seen as ducks or rabbits, or both at once — guide us through the tangled web of contemporary theory, postartistic practice, and antifascist imagination. From antifascist comics to networked movements, from intersectional struggles to economies of interdependence, duckrabbits and guests map how cultural work confronts both old and newly mutating forms of authoritarianism.

In this first episode of the series, co-hosts Kuba Szreder, Aria Spinelli, and Sepp Eckenhaussen, together with producer Anielek Niemyjski, introduce comrade Duckrabbit. They share their reasons for making an antifascist art podcast today, and announce the all-star line-up of artivist guests in the upcoming episodes.

Cover art by Kacper Greń

Listen to Duckrabbits Talk Back

RSS: https://media.rss.com/duckrabbits-talk-back/feed.xml
RSS.com homepage: https://rss.com/podcasts/duckrabbits-talk-back
Apple podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/duckrabbits-talk-back/id1896885677?l=en-GB

About

Duckrabbits Talk Back is hosted by Sepp Eckenhaussen, Aria Spinelli and Kuba Szreder. The podcast was inspired by the comic treatise Duckrabbits Unveiled: A Sneak Peek at the Postartistic Theory and Practice (2025) by Kuba Szreder and Kacper Greń.

Production by Anielek Niemyjski
Cover art by Kacper Greń
Jingle by Olka Dąbrowska

Amsterdam, Institute of Network Cultures, 2026

Duckrabbits Talk Back gathers thinkers, activists, artists, and postartists to discuss the global rise of fascism, ask questions together, and formulate possible responses. Duckrabbits — those wonderfully ambivalent creatures that can be seen as ducks or rabbits, or both at once — guide us through the tangled web of contemporary theory, postartistic practice, and antifascist imagination. From antifascist comics to networked movements, from intersectional struggles to economies of interdependence, duckrabbits and guests map how cultural work confronts both old and newly mutating forms of authoritarianism.

In this first episode of the series, co-hosts Kuba Szreder, Aria Spinelli, and Sepp Eckenhaussen, together with producer Anielek Niemyjski, introduce comrade Duckrabbit. They share their reasons for making an antifascist art podcast today, and announce the all-star line-up of guests. In the coming weeks, all seven episodes of the first season will be released.

You can find Duckrabbits Talk Back via https://rss.com/podcasts/duckrabbits-talk-back, or on any major podcast platform.

About Duckrabbits Talk Back

Co-hosts Sepp Eckenhaussen, Aria Spinelli, and Kuba Szreder decided to make this podcast based on a postartistic intuition: that artistic potentials bloom fully only when planted beyond the narrow confines of the professionalised field of art. This line of thinking has a long tradition, rooted in historical avant-gardes and postconceptual art: from Allan Kaprow’s call for artists to “drop out” of art, through Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ maintenance art and Rasheed Araeen’s push to move art beyond art, to Jerzy Ludwiński’s lectures on art in the postartistic age. Writing in 1971, Ludwiński suggested that art had already transformed into something else — something that escaped our capacity to name it, but carried greater potential.

These historical calls respond to contemporary urgencies. As liberal globalisation unravels under authoritarian pressure, postartistic antifascism emerges as a way to blur the line between art and life, image and action, irony and commitment. In Poland, for example, Ludwiński’s thought became a Leitmotiv of antiauthoritarian counterculture after years of right-wing authoritarian backsliding. Postartistic practitioners carried paintings as protest signs, organised marches for hospitality, and invented new antifascist visual idioms.

The Duckrabbit is the mischievous mascot of this radical ambivalence. It can be seen as a duck, a rabbit, or both at once. It can be seen as a duck, a rabbit, or both at once. In the same way, postartistic practices can be viewed as art, activism, both, or neither, depending on whom you speak with, how you act, and what kind of perspective you adopt. This double-sidedness has political implications. Against fascist rigidity, scapegoating, hate campaigns, and conspiratorial certainty, the Duckrabbit links absurdist humour with antifascist conviction, and postartistic flair with antiauthoritarian resistance.

Now the Duckrabbit returns — and talks back. Across seven episodes, Duckrabbits Talk Back brings together artists, theorists, organisers, and cultural workers to discuss antifascist network cultures, economic interdependence, complex simplicity, intersectionality, and the politics of cultural work today. What can art do when authoritarianism mutates? What forms of solidarity, organisation, and imagination are needed now? And what is to be done, today, with art, non-art, and postart?

Listen to Duckrabbits Talk Back

RSS: https://media.rss.com/duckrabbits-talk-back/feed.xml
RSS.com homepage: https://rss.com/podcasts/duckrabbits-talk-back
Apple podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/duckrabbits-talk-back/id1896885677?l=en-GB

Credits

Hosts: Aria Spinelli, Kuba Szreder, and Sepp Eckenhaussen
Production: Anielek Niemyjski
Cover art: Kacper Greń
Jingle: Olka Dąbrowska.

The series is inspired by the comic treatise Duckrabbits Unveiled: A Sneak Peek at the Postartistic Theory and Practice, which we published at INC in 2025.

 Interview with Colectivo Promedio

The introduction of Digital Tribulations, a series of intellectual interviews on the developments of digital soveregnty in Latin America, can be read here. 

I arrived in San Cristóbal de las Casas on a cold morning, after an uncomfortable overnight bus from Puerto Escondido. The city sits at 2,200 metres in a pine-forested valley in Chiapas: colonial cobblestone streets, low painted houses, heavy wooden portals, and a light that filters milky between the mountains in the morning and falls suddenly at dusk. I stayed for a week, which turned into an accidental summer school on Zapatismo.

The name comes from Emiliano Zapata, a horseman and landowner’s son from Morelos who organised the Ejército Libertador del Sur during the Mexican Revolution under the slogan Tierra y Libertad (Land and Freedom). He is remembered not only for the fight but for the refusal: when he entered Mexico City in triumph alongside Pancho Villa, he declined to sit in the presidential chair, saying it was a throne that corrupted men. The Zapatista uprising of January 1st, 1994 — timed precisely to coincide with the entry into force of NAFTA, the free trade agreement with the USA — inherited that refusal and made it the centre of its political organisation. Over the following decades, the movement transformed from an armed insurgency into a laboratory of autonomy: indigenous Mayan tradition, Marxist guerrilla experience and the language of national liberation converged into something harder to classify, something new: self-governing communities, autonomous schools and clinics, rotating assemblies, and a theory of power summarised in the phrase mandar obedeciendo (“governing by obeying”).

Much of this I learned through people I met in the city. One evening I sat in a small room in a cultural centre called Gato Negro, on a broken sofa, listening to Lila — extensions knotted into a thick braid, her husband cooking behind the wall — recount the story of her family. Her father, Amado Avendaño Figueroa, was a journalist and owner of the newspaper El Tiempo. When the Zapatistas took San Cristóbal in 1994 – thinking it was a suicide mission – their house became an information hub: the phone never stopped ringing, communiqués signed by Subcomandante Marcos arrived and were archived, and news reached Europe before it reached the rest of Mexico, bypassing a national media that portrayed the uprising as a criminal group manipulating indigenous people. Avendaño ran for governor with Zapatista support, survived an assassination attempt, won the election, was denied the result, and was invested by indigenous communities as gobernador rebelde (rebel governor), receiving the bastón de mando, the sacred ceremonial staff — to this day the only non-indigenous person to have done so. By the mid-nineties, the internet arrived and the declarations no longer needed to pass through their house; El Tiempo closed, and what remained was the room Lila was speaking from.

Amado Avendaño Figueroa with the mando staff.

At Sendas, another cultural centre close to the Zapatista networks, I attended discussion sessions led by John, a lanky Irish man with a ponytail and a cigarette, who came into the city twice a week to run collaborative research on the Zapatista declarations. In one session we worked through a quiz on Chiapas: the state has the highest biodiversity in Mexico after the Amazon, produces more corn and coffee than any other, holds more water than any other — yet tap water is undrinkable. There is, however, a large Coca-Cola bottling plant. Mexico ranks second in the world for per-capita consumption of the drink, and Chiapas has a rate four times the national average; Coca-Cola advertised directly in indigenous languages and traditional dress, and the penetration has been such that the drink has entered indigenous religious rituals, in some communities replacing traditional fermented beverages. John mentioned the arrival of unmediated internet  in communities with no prior framework for it: what some were beginning to call etnoporno, a shorthand for a broader anxiety about cultural penetration through platforms. 

At the Sendas Cafè.

At Sendas I met Paco, a member of Colectivo Promedios, working a few doors down from the hacklab, who told me how to make contact with the caracol — the self-governing Zapatista communities, established in 2003 as the concrete infrastructure of autonomy: each caracol (the word means snail, chosen as a symbol of slow listening, of speech that enters and exits in a spiral) houses a Junta de Buen Gobierno, a rotating council that coordinates autonomous schools, clinics, justice systems and cooperatives across the territory. The procedure to visit one is precise: take the central bus, then a taxi to Altamirano, speak to the interzona, prepare three identical copies of the same letter — one for the comandancia general, one for the comité clandestino, one for the interzona — explaining who you are and why you want to come, with no guarantee of a reply. The chances seemed too low, and I was already behind on time, so I passed. 

Instead, I interviewed Paco, who gave me a detailed account of nearly two decades spent building communication infrastructure inside and alongside the Zapatista autonomy project, years before the vocabulary of digital sovereignty had fully formed. In retrospect, much of what Promedios was attempting in the early 2000s anticipated debates that are only taking place now at a global level.

In the end, the Zapatista project famously opened to the world. The 2005 Sexta Declaración de la Selva Lacandona explicitly called for alliances beyond Chiapas and beyond Mexico, with movements and communities sharing no fixed ideology but a common refusal of the “death machine” of global capitalism. In 2021, a delegation crossed the Atlantic to reach what they called an Insubordinate Europe. The caracoles should now be nodes in a network that has always understood local autonomy and global solidarity as two sides of the same project. Talking to Paco was, in a small way, part of that opening.

The first declaration of la Selva Lacandona.

***

To begin with, could you tell us what the colectivo Promedios is?

My name is Paco Vázquez, and I am a member of the colectivo Promedios de Comunicación Comunitaria. We are an organization that was founded in 1998 to accompany the Zapatista movement in its demand for access to its own media.

For nearly 18 years, we worked with the movement through an ongoing program aimed at facilitating the appropriation of communication media within the autonomy project. Since this is a project without a predefined structure—that is, it is not a socialist project with a specific program—the Zapatista project is an experience of experimentation, dialogue, and reconstruction, constantly adjusting and generating new proposals; it is highly irregular. This meant that we accompanied the process by finding or proposing possible solutions to the needs that emerged or were identified during the construction of autonomy and Indigenous self-government.

Essentially, we trained people within the communities who, as volunteers in the political project, provided communication services addressing a wide range of needs. This ranged from documenting events and producing audiovisual materials in documentary or short report formats, to accompanying members of the organization working in health or education, or even documenting community justice processes by filming agreements between communities in dispute. All kinds of community events were documented, including religious and cultural ones, as well as traditional rituals, always serving as a tool for community development.

So communication was not understood in the sense of news reporting, but rather in a community sense: materials to promote vaccination, materials to promote women’s rights, or often simply rights-related materials for internal use within the communities. Some of these audiovisual productions were also shown at film festivals, university circuits, academic spaces, and activist networks.

Another part of the work carried out by these people is still ongoing; the fact that we are no longer involved does not mean it stopped. They have continued independently for years, without the need for this permanent annual program. These community communication teams operated in each autonomous municipality, as well as in a regional center providing more comprehensive services to the Juntas de Buen Gobierno (Good Government Councils, the Zapatista governing body). They produced materials and provided services to leaders, political commissions, and organizational commissions, facilitating internet access, offering technical support so people could use email, and resolving issues related to printers, software, or operating systems.

In 2000, we facilitated the migration to Linux, which has since partially reversed because, for some people, it is easier to buy a computer with software already installed. Still, to this day, the vast majority continue working with free software.

During those years, our collective also participated in civil society actions outside direct collaboration with the Zapatista movement, working with human rights organizations and independent journalism within the broader field of independent communication. We researched autonomous networks. We developed a network that is no longer operating because it ceased to be necessary: we had a wireless telecommunications network in the city, with a tower here in the city center providing service to the outskirts. Only one neighborhood remains, quite isolated, which now operates independently.

The network we had in the valley was dismantled because, over time, the industry and projects like Altán began offering more robust connectivity. They have capital and infrastructure that a small collective cannot compete with. And people’s awareness is not always high enough to understand that if I cannot provide same-day technical support, it is because we are a small collective and I also have to make a living. For a time, we developed that experience, especially with the goal of creating solutions tested in the field. Often, a community or collective approaches with a proposal like “we need networks” or “we need internet access,” and if you do not have solutions that you have effectively tested on the ground, providing service to a certain number of users, you cannot tell them “this can be used.” That was the central objective of that network, but it no longer exists.

A large part of our work has also involved training in the use of audiovisual media and, more recently, critical analysis of private social networks and the promotion of free software and independent platforms.

What problems did you encounter, and what worked or didn’t work while developing this communication infrastructure?

Well, I think the idea that a community network has to operate like the market is a mistaken starting point. In the initial stage, we worked with people who had a political or ethical commitment, but also a practical need, because there is no coverage on the outskirts of the city. Large companies refused for a long time to deploy infrastructure because it was not profitable in cost-benefit terms. That neighborhood that still uses the service we built 10 or 12 years ago is the only one left because, even though they tried to negotiate with Telcel or Telmex, those companies look at their numbers and say: “you have 60 users, I’m not interested, I won’t install a tower because it is not profitable.”

The people we started the project with understood it in its political and ideological dimension and as an experiment. Gradually it grew; we reached nearly 300 users across the outskirts, and for an experimental project it was quite rich because we had a great diversity of people. But some people thought they were subscribing to “Telmex B,” so they expected immediate service. They expected things they would never ask of large companies, like: “I’m going to be away for a month, don’t charge me for that month.” I would tell them: “sorry, you can’t ask that of Telmex or Telcel, but you insist on asking me? I think you don’t understand that we are a different kind of project.”

This effort to raise awareness about how networks are used seems to me one of the major challenges of contemporary society. Starting from the idea that we already understand that without our own infrastructure—whether civic or national—there is no sovereignty, it is essential that most people understand how it works. That is, they should understand that if the commercial node in the city collapses, there is nothing I can do. There were many difficulties; we even developed software tools to help users diagnose problems: “if you click here, it will tell you where the issue is.” If the problem is on your rooftop, where your antenna is, then I have to help you. If it’s in my tower, also. But if it’s in your upstream link, I can’t do anything—it depends on the larger infrastructure of Telmex or Megacable that I rely on. If your problem is in Villahermosa or Miami, there is nothing I can do. Cultivating that awareness is important for community projects.

Another key point is that, to the extent that local resources can be generated—local servers—whether through Mesh technologies or others that allow independent networks that do not rely on a WhatsApp server to deliver messages, there can be decentralization and a real alternative to private global platforms. In that case, communities can manage their networks more efficiently. If what you do is provide connectivity so people can use WhatsApp, you remain in the same situation while also taking on the burden of the “last mile.” You are effectively doing the work so that large corporations can profit. It’s a paradox—the paradox of Open Source more broadly—and it shouldn’t be overlooked.

There is a tension between global scale and community scale through platformization. Everything is now shaped by that, although there are also some examples of worker cooperatives. I don’t know if that has reached here.

Nothing larger has developed here. There is a network of merchants who, faced with the lack of distribution in rural areas, began installing small devices to sell SIM cards or prepaid credit. As I mentioned, in response to the lack of coverage, small companies began to emerge—telecommunications technicians who used to work for large firms and then set up independent businesses by installing small WISPs (wireless internet service providers). In the deep jungle, they began working with HughesNet satellite—high-latency internet commonly used in remote rural areas, which is quite poor, but it was what was available—combined with a local WISP: one satellite connection serving 20 or 30 users.

In the Los Altos region, which is more densely populated, they set up wireless links from the city to the mountains, with repeaters across the area. This led to the formation of a kind of guild—a group of “Wisp-eros,” small entrepreneurs who buy a robust connection and distribute it via antennas to nearby towns to cover rural areas. At one point they functioned as a kind of informal union: they began sharing bandwidth for content distribution, such as movies. They set up local servers with films so users could watch them without accessing the broader internet. It was interesting, but eventually the Federal Telecommunications Commission shut them down. First, Telmex cut their service because they were using residential fiber for commercial purposes. Telmex couldn’t identify the content of the traffic, but it could detect the volume; once they identified commercial-level usage, they began blocking them through supposed regional failures, effectively harassing them. In the end, although they formed a kind of network among Telmex and Megacable users, they gradually disappeared.

These were processes in which sectors of the population could build networks to share content. They used servers with pirated movies to attract customers and offer added value, reducing bandwidth consumption by downloading content locally instead of repeatedly from the internet. Interesting, but it didn’t develop much further. In Chiapas, there hasn’t been anything beyond that.

In Brazil, there are movements like the Landless Workers that speak of popular digital sovereignty; did that kind of shift in discourse reach the Zapatista movement or other movements in Chiapas?

I don’t know. I think building their own infrastructure has not been a priority. It’s curious: in 2000, we set up an experiment with a local content server. It was a very basic system, fed through a HughesNet connection, that downloaded daily versions of the newspapers most consulted by the Zapatistas at the time (La Jornada, Enlace Zapatista) and Wikipedia; we had previously downloaded the databases, which were updated every two or three days. We installed it as a pilot research project, but it wasn’t understood. I think it was early, or ahead of its time, perhaps out of context, and perhaps we failed to foster more dialogue. The general intuition was: “we want someone to connect us to the internet in general, not to a local service.” I interpret that they saw it as a limitation. In some ways it was, but it was also a form of agency.

Today, the debate is about who connects you, who filters the traffic you consume, who manages your data, and how you ensure speed for non-commercial uses—but at that time, that debate didn’t exist. The project worked technically, but people didn’t understand its purpose. And in response to your question, I think that understanding has still not fully developed. There is a paradox: social movements organize themselves through private U.S. platforms like WhatsApp. I don’t know how much they use these platforms today; the general population certainly does—it is the most widely used in Mexico. But autonomous communities still use radios. Non-autonomous communities also use VHF or FM radios, even here in the city among market vendors or taxi drivers—two-way communication systems. The Zapatistas also continue to use them in rural areas. That, at least, allows for self-managed communication in urgent situations.

Even as coverage expands, those WISPs operating in the region—many of which have shifted from HughesNet to Starlink—continue to provide service, but it remains costly. If you buy a two-way radio, once you’ve paid for it, there are no further costs. So these systems continue to coexist. Of course, radios are mainly used for basic coordination—security, public services, infrastructure. If the power goes out, radios still work; if the power goes out, the internet does not. They continue to use them, but there is no structured effort to transition toward independent networks for ideological or strategic reasons; it’s more a matter of practicality. I also think the Zapatistas have not shown much interest in promoting such projects, because when we proposed them, they didn’t generate much curiosity. In retrospect, we probably should have spent more time analyzing and explaining what the internet and digital platforms actually are.

And is the federal government present here with projects?

The Altán network, a public-private initiative aimed at bringing connectivity to rural areas where companies like Telcel do not operate, is deployed across all territories—although Zapatista territories are not homogeneous and include mixed populations. The Mexican state has an obligation to provide service and appears to be trying to address that responsibility. However, as I mentioned, it is often Walmart that ends up delivering the “last mile,” since Walmart has become a major provider of mobile internet through its BAIT brand, using Altán’s infrastructure. The government built the infrastructure, but a company is needed to manage that last mile—identifying users and handling data consumption. In practice, most of that administration is being handled by Walmart. There are some smaller exceptions, such as Wiki Katat, the first mobile phone and internet network run by an Indigenous community in Mexico (in Tlahuitoltepec), managed autonomously, which has a few users here. But that remains more of an ideological initiative; there is no advertising for it in the city—it spreads through grassroots networks.

What practical steps can be taken in the coming years to become more autonomous?

Honestly, I have little confidence in how well the problem is understood. Most of society, including organized civil society, does not fully grasp it. A proper cost-benefit analysis has not been made. Many people seek a free or cheap service similar to what private companies offer and value it in the same way; they do not recognize that it is fundamentally different. Only moments of crisis tend to shift that perception.

We’ve been working on this for many years without fully succeeding. It’s similar to the free software movement: platforms are now robust, but people only adopt them when they are as easy to use as Windows. That extra effort—or the limitation of not having instant technical support—is a matter of political or ethical commitment. Over time, some tools do stabilize, like Signal, which many now see as a viable option, even though it originated as a radical independent project.

I think a moment of crisis is approaching, because the U.S. government is putting pressure, and in Mexico the government is requiring phone lines to be registered in individuals’ names, supposedly to combat crime and extortion. Starting in June, service will be cut off for those who do not register their line. In the past, SIM cards were sold informally on the street; you can still buy one at an OXXO for 50 pesos and use it without restrictions, but that supply is running out. The new generation of SIM cards already requires registration.

This has led many people to start discussing privacy. Currently, there is an initiative in the city to implement mesh networks—networks that allow decentralized, community-based interconnection of devices. There are meetings among activists, alternative communities, and even some “hippie” groups. I haven’t had time to participate, but I know the technicians involved, and it seems promising. Still, I’ve seen many similar initiatives collapse over time. I don’t think infrastructure alone creates social processes; rather, social processes must justify and sustain the technology. That’s why I follow it with interest, but also with some caution. Projects like RedPhone or Signal, for example, emerged from social movements grounded in ideas of autonomy and freedom—very anarchist in spirit—and some of them have actually succeeded.

Did anything related to blockchain reach here?

No, not really. At most, there are maybe three people here who use Bitcoin. It’s not widespread. Some people use certain protocols for secure transactions—for example, to send money to Gaza—as an alternative method. There could be some overlap between anarchist ideas and blockchain in terms of guaranteeing anonymity, but it’s not something widely adopted. In practice, what people use for transactions is PayPal and what one might loosely call “narco-pay”—things you hear about informally. Blockchain at a general level—maybe for sending money to places like the Cayman Islands—but not for ordinary people. For example, we’ve heard that extortion payments are often made via PayPal.

On the wall.

Interview with the Medilabmx.

The introduction of Digital Tribulations, a series of intellectual interviews on the developments of digital sovereignty in Latin America, can be read here. 

As I arrived in Mexico for a job interview, I took the opportunity to visit the Medialabmx, a space of technological resistance and experimentation in Mexico City. Located in the vast and lively La Merced market – an area that has been a trading hub since pre-Hispanic times, where an uncanny concentration of Niño Dios figures and anatomical religious icons, often dressed in elaborate custom-made costumes, fills the merchant’s stands – the lab sits at the intersection of a maker space and a research institute. Medialabmx also maintains close ties with the Institute of Network Cultures: books by Geert Lovink and other INC authors line its shelves, alongside a shared hacker ethic. 

I first came to an event from Diana Millán, aka fearlessdiane, a spanish INC researcher and artist spending some time there with her project InternetCore. I wandered through the lab, taking in the textiles, printing machines, and various ongoing projects, before arranging an interview with Leonardo Aranda and Dora Barotti the following week. We sat around a central table one afternoon and began discussing the lab’s activities and methodologies, tracing a line from Mexico’s long-standing autonomous practices (both before and after the rise of the commercial internet)  the country’s current political landscape. 

What emerges from the conversation is their proposal of technology as a field of resistance and conviviality, shaped through collective practices, care, and situated forms of autonomy.

***

What is your trajectory and what does Medialabmx do? 

Medialabmx is a project that was born thirteen years ago. I am Dora Barotti and here beside me is Leonardo Aranda. We are an autonomous space and a collective that works at the intersections between art, technology, and politics. This is put into practice through different fronts. On one hand, there is theoretical research, where there are processes of articulating concepts and ideas, which involve appropriating and expanding other notions of technology to problematize and criticize hegemonic versions of it.

Another line of our work has to do with the development of projects from the perspective of art. Rather than the creation of objects as such, it has to do with the development of different methodologies of artistic research. Therefore, there are diverse processes and practices that are later taken to another line of action related to the socialization of those investigations and theoretical and artistic processes. This socialization occurs through workshops, courses, laboratories, and seminars, where we attempt to decenter the technological dimension of the devices and focus on critique and reflection through them.

Much of what interests us are the face-to-face processes and what can emerge from them. From there, we also work extensively with concepts such as tactical media, technological disobedience, the “do it with others” as part of our foundations, and convivial technologies. Another part that we work on a lot is technological development. Normally we collaborate with different actors, such as activists or journalists, and develop technologies based on their communication needs or to activate certain spaces for activism.

Much of what we work on is linked to the question of technological autonomy in two senses. On one hand, there is a constant question about what technology is and how to define it from the Latin American sphere. We are related to those types of convivial processes and with philosophies such as those of Ivan Illich. From that link with theory, we are interested in exploring philosophies that contribute to that reflection on technological media. Hence what was said about conviviality, which is this concept from Illich where he speaks precisely about autonomy as one of the bases of the technological.

Can you mention some projects?

Dora: One of the programs that form part of Medialab, and which I coordinate, is called Costurero Electrónico. It makes reference to these Latin American costureros [sewing boxes/circles], which are circles formed around textiles and political issues, where the textile is the materiality used to express oneself, generate denunciation, demands, etc. We work on the relationship between textiles and electronics and their metaphors to lead toward collective organization and action. Within this program, there are different projects and pedagogical activities.

One of those projects is Voz Pública [Public Voice], a participatory project featuring an online platform to collect personal stories of gender violence. Those stories can later be amplified through wearable electronic textiles in public space, which are socialized through laboratories of textile rebellion where they are replicated. But in addition to being replicated, the participants appropriate those same prototypes to be acted out collectively in public space.

There is also a series of projects about the forced disappearance of women, involving a series of mediations through textiles. There is an electronic sculpture through which you can present textile strips and record the question ¿la has visto? [have you seen her?]. That question remains linked to the strip and the absent identity. Later, those voices are amplified in public space through another electronic textile. Whoever carries that other textile makes those previously collected voices sound out, asking in an almost schizophrenic way: ¿la has visto? ¿la has visto? ¿la has visto? ¿la has visto?. When a passerby receives one of those strips, the voice in the textile is silenced, but with the poetic idea that the question continues elsewhere, asking eternally toward infinity.

In the middle of the pandemic we developed this project called Respirar Juntxs [Breathing Together] which played slightly with the metaphor of what it implies to re-tune bodies, but at the same time what implications breathing next to someone else had in the middle of a health crisis. It was designed for public space and the occupation of public space, but also with a lot of questions surrounding the communal and the immune. There were many reflections around how to develop a prototype that could allow for coexistence and at the same time care for one another, and return to re-tuning ourselves in a moment when the individual was what was being privileged.

We developed these masks that have a breathing sensor. Everything we work with in our projects are recycled or very cheap materials that any person can easily obtain. They are lids of coffee jars, for example. The whole idea is that you put on the mask and when you breathe, a sound is generated from the airflow. So you breathe and it sounds. It has a circuit and a series of speakers that allow for the amplification of that frequency. The idea of the activation of these masks is to tune the breathing of all those bodies in the public space.

Leonardo: And there are many reflections around the obvious political nature in the context of the health crisis that led us to that. The mask is also an appropriation of a bellicose object, which are gas masks, and the idea is to turn that around. I think the project Dora showed and this one we did collectively reflect very well this idea of achieving a reconfiguration of technology, even in aesthetic terms. That is to say, how technology looks. It is very different from the notion of technology as something bright, pretty, and elegant. Here, much of what interests us is that, and the other part is the construction processes of technology, which are always linked to this idea of collectivization, the ways in which people learn certain types of skills through the reproduction of the technological. There is also the formative aspect of the technological, because it could well have been just a face mask where they attached a pre-made device. But the object itself, through its means of activation, allows for a mobility of bodies, a presence, an action.

Other types of projects we do are alongside journalists. We made this map about violence in the state of Morelos. In this case, we worked with journalists whose problem was that there was no open and systematized database about violence, that there was a denial from the government to admit there was a wave of violence, and that there were a series of claims they made regarding a certain structure of the violence. Their claim was that all the violence was related to drug trafficking from Guerrero toward Mexico City, and that the state of Morelos was a transit place where violence occurred. But the government said that was not true.

We did a series of laboratories in which, with the information they had, we managed to build a database from which a cartography was created. The way they had worked to systematize their own information was starting from the nota roja [crime/blood news]. They took the information and kept it in a spreadsheet, but they said: “what do we do with this?”. What we did was take that information and translate it to the map. We worked on all the symbology of the map collectively with the project participants. We made an entire timeline to understand the evolution of violence in the state. There is always the link to the journalistic note, because that was the way they had systematized their information. And there is a more participatory part where, if someone wanted to continue feeding it, there is the possibility to keep updating it.

A machine from the lab.

Right now, we are doing one in the context of Palestine. We are working with architects in Palestine, very focused on the Negev desert, which is an area east of Gaza. That is where the military zone is from which all the planes take off. The theme with this part of the desert is that it is a region in which the majority of the population is Bedouin, and they are in a moment in which if they do not start showing their belonging to that territory, what has happened in the rest of Palestine will happen, which is basically that they are razed.

The map has become a participatory tool. They are there and we are making the infrastructure. The way it has been worked is that they upload documentation and we did a workshop on what types of spaces were interesting to register. One of the things that seemed important to us was to give personality to the map regarding iconography. All the iconography is based on a Palestinian textile technique, with the idea of using symbols that could be recognized by the people of Palestine, but that for someone external maybe was not going to mean anything more than “it looks pretty.” It is a way of, in plain sight, showing things and at the same time not showing them.

It has become a project that has been in evolution for a couple of years. At the beginning it was very much like: “we are going to portray the life of this region and certain important landmarks of the territory.” And then it started to happen that many of those things we documented have already been demolished, excavators have already entered, and everything that has happened in the rest of Palestine began to occur. So it also became a way to document that destruction. One of the categories that appeared later is the idea of ruins, which also becomes an integral part of the map.

What is the meaning for you of digital sovereignty and how has it been seen in Mexico in recent years? 

Leonardo: I believe that in Mexico there is a very long tradition around the idea of digital sovereignty, not necessarily named as such, but certainly as a practice that has to do with the appropriation of technology. I would tell you that a bit of what we have investigated has to do with the community radio networks, which is very interesting because in reality that movement arises from an initial government initiative. We are talking about the fifties. The government says: “we need a way to socialize public information, but we have a population that mostly does not know how to read, so what is the medium for socialization?”. And they say: “radio”. So the government generates an enormous network of radios that covers the entire national territory.

At some point that project starts to lose interest from the government, but what they do leave is the infrastructure. And it is from that infrastructure that suddenly collectives within those communities say to themselves: “the government is gone, what do we do with this, with this radio?”. And what they start to do is reactivate those infrastructures, but now as they want. They basically learn how to repair the radios, how to operate them, how to generate content, etc. All of that is an incredibly strong moment that has occurred since the fifties and up to this date. That is, you still find a ton of community radios.

But in the nineties there was the digital turn. I was telling you about collectives like Rhizomatica, which is an important collective because some years ago they started generating infrastructure to bring telephony based on digital networks to a series of communities. And the way in which people have been organizing is over the work that already existed in terms of organization in several of those spaces around the radio. It was reorganizing those types of networks, but now around the digital.

I believe this is one of the projects that was very inspiring for thinking in terms of technological sovereignty in three distinct terms. On the one hand, technological sovereignty from an infrastructure level: what it means to have possession over these types of technologies, skills over them, the possibility of reproducing them. On the other hand, in terms of processes, in order to not reproduce the most harmful aspects of technologies, it is necessary to also rethink their material processes. That means what you work with, what type of technology you use, how you manufacture it, and what processes of work and organization occur around them. And what we already discussed, as a reflection that we could say is aesthetic, but the aesthetic has to do not only with how it looks, but with a reflection that crosses questions of who makes the technology and, in function of that, what type of values it prints and how it is experienced.

It is very different a technology that prints the value of “everything is transparent, everything is clean, everything is unpolluted” to a technology that looks a bit like what we showed, where part of that sovereignty over the technological also goes along with people recognizing themselves in the technologies and it not resulting totally alien. This idea of alienation, when basically the technology is alienating because you cannot recognize yourself in it. Our work, as Dora already said, comes a lot from the field of the arts, and is very much also about how to relate to technology from those places.

And what is the artistic context here and how does it relate to the spaces of resistance? 

Leonardo: I believe there are two main antecedents of that link. It is a very generational thing. We as Medialab emerged at a time when there was an effervescence of certain discourses around the hacker, around free software, around all those types of things. When we started thirteen years ago, there was an effervescence here in Mexico. On the other hand, we are a generation that saw itself very influenced by and aligned much with, for example, movements like Zapatismo, with this idea about self-organization.

To us, that place arrives in a particular way. It is not that the discourse of Hakim Bey, an American anarchist theorist and writer, arrives first. It arrives through Zapatismo. Because rather Hakim Bey takes up ideas from Zapatismo and then posits the idea of temporary autonomous zones, because he is seeing what Zapatismo is doing. To us, it happened the other way around: we had to see all these types of social movements first and then see how they begin to develop toward the technological. So I believe those generations that were very linked to the beginning of the digital, and more akin to those types of discourses like the hacker, were marked also by those types of social movements and started certain types of projects.

I believe that now that scene is very limited. That is, I believe right now art is much more interested not so much in the critical, but in other types of things, you know, more the celebratory: “how incredible it is that now we can do this or that with artificial intelligence.” And I believe that we in that sense are a bit in the rearguard saying: “no, we still have to think critically.”

I believe the other important antecedent is the Rancho Electrónico. It was started mainly by a character called Jaime Villarreal, who was in the audio workshop of the Centro Multimedia, where Leo was also a part. The Centro Multimedia was that space where there were certain types of discourses that already started to generate certain types of questions, but at the same time the Centro Multimedia is a governmental, institutional space, funded by the federal government. Unlike that, Medialab and Rancho Electrónico are self-managed, independent spaces.

So there is a dissidence from the Centro Multimedia, a series of characters that come out of there. Jaime founded the Rancho Electrónico along with other people, also curiously very much from the arts, like Minerva Cuevas and other artists. On this side, another group of characters who also come from the arts opened Medialabmx. They were always spaces where there was dialogue, different collaborations and more. But I believe they are the two spaces where much of the critical discourse here in Mexico City around technology is articulated.

In the rest of the country, I believe the other important scenario is Oaxaca. Oaxaca has a strong history starting many years ago. The magisterio [teaching body], which are the teachers’ unions, establishes an important social struggle there, from which many other movements began to be articulated, not necessarily related to the magisterio, but which began to generate a lot of social struggle in Oaxaca. It becomes an important space for social graphics, for thinking about certain types of autonomies in cultural spaces, and much effervescence is found among certain collectives that are thinking precisely about technological autonomy.

I believe the important difference between these two scenarios is that many of the projects that arise there are more related to establishing digital infrastructures in rural territories, while here the scenario is more of urban youth: how you survive in the environment of a city like this and how you dialogue with the technological that exists here.

Dora: I also wanted to talk a bit about technological autonomy from something more contextual, which goes beyond the hacker or maker spaces or those who are already working directly with those concepts. It has to do with a formative question of life and daily routine: fixing things. I suppose that in other Latin American countries you have visited it is something you have noticed, that it is not so much a difference in how we relate to planned obsolescence or technological obsolescence. Our conditions, needs and precariousness lead us to catalyze imagination and creativity to resolve urgencies, whether they are urgencies of survival on a more physical level, but also of political survival and resistance.

Unless you come from a quite bourgeois and privileged place, we come from a pedagogy of fixing things, or knowing some space where they can be fixed. And then you generate a relationship with technology of not fearing opening things, not fearing understanding them from reverse engineering. That leads you to relate from another place, and it is not “it doesn’t work, I’ll throw it away,” but rather there are many spaces and many trades related to that. We have entire streets that are only dedicated to the sale of electronic components, and there are trades related to that.

To me it was impactful when I had the opportunity to leave the country already quite older and realize that needing electronic components to give a workshop was not about going to the space and relating with the people who dedicate themselves to that, understanding the commercial movements around that, but rather ordering everything by internet.

A bookshelf inside the Medialabmx.

In Brazil there is a word to describe that: gambiarra, that goes toward that.

Yes, and I believe the context is also important, because from there there is a series of investigations around the idea of vernacular technologies, which is also something we have been working on for many years, first from a more intuitive place, without realizing it, and suddenly things get named. It relates directly with the entire question of technological appropriation.

Leonardo: I believe many of those antecedents up to a certain point are scenes that right now are in a complex moment of crisis, not necessarily in the most active place. But where I do see that there is a recent moment of much effervescence is, for example, in techno-feminisms. The spaces like the Rancho Electrónico disappeared, and you could think that then an entire scene disappears. But women and dissident bodies that belonged to those spaces reorganized into collectives and colectivas, precisely through a rethinking of the technological from themselves. And from there feminist servers, feminist internet, feminist AI. There is an accent where I believe there is a lot of important work.

Dora: Yes, and I believe that above all it was like the counterpoint to the hacker spaces of fifteen years ago. Despite those being political projects and with many reflections on how things are done, they remained for the most part being spaces where masculinity had authority, with pedagogies that were not friendly at all with feminized bodies. That authority and that control and power of spaces continued belonging much to certain masculinities.

So I feel that techno-feminisms in a certain way are also a counterpoint to that, saying: “I also want to learn to program, I also want to generate my reflections in relation to technology, because technology is one of the bases that is constantly emphasizing heteropatriarchal relations.” So, how can I from this place propose those other spaces where care is put in the middle of the table? The rethinking itself of technological imaginaries: why are all technologies designed around the masculine model or an idea of a woman? And how does that reveal itself before the bodies? I feel that at the same time, from each emergence, other branches arise that continue counterpointing and unfolding all those questions about the technological.

Leonardo: And I believe that, for example, a result slightly of that is what we are showing you now as work. Because ten years ago maybe many of the philosophies of these spaces had this very hierarchical thing of who knows how to program, who knows how to make circuits, who knows electronics. “I am more hacker than you.” “I program more.” “I use Linux.” It was like a competition of who is more like that. And now I believe that, for example, many of those logics already detached from that very hierarchical and competitive thing of who knows what, to say: “no, let’s see, it doesn’t matter if you program or don’t program, rather what can you contribute in terms of thought, what can you contribute in terms of organization?”. How we expand the idea of the technological, which has been proposed for a long time, but in feminism was proposed in a much more concrete way. For example, cooking is a technology, textile is a technology, the body is our first technology of resistance. And from all the metaphors that can be unfolded, as well as all the material forms of being able to carry demands, denunciations, well yes, a ton of things around that.

Dora: I also feel that our work methodologically revolves around the idea of communities of practice. Not the community understood from a territorial question, like “you belong to this territory,” which is the most romantic idea about community, but rather how through the practices we propose and the activities we propose, we can summon a series of actors who are not necessarily linked directly with formations or disciplines related to technology or the arts. Suddenly a sociologist can come, an anthropologist, an engineer, an artist, a designer, but also a madre buscadora [searching mother]. The idea is to say: in reality what links us is an urgency or a shared interest. These are the questions we are putting on the table and based on sharing or guiding about these techniques, we are going to elaborate reflections or generate questions, and that is going to be taken to materiality.

We also work much from the idea of expanded temporalities, where suddenly someone took a workshop with us on a topic, and months later decides to take another, and suddenly meets another who already took another, and without realizing it an entire community is already being generated where there is already an entire series of reflections and bases that have been generated starting from this space. That is something that has interested us much because then you have a diversity of voices where you are also working on other things: what happens when there is disenso [dissent]? How do we work with dissent? How do we make collective agreements? How are we going to talk about autonomies if we don’t know how to make agreements? So that is where the pedagogical has a very important place. Sometimes we say that the technical part is the pretext. In workshops of electronic textiles, suddenly it is revealed that we are going to talk about bodies, about territories, about digital colonialism.

The Latin American perspective seems very interesting to me because there is a long tradition of technological dependence. Now, for example, in Europe we are also technologically dependent, and it occurred to me to think about the colonialists and the colonized. I think more things happen here than in Europe. I saw it also in Brazil, where there are very strong social moments, but there is also a role for the State, with initiatives such as PIX, which is a public payment infrastructure that radically changed the lives of citizens in three years. What happens here in Mexico? [La perspectiva latinoamericana me parece muy interesante porque hay una larga tradición de dependencia tecnológica. Ahora, por ejemplo, en Europa también somos tecnológicamente dependientes, y me pasaba a pensar de los colonialistas a los colonizados. Creo que aquí acontecen más cosas que en Europa. Lo vi también en Brasil, donde hay momentos sociales muy fuertes, pero también hay un papel del Estado, con iniciativas como el PIX, que es una infraestructura de pagos pública que cambió radicalmente la vida de los ciudadanos en tres años. ¿Qué pasa aquí en México?]

Leonardo: I would think two things. I believe here you can find a lot of reflection in terms of the relationship with this dependency regarding economy and technology since the seventies. The school of dependency is exactly a school of thought that crosses all of Latin America and you can perfectly map it toward current decolonial theory. It is like a very linear line of thought until what we now understand as decolonial theory.

I believe much of that theory is based on a premise which is basically the role of the State in generating those forms of autonomy or sovereignty. All that theory centers basically on saying: “how do we generate State policies that make us less dependent economically and, therefore, technologically?”. Here in Mexico and in Latin America, you can track it back to the seventies with a ton of theorists. But it seems important to say that this is the posture that has, for example, now the government of Mexico. They have recovered a ton of those discourses about developmentalism, about dependency theory, etc., and they start to say: “the policy of Mexico now is a policy of energy sovereignty, of technological sovereignty.”

In the previous government, the premise of CONACYT, which is now already a secretariat of science and technology, was that Mexico had to develop its own technology, that Mexico had to have an energy autonomy. Now I believe that we come from a completely different moment, because we think precisely that this autonomy, which is an autonomy solely at a state level, does not seem to us to contribute anything really to real sovereignty. Why? Because for us the role of the State basically would have to pass rather than facilitating the initiatives of the citizenry, and not so much by the State being the administrator of all the infrastructure.

The previous policy was about sovereignty, but in reality there was very little real technological development. That discourse was much more discursive than practical. And now, with Claudia Sheinbaum, it is not a secretariat but an agency of technological innovation. But what this agency has is basically how we implement last-generation technologies, like artificial intelligence, in government tasks. Returning to the normal scheme of how I put this chatbot within the normal tasks of government, how I utilize these technologies within the different secretariats. It is digitalization in the most traditional sense of innovation of public service, but quite limited.

And besides, precisely without a critical perspective. In the best cases, what I call a mere “tropicalization”: for example, “we are going to take a chatbot that has indigenous languages.” But if you are not attacking the infrastructure problems, if you are not attacking the ecological problems, if you are not attacking all this type of other problems that have to do with displacement, dispossession, etc., that precisely those communities suffer, then what good is it? It becomes makeup to say “we already have this super large initiative in Latin America,” a model of language that integrates Spanish as a central language but also indigenous languages.

There is a supercomputing initiative that the government of Claudia just launched a couple of weeks ago: “we are going to have the largest supercomputers in Latin America.” Without really entering into the same logic, basically of staying at the peak of development. So I believe that even the term sovereignty in that sense is a contestable term, because on one hand the State moves over the idea of energy and technological sovereignty, but I insist, it is a notion of sovereignty completely linked to the theories of the seventies. What interests us is thinking about sovereignty from another place, the so-called popular sovereignty.

In the end it is a question about who is the agent of technological development. In the response of the government, the agent of technological development is the State. For us, the agent of technological development must be absolutely everyone. It is not that everyone has to program, but rather recognizing the capacity of agency over technology in different dimensions, from imagining the technological to expanding the sense of what is technological.

The view from the internal courtyard of Medialabmx.

Is there any truth in this rhetoric of the Mexican narco-state, that it is completely sold out to the United States to do anything? 

Leonardo: I believe the idea of the narco-State is very dangerous in more than one sense. Because in the end that is the discourse that right now the right-wing mobilizes against left-wing governments: “failed government,” etc. The history of narcotrafficking in Mexico in reality is linked completely to the right. It is in the right where it emerged, where it organized, where it took roots within the government, where there was a much stronger corruption. So there is a complex thing there.

Saying that there is a complete dependence on the United States also seems to me quite problematic. We are the first commercial partner of the United States, along with Canada. That supposes basically that there is a co-dependence more than dependence. The economy of Mexico is tied to that of the United States, it’s true. If the United States stops buying from Mexico, there is an enormous problem. But in the same way, if we stop producing, the production chains of the United States are completely linked. Not only the agricultural, it’s everything. There is already a regional integration which is one of the reasons why it is very difficult to apply all this imperialist logic, and it is one of the complexities they have faced at the hour of trying to put tariffs on Mexico.

It is also important to recognize the transition between the Mexico of the fifties, which was a Mexico maquilador [assembly plant operator] of technology. The first maquila in Mexico appears right around the fifties in Ciudad Juárez, manufacturing transistors under the idea that labor was cheaper here and that there was less labor regulation. The transistors of Silicon Valley in reality were made in Ciudad Juárez. But between that and now there already were a series of technological and knowledge transfers, in which it is no longer only that here the transistors are manufactured. In reality here part of that technology is already designed. So it is a false discourse to say that there is no local development.

I think rather in terms of economic co-dependence. And on the other hand, the relationship with the technological, if you want to propose it only from hegemonic terms, well maybe yes: if the United States is together with China at the head of the race for artificial intelligence, it could seem that we depend completely. But in reality technology goes beyond discourse. If you understand technology in terms of logistics, infrastructure, of organization, there you do see a much larger interdependence, because then the whole discourse that we depend completely falls down.