Indigenous movements, ICTs and the state in Latin America

ABSTRACT

This paper presents an analysis of the evolving cyber politics landscape in Latin American countries from the perspective of the region’s Indigenous social movements. It examines the types of regulations and tools that Latin American governments have adopted to assert their control over the online world, how these measures constitute barriers for Indigenous organizations, and how social media and other ICTs are shifting the balance of power between Indigenous movements and the state. Based on three years of qualitative fieldwork in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Chile, this paper argues that the ability of Indigenous groups to use ICTs for political engagement is threatened by restrictive communications policies, libel laws, authoritarian national security legislation, and government use of surveillance technologies. Indigenous claims challenge established political and economic structures of power, but communities lack the resources to ensure their own information security, to detect online attacks and to defend themselves against authoritarian practices. As a result, Indigenous organizations are faced with censorship, self-censorship, and accusations of defamation and terrorism. This limits the potential of ICTs to serve as instruments of democratization.

KEYWORDS:

• ICTs
• social media
• indigenous peoples
• security
• repression
• power
• Latin America

Notes

1. https://ourworldindata.org/internet#internet-access.

2. The Association for Progressive Communication has produced a number of country reports on this topic: https://www.apc.org/en/projects/examining-internet-freedom-latin-america-exlila

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) [430-2017-00248].

Notes on contributors

Pascal Lupien

Pascal Lupien is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Brock University in Ontario, Canada  His research interests revolve around democratic innovation, civil society, and political communication.

Gabriel Chiriboga

Gabriel Chiriboga is a graduate of the Social Development Program at the Universidad Técnica del Norte in Ibarra, Ecuador. He works as a Coordinating Manager for the Plan Toda una Vida, a project of the Ecuadorian national government.

Soledad Machaca

Soledad Machaca is a researcher and graduate student in the Social Communications Program at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés in La Paz, Bolivia.