Tierra Común: A Collective Agenda for the Future

During the health crisis which we are living on a global scale, it has become ever more obvious how urgent it is to push forward with an agenda that denounces the imposition of a technological regime based in the extractivism of data and surveillance.

Under this heading: what should be the priorities of Tierra Común? Where and how ought we to begin to implement them? With the aim of giving a collective response to those concerns, the members of Tierra Común met on the 28th of October online via the Jitsi platform.[1]  This, the third even organised by the TC network, “TC3”, had for its aim to share ideas about the potential future of the initiative. In dialogue, we identified important convergences that we’d like to develop here.

One shared idea was that our priority as a network is to build links of solidarity. We need a network that can nurture new bonds and relations for rethinking how and where people can actively participate in the complex process of decolonizing data.

The question of where is particularly important, because in Latin America the decolonizing of data has to do with constructing an opportunity for new relations with the existing decolonial movements. One proposal was to renew the legacy of the “theatre of the oppressed”[2] in relation to this new theme. Another proposal was to promote the creation of spaces where young people can participate, act and rethinking their relation to data. In sum, to build counter-hegemonic spaces against technologies as a way of promoting diverse expressions of decolonial encounters. In this sense, TC has the challenge of organising itself as a space that can open opportunities for articulation and dialogue between diverse communities.

But we must also address seriously the question of how. A priority of TC ought to be to encourage organic relations that help learning and exchange that contributes to building strategies for overturning asymmetries of power. We thought that the decolonization of data our to be one of those strategies. It’s important for the network that each one of its members proposes, shares and pushes forward initiatives from their own contexts, promoting as much the spread of ideas as the process of collective creation. We have to think and make decolonization actual in multiple locations.

From this follows the need to define the ethics and values of the network. Some members underlined that the TC network ought to construct ways of bringing together the academy, activists and communities, placing itself at the service of their needs. Equally the network has as a priority the offering of value to local communities and opening up spaces for collaboration with them.

So that we have the capacity to address those priorities, we must strengthen the networking within TC, encouraging the interchange of projects, ideas and publications. One idea for moving ahead with this suggested by several members was to begin by doing something feasible, small and measurable (as a starting-point). Small initiatives might include the organization of campaigns, events and debates. This would not only combat frustration; it would also mean that these “small interventions” could serve to support more organic commitments (within the network or in a more local way).

For the long term, TC ought also to have a great impact on the policies that sustain data colonialism. But the starting-point must be to build a community of solidarity which is committed to working for the decolonization of data from people’s own locations.

As a stating-point, the practical priorities are clear. In the first place, we will continue organizing workshops, conversations and local events which can make a “Tierra Común” happen anywhere, a Tierra Común without limits or boundaries, so far as possible. We will begin with small projects that focus on three thematic headings: the technological, the non-technological and the academic. WE will push forward with small interventions that help local communities and promote initiatives together with them. 

So far as our shared reflexive resources go, we will gather together the histories, tactics and strategies which have worked to resist, reinvent or change power in other decolonial movements. We will organize reading groups for helping and connecting up the TC network. We will connect with people who work in large tech corporations or in multilateral organizations with the aim of debating with them the problems of data colonialism, but always on “our own terms”. We will develop a newsletter for communicating better what’s happening and what members are currently working on. We will establish themed working groups to promote our discussions.

And finally, as Guiomar Rovira Sancho suggested, we will promote the creation of a “virtual café” for informal chat in smaller groups. Strengthening the TC network will also mean nurturing the small networks within the larger network.

We have a lot of work to today, but in these difficult times, the shared effort is something that can give us hope. thanks to everyone who contribute their ideas and energy!

Nick and Paola

[1] A special thanks to Louise Marie Hurel S. Dias who was in charge of the logistics, technical support, documentation and reporting of this meeting.

[2] The Theatre of the Oppressed: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teatro_del_oprimido