Open AccessSHARED NETWORKS: THE PATHS OF LATIN-CENTRIC INDIGENOUS NETWORKS TO A PLURIVERSAL INTERNET
Author(s) -
Fernanda R. Rosa
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
selected papers of internet research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2162-3317
DOI - 10.5210/spir.v2021i0.12020
Subject(s) - the internet , indigenous , telecommunications , interconnection , internet backbone , internet transit , internet access , service (business) , latin americans , service provider , business , computer science , world wide web , political science , law , marketing , ecology , biology
This research paper examines the emergence of shared networks inTseltal and Zapoteco communities in Chiapas and Oaxaca (Mexico): internet first milesignal-sharing practices that articulate interconnection infrastructure and coexistencevalues to extend the internet to areas where the services of existing larger internetservice providers are unsatisfactory or unavailable. In the case studies analyzed,indigenous people become internet codesigners by infrastructuring for their own localnetworks and interconnecting to the global internet. The paper argues that a hybridmaterializes at the level of network interconnection when comunalidad, or the way of thesecommunities, supported by unlicensed frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum, towers,radio antennas, houses rooftops, routers, and cables meet the values of the internet serviceproviders and their policies. Shared networks are a result of what these arrangements bothenact and constrain, and the evidence of vivid struggles of Latin-centric indigenousnetworks towards a pluriversal internet.