Abya Yala Community Network Seedbed Visit to Cheran, Mexico
I am posting another travel exchange amongst the CN peers that took place in June 2019. I am using some of the text written by the team who travelled to Cheran and conducted the activities!
Photo Source: Karla Velasco
“The Abya Yala Community Networks Seedbed (Semillero) promoted by AlterMundi, Rhizomatica and REDES A.C., is a training space for promoters, referents and companions of community network processes in the different regions of Latin America. The project aims to build a training space, as well as create pedagogical tools to make them available to people and communities that undertake community processes to appropriate telecommunications technology."
“In its plan for 2019, two training courses, one in Mexico and another in Argentina, were proposed in order to strengthen existing processes and the creation of new community network projects.”
"The first Semillero was planned to be held from June 19 to 24 in Cherán K’eri, Michoacán, Mexico, as a space for articulation between different groups of people working in indigenous and community communication and telecommunications processes in Mexico. The peers from the LAC region were invited to participate in order to contribute to the process.”
The process included 1) hands-on training in a workshop, “Participatory Design of Community Intranets” to graduates of a recent diploma course, 2) workshop on introduction to community networks, 3) the installation of two nodes of the LibreRouter, 4) intranet design using operative system called YunoHost.
Lessons Learned:
“The strategic goal of the intranet in Cherán is an inspiring and authentic take on community networks. The Xamoneta collective, which hosted the event, proposed the creation of the XAMONETA intranet network, which means: ‘echo’ in the most widely spoken indigenous language in the region: purépecha . The aim of the network is to support Cherán’s knowledge compilation as a tool to continue and strengthen the political struggle and the reclaiming of traditional values. Creating a community archive is strategic to achieving the goal of linguistic revitalization and providing ‘connectivity with meaning’".
“In many places, community networks are still looked at as ‘free internet’ or as a possibility to have ‘cheaper internet’, and it is inspiring to know that there are communities thinking beyond that.”
Links to the blogs and twitter posts about this travel exchange!
carla writes for the team, Instituto Bem Estar Brasil in the blog post “Semillero, a dialogue of knowledges” https://ibebrasil.org.br/en/2019/07/semillero-a-dialogue-of-knowledge/
photo source: IBEBrasil blog post screenshot
Gui writes a blog for the Altermundi team (in Spanish) on the experience in a blog called “Semillero de Redes Comunitarias en Cherán” : Semillero de Redes Comunitarias en Cherán |
photo credit: screenshot of Altermundi’s blog
hiure writes for the Coolab team in a blog titled “Coolab joins the “semillero” of community networks in Mexico” Coolab
photo credit: hiure’s blog post
Finally, Redes AC Mexico also posts on twitter some insight to the work (in Spanish) https://twitter.com/redesac_mx/status/1143692362163675136
photo source: screenshot of Redes tweet
Enjoy reading and learning from the different experiences!