Submissions talk:2023/Hacktivismo y medios libres en México

Speedy translation to English by DeepL

(To aid program committee)

Despite its geographical proximity to the United States, the hacktivist movement in Mexico had an origin and a trajectory closer to the southern European initiatives of the late 1980s. From exchanges with collectives in Italy and Spain, which intensified with the Zapatista uprising in 1994, a heterogeneous and diverse movement began to consolidate in Mexico, initially articulated through the Internet and later in self-managed spaces.

This talk will present the partial result of a doctoral research focused on the relationship between the hacktivist movement and the free media movement with special emphasis on the experiences in Mexico City.

It will explain the relationship between social movements and the emergence of collectivities that self-managed their own media infrastructures during the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s. It will identify the continuities with respect to organizational modes and topical repertoires during these two decades.

It will also account for the technological transformations and the ways in which Mexican hackers contributed to, adapted to and resisted these changes.

Finally, a balance of what is currently happening in a hacktivist scene that is still not recovering from the ravages caused by the pandemic will be presented.