Hacking the Territory: Solutions Journalism and Civic Resistance in Latin America
By Melisa Gabbanelli
Latin America is emerging as a leading source of citizen-led experiences that continue to strengthen community building, autonomy and locally driven creation in response to the erosion of rights by local governments. The potential of technology, combined with the commitment of the organisations that are part of DemocráTICa, invites us to keep rethinking how we can build collective responses that serve the needs of communities.
We are living through a historic moment in which human rights violations are taking place both in physical spaces and in the digital world. This reality compels us to consider what kind of virtual environments we are creating, legitimising and reproducing.
For decades, digital spaces have become intangible environments where different forms of interaction take place. Social media platforms in particular have become spaces where hate speech is multiplying and becoming increasingly extreme. Such narratives are endorsed and spread not only by individuals and social groups, but also by government authorities and international organisations that find fertile ground there to amplify denialist and anti-rights narratives charged with violence.
The digital world reflects what happens in our face-to-face relationships, and what takes place in one environment is echoed in the other. The boundaries between what is digital and what is not are becoming increasingly difficult to identify. Against this backdrop, it is worth considering how solutions journalism can play a central role in telling stories that highlight the active role of communities in developing responses that create positive change in their territories, particularly when faced with digital vulnerability and the absence of the State.
The Global South has historically been overlooked when it comes to infrastructure, funding and the implementation of long-term projects. The region constantly moves between political forces competing for power, in contexts that can contribute to weakening democratic institutions, transferring natural resources to foreign capital and disrupting local and regional economies. These dynamics have severe consequences for different social groups, particularly those facing greater vulnerabilities, including young people, rural communities, community media and older people.
Job losses and barriers to accessing healthcare, education, essential services and the basic infrastructure required to guarantee human rights are common across the region. Against this Latin American backdrop, there is an urgent need to continue investing in the creation, sustainability and dissemination of narratives, spaces and social initiatives that are developing solutions for communities — often designed by and for those very communities.
Digital sovereignty has therefore emerged as a priority agenda for safeguarding freedom of expression, digital rights, a diversity of voices and representation online, civic capacity and democratic guarantees. Through the lens of solutions journalism, three organisations based in Mexico and Colombia are working on independent community communication, community-led territorial defence and digital rights education. Although each has its own profile, all three place collaboration at the heart of their work, based on the conviction that solutions are built collectively and that the Global South has a responsibility to become a strategic actor in shaping the digital sovereignty agenda.
Building digital resilience from Colombia
Mateo Alejandro Vera Ramírez is Captain of Initiatives at Fundación Verez y Saberes, a youth-led Colombian non-profit organisation that promotes social transformation by democratising art, culture and community knowledge. Innovation is central to its projects, which address politics and democracy; environmental and urban issues; and art, culture and wellbeing. Across these areas, digital technology is understood as a tool to protect human rights and expand civic space.
Developing a digital sovereignty agenda requires carefully identifying the social challenges present in each territory and finding collective, creative and feasible solutions that can be implemented alongside citizens. Since its creation in 2023, the foundation has developed 30 projects at digital, interlocal and national levels.
Along this journey, it received support from DemocráTICa — the regional programme promoting digital democracy and strengthening civil society organisations across the Global South. DemocráTICa provided collaboration and training on issues related to social media and artificial intelligence, as well as guided mentoring on organisational development and institutional strengthening. This enabled the foundation to design increasingly ambitious projects with greater potential for impact and scale.
As Vera Ramírez explains:
“When you design a project, you are usually very ambitious — you want to change the whole world. Working with DemocráTICa helped us understand the landscape more clearly and think about the path we needed to take to become recognised in Colombia for our work on digital rights. They encouraged us to design a project that would put us on the media and political agenda around issues connected to digital democracy.”
Resilientxs LATAM is the foundation's most ambitious project to date and one that has been supported by DemocráTICa. It is a digital ecosystem designed to respond to digital rights violations. According to Vera Ramírez, the initiative is currently at an intermediate stage of development and the team is working towards consolidating it before launching it as a free tool. It is intended for anyone with intermediate digital skills who wants to learn more about digital security, disinformation, the legislative frameworks governing these issues across Latin American countries and other related topics.
Resilientxs LATAM builds on several previous areas of work developed by the foundation. Vera Ramírez explains:
“We are developing a bot to provide psychosocial support and legal advice, mainly in Colombia, Mexico and Argentina. We also have a self-paced course connected to a videocast featuring several leading Latin American organisations. And we have a group of brigadistas — people who provide what we might call digital first aid. When someone experiences an online attack, a brigadista will be available to provide that initial support. Those are the initiative's three strongest pillars.”
The project encouraged the foundation to seek funding after identifying the absence of an ecosystem specifically designed around digital rights. From this experience, the team argues that digital sovereignty remains an ambiguous concept that needs further debate: while the term is increasingly used, no State owns a social network.
Democracy requires ongoing protection. At a time when anti-rights movements and hate speech are expanding rapidly at both global and regional levels, one possible response is to strengthen local and community action.
Young people are among the groups most exposed to digital violence, identity theft and attacks that can affect their wellbeing and rights. In response, Verez y Saberes runs Concejal por un Día, an initiative designed to bring young people closer to politics and demonstrate that consensus and social change are built collectively, through dialogue, encounters with others and civic participation.
Vera Ramírez explains:
“These young people are often unaware of their civic rights. Through this initiative, we want to bring them closer to a democratic space because we identified a gap between formal education and the disinformation circulating on social media.”
The foundation has also developed the Botiquín de Salud Mental (Mental Health First Aid Kit), a physical and digital resource addressing stress, anxiety and depression that can arise from online interactions and seriously affect emotional wellbeing, particularly among young people.
Vera Ramírez and his team also highlight that their connection with DemocráTICa enabled them to become part of an ecosystem of organisations working around digital sovereignty. This has allowed them to remain in constant communication, cooperate internationally and discover initiatives being implemented across the region.
As Vera Ramírez puts it:
“We absolutely need to be having the conversation about digital sovereignty from the Global South and working together to protect our rights. Society needs to act as a guarantor and recognise that there are rights and responsibilities that must be respected.”
Mapping the territory to transform it
Another Latin American organisation supported by DemocráTICa is Netas Ciudadanas, a multidisciplinary collective based in the municipality of Querétaro, Mexico. The team works to defend territories and civic space through active citizen engagement.
Neta means telling things as they are from a citizen perspective, explains Luis Sierra, co-founder of the collective:
“During the pandemic, we started walking and cycling around the city more often, and that gave us the opportunity to meet other people who were fighting for civic space. From there, we wanted to deepen our work around citizen-led reporting and were able to incorporate technological tools — particularly open mapping — into these advocacy processes.”
The metropolitan area of the State of Querétaro has a population of close to 1.5 million people and comprises three municipalities: Querétaro, Corregidora and El Marqués. These territories are far from homogeneous, with significant social, economic and geographical disparities.
Given the particular characteristics of each area, Netas Ciudadanas needed technological equipment that would allow the team to map the territory from the air.
Sierra explains:
“We are talking about a territory with ravines — rock formations that create channels for strong water flows — as well as limited accessibility for people with reduced mobility, among other challenges. Because the terrain is so uneven, some areas sit lower than others, so when rainwater is not properly managed, serious flooding occurs.”
Through its relationship with DemocráTICa, the organisation received advice on budgeting and was able to connect with other organisations, build new strategic alliances and take on new challenges.
Sierra recalls one particular example:
“We moved beyond the Querétaro metropolitan area to the Monterrey metropolitan area, where we also worked with people who are currently protecting and promoting the conservation of the Santa Catarina River. When there is no rain, the river level drops dramatically, but when it rains, the water returns to its natural course. Rather than seeing that as a problem, it reminds us that the river is alive — and of everything that means.”
The experience pushed the collective to engage with new social actors and co-create a territorial strategy that reflected the particular characteristics of the area.
Sierra says DemocráTICa's institutional backing was particularly valuable for Netas Ciudadanas because it helped build greater trust with communities and opened new opportunities to develop more ambitious projects with greater impact. Having a dedicated budget to cover travel to other municipalities also made it possible to meet directly with local communities. The advice they received became a valuable resource for strengthening their position as a collective working on these issues.
A drone and microphones were among the tools they needed to move forward with two community projects.
One example illustrates how technology can support communities in understanding and reclaiming their own spaces:
“One of the communities we work with has a plot of land that was abandoned for a long time. The people who owned it died many years ago, and it was never legally established who inherited the land. The community first cleaned it up because it had become a dumping ground. They then replanted it with native trees, and it became a space where people could meet and play. Thanks to the drone, we were able to understand the scale of the area, take aerial photographs and cover a space that is difficult to map because of its geographical characteristics. Fortunately, we have the technical capacity to georeference photographs, which also helped us identify some of the trees in our inventory, as well as benches and playground equipment.”
All of the mapping was carried out using open-source tools, which the collective considers a pillar of digital sovereignty: enabling communities themselves to develop and control the technologies they use has value in its own right.
Sierra reflects:
“We work at a very small neighbourhood scale, which makes what is known and understood at that level even more important. I think this is essential, and we should work towards making it the norm for this type of initiative.”
The microphones, meanwhile, were needed for a sound-mapping project being developed with another community. The initiative documents the sounds heard in a park — water, animals and people, as well as more urban sounds such as engines. It is another way of building narratives about the spaces communities inhabit, rooted in local identity and experience.
Among the challenges identified by Netas Ciudadanas at both local and regional levels are the complexities of the post-truth era, where truth can appear to be accepted only when it aligns with personal interests. The organisation also highlights the challenge of creating new narratives and building consensus among different social actors around a common good.
A further challenge is ensuring that participatory technologies reach smaller, more local spaces.
Sierra argues:
“Grassroots movements carry enormous weight in the places where they work and provide a genuine counterbalance. I would invest in an increasing number of micro-scale projects with very strategic objectives, rather than large regional or national strategies.”
Community media as digital sovereignty
Creating and sustaining both digital and analogue spaces, including community radio, is another challenge in an age of hyperconnectivity.
In rural areas, local media remain essential for understanding what is happening across a territory. In many cases, community radio is the only available means of communication connecting people who live far from urban centres — and sometimes far from their nearest neighbours.
Building an independent agenda rooted in local identity is therefore essential for many communities. Technical support and teams of communicators committed to sustaining these spaces become equally important.
For the past ten years, Laboratorio Popular de Medios Libres has worked to promote community communication technologies, particularly in rural areas of Mexico.
Armando Gómez Martín, a member of the organisation, explains:
“We are very interested in the technical side of things — knowing how to connect a cable, solder it, arrange it properly and understand how things work. The Laboratorio began as a project among friends who shared this interest. We started organising activities to meet other technicians and other communicators with whom we could share some of the knowledge and tools used in community settings.”
One of the organisation's resources is the Biblioteca Digital de Cuidados Digitales (Digital Library for Digital Care), which brings together materials based on experiences documented over a decade of working alongside communities, as well as detailed information about antennas, transmitters, radio frequencies and links.
The Laboratorio has a base in Mexico City and another in the rural state of Morelos. Gómez Martín explains that connectivity remains a challenge in these territories and that projects seeking to reduce the digital divide must continue to be supported.
Across the different territories where the Laboratorio has implemented initiatives, the organisation has trained local communicators, installed radio antennas for community stations and provided connectivity through community internet providers.
Communities themselves usually contact Laboratorio Popular de Medios Libres to arrange a meeting, explain their specific needs and jointly design a response.
With support from DemocráTICa, the organisation has been able to strengthen autonomous digital services. Gómez Martín explains:
“We currently have four servers in Mexico. We don't rent servers from Amazon or from providers abroad — we install the machines ourselves and provide cloud services, websites and other tools. For some time now, we have also wanted to set up a federated social network. The fund also enabled us to pay trainers for their workshops and expand our infrastructure.”
How information is stored —and where— is also a question of digital sovereignty.
Technology must continue to be a tool that enables us to expand our digital rights. Yet technology also requires physical infrastructure, and the challenges associated with this material dimension are not always taken into account.
According to Gómez Martín, funding from DemocráTICa enabled the Laboratorio to strengthen its institutional capacity. One significant improvement involved introducing good practices and strengthening its organisational structure. Another part of the funding was used to expand its infrastructure.
He explains:
“We already have autonomous servers, but we needed to strengthen them. So rather than buying a new server or computer from scratch, we needed to reinforce the infrastructure we already had. Digital services require storage: if we are going to upload photographs, videos and texts, we need the right spaces to store all that information.”
The organisation was able to purchase specialised hard drives designed for servers, with higher performance and a longer lifespan. It also purchased RAM to improve server processing, while another part of the funding covered electricity and internet connectivity costs, as well as different types of training.
The Laboratorio is currently developing a user guide for Mastodon, a social network that differs radically from more commonly used platforms such as Facebook.
Some of its most relevant characteristics include decentralisation — each Mastodon server is an independent entity capable of interacting with others to form a global social network — as well as free and open-source software that grows through community contributions. It operates without advertising or algorithms determining the information users receive, while its interoperability is based on open web protocols that allow it to communicate with other platforms.
Gómez Martín describes Mastodon as a free, democratic, safe and respectful social network. Reflecting on the commitment of Laboratorio Popular de Medios Libres, he adds:
“We feel that one of the greatest risks humanity faces today is that people's data are not in their own hands or under their own control. We are talking about all the photographs, texts and emails a person has. There is a huge risk of surveillance, data leaks and the ways Big Tech companies use our data. Communities and independent nation states need to move towards technological and digital sovereignty.”
For Gómez Martín, the Global South has both a central role and unfinished work ahead in supporting projects that enable people and communities to regain control over their information. He particularly highlights the responsibility and agency of communities themselves in building a path towards digital democracy.
Solutions built from the territories
The stories gathered here aim to highlight how Latin American organisations are taking direct action in response to the gaps and inequalities they identify in their own territories.
Across very different contexts, they draw on international cooperation, alliance-building and community-led responses to address challenges that recur throughout the region.
Their experiences also demonstrate that digital sovereignty is not only about technology. It is about who has the power to create it, access it, understand it and decide how it is used. It is about infrastructure and data, but also about narratives, community knowledge, civic participation and the capacity of communities to shape their own futures.
Efforts to advance digital sovereignty make it possible to bring visibility to projects and community spaces responding to democratic and rights-related challenges across the region. Continuing to work collectively and staying informed is essential to safeguarding freedom of expression, digital security, equality and universal access to the internet, as well as privacy, transparency, mental health and the governance of our digital environments.
About the authorMelisa Gabbanelli holds a degree in Social Communication from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and works as a freelance journalist and cultural manager. She complemented her academic background with a postgraduate degree in Communication and Cultural Management from FLACSO and an Advanced Diploma in Heritage Management from UNTREF. She is currently completing an Advanced Diploma in International Cultural Management jointly delivered by REDAPPE and UNRT. She worked in radio production and presenting on Vuelta de Tuerca, a project she created to tell stories of social impact. She was selected by Wikimedia Argentina to develop the podcast Mujeres Migrantes: sabores y saberes and the project Deporte adaptado – relevamiento de perfiles de atletas argentinas. She has also worked in communications and institutional relations for civil society organisations including Fundación Mediapila, Revista Intrépidas, Proyecto DANE and Proyecto Pura Vida. She currently works as a Cultural Manager at the Museo de la Aduana in Buenos Aires and as a freelance writer for Área Urbana magazine and the Otra Economía platform. |
