Tequiologies: Indigenous Solutions Against Climate Catastrophe

Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil

Part of the Indigenous Solutions: Art/Media/Thought Series

February 7, 2022

HTNM: Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil, "Tequiologies: Indigenous Solutions Against Climate Catastrophe"

Event Description

It is a myth of the West’s choosing: perpetual economic growth, advancing through a digestive system of sorts, one that uses technology as one of its core components. In its churn, ecosystems became goods; people, mere consumers. The myth turned the world into a place increasingly inhospitable to human life. An alternative, offered by Abya Yala, lies in separating economic development and the development of new technologies from consumerism. This would place technological creation and ingenuity once again at the service of the common good, not of the market. Technology as tequio; technological creation and innovation as a common good.

Speakers

Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil is a member of COLMIX, a collective of young Mixe people who carry out research on Mixe language, history and culture. She studied Hispanic Languages and Literatures and holds a Master's degree in Linguistics from UNAM. She has participated in many projects aimed at fostering linguistic diversity and developing educational materials in indigenous languages, as well as projects documenting and calling attention to endangered languages. She has been involved in developing written material in Mixe and furthering the emergence of readers of Mixe and other indigenous languages. She has been active in the field of literary translation, in the defense of indigenous language speakers’ linguistic rights, and in advocating for the use of indigenous languages in the virtual world.

Natalia Brizuela is the Class of 1930 Chair of the Center for Latin American Studies, and a professor of Film & Media and Spanish & Portuguese at UC Berkeley with affiliations in the Program in Critical Theory and Gender and Women's Studies. She is also a Project Director and Co-PI for the Mellon funded International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs. Brizuela is the author of Fotografia e Imperio; Depois da Fotografia; and The Matter of Photography in the Americas among others. She is Co-Editor of the book series Critical South (Polity).

Alex Saum-Pascual is Associate Professor of Spanish and New Media at UC Berkeley. In the Department of Spanish and Portuguese she teaches Contemporary Spanish Literature and Culture (20th and 21st Centuries) and Electronic Literature (Digital Humanities).

Cosponsors

Co-presented by the Berkeley Center for New Media, the Center for Latin American Studies, and Berkeley Arts + Design as part of the ATC | Art, Technology and Culture Colloquium and the Indigenous Technologies Initiative. Co-sponsored by Spanish & Portuguese, the Center for Race and Gender, the Arts Research Center, and the American Indian Graduate Program.