Coda

This chapter provides a balance for the volume, accounting for the implications of recent political shift in the US, much of which has been linked to social media. It emphasizes how the texts included in this collection also suggest the speed with which technology is playing a preeminent role in cultural, political, and social relations, be it north or south of the border. In the end, it seeks to strike a balance between the scholarly worlds in Portuguese and Spanish and academic spheres of the Anglo domain, clarifying the volume's intention not to pontificate, but rather to serve as a bridge between the Latin American digital humanities and the Anglo academe in the US and the UK, in a fashion as independent as possible to hegemonic proclivities.

On DH in Argentina

In this chapter, Gimena del Río Riande, the Argentine researcher based at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), talks about the state of the digital humanities in Argentina and the potential implications and promise of digital research in Latin American academia. She explains the specific challenges in the region and how technologies are playing a defining role in the reshaping of Latin American humanities at the dawn of the 21st century. As expected, the way in which the humanidades digitales developed in Spanish-speaking countries differs significantly from that of the Anglophone digital humanities. These differences can be found not only in the language that communicates research—all the different variants of Spanish—but also in the topics, methods, and tools, due to the diverse academic, cultural, and economic contexts. To illustrate this, Gimena del Río tells us how she started working in 2013 on the creation of a digital humanities community in Argentina, the Asociación Argentina de Humanidades Digitales (AAHD), and the digital humanities projects she is currently coordinating.

Electronic Civil Disobedience

This chapter discusses the Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT), a group that developed virtual sit-in technologies in solidarity with the Zapatistas communities in Chiapas, Mexico, in 1998. EDT, like many artivist groups, understood that the “politics of fear” set-off by 9/11 would be used by governments to establish almost everything under the signs of cyberwar, cyberterrorism, and cybercrime in order stop the development of Digital Zapatismo, electronic civil disobedience, hacktivism, and tactical media work across the arcs of Latin America and beyond. This essay establishes the conditions that were navigated by EDT and artivists working across digital platforms to establish new network gestures that would connect and amplify new visions of social formations emerging across Latin America, especially from the indigenous communities that were not deterred by the establishment of post-9/11 planetary war.

No Blogger, No Cry

The chapter is a concise creative essay by one of the protagonists of Cuban alternative blogging movement and emerging civil society. Younger generations in Cuba want to have their voices heard worldwide, despite the official censorship of the Castro government and the repression of the State Security. Freedom of expression as well as fundamental freedoms are still under attack in Cuba today, the once-called Island of Utopia by many international intellectuals, academics, and all sorts of political pilgrims mainly from the Left. Therefore, it is very important to know the insights of this peaceful struggle of the Cuban people for a more inclusive and democratic country, beyond the historic monopoly of the Communist Party. It is also important to understand why solidarity from abroad is necessary for these 21st-century freedom fighters not to succumb in isolation under the physical oppression but also under the misleading narrative of the Cuban Revolution seen as resistance to U.S. Imperialism and global capitalism. This creative essay playfully displays an initial map useful both for Cuban studies experts as well as for the common tourist.

Nation Branding

This chapter proposes the practice of nation branding as a political technology, as an example of neoliberalism in which the definition of national identity, previously assessed primarily by the social sciences and humanities, becomes the domain of business managers and advertising executives, thanks to technologies associated with social media. It explains how the redefinition of social goods, the role of the state, and the role of experts entail the replacement of a more socially driven understanding of identity with an act of commercial prestidigitation by way of nation branding; the pertinent state entities are replaced by advertising and image consultancy firms; and, lastly, scholars of various disciplines are replaced by advertising and PR executives. In short, following neoliberalism, identity is reinterpreted as brand. Identity no longer results from the never-ending and instantaneous negotiation between a multiplicity of parties, representative of myriad aspects relevant to the configuration of individuals and communities, but is rendered instead as the quantifiable, concrete result of a variety of transactions. Through this reformulation, a new relationship is suggested between the idea of nation as imagined community and the reality of the state as a material expression of the concept of nation.

Tech Disruption as Knowledge Production

The chapter highlights some of the important questions raised by DH debates in work that problematizes the omission of critical race, gender, and class perspectives, with respect to the study of the digital, and builds on these perspectives to consider the ongoing dilemmas of the field in Cuba during a new era of transnational relations contributing to the further transformation of Cuban society. Across the Americas, new research is taking up questions that include an understanding of how digital social networks mediate Latinx immigrant sociality and activism, and how others articulate the problems of digital segregation.

In and Out of Digital Humanities

This introductory chapter provides a general context for this collection, starting with the anecdotal inception of the project. It provides a list of some of the important titles in the field of digital humanities that figure prominently as academic predecessors and ponders on the consequences and implications of the digital turn in the humanities for the study of Latinx and Latin American culture. In response to the cultural hegemony of Anglocentric circles in the digital humanities, it provides ample evidence of the development and existence of the field in Latin America. Finally, it provides a brief overview of the four sections into which the book is divided: digital nations, transnational networks, digital aesthetics and practices, and interviews with Latin American DH scholars.

On DH in Brazil

This interview, held in the first half of 2018, focuses on the digital humanities in Brazil. It discusses various aspects of the subject. It signals an increasing interest in the digital humanities in Brazil, visible in several initiatives, and materialized in projects and works both theoretical and applied. The growing creation of laboratories, study centers, or research groups stimulates discussion and the strengthening of the general humanities. Lacking the support of specific public policies, the initiatives listed are the fruit of commitment by researchers, since branches of government have not yet identified an important research area for the development of new knowledge in the humanities. The interview lists names of important Brazilian activists from the area of digital humanities. It also points out the difficulties in the development of the digital humanities, such as the lack of knowledge of the area by researchers and the tendency to reduce the budgets of institutions and universities due to the current economic crisis. Publications, seminars, and other activities that enable the wide exchange of experiences developed at the national and international levels are considered fundamental in the strengthening of the field. Finally, it highlights the relevance of the promotion of events for dissemination in the area, like the 1st International Congress on Digital Humanities, which involved universities, research centers, and cultural institutions in its organization.

Carnival, Hybridity, and Latin American Digital Humor

Enchufe.tv, an online comedy series that satirizes Ecuadorian idiosyncrasies and local urban culture, became the most popular online TV series in the country and a regional phenomenon in Latin America. The online show questions cultural stereotypes and social norms, while adapting and parodying transnational audiovisual formats and entertainment genres. Based on interviews and textual analysis, this chapter analyzes Enchufe.tv as a case study of Latin American digital humor, an increasingly relevant phenomenon to understand how cultural globalization and hybridity operate in today's transnational, multimedia entertainment. The case of Enchufe.tv not only reveals the challenges and opportunities of the digital medium for independent audiovisual projects, but also how the limits of critical humor are negotiated in cultural, political, and commercial terms.

Cuban Digital Pedagogies and the Question of the Interface in Yaima Pardo’s Offline

This chapter analyses Yaima Pardo’s Offline to explore how the cross-fertilization of documentary and digital conventions can be used to reconstruct web navigation as an immersive experience that offers itself as a pedagogical intervention and critical interrogation of internet infrastructures and practices in Cuba. In Offline, the immersive dimension of nonfictional representation (live action footage, interviews, and database video images), and the operational dimension of digital interfaces (reading emails, clicking links, navigating multiple windows, downloading data, but also witnessing machine errors produced by internet access restrictions or limitations in data transmission capacity) contaminate each other and produce a tense convergence of cinematic conventions and data processes. It is through this tense convergence of national and global database images, functional and dysfunctional interfaces, and the nonfictional remixing of pro-filmic spaces and cyberspaces that Offline comes to represent some polemics and disputes, as well as some contradictory and ambivalent aspects that form part of the internet debate in Cuba. Offline evokes the idea that documentaries can play an important role as cinematic interfaces for the development of digital humanities practices in countries where internet connection and access to digital interfaces cannot be taken for granted.