New GenderIT.org edition: Trans perspectives on technology and politics from Latin America

Currently, trans, gender-diverse and intersex people’s lived experience is marked by colonial powers, which have mutated their original forms. In the face of oppression, how can we imagine the future, predict it and enunciate it from our trans-eco and technofeminist alliances? How can we articulate our alliances in the present time and strengthen them to build foundations facilitating equal access and opportunities? How can we intentionally integrate those bodies that have historically been subsumed by coloniality and strive to connect our movements? How do we collaborate to place trans voices at the centre, to take them to the next level?

This edition encompasses the fused multiverses coexisting among trans populations across the Latin American global South, also known by the Kuna peoples as Abya Yala. From visual arts to political science, this writing collection maps and highlights best practices engaging with technology as a tool for political emancipation, autonomy and self-determination. The solutions to our problems are multilateral; possibility isn’t a straight line, which makes it vital to connect and allow for multiple perspectives.

In this edition:

• Kira Xonorika, a Paraguayan interdisciplinary artist, researcher and writer, provides background context and an overview of this bilingual GenderIT.org edition (also available in Spanish).

• Ventura Profana, a Brazilian artist and writer, narrates an Afrofuturist manifesto in ''Theology of Transmutation,'' which engages trans epistemology and theological studies to examine the colonial legacies and historical choreographies of the white supremacist matrix; Ventura explores the historical instrumentalisation of Christianity as a device for the maintenance of whiteness.

• Sol Ámbar Sánchez Latorre, sociologist, writer and activist, writes about the progress of judicial processes in Colombia, expanding on the scope of communications and digital media facilitating political mobilisation for trans and non-binary people. In her writing, she interrogates the realm of representation and exposes the ways in which violence is replicated.

• Ari Vera Morales, Mexican trans activist and ILGA World board member, narrates the processes of capacity building which enable the labour and technological inclusion of trans and gender-diverse people in Mexico, and how transnational companies have formed alliances to offer clear paths towards financial autonomy and education in digital tools. 

• Vita Evangelista, a non-binary new media artist, offers a poetic reflection on geolocation, the city of São Paulo, and their experience as a migrant. This autoethnographic essay, deployed between art and queer theory, explores the micro-scenarios of late capitalism in São Paulo as symptoms of cross-cutting regional politics.

• Tatiana Buelvas Valdiris, an expert consultant in diversity, equity and inclusion, writes from the perspective of cis-trans alliances, and how civil society organisations, the private sector and academia can establish connections to enable labour inclusion and leadership. 

Read the full edition here.

Cover image: Xonorika Kira