Interview with Colectivo Promedio
The introduction of Digital Tribulations, a series of intellectual interviews on the developments of digital soveregnty in Latin America, can be read here. 
I arrived in San Cristóbal de las Casas on a cold morning, after an uncomfortable overnight bus from Puerto Escondido. The city sits at 2,200 metres in a pine-forested valley in Chiapas: colonial cobblestone streets, low painted houses, heavy wooden portals, and a light that filters milky between the mountains in the morning and falls suddenly at dusk. I stayed for a week, which turned into an accidental summer school on Zapatismo.
The name comes from Emiliano Zapata, a horseman and landowner’s son from Morelos who organised the Ejército Libertador del Sur during the Mexican Revolution under the slogan Tierra y Libertad (Land and Freedom). He is remembered not only for the fight but for the refusal: when he entered Mexico City in triumph alongside Pancho Villa, he declined to sit in the presidential chair, saying it was a throne that corrupted men. The Zapatista uprising of January 1st, 1994 — timed precisely to coincide with the entry into force of NAFTA, the free trade agreement with the USA — inherited that refusal and made it the centre of its political organisation. Over the following decades, the movement transformed from an armed insurgency into a laboratory of autonomy: indigenous Mayan tradition, Marxist guerrilla experience and the language of national liberation converged into something harder to classify, something new: self-governing communities, autonomous schools and clinics, rotating assemblies, and a theory of power summarised in the phrase mandar obedeciendo (“governing by obeying”).
Much of this I learned through people I met in the city. One evening I sat in a small room in a cultural centre called Gato Negro, on a broken sofa, listening to Lila — extensions knotted into a thick braid, her husband cooking behind the wall — recount the story of her family. Her father, Amado Avendaño Figueroa, was a journalist and owner of the newspaper El Tiempo. When the Zapatistas took San Cristóbal in 1994 – thinking it was a suicide mission – their house became an information hub: the phone never stopped ringing, communiqués signed by Subcomandante Marcos arrived and were archived, and news reached Europe before it reached the rest of Mexico, bypassing a national media that portrayed the uprising as a criminal group manipulating indigenous people. Avendaño ran for governor with Zapatista support, survived an assassination attempt, won the election, was denied the result, and was invested by indigenous communities as gobernador rebelde (rebel governor), receiving the bastón de mando, the sacred ceremonial staff — to this day the only non-indigenous person to have done so. By the mid-nineties, the internet arrived and the declarations no longer needed to pass through their house; El Tiempo closed, and what remained was the room Lila was speaking from.
Amado Avendaño Figueroa with the mando staff.
At Sendas, another cultural centre close to the Zapatista networks, I attended discussion sessions led by John, a lanky Irish man with a ponytail and a cigarette, who came into the city twice a week to run collaborative research on the Zapatista declarations. In one session we worked through a quiz on Chiapas: the state has the highest biodiversity in Mexico after the Amazon, produces more corn and coffee than any other, holds more water than any other — yet tap water is undrinkable. There is, however, a large Coca-Cola bottling plant. Mexico ranks second in the world for per-capita consumption of the drink, and Chiapas has a rate four times the national average; Coca-Cola advertised directly in indigenous languages and traditional dress, and the penetration has been such that the drink has entered indigenous religious rituals, in some communities replacing traditional fermented beverages. John mentioned the arrival of unmediated internet  in communities with no prior framework for it: what some were beginning to call etnoporno, a shorthand for a broader anxiety about cultural penetration through platforms. 
At the Sendas Cafè.
At Sendas I met Paco, a member of Colectivo Promedios, working a few doors down from the hacklab, who told me how to make contact with the caracol — the self-governing Zapatista communities, established in 2003 as the concrete infrastructure of autonomy: each caracol (the word means snail, chosen as a symbol of slow listening, of speech that enters and exits in a spiral) houses a Junta de Buen Gobierno, a rotating council that coordinates autonomous schools, clinics, justice systems and cooperatives across the territory. The procedure to visit one is precise: take the central bus, then a taxi to Altamirano, speak to the interzona, prepare three identical copies of the same letter — one for the comandancia general, one for the comité clandestino, one for the interzona — explaining who you are and why you want to come, with no guarantee of a reply. The chances seemed too low, and I was already behind on time, so I passed. 
Instead, I interviewed Paco, who gave me a detailed account of nearly two decades spent building communication infrastructure inside and alongside the Zapatista autonomy project, years before the vocabulary of digital sovereignty had fully formed. In retrospect, much of what Promedios was attempting in the early 2000s anticipated debates that are only taking place now at a global level.
In the end, the Zapatista project famously opened to the world. The 2005 Sexta Declaración de la Selva Lacandona explicitly called for alliances beyond Chiapas and beyond Mexico, with movements and communities sharing no fixed ideology but a common refusal of the “death machine” of global capitalism. In 2021, a delegation crossed the Atlantic to reach what they called an Insubordinate Europe. The caracoles should now be nodes in a network that has always understood local autonomy and global solidarity as two sides of the same project. Talking to Paco was, in a small way, part of that opening.
The first declaration of la Selva Lacandona.
***
 
To begin with, could you tell us what the colectivo Promedios is?
My name is Paco Vázquez, and I am a member of the colectivo Promedios de Comunicación Comunitaria. We are an organization that was founded in 1998 to accompany the Zapatista movement in its demand for access to its own media.
For nearly 18 years, we worked with the movement through an ongoing program aimed at facilitating the appropriation of communication media within the autonomy project. Since this is a project without a predefined structure—that is, it is not a socialist project with a specific program—the Zapatista project is an experience of experimentation, dialogue, and reconstruction, constantly adjusting and generating new proposals; it is highly irregular. This meant that we accompanied the process by finding or proposing possible solutions to the needs that emerged or were identified during the construction of autonomy and Indigenous self-government.
Essentially, we trained people within the communities who, as volunteers in the political project, provided communication services addressing a wide range of needs. This ranged from documenting events and producing audiovisual materials in documentary or short report formats, to accompanying members of the organization working in health or education, or even documenting community justice processes by filming agreements between communities in dispute. All kinds of community events were documented, including religious and cultural ones, as well as traditional rituals, always serving as a tool for community development.
So communication was not understood in the sense of news reporting, but rather in a community sense: materials to promote vaccination, materials to promote women’s rights, or often simply rights-related materials for internal use within the communities. Some of these audiovisual productions were also shown at film festivals, university circuits, academic spaces, and activist networks.
Another part of the work carried out by these people is still ongoing; the fact that we are no longer involved does not mean it stopped. They have continued independently for years, without the need for this permanent annual program. These community communication teams operated in each autonomous municipality, as well as in a regional center providing more comprehensive services to the Juntas de Buen Gobierno (Good Government Councils, the Zapatista governing body). They produced materials and provided services to leaders, political commissions, and organizational commissions, facilitating internet access, offering technical support so people could use email, and resolving issues related to printers, software, or operating systems.
In 2000, we facilitated the migration to Linux, which has since partially reversed because, for some people, it is easier to buy a computer with software already installed. Still, to this day, the vast majority continue working with free software.
During those years, our collective also participated in civil society actions outside direct collaboration with the Zapatista movement, working with human rights organizations and independent journalism within the broader field of independent communication. We researched autonomous networks. We developed a network that is no longer operating because it ceased to be necessary: we had a wireless telecommunications network in the city, with a tower here in the city center providing service to the outskirts. Only one neighborhood remains, quite isolated, which now operates independently.
The network we had in the valley was dismantled because, over time, the industry and projects like Altán began offering more robust connectivity. They have capital and infrastructure that a small collective cannot compete with. And people’s awareness is not always high enough to understand that if I cannot provide same-day technical support, it is because we are a small collective and I also have to make a living. For a time, we developed that experience, especially with the goal of creating solutions tested in the field. Often, a community or collective approaches with a proposal like “we need networks” or “we need internet access,” and if you do not have solutions that you have effectively tested on the ground, providing service to a certain number of users, you cannot tell them “this can be used.” That was the central objective of that network, but it no longer exists.
A large part of our work has also involved training in the use of audiovisual media and, more recently, critical analysis of private social networks and the promotion of free software and independent platforms.
What problems did you encounter, and what worked or didn’t work while developing this communication infrastructure?
Well, I think the idea that a community network has to operate like the market is a mistaken starting point. In the initial stage, we worked with people who had a political or ethical commitment, but also a practical need, because there is no coverage on the outskirts of the city. Large companies refused for a long time to deploy infrastructure because it was not profitable in cost-benefit terms. That neighborhood that still uses the service we built 10 or 12 years ago is the only one left because, even though they tried to negotiate with Telcel or Telmex, those companies look at their numbers and say: “you have 60 users, I’m not interested, I won’t install a tower because it is not profitable.”
The people we started the project with understood it in its political and ideological dimension and as an experiment. Gradually it grew; we reached nearly 300 users across the outskirts, and for an experimental project it was quite rich because we had a great diversity of people. But some people thought they were subscribing to “Telmex B,” so they expected immediate service. They expected things they would never ask of large companies, like: “I’m going to be away for a month, don’t charge me for that month.” I would tell them: “sorry, you can’t ask that of Telmex or Telcel, but you insist on asking me? I think you don’t understand that we are a different kind of project.”
This effort to raise awareness about how networks are used seems to me one of the major challenges of contemporary society. Starting from the idea that we already understand that without our own infrastructure—whether civic or national—there is no sovereignty, it is essential that most people understand how it works. That is, they should understand that if the commercial node in the city collapses, there is nothing I can do. There were many difficulties; we even developed software tools to help users diagnose problems: “if you click here, it will tell you where the issue is.” If the problem is on your rooftop, where your antenna is, then I have to help you. If it’s in my tower, also. But if it’s in your upstream link, I can’t do anything—it depends on the larger infrastructure of Telmex or Megacable that I rely on. If your problem is in Villahermosa or Miami, there is nothing I can do. Cultivating that awareness is important for community projects.
Another key point is that, to the extent that local resources can be generated—local servers—whether through Mesh technologies or others that allow independent networks that do not rely on a WhatsApp server to deliver messages, there can be decentralization and a real alternative to private global platforms. In that case, communities can manage their networks more efficiently. If what you do is provide connectivity so people can use WhatsApp, you remain in the same situation while also taking on the burden of the “last mile.” You are effectively doing the work so that large corporations can profit. It’s a paradox—the paradox of Open Source more broadly—and it shouldn’t be overlooked.
There is a tension between global scale and community scale through platformization. Everything is now shaped by that, although there are also some examples of worker cooperatives. I don’t know if that has reached here.
Nothing larger has developed here. There is a network of merchants who, faced with the lack of distribution in rural areas, began installing small devices to sell SIM cards or prepaid credit. As I mentioned, in response to the lack of coverage, small companies began to emerge—telecommunications technicians who used to work for large firms and then set up independent businesses by installing small WISPs (wireless internet service providers). In the deep jungle, they began working with HughesNet satellite—high-latency internet commonly used in remote rural areas, which is quite poor, but it was what was available—combined with a local WISP: one satellite connection serving 20 or 30 users.
In the Los Altos region, which is more densely populated, they set up wireless links from the city to the mountains, with repeaters across the area. This led to the formation of a kind of guild—a group of “Wisp-eros,” small entrepreneurs who buy a robust connection and distribute it via antennas to nearby towns to cover rural areas. At one point they functioned as a kind of informal union: they began sharing bandwidth for content distribution, such as movies. They set up local servers with films so users could watch them without accessing the broader internet. It was interesting, but eventually the Federal Telecommunications Commission shut them down. First, Telmex cut their service because they were using residential fiber for commercial purposes. Telmex couldn’t identify the content of the traffic, but it could detect the volume; once they identified commercial-level usage, they began blocking them through supposed regional failures, effectively harassing them. In the end, although they formed a kind of network among Telmex and Megacable users, they gradually disappeared.
These were processes in which sectors of the population could build networks to share content. They used servers with pirated movies to attract customers and offer added value, reducing bandwidth consumption by downloading content locally instead of repeatedly from the internet. Interesting, but it didn’t develop much further. In Chiapas, there hasn’t been anything beyond that.
In Brazil, there are movements like the Landless Workers that speak of popular digital sovereignty; did that kind of shift in discourse reach the Zapatista movement or other movements in Chiapas?
I don’t know. I think building their own infrastructure has not been a priority. It’s curious: in 2000, we set up an experiment with a local content server. It was a very basic system, fed through a HughesNet connection, that downloaded daily versions of the newspapers most consulted by the Zapatistas at the time (La Jornada, Enlace Zapatista) and Wikipedia; we had previously downloaded the databases, which were updated every two or three days. We installed it as a pilot research project, but it wasn’t understood. I think it was early, or ahead of its time, perhaps out of context, and perhaps we failed to foster more dialogue. The general intuition was: “we want someone to connect us to the internet in general, not to a local service.” I interpret that they saw it as a limitation. In some ways it was, but it was also a form of agency.
Today, the debate is about who connects you, who filters the traffic you consume, who manages your data, and how you ensure speed for non-commercial uses—but at that time, that debate didn’t exist. The project worked technically, but people didn’t understand its purpose. And in response to your question, I think that understanding has still not fully developed. There is a paradox: social movements organize themselves through private U.S. platforms like WhatsApp. I don’t know how much they use these platforms today; the general population certainly does—it is the most widely used in Mexico. But autonomous communities still use radios. Non-autonomous communities also use VHF or FM radios, even here in the city among market vendors or taxi drivers—two-way communication systems. The Zapatistas also continue to use them in rural areas. That, at least, allows for self-managed communication in urgent situations.
Even as coverage expands, those WISPs operating in the region—many of which have shifted from HughesNet to Starlink—continue to provide service, but it remains costly. If you buy a two-way radio, once you’ve paid for it, there are no further costs. So these systems continue to coexist. Of course, radios are mainly used for basic coordination—security, public services, infrastructure. If the power goes out, radios still work; if the power goes out, the internet does not. They continue to use them, but there is no structured effort to transition toward independent networks for ideological or strategic reasons; it’s more a matter of practicality. I also think the Zapatistas have not shown much interest in promoting such projects, because when we proposed them, they didn’t generate much curiosity. In retrospect, we probably should have spent more time analyzing and explaining what the internet and digital platforms actually are.
And is the federal government present here with projects?
The Altán network, a public-private initiative aimed at bringing connectivity to rural areas where companies like Telcel do not operate, is deployed across all territories—although Zapatista territories are not homogeneous and include mixed populations. The Mexican state has an obligation to provide service and appears to be trying to address that responsibility. However, as I mentioned, it is often Walmart that ends up delivering the “last mile,” since Walmart has become a major provider of mobile internet through its BAIT brand, using Altán’s infrastructure. The government built the infrastructure, but a company is needed to manage that last mile—identifying users and handling data consumption. In practice, most of that administration is being handled by Walmart. There are some smaller exceptions, such as Wiki Katat, the first mobile phone and internet network run by an Indigenous community in Mexico (in Tlahuitoltepec), managed autonomously, which has a few users here. But that remains more of an ideological initiative; there is no advertising for it in the city—it spreads through grassroots networks.
What practical steps can be taken in the coming years to become more autonomous?
Honestly, I have little confidence in how well the problem is understood. Most of society, including organized civil society, does not fully grasp it. A proper cost-benefit analysis has not been made. Many people seek a free or cheap service similar to what private companies offer and value it in the same way; they do not recognize that it is fundamentally different. Only moments of crisis tend to shift that perception.
We’ve been working on this for many years without fully succeeding. It’s similar to the free software movement: platforms are now robust, but people only adopt them when they are as easy to use as Windows. That extra effort—or the limitation of not having instant technical support—is a matter of political or ethical commitment. Over time, some tools do stabilize, like Signal, which many now see as a viable option, even though it originated as a radical independent project.
I think a moment of crisis is approaching, because the U.S. government is putting pressure, and in Mexico the government is requiring phone lines to be registered in individuals’ names, supposedly to combat crime and extortion. Starting in June, service will be cut off for those who do not register their line. In the past, SIM cards were sold informally on the street; you can still buy one at an OXXO for 50 pesos and use it without restrictions, but that supply is running out. The new generation of SIM cards already requires registration.
This has led many people to start discussing privacy. Currently, there is an initiative in the city to implement mesh networks—networks that allow decentralized, community-based interconnection of devices. There are meetings among activists, alternative communities, and even some “hippie” groups. I haven’t had time to participate, but I know the technicians involved, and it seems promising. Still, I’ve seen many similar initiatives collapse over time. I don’t think infrastructure alone creates social processes; rather, social processes must justify and sustain the technology. That’s why I follow it with interest, but also with some caution. Projects like RedPhone or Signal, for example, emerged from social movements grounded in ideas of autonomy and freedom—very anarchist in spirit—and some of them have actually succeeded.
Did anything related to blockchain reach here?
No, not really. At most, there are maybe three people here who use Bitcoin. It’s not widespread. Some people use certain protocols for secure transactions—for example, to send money to Gaza—as an alternative method. There could be some overlap between anarchist ideas and blockchain in terms of guaranteeing anonymity, but it’s not something widely adopted. In practice, what people use for transactions is PayPal and what one might loosely call “narco-pay”—things you hear about informally. Blockchain at a general level—maybe for sending money to places like the Cayman Islands—but not for ordinary people. For example, we’ve heard that extortion payments are often made via PayPal.
On the wall.