Text written by Rubén Solís Mecalco & Camila Nobrega of Kuirme Collective, editors of the books. The Kuirme Collective is supported by the Green Screen Coalition.
Simultaneously from Belém do Pará during COP-30 (UN Climate Change Conference held in Brazil) and the People´s Summit; San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas (Mexico) and Berlin (Germany), we launched the two books ‘Fictions and Frictions’, and ‘Ficciones y Fricciones’. This bilingual initiative by the Kuirme Collective explores the dominant and peripheral narratives surrounding the intersections of Environmental Justice and Digital Rights in both Europe and Latin America.
Our perspective is shaped by our experiences as migrants navigating between these two continents, embodying nomadic steady movements, words that usually are not seen or understood together. The books inhabit this crossroad. Our investigation delves into potential intersections, as well as the tensions and contradictions, along with mutual inspirations among various organizations, collectives, and academic research groups.
This publication emerges primarily from our encounters with four other collectives: the Múuch’ Xíinbal Mayan Assembly from the Yucatán Peninsula (Mexico), the Grupo Latinoamericano de Estudios Formación y Acción Feminista (GLEFAS) from various parts of Latin America, and Intervozes (Coletivo Brasil de Comunicação Social – Brazil).
English book – “Fictions & Frictions” (2025)
Spanish book – “Ficciones & Fricciones” (2025)
These publications address the challenges of large-scale extractivisms, identifying gaps and commonalities between diverse narratives and agendas associated with digital rights and climate justice. One of the key questions the publication brings is: does the expression “digital rights” sum up the understandings of rights related to the digitalization of life from feminist/territorial perspectives centered on social-environmental justice? What are the other forms of naming, seen and discussing it?
The collective soul of these books brings the tensions, power and crossings when different voices work together. It is not one linear but a spiral creative process. This is reflected in the multiple ways to approach and read the books.
In 2023, when we started this long journey, we wanted to answer the following questions: What are the fictions and frictions in the intersections between digital rights and climate justice? By Fictions we meant, on the one hand, the imaginaries, dreams, collective creation. On the other hand, the misunderstandings that exist between world translations, the misinformation, the problem of monolithic narratives. The word Frictions guided us through and from conflicts, with the aim of making visible the challenges of communication between multiple worlds. We delved into the impossibility of a unique narrative and the power of acknowledging it. The gaps interest us. For this reason, we embraced not only paths in direction to resolutions and middle grounds but also tensions and gaps that show fruitful ways of (de)construction and reflection.
To address the main question, we consulted three key organizations from Latin America and one from Europe. In addition, we conducted an interview with an expert adviser from the European Parliament. We identified feminist de/anti/post-colonial and queer issues, as well as resistance practices, in response to new forms of colonial violence linked to the development paradigm associated with the extraction of raw materials and the control and concentration of discourses, further exacerbated by the expansion of digital technologies.
These books encapsulate the fictions and frictions that arise from the dominant imaginaries about the world we aspire to build. They provide an insider perspective on marginalized debates surrounding climate justice and digital rights, and they explore ways to make these discussions more inclusive.
The protagonists of Fictions and Frictions / Ficciones and Fricciones book emerged from the dialogues with the Kuirme collective:
- Grupo Latinoamericano de Estudios Formación y Acción Feminista (GLEFAS) is a network of comrades, workspaces, and organizations committed to collectively constructing thoughts and action strategies against the various manifestations of oppression.
- Múuch’ Xíinbal Mayan Assembly from the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, is an autonomous organization of territorial defenders, including women, men, and individuals outside the colonial binary gender system. They autonomously spread important information using concepts in both Maya and Spanish through face-to-face assemblies and digital tools – website, podcast, and social media – across multiple rural Mayan communities in the region.
- The Brazilian Intervozes Collective: Founded in 2003, Intervozes – Brazilian Collective of Social Communication – is an organization that advocates for the human right to communication in Brazil and actively participates in various networks across Latin America. The collective identifies and denounces longstanding communication oligopolies established in Brazil, many of which are linked to land monocultures, as well as emerging digital monopolies. Their aim is to ensure that communication is recognized as a right that should be democratized and accessible to all citizens, but guaranteeing an intersectional perspective.
- Letzte Generation: Since April 2022, Letzte Generation has been part of the A22 Network, an international network of civil resistance projects. The collective connects the struggles for climate and environmental justice in Germany; its name derives from the idea of being the last generation before the climate and environmental systems we know collapse.
All these interviews/exchanges reflect the self-aware perspectives of each collective and organization in dialog with our experiences as Kuirme Collective. In this sense we are glad to invite all of you to read, circulate, help us transcend and subvert the limitations of social media. Please share with your networks. We want to organize launches and focal discussions in different languages (English, Spanish and Portuguese) in 2026 to amplify these lenses in the debate, so share with people who might be interested and who may feel welcomed and invited. This book is only a starting point, our invitation is to think further together from feminist and sex-gender dissident multiple perspectives.
About Kuirme Collective:
We are a collective of academic researchers who are also activists, transmedia creators, documentarists, engaged both within and outside universities. We produce knowledge that is collectively situated and grounded in the intersections of feminism, sex-gender dissidence, and socio-environmental justice. Our aim is to challenge prevailing understandings of extractivism, knowledge, and power in various spheres.
Our perspective is nomadic, feminist, decolonial, queer, and migrant, positioned at the crossroads between Latin America and Europe. We view this space between the two continents as essential for shaping our perspectives and the identity of our collective, resisting the dominant narrative that seeks to confine us to a non-place. Transition, along with sexual and gender dissidence and immigration, represents journeys in our experience.
Contacts: Kuirme@proton.me & https://linktr.ee/kuirme