https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7168-6885
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ABSTRACT
How might the creation of digital research infrastructure for preserving archival materials in Latin America resemble the infrastructure of extractivism? This essay examines the development of a digital repository for one of the most important collections of Amazonian history, culture, and politics at the Biblioteca Amazónica in Iquitos, Peru. Funded in part by the Modern Endangered Archives Program (MEAP) at the University of California, Los Angeles, the project seeks to digitally catalog and preserve photographs, newspapers, maps, and local journals at risk of further damage by humidity, rodents, lack of funding, and potential fires. In dialogue with critical infrastructure studies, I consider how this otherwise altruistic project fits into the broader landscape of extractive infrastructure in the Amazon region. To problematize what materialities might be flattened in the process of digitalization and their implications for the potential digital colonialism of the project, I compare the MEAP research infrastructure to other infrastructural projects in the Iquitos area, with special emphasis on the kinds of relational encounters that Iquiteños improvise when infrastructure does not work as intended. I argue that creating similar opportunities to engage and struggle with digital research technologies has the potential to transform them for local use and complicate their potentially extractive qualities.
RESUMO
Como a criação de plataformas digitais de armazenamento para preservar materiais de arquivo na América Latina poderia se assemelhar às infraestruturas do extrativismo? Este ensaio examina o desenvolvimento de um repositório digital para uma das mais importantes coleções de história, cultura e política da Amazônia na Biblioteca Amazônica em Iquitos, Peru. Financiado em parte pelo Modern Endangered Archives Program (MEAP) da Universidade da Califórnia, em Los Angeles, o projeto procura catalogar e preservar digitalmente fotografias, jornais, mapas e periódicos locais com risco piora nos danos devido à humidade, roedores, falta de financiamento e potenciais incêndios. Em diálogo com os estudos críticos de infraestrutura, exploro como esse projeto aparentemente altruísta se enquadra no panorama mais vasto das infraestruturas extrativistas na região amazônica. Para problematizar quais materialidades podem ser “achatadas” no processo de digitalização e assuas implicações para o potencial colonialismo digital do projeto, comparo a infraestrutura de investigação do MEAP com as de outros projetos infraestruturais na área de Iquitos, com especial ênfase nos tipos de encontros relacionais que os Iquitenhos improvisam quando a infraestrutura não funciona como esperado. Argumento que a criação de oportunidades semelhantes de envolvimento e de enfrentar dificuldades com as tecnologias de pesquisa digital tem o potencial de transformá-las para o uso local e complicar suas qualidades potencialmente extrativistas.
RESUMEN
¿En qué se parece la creación de plataformas digitales de almacenamiento para preservar materiales de archivo en América Latina a la infraestructura del extractivismo? Este ensayo examina la creación de un repositorio digital para una de las colecciones más importantes de historia, cultura y política amazónicas en la Biblioteca Amazónica de Iquitos, Perú. Financiado en parte por el Modern Endangered Archives Program (MEAP) de la Universidad de California, Los Ángeles, el proyecto pretende catalogar y preservar digitalmente fotografías, periódicos, mapas y diarios locales que corren el riesgo de sufrir más daños por la humedad, los roedores, la falta de financiación y los posibles incendios. En diálogo con la crítica de la infraestructura, considero cómo este proyecto, por lo demás altruista, encaja en el panorama más amplio de las infraestructuras extractivas de la región amazónica. Para problematizar qué materialidades podrían ser achatadas en el proceso de digitalización y las implicaciones de éstas para el potencial colonialismo digital del proyecto, comparo la infraestructura de investigación del MEAP con otros proyectos de infraestructura en el área de Iquitos, con especial énfasis en los tipos de encuentros relacionales que los iquiteños improvisan cuando la infraestructura no funciona como se pretendía. Sostengo que la creación de oportunidades semejantes para enfrentar y luchar con las tecnologías digitales de investigación tiene el potencial de transformarlas para el uso local y así complicar sus cualidades potencialmente extractivas.
Acknowledgement
Mi más profundo agradecimiento a mi colaboradora, Sydney Silverstein, y al equipo MEAP: Iris Abril del Águila Yahuarcani, Margarita del Águila Villacorta, Juan José Bellido Collahuacho, Christian Ahuanari Tamani, Susan Layche Celis, Roldán Dunú Tumi Dësi, Julio Ramírez Arévalo, Jhonatan Rodríguez Macuyama, Nixia Nubia Rodríguez Macuyama, y Maruja Pierina Zárate Moreno. También agradezco al Padre Miguel Fuertes y al Hermano Víctor Lozano por su apoyo y dedicación al proyecto. Dedico este ensayo al Padre Joaquín García (1939–2024), gran amante de la Amazonía peruana y su biblioteca.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Official reporting stated that there were no flames only glowing embers and smoke. See Fuentes (Citation2022). However, when I shared photographs of charred furniture and equipment with the structural fire engineering expert Erica Fischer on October 17, 2022, she determined that the damage was not possible without the presence of flames.
2 Fischer also confirmed that lithium batteries are highly combustible, especially in such conditions.
3 My book (Smith Citation2021) also addresses how extractive practices permeate tourism and literary and cultural production in and about Amazonia.
4 I consider digital research infrastructure as a pipeline following Nicole Starosielski’s provocation to extend the definition of a pipeline to any “media ecology that creates channels along which material can flow [seemingly] unhindered by environmental circumstances.” See Starosielski (Citation2016, 53).
5 Here I am following Marisol de la Cadena's call to consider how intersecting worlds and cosmovisions give rise to "not only entities." In this case, a pipeline may be extractive infrastructure in a worldview that separates humans from nature, but it will also inevitably be not only that. See De la Cadena (Citation2015).
6 Though Lima’s city lights were installed in 1886, streetlights came to Iquitos in 1905, to Tacna in 1912, and Cusco in 1914. See Huamaní Huamaní (Citation2014) and Organismo Supervisor de la Inversión en Energía y Minería, Osinergmin (Citation2016).
7 He writes, “The environment precedes infrastructure the way a landscape precedes an engineer’s design for a bridge, which itself precedes a bridge. To put is crassly, in this formulation, environment is the infrastructure of infrastructure.”
8 Uriarte makes a direct connection between rivers as infrastructure and other infrastructural projects in the Amazon region: “These ‘fluvial poetics,’ and their role in the everyday lives of the region’s inhabitants, have also been central to the state’s modernization and infrastructure projects of production and exploitation of the soil, as they tried to impose new ways of conceiving of travel (and, in more general terms, displacement).”
9 As Dennis Rodgers and Bruce O’Neill insist, “Infrastructure is not just a material embodiment of violence (structural or otherwise), but often its instrumental medium, insofar as the material organization and form of a landscape not only reflect social orders, thereby becoming a contributing factor to reoccurring forms of harm” (Citation2012, 404).
10 The layered nature of infrastructure is one of its qualities. Starosielski has shown how fiber-optic cables are often laid in relation to previously established infrastructures, and Fernando Santos-Granero and Federica Barclay have traced a history of extractivist cycles building on the infrastructure established by previous cycles. See Santos-Granero and Barclay (Citation2002).
11 The fiber-optic cables are yet to be extended to homes or most businesses, for example.
12 According to the essay, the percentage is even lower when considering those with access at home.
13 One need only search a social media platform for “Puente Nanay” to see creative selfies generated a top a bridge that did not go anywhere.
14 Even today, with a relative democratization of Internet and social media platforms for hosting cultural heritage, few Amazonian archives exist in Peru. José Ragas’s comprehensive annotated list of “important digital collections on Peruvian historical sources written, printed, visual, or sonic” includes only three mentions of Amazonian sources, two of which are Facebook pages. See “Digital Resources: Digital Peru, 2.
15 The late intellectual and progressive priest Joaquín García, author of many works on Iquitos, founded CETA in 1972 through an agreement with the Vicariate. The initial aim of the institution was to adapt the reforms of Vatican II to the Amazonian context, and CETA also produced numerous publications on the history and ethnography of the region. Eventually, members of CETA gathered their personal libraries to create the foundation for the Biblioteca Amazónica, which originally opened in 1992, with some support from the regional government of Loreto. Both a budget crisis and the declining health of García caused CETA to dissolve in 2018, at which time the Biblioteca Amazónica officially passed to the hands of the church, causing its status as a public institution to become muddied. See Vásquez Valcárcel (Citation2018).
16 The Arcadia Fund is a UK-based charity founded in 2001 by the philanthropist couple Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. The organization provides financial support to projects around the world focused on preserving endangered culture, protecting endangered nature, and promoting open access, according to their website, https://www.arcadiafund.org.uk/.
18 Poirier et al. define “data ideology” as “a complex set of assumptions and understandings, both tacit and explicit, that form a meta-discourse about data, how it functions, what needs to be done with it, who should handle it and how, and why it is valued and might be rendered still more valuable” (Citation2020, 215).
19 Aguirre and Salvatore underscore how important private collections in Latin America were the “objeto de saqueo o compra por parte de instituciones extranjeras interesadas en aquello que Ricardo Salvatore ha llamado ‘la empresa del conocimiento’” before they could be incorporated into public or university collections. See Aguirre and Salvatore (Citation2018, 13)
20 In fact, Arcadia does not allow for any indirect costs to be taken from the grant money either, which makes listing US universities as grant recipients a challenge. Indeed, they are infrastructurally set up to partner directly with archives abroad and place the pressure on US-based PIs to negotiate terms with their institutions when needed.
21 Rachel Deblinger, director of the Modern Endangered Archives Program at UCLA, in conversation with the author, July 31, 2022.
22 “El colonialismo digital es una ideología que se resume en un principio muy simple, un condicional: ‘Si puedes, debes.’ Si es posible hacer que una cosa o una actividad migre al ámbito digital, entonces debe migrar” Casati (Citation2015, 19).
23 Staff from the Prince Claus Cultural Emergency Relief Fund, which supported fire recovery efforts, were so impressed by our team’s knowledge, that they have invited us to apply for a prevention grant so that team members can put their skills to use training other local cultural heritage institutions in best practices for archiving and digitizing and preventing and mitigating damage from disasters.
24 Making sure to call attention to the potential surveillance made possible by an apparently democratic distribution of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), Ávila Pinto argues that a commons of digital heritage (“patrimonio digital común”) is central to overthrowing digital colonialism (Citation2018, 24). Indeed, user data from the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies affirms that subscription academic articles are readily available to scholars working in the centers of former empires in the Global North, where universities provide them with paid access. The geography of informational access expands to the Global South dramatically when the same articles are made available with open access.
25 Poirier et al. suggest that international data standards can exclude certain publics. They write, "As more diverse research domains are incorporated into the universe of open data, standards tend to proliferate, becoming less 'standard' as they evolve to the specificities that diverse communities address with their data." See Poirier et al. (Citation2020, 211). So far, we have been limited by standards imposed by Arcadia and UCLA to reduce such diversity.
26 Because at the time of writing, the metadata for the project is not yet complete and our collection is not yet live, we cannot analyze how usage of the archival materials might reinforce or challenge the digital colonialism of the project. We hope to undertake this work moving forward in order to make the archive both desirable and accessible to people in Loreto, Peru, and Latin America more broadly.
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Amanda M. Smith
Amanda M. Smith is Associate Professor of Latin American literature and culture at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research explores relationships among space, ecology, decoloniality, and development in contemporary Latin American cultural production. Her book, Mapping the Amazon: Literary Geography after the Rubber Boom (Liverpool University Press, 2021), examines how canonical twentieth-century novels in constellation with a variety of other media forms produce Amazonian space by shaping how people across the globe understand and use the region. She was the co-founder and first co-chair of the Amazonia section of the Latin American Studies Association and is currently co-PI on a Modern Endangered Archives Program grant to digitize the Biblioteca Amazónica in Iquitos, Peru. Smith's work has appeared in The Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies; The Journal of West Indian Literatures; Revista de Estudios Hispánicos; Revista Hispánica Moderna; ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America; A contracorriente; Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures; and Ciberletras.