Digital lancers: Sarayaku in the global village

Abstract

The technological era has made possible new unexpected articulations. Lanceros digitales is one of these supposed oxymorons. An apparent contradiction that allows us to reread the proposals of Marshall McLuhan and Media Ecology, to verify new discoveries with a renewed look. This article focuses on the extensions of new media in a complex environment, an indigenous context of technological appropriation. Based on the Sarayaku case, a paradigmatic example of indigenous resistance, climate activism and cyberactivism, the changes that emerge in the new digital environment will be pointed out. For this, the theory of appropriation will be applied, showing Media Ecology’s thesis in a scenario of indigenous modernity and the transformations that take place in the changes of ecosystem will be observed. The consequences of the Moebius effect, of Sarayaku's round trip, from the communitarian to the global, from the village to the global village, will be established. Finally, the keys to its political achievements, synthesized in the control of the art of the spear, now digital, wielded with community commitment and directed by and for the reconstruction of the myth, will be exposed.