*IV Patria Colloquium is dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the multiplatform teleSUR
*IV Patria Colloquium to deepen on how dynamics of power are transformed in an interconnected world
*IV Patria Colloquium to deepen on how dynamics of power are transformed in an interconnected world
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00:00Welcome back to From the South, and join us as we go back to the Patria Colloquium, as
00:15we contact our correspondent in Havana, Belén de los Santos-Highbill.
00:18What can you share with us at this hour about the updates on this event?
00:23Sandra, exactly as you were saying, we continue here in the fourth edition of the Patria Colloquium
00:29in Havana, Cuba, precisely in the University of Havana, and the colloquium is underway.
00:36The conferences have already started.
00:38Just right now, as we were saying, this is also the 20th anniversary of Telesur, so there's
00:45a lot of conferences, a lot of discussions that have to do with this legacy.
00:49We're just located right now specifically in the part of the exhibition that honors
00:54those 20 years of work.
00:57Director of Telesur, Patricia Villegas, also just gave a conference on the challenges of
01:02this past 20 years.
01:04There's been a lot of debate about what this really means, and also this colloquium as
01:09an opportunity to think about the media platforms and the challenges, but also the possibilities
01:17of building new technologies, technologies from the global south that really allow for
01:22these discussions that really allow for a counter-hegemonic media production.
01:28At this moment, because we know that we have guests from over 47 countries, and at this
01:33moment we are joined by Rob Lucas.
01:35He is from England.
01:37He's the publishing director of the New Left Review.
01:41Thank you so much, Rob, for joining us.
01:43I would like to ask you, in this event, one of the main discussions has to do with the
01:49possibility of building new technologies, sovereign technologies.
01:53How does that come into play in this global scene?
01:57Well, I think fundamentally at the moment we're faced with a technological environment
02:04on a global level which is extremely centralized, and that's been the case increasingly over
02:09the last quarter of a century or so, particularly with the rise of the web and then web 2.0
02:16and the social media platforms and so on massively centralized the data and all of the computing
02:23power in general, and that kind of undermined previous visions of an egalitarian social
02:30kind of web or internet, and it's become increasingly hard to see how we can kind of push back on
02:39that terrain.
02:40These platforms in many ways, they're hostile terrain for us.
02:45So, for me, that's the fundamental question that needs to be thought through.
02:50Historically, the kind of egalitarian answers on the technological level in terms of software
02:56and so on was free software, software that users could edit themselves, change, download
03:04freely, share freely, use as they wanted, but when things are being run on someone else's
03:11server somewhere, that freedom is in question.
03:15It's not clear what it means, so I think what we need to be thinking about is how we can
03:19establish infrastructure, an alternative infrastructure, which makes those things meaningful again,
03:26and that's where possibly places where you do have left parties, movements, unions, etc.,
03:33of some scale, they can be doing things which reinforce the development of popular sovereignty
03:40or national sovereignty.
03:41It works at different levels, at the level of technology, as a basis for other kinds
03:47of media.
03:48Okay, so we were saying that in this colloquium we have representatives, we have over 400
03:54guests and representatives from 47 countries, and a lot of what is happening here has to
03:59do with that networking, from that sharing of experiences also, of different forms of
04:06media outlets, different forms of ways of covering, well, very significant political
04:13scenes and very different political scenes as well.
04:16How does that networking and the sharing of experience contribute, or could it contribute
04:22to this possibility of hopefully in the coming years being able to build those sovereign
04:29technologies?
04:30Is it in that exchange that we find that possibility?
04:33Because many of the regional blocs, for example, have been talking about the importance of
04:39developing its own sovereign networks.
04:42How do you see that?
04:44Well, I mean, in terms of the question of countries and blocs developing sovereign technologies,
04:51of course, within the frame of Silicon Valley thinking and so on, one could imagine that
04:58there would be like a local version of Silicon Valley in every country, right?
05:01But probably that's never going to be a realistic possibility.
05:06It's not really going to work.
05:07But what you do have with things like free software is something that's potentially universal,
05:12is something that could be created by people in one place, shared with people everywhere.
05:17And so it can improve the sovereignty of people in one country and those in another country.
05:25It's not necessarily a kind of this country against that country or this bloc against
05:31that bloc kind of problem.
05:32And that's where, in some ways, there's something with a kind of what we might call an elective
05:39affinity with the traditional sort of universalism, egalitarianism of the left.
05:46And in my presentation here, I'm going to frame it in terms of a local tradition going
05:52back to Jose Marti, where Cuban nationalism has always had this strange character of being
05:58also an internationalism or a universalism or a humanism.
06:02And in a way, you could think about that in the same terms, promoting a kind of software
06:09and a kind of platform that can be shared globally by people in the global south and
06:14people elsewhere as well can benefit people here and in all of those other places.
06:20Not just about here.
06:21Excellent.
06:22So before we end this interview, I would like to ask you about one of the other topics that
06:29is up for discussion.
06:30Well, we really think the Patria Colloquium as a gathering, of course, of this leftist
06:36media outlet and really leftist movements that come together to think their own thought
06:41process and also a strategic plan and hopefully a collective plan for the years to come.
06:48So that means to say that our outlets need also be a place of the development and the
06:54creative development of thought that is also linked to all of those experiences that are
06:59happening here in the global south.
07:01How do you see that role, that interconnection between on the ground practices and the media
07:08outlets and the academic also outlets?
07:12How is that happening and how do we need to think it for the years to come?
07:17We often find that the best new radical intellectuals are produced in moments of social struggle.
07:25They tend to come in generational waves.
07:27When there is a significant upheaval in a certain country, a wave of demonstrations
07:33or so on, it produces, it gives people a whole new experience where they see things clearly
07:39for the first time and they start asking questions and trying to theorize and five years later
07:44they are significant intellectuals often.
07:48I think that's what we need to look at is where, what the movements, in a way the movements
07:53are the source and the point is to look into those movements, who is saying the interesting
07:59things, who is thinking beyond the immediate problem and trying to generalize and find
08:03a way forward and then to try to create a kind of global left culture out of that, have
08:09those people talking to each other, sharing experiences and so on.
08:13Broadly that sort of thing I think is the role that left media can do to try to crystallize
08:21that kind of thinking and that culture.
08:23Thank you so much Rob for joining us here in Tell Us Your English, it's been a pleasure
08:28talking to you and also continue to think about these things that we'll continue to
08:32dedicate this year on those ideas.
08:35Thank you so much.
08:36Thanks.
08:37So Alejandra, as we were saying, this is what is being discussed here and a lot of
08:43ideas.
08:44Rob was just saying that a lot of this, well intellectuals are actually formed in this
08:50dialogue, in this back and forth analyzing and thinking about our own, our very own processes
08:56here in the Global South and we definitely hope that that is what is happening here today
09:02in Havana, Cuba.
09:03We will continue to bring you all the latest information, hopefully speaking to all the
09:08participants or many of the participants to really gather a little bit at least of
09:13what is happening here at Havana University.
09:15I go back to you Elena.
09:19Thank you El and also Rob Lucas for all the information, the hand information and we will
09:24keep in contact throughout the day and the upcoming days to know all the details of this
09:29event.