Latin American Feminists, LGBT Activists Take Their Fight to the Internet Sarah Lynch and Leigh Cuen - Vocativ
go to original August 18, 2015

Feminist hackers meeting in Mexico (Liliana Zaragoza Cano)

Latin America is home to some of the most active feminist and LGBT hacktivists in the world. This summer, they have been uniting online - and off - in efforts to boost regional solidarity, protect themselves against gender-based abuse including cyber bullying and fight violence such as femicide - the killing of women.

According to the Mexico-based National Citizens’ Observatory on Femicide, a coalition of 43 human rights and women’s organizations, killings targeting women are common in Mexico, where hacktivists recently met at a conference. Abuse against LGBT people in Mexico is also rife, some say. “In states like Guadalajara, street harassment against lesbian, queer and transgender people is common,” said Liliana Zaragoza Cano, a Spanish expat living in Mexico who helped organize Transhackfeminist, a conference for feminist and LGBT hackers held in Puebla, Mexico late last month. "Feminist hactivists are in auto-defense mode, because we want to stay alive,” she said.

In countries such as the U.S. and Canada, hackers collectives comprised of women and LGBT people are rare. Those that do exist seem to predominantly function as social groups promoting professional skills rather than operating as covert networks. Latin America’s small but active networks of queer and feminist hackers, though, appear to be increasingly political and interconnected as they work on secretive hacktivist projects.

Read the rest at Vocativ

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!