Sowing hope through our stories
By Aída Naxhielly Espíndola of La Sandía Digital
“Similar to a news desert, an information desert refers to a community with limited access to useful information resources on a wider scale (for example, from government agencies or other institutions). We use this term to describe the lack of access to quality information from a variety of sources and the general lack of information infrastructure in certain communities […] While news deserts have an aridness of information, there are still seeds of local journalism to water and propagate: these regions are not isolated but rather interconnected with, and integral to, information ecosystems.”
The Engine Room: Bárbara Paes, Olivia Johnson, and Cristina Veléz Vieira. “Working towards Healthier Information Ecosystems: Collective Visions from Civil Society in Latin America and the Caribbean.” (2024).
At La Sandía Digital, we believe in the transformative power of narratives. We understand them as thought structures that shape a vision of the world. We use and feed them all the time when we tell stories, when we communicate. They are made up of the stories, concepts, themes and characters that shape an argument, an explanation of life.
Narratives do not remain in the realm of the “subjective”, that is, they are not only isolated words or stories…they are reflected in actions, decision-making, in ways of being and being in/with the world. They have a direct impact on our lives and territories because there are narratives that occupy more space than others, silencing other horizons in their wake. Thus feeding notions about what progress, development, desirable life or our own future is.
At La Sandía Digital, we built a work methodology that involves different aspects in order to strengthen other stories from a place of dignity, from other meanings outside of the hegemonic or the hopeless,. Among them, we have narrative conversations for weaving stories that are then returned to the people. We do this based on the Narrative-Practice method, which invites us to witness, question, document and connect.
In the spaces we occupy, we strive to create opportunities to activate something in that sense. It feels relevant to us to contribute to individuals, collectives, and communities in telling their own stories. At the gathering held a few weeks ago in Santiago de Chile, convened by The Engine Room, there was a small space for this, which I had the opportunity to co-construct and co-facilitate with Nathaly Espitia. From an exercise of embroidery, live radio, some questions and dialogue, a reflection on our actions, hopes and dreams that summon us around information ecosystems was woven.
Because, as it is well reiterated among narrative practitioners: “the way we tell stories has effects on the way we inhabit them”. And this also applies to those of us who work in activism, advocacy, accompaniment, journalism, capacity-building, production and so many other things. We also need spaces to tell each other things, to listen to each other and to remind ourselves of what we have achieved and what we have contributed to the dream we are pursuing. We need spaces to declare ourselves as what we seek to build for others.
Because resonating among peers is a powerful act. This became clear to me again in the listening session, because sharing words enables exchanges and encounters in the stories of others, in which we find ourselves or see ourselves reflected. And this is also manifested when we weave and return what is named by all, from a place of affection and dignity.
I am certain that the narrative dispute is fundamental to restoring information ecosystems. After all, we seek not only to name what we hope to transform, but also to refute the discourses of violence, hatred, contempt and dispossession that are normalized through repetition, through narratives that seem immutable because “the world is like that and that’s it”. We question, then, the vision of a life that we have been led to believe is possible in only one way.
And so, in the midst of the so-called deserts, we find, through the spinning of other words and collective stories, the possibility of sowing those seeds that will sprout and bear fruit.