This article elaborates a feminist digital activist perspective on the Colombian national strike of 2021 through the work of two women-led collectives (colectivas) in which I participated from afar, as part of the Colombian diaspora. Radio Lila is a collective of women living in Cali’s oriente, and Cacerola Collective is formed by Colombians in the diaspora, mostly people working in the creative industries. Through the study of these colectivas’s praxis, this article argues that women-led collectives use digital tools and the internet not only to set up political actions but also to create online places for care and mourning. This argument makes conspicuous how there is a gap in the research on digital activism, concerning the emotional tools activists seek to transit political uprisals and their aftermaths. In other words, we see here how feminist research on social media can also focus on retreating, going offline, as a way of personal and communal care.
Radios y Cacerolas: Feminist Approaches to Online Activism during the 2021 Colombian National Strike
Luisa González is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Research and Documentation on Latin America, CEDLA – University of Amsterdam (Netherlands), with a master’s in film studies from the same university and a bachelor’s in social communication from Universidad del Valle (Colombia). My current research focuses on digital cultures, particularly popular-class filmmakers, activists, and sex workers. I am also a filmmaker and film curator (https://luisagonzalez.hotglue.me/) and cofounder of the online film magazine Revistavisaje.co.
Luisa González; Radios y Cacerolas: Feminist Approaches to Online Activism during the 2021 Colombian National Strike. Feminist Media Histories 1 October 2024; 10 (4): 84–108. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fmh.2024.10.4.84
Download citation file: