Editor’s Letter: Technology
In celebration of the 30th anniversary of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard (DRCLAS), ReVista is focusing on inequality.
Category: Technology: Artificial Intelligence and Beyond
QR and Tocapus: Visual Communication of the Andes
Connecting the digital present with pre-Hispanic symbols is an opportunity to reclaim these signs and link them with new meanings. As a Peruvian artist and daughter of a Quechua-speaking family (an Indigenous language of the Andes), I began a journey of exploration that helped me understand the importance of textiles in this region of my country.
Technology and Collective Memory: Commemorating the Unidad Popular
The one thousand days of Salvador Allende’s presidency, from 1970–1973, marked a period of political innovation in Chile.
Giving a Soul to AI: When Fiction Illuminates the Ethics of the Present
To better understand the present of artificial intelligence, I decided to travel to the future. I did so through writing a novel, Robots with Soul: Trapped Between Truth and Freedom.
Distance Unknown: Visualizing Migration: A Money Tapestry
Migration is full of distances unknown — how far, costly, mentally and physically straining the journey will be for migrants, as they separate from their home, their country and the family they love.
Ancestral Technology: Inside Colombia’s Hidden Technological Landscape
Luz Marina Burgos’ fingers moved deliberately across the threads, constructing a tšombiach—a ceremonial sash commonly used to protect and strengthen the body.
Endangered Languages in the New Age of AI
Fifteen years ago, while in Mexico City, I stumbled upon the retrospective exhibition Helen Escobedo: A escala humana, a tribute to the artist at the city’s Museum of Modern Art.
New Eye on the Universe: Chile’s Vera C. Rubin Observatory and AI
The largest digital camera made to date, comprising 3,500 megapixels, is embarking on a decade-long time-lapse movie of the entire southern sky.
Against the Odds: Latin America’s Quiet Leadership in the Age of AI
Working on Artificial Intelligence (AI) policy in Latin America has been one of the most rewarding and transformative experiences of my professional life.
Half a Life Between Two Futures: Brazil, the United States and the AI Era
This year, I celebrate a milestone: half of my life in the United States. I was born and raised in Brazil, educated as an engineer in Rio de Janeiro, and started my professional career in a country still searching for its democratic footing.
Leading AI Societal Leapfrogging in Latin America: “Iron Man” Exoskeleton for Microeconomic Growth
In my days as an international cooperation consultant in South America, I led a team to study the massive public investments made in traditional infrastructure for Bolivia…
The AI-Era Digital Divide: Listening to Mexican Youth Voices
One Mexican teenager admitted in an on-line survey, “To summarize information or conduct research, honestly, it makes my work much faster, but it does worsen my research skills.” She was referring to AI as an educational tool.
Race and Culture: AI Is Not Neutral
For many Latin Americans, “Artificial Intelligence” is El Cuco—the bogeyman. The words evoke imagery of technology enabled monsters from the big screen…
Immigrant Surveillance Machine: A Replay of Eugenic Technologies for Authoritarian Conditioning
The right-wing MAGA’s immigrant surveillance and deportation machine will not end with a focus on immigrants alone. We can see that clearly by looking at the history of eugenic campaigning…
AI, Gender and Power: Rewriting Latin America’s Digital Future
During the 2023 Colombian regional elections, I received a video that appeared to show a female candidate making a controversial statement.
Lessons from the Brazilian Cerrado: Technological Achievement and Environmental Challenges
The Brazilian Cerrado— the country’s vast tropical savanna— has gained recognition in recent years as a successful model story in agronomic development and precision agriculture fueled by technology within the tropics.
Green Technological Change: Opportunities and Challenges in Latin America
Latin America is far from being a major contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, it is among the most vulnerable in the world to the effects of climate change.
Water Stewardship Is Strategy, Not Philanthropy: A Field Note from Latin America
The first time I sat across from a farmer in rural Latin America, water sat with us too—silent, almost taken for granted.
A Review of The Years of Blood: Stories of a a Reporting Life in Latin America
Her new book, The Years of Blood, offers, as its subtitle suggests, “stories from a reporting life in Latin America.” A widely decorated journalist, Guillermoprieto has written, in fact, several lives’ worth of reportage on the region. While she began chronicling Latin America in 1978, this volume collects essays published in the 21st century—most after 2010.
A Review of Brazilian Socio-Economic Dynamics: Contexts and Contemporary Realities. Contributions to Economics
Gilmar Masiero’s Brazilian Socioeconomic Dynamics arrives at a critical juncture in the intellectual conversation about Brazil. In an era in which international headlines often oscillate between portrayals of Brazil as an eternal “country of the future” or a nation mired in perpetual crisis, Masiero, a professor of business management at the Universidade de São Paulo (USP), offers a welcome and rigorously argued third path: a blueprint for activating Brazil’s latent “socioeconomic dynamics.” He does that by offering a nuanced perspective that goes beyond economic metrics—he incorporates Brazilian social and political dynamics as forces that have shaped the nation.
