Women creators of Latin American electronic literature: a geographical overview

Neste artigo, faço uma apresentação das mulheres criadoras de literatura eletrônica latino-americana, a partir de sua localização geográfica e baseando-me em obras incluídas em diferentes bancos de dados e coleções internacionais, bem como uma série de entrevistas com a maioria dos artistas foi realizada como parte da pesquisa. Isso possibilitou a criação de um histograma que apresenta informações a respeito de 43 mulheres criadoras e identifica as relações entre o país de nascimento, o ano de criação do primeiro trabalho publicado e as ferramentas tecnológicas utilizadas. A partir dessa abordagem, pôde-se identificar as primeiras mulheres latinoamericanas tradutoras de literatura eletrônica do inglês para o português e os primeiros trabalhos escritos em outros idiomas (inglês e francês), além do espanhol e do português. Trata-se, assim, de um trabalho que se desenha como uma primeira tentativa de documentar a contribuição das mulheres latino-americanas para a literatura eletrônica.


Introduction
Latin American and Latino representation in the Electronic Literature Organization's collections of such works -highly influential points of reference in the field internationally -has improved considerably over the three volumes curated thus far: from 3 works in the first collection (ELC1, 2006) to 7 in the second (ELC2, 2011), to 13 in the third (ELC3, 2016). † Furthermore, contrary to what might be "typical" expectations about the presence of women creators in this field, female writers/artists/programmers made up 67% of the "authorship" of Latin American and Latino works in the first collection, and 43% of such works in the third. ‡ What is worth taking from these sample statistics is that women creators of electronic literature have been acknowledged as producing highly innovative works by others in the field, and, although the collections do not present materials in chronological order of creation, closer examination of the works themselves indicates that Latin American and Latina women creators of electronic literature have been making their presence felt strongly since the very early days § .
While some attention has recently been paid to women creators of electronic literature (MENCÍA, 2017;PITMAN, 2019), ** there is still no significant research available that targets the contributions of Latin American women creators specifically. This overview is intended, therefore, to be a first step in this direction, and an invitation to others to fill this gap. Though archival work has recently begun in certain countries (Chile and † The ELC1 (2006)  In compiling this list, I have taken into account the nationality/ethnicity of authors as well as the thematic focus or fictional location of works -it is thus as generous as possible in its assessment of "Latin American-ness".
‡ It is only the second collection that is disappointing in this regard: the only works that might be said to have any female Latin American "authorship" are those which include digital artist and programmer Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo. § An overview of Latina women creators of electronic literature in the USA is not included in this article but will be addressed in a future work. ** Edited by María Mencía, #WomenTechLit (2017) explores the creative work of women in the international field of electronic literature over the past several decades, bringing together the work of 28 scholars and creators. Written by Thea Pitman, "Latin American Electronic Literature created by women"  Another key figure with a long career in the field is Belén Gache (Argentina, 1960).
Gache is a prolific creator who started producing works of "expanded and experimental literature" -interactive works, video poems and multimedia narratives -for circulation and consumption online from the mid-1990s via the Experimentation with intertextuality and media can be seen in other early Latin American digital writers such as Mariela Yeregui (Argentina, 1966). Her interactive piece Ephitelia (1999) † † † (HTML, JavaScript, web-based) (Fig. 2a) consists of a collage map of the human body (brain, heart, mouth, eyes, genitals and feet) that the reader can explore through scanned photographs, sketches, drawings, handwritten notes and audios. Quotations making poetic allusions to specific body parts −by Julio Cortázar, James Joyce, Alejandra Pizarnik, Jacques Derrida, Sylvia Plath and James Carse− appear randomly on the screen as pop-up window alerts. Visual dynamism and onscreen poetics are produced by the multiplication of media products and the emergence of multiple windows that at times make the interactor lose control over the interface. From a different perspective, this is an example of a visually "busy" and "typographically" dense aesthetic referred by María Enberg (2010) as an "aesthetic of visual noise". The experimentation between intertextuality, crowded screens, programming languages like HTML and JavaScript, and the use of English as a foreign language to explore "how body distances were culturally different from cultural distances," ‡ ‡ ‡ as well as to portray *** In terms of her contribution to e-lit per se, we also find the hypermedia works Wordtoys (2006) and Góngora Wordtoys (Soledades) (2011). † † † The work was created at the hypermedia lab in UCLA (USA) during a visiting scholar stay. ‡ ‡ ‡ "At the time I was living in Los Angeles and I was interested in how body distances were culturally different from my cultural distances. So, I thought about making this virtual body that enabled the 'touch' (of the mouse) in which many could touch a body and deconstruct it. Ephitelia is a body in friction".". Interview with the artist by email (March 6 th , 2020) these thoughts as "a body in friction" gives Ephitelia the poetic creativity emerging from migration experiences in Latin American electronic literature creations.  technologies (hypertext as a mechanism; the possibility of random association; the increased potential for user-reader participation; and the simulation of systems)".
Moreover, Zerbarini's creative leitmotif: "the work stops being an object and is transformed in behaviour" (Zerbarini, Personal Website) can be experienced in other early pieces such as Shadows (2000)

Chile's early multimedia literary and art projects
On the Chilean literary scene, a poet, artist, filmmaker and activist who began creating art installations since the 60's is Cecilia Vicuña (Chile, 1948). She refers to the works that she created in this period as "Arte Precario" [Precarious Art], "my early works were not documented, they existed only for the memories of a few citizens" (Vicuña, Personal Website). The work "quipu that remembers nothing" (1966) (an empty cord) was her first piece of "precarious art", along with her multiple projects called basuritas into a print novel. According to Neustadt, Lumpérica can be read as a novel of resistance, a fragmentary narrative that suggests "a transtextual and multimedia continuum that spirals between fictional, corporeal, and visual performances" (1999, p. 24). Both Eltit and Vicuña's approach to mixing and remixing media in the early 1980's reaffirms that literary and artistic experimentation in Latin America was present since the very early days.
Eugenia Prado (Chile, 1962) is perhaps Chile's greatest digital literature female creator.
In a recent interview, she acknowledged her first printed novel, "El cofre" [The chest]  (Fig. 3b), an interactive narrative and video installation that presents memory as reconstruction and deconstruction. The idea behind the project is to create an experience that constitutes a visual archive of intimate and recent memories shaped by recurrent images appearing in Wolf's home videos. This allows the interactor to mix and link the characters' memories through images in order to create multiple narratives. According to Wolf, memoryFrames was a way to explore these ideas: "memory as a narrative construction and an action that is constantly updated, the notion that images become our memory; the archive as a producer of new information; and the thought or question † † † † Interview with the artist by email, (April 21 st , 2020). about whether our memories (or its images) are interchangeable". † † † † † Interactive installations are a genre that will later developed specially in the Brazilian scene.
One other creator who deserves a mention in a loosely Chilean context is María Mencía (Venezuela, 1960).  . ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ Among Mencía's earliest works in the UK, we find installations, video-poems and performances such as 7 minutes of passion (1992) and Tell me that you love me (1993). The latter is a fax machine connected to a remote-controlled car that goes over the words "I love you" to produce aleatory phrases and drawings on a different surface; this experimental installation is considered her first electronic literature creation.
§ § § § § This work is part of larger AHRC project "Memory, Victims, and Representation of the Colombian Conflict" led by Professor Claire Taylor at the University of Liverpool, UK.

Brazil's hypertextual essays, interactive narratives and digital art exhibitions
Brazil has also a long tradition in the fields of electronic literature and art ****** . In 1999 Giselle Beiguelman (Brazil, 1962)  In the field of generative systems of art, we find Vera Sylvia Biguetti (Brazil, 1956), a sculptor, painter and multimedia essayist. Her earliest play/paint works using art generator software include Stereoscopy Space (2003) (Fig. 3a) and Gr@fite (2004) (Director/Shockwave, web-based and CD-ROM). These pieces are a splash of generative art and colour that "show reactive, generative and interactive software applications as an amusement" where depending on the object and the interaction "the spectator is changed into a graffiti creator or a DJ" (Biguetti, Personal Website Another interdisciplinary artist and researcher who has been leading art and technology projects since 1989 is Lúcia Leão (Brazil, 1963 ideas and criticism with other contemporary artists at a regional and international level. For instance, "POIESIS. BETWEEN_PIXEL_AND_PROGRAM" was presented at the Oi Futuro Art Centre in Rio de Janeiro from October 23 rd to Dec 3 rd 2007. ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ Among the featured artists there were two Brazilian women, Adriana Calcanhotto (Brazil, 1965) and Lenora de Barros (Brazil, 1953 depicting the artist's tongue interacting with the mechanism of a typewriter (Fig. 3b).  limited, it is a first step and an invitation towards studying the emergence of digital practices in these countries. (Unix, VR) (Fig. 5b) is a virtual reality environment developed in Unix by using a

Mexico's first virtual reality environments and current creative laboratories
Silicon Graphics computer. The idea was to create "avatars" that were armed with body parts bearing gender stereotypes of beauty and colour that the public could mix to create a virtual body (avatar). The work was inspired by the first internet chat systems (IRC) and the first graphic chats (The Palace In recent years, Laura Balboa (Mexico, 1979), Karen Villeda (Mexico 1985) and Minerva Reynosa (Mexico, 1979) have also developed works of electronic literature.
Balboa's playful collection of "code poetry", you CODE me (2009)

Are Blogs e-lit? Blogging in Cuba, Chile and Costa Rica
As we have seen, many works of electronic literature by Latin American women have been avowedly collaborative projects. In much recent work this undoubtedly has to do with the increasing technical complexity of the projects and the limitations of any one individual's skillset, but also, in the case of many of the works reviewed here, group work, collaboration with specific existing communities, and/or the creation of new affective communities around a work, is very much part of the point. The desire to create communities (writing networks) is also a defining feature of many blogs written by women. While blogging is not typically included in definitions of e-literature, it is here that Latin American women writers can be seen to have their biggest impact in terms of garnering, and occasionally mobilising, an audience. The tendency is to accept "blog-novels" such as Hembros: asedios de lo post humano (2006-) (Blogger, webbased) by Eugenia Prado Bassi (Chile, 1962), but not non-fiction blogs. The reticence to accept non-fiction blogs as e-literature may be because they are seen as being too easily "printed out" so not "electronic" enough (although this is disputable these days), or because they are not "literary" enough (though blogging fits very well with that sui generis Latin American literary genre, the chronicle).
Blogging has really flourished in Cuba, despite restrictions on internet access. At the peak of its success in 2008-09, and after being blocked by Cuban government censors, the blog Generación Y (2007-) (Bitban, web-based), ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ written by Yoani Sánchez (Cuba, 1975), was receiving an average of 10 million visits and 30,000 comments a month), and was being crowd-translated into multiple other languages (HENKEN, 2010). While some of Sánchez's work has a feminist focus, her main aim is to vent her frustration with the state of contemporary politics in Cuba, and propose a "revolution"  Álvarez Ramírez (Cuba, 1973), the author takes a less Manichean approach to politics in Cuba and focuses instead on the intersectionality of the Black, female, queer experience. As stated by Sierra Rivera (2018), Negra cubana is most "revolutionary" for its attempt to network "a cyberfeminist agenda to connect Cuban black women's ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ The blog was originally hosted on Desde Cuba, moving to 14ymedio in 2014.
voices with other voices around the world" and "create safe online networks where women can openly discuss any issue without being threatened". In

The emergence of the Colombian and Southern Cone e-lit scene
Latin and fortune-telling crystal glasses. Colour and fiction play an important role in the work as the colour of the character's eyes dictates the story's genre: blue is for science fiction, pink for romance and red for horror. Pose-Rivero's digital works are an example of the rise of Southern Cone women artists in the Latin American e-lit scene. ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ A 'mandala' is a symbolic representation of the universe. It is used in sacred rituals and as an aid for meditation in Buddhism and Hinduism. § § § § § § § § "The novel had several steps before being published and purchased online […] a first version was made in Flash that was quite obsolete, and it could not be published, but it served to show to the editors". Interview with the artist by email (March 10 th , 2020). ********* "Caminos Narrativos" [Narrative Paths] comprises 22 works out of which 3 are considered digital stories, and out of those 3 only 1 is written by women (Loren Pose).  Aranda (Chile, 1966), Amor Muñoz (Mexico, 1979) (2015), an interactive piece that generates and engraves poems about light, rainbows, stars and planets on 3D metallic-like meteorites.
In the artist's words, the project "seeks to create a connection between theory and poetics, to see science as a search for beauty and art as the creation of organized processes and systems" (Muñoz, Personal Website

The histogram
Based on the information gathered together here, taken from the databases mentioned earlier, as well as personal interviews with the artists/writers/programmers themselves, I have created a histogram of 43 digital works created by Latin American women to illustrate the evolution of the field in the region (Fig. 8) (2007); and one in Costa Rica with Dorelia Barahona's et al. Milagros Sueltos (2007).

Conclusions
Electronic literature by Latin American women creators is, as I hope is evident from this overview, an exciting, innovative, diverse and dynamic field of cultural production.