A Brief History of the Latin American HCI Community
It has been over 20 years since Human-Computer Interaction became a subject of interest in various countries across the Latin American region. In some cases it started out with even more strength (such as Brazil and Mexico), creating conditions for the first local communities to assemble.
In spite of the great work and effort undertaken by these local communities, its members began to note that the communities at the country level were not large enough as to have an impact on policy or decision-making within academic departments or funding agencies, and that several countries still did not have a solid community as to hold workshops or conferences which would allow members to share experiences, proposals, and progress in HCI projects.
In 2001, a small group of Latin American researchers from Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, and the USA met and identified cultural and research affinities during the Development Consortium held at CHI 2001 in Seattle.
This was a landmark event for the Latin American community, where members of this group began to seek improvement in participation, collaboration, and communication in Latin America, looking also to influence the future of HCI in said community. In fact, one of the most important outcomes of this event was the creation of the Latin American Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (CLIHC, after its initials in Spanish “Congreso Latinoamericano de Interacción Humano-Computadora”, and Portuguese “Congresso Latino-americano de Interação Humano-Computador”). CLIHC has become a key forum for all those interested in HCI in Latin American countries.
CLIHC is a biennial conference series that started in 2003 (with Clarisse de Souza and Alfredo Sánchez as general chairs), and it has been held in Brazil, Mexico, Costa Rica, Argentina, Guatemala, and Panama (Fig. 1). Thanks to this conference, researchers, practitioners, and students from countries in the region can meet to learn about and share approaches to address common issues in HCI. Moreover, this conference is an important gathering place to support and promote HCI in countries where this knowledge domain still has timid initiatives.
Even though the Latin American community had been working hard, it was not until 2012 when the integration with SIGCHI was recognized through representatives at the SIGCHI Latin American HCI Workshop organized in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil. Three community members who would serve as officers were elected were: Alfredo Sánchez, Elizabeth Furtado, and Natalia Vivas. After the formal creation of the SIGCHI community, there was a greater incentive to strengthen collaboration in order to reach other Latin regions. In 2013, CLIHC began to take place in countries other than Brazil and Mexico, to offer smaller communities the opportunity to reinforce their integration to the Latin community.
Not all the initiatives in the Latin American community are directly related to CLIHC. In 2018, Susan Dray led the SIGCHI Across Borders Initiative (SABI), a project that consisted of several regional meetings conducted by SIGCHI EC members to discuss the future of HCI in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The meeting for Latin America was held in Guatemala, where regional researchers met along with Susan and Aaron Quigley to reflect on the needs of this community and to offer guidance on the support that SIGCHI can provide. Some of the issues discussed were related to the importance of journal publications as opposed to conference publications; the cost of events’ registration, such as CHI and other relevant HCI conferences; the impact of research at the regional and local level; the challenges posed by language diversity; the lack of a regional academic curriculum that takes into account particular socio-cultural traits, among others.
After this meeting took place, different members of the Latin American community began collaborating in a variety of activities. Workshops and summer schools related to CSCW (at CSCW 2018, CLIHC 2019, and a summer school in Brazil); postdoctoral studies; group collaborations, for research and administrative matters; furthermore, some of the papers presented at the CLIHC conference held in Panama were selected for extended version submission in a prestigious journal.
Since the end of 2018, more communication channels have been opened. One of the most active conversations at the moment is taking place on Slack, with participants working in Latin America as well as Latin Americans working in foreign countries. This channel is open to any person interested in Latin America or who wants to collaborate with any member of the community. It is important to point out that it was in this outlet where several members of the community worked together to assemble a SIG meeting held at CHI 2020; and even though CHI 2020 was canceled, that did not stop the community from organizing the online event. In fact, four sessions were held: Technology adoption and participatory design in LATAM; International collaboration and grant writing and HCI knowledge production outside LATAM; Migration and Identity + Shades of feminism and reproductive rights in LATAM; and, HCI and education. If anyone wants to join us on Slack, here is the link (or email us here and we will add you).
We should also mention that our community is so large and diverse that there are great initiatives that have made a positive impact on community members, such as The Collaborative Network to Support HCI Teaching and Learning Processes in Ibero America (HCI-Collab), The University Corporation for Internet Development (CUDI, in Spanish), among others; as well as the local chapters in Latin America (Brazil, Cafeteros, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Mexico).
This year appeared to be particularly good for the Latino community as a variety of important conferences would take place in its countries, such as Ubicomp, PDC, ACM Compass, ICTD, Jornadas Iberoamericanas, as well as national HCI conferences such as the Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems, and the Mexican Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. Naturally, some adjustments had to be made due to the pandemic, so some were held online, while others were postponed to 2021.
Latin America is so diverse, with many challenges and opportunities, that we need different voices to continue developing a regional plan that can be suitable for all the communities inside the region, as well as the members currently located beyond. This community has been strengthened thanks to the drive and will of each one of its members, and also due to the support that we have received along this long path by initiatives such as HCI Across Borders, SABI, and the SIGCHI Development Fund. We are very hopeful that the interest in this community will result in more effective efforts and support to make it even more visible to the international community.
