*Andres Rodriguez Mera

Cyberspace is characterized by relating people, protest repertoires and digital identities through social networks that are developed outside of States and their respective national governments. It operates based on information networks —local, regional and global— that produce and transmit both content and narratives. Its platforms, applications and formats favor the description of local events for global audiences and vice versa.

Each protester has a story, video or photo to share. With the expansion of the use of new digital tools and channels, legitimacies are mobilized that displace the elites from their pedestal as sole creators of social and political reality —technological democratization—. For example, the attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York became a milestone for the journalistic turn of the web on a global scale, Dan Gillmor promoted the concept of citizen journalism. That was the initial moment of free platforms for the dissemination of content, blogs emerged as inventions that articulate a virtual social fabric, the blogosphere, through principles such as the free dissemination of content and cooperation among its members.

However, the predominance of commercial social networks also entails censorship and blocking of activist networks in authoritarian regimes, criminalization and control in democratic regimes, approaches noted in the book “El desengaño de Internet” (2012) and by the protest movements themselves. However, digital logic and dynamics still enable horizontal and fairly impartial interactions. The constant challenge of cyberactivism is the transmission of rights to the privacy of digital communications.

It is worth remembering that during the administration of the former mayor of the Metropolitan District of Quito, Augusto Barrera Guarderas (2009-2014), adjustments were made to the infrastructure of the public bicycle rental service. The Ministry of Mobility managed a new administrative department: the Non-Motorized Transport Coordination Directorate. Over the years, hundreds of cyclists were seen, day after day and on the avenues of the Ecuadorian capital. During this management period, said rental system had 658 bicycles, distributed in 25 stations. The public bicycle project in our city was called “BiciQ”, an alternative mobility service system that has been operating in the capital since August 2012 and that as of April 24, 2017 is managed by the Metropolitan Transit Agency (AMT). .

From 1997 to the present date, twenty-five years have elapsed during which protests and demonstrations still persist, structuring the positioning and interests of urban cyclist groups. Until 2002, the concentrations of bicycle activists lacked economic, logistical and public support from the Metropolitan District of Quito. The organizations/foundations with the longest institutional track record around bicycle mobility in Quito are Biciacción and Ciclópolis. At the beginning of the 2000s, a group of activists belonging to Acción Ecológica, a radical environmental organization with organizational networks at the national and international level, prioritized their fight for bicycle mobility over initiatives in defense of nature and the peoples that This group promotes This is how Biciaction came about.

Currently, BiciQ has not operated since the start of the pandemic in March 2020. The Municipality suspended this service as part of the biosecurity measures corresponding to confinement. The municipal authorities lack a public statement regarding the fate of this project. For its part, the State Comptroller General’s Office found irregularities in the purchase of 300 electric bicycles that the Mobility Secretariat of the Municipality of Quito acquired in 2015 from the AllBikes company for an amount of USD 844,207. In that context, the Carishina en Bici cyclists’ collective published a statement through their digital accounts, in which they stated the persistence of problems around BiciQ such as the lack of maintenance of the bicycle fleet, the non-existence of enough cycle paths, like the circulation of cars in the exclusive lane for bicycles.

At the end of March 2022, Jaime was riding his bicycle when he was run over by a unit of the Ecovía public transport system. This event occurred in the exclusive lane of the Ecovía, between the Orellana and La Paz stops —direction south-north of Quito—. A month later, on May 9, as a nonviolent action strategy, another group of cyclists, Cleta Endiablada, decided to summon the #AdiósJaime cycle march from their digital accounts on Facebook and Instagram. A more conscious and respectful mobility towards cyclists and pedestrians was demanded to commemorate the death of Jaime Veintimilla. The public mobilization took place on May 12, 2022 and its participants pedaled from the Río Coca station —north of Quito— to the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar. At the closing of said action, a posthumous tribute to Jaime was made and a white bicycle was placed at the site of the traffic accident. The cyclist groups demanded #NoMasFamiliasAtropelladas, #RespetarLaLeyEsVida and #ReglamentoPorLaVidaYa.

Similarly, Carishina en Bici questioned on its Twitter account the Ciclovias Plan of the Municipality of Quito as part of its repertoire of actions for the commemoration of #WorldBicycleDay (April 19, 2022). Its members consider that it is urgent to establish road priority for pedestrians and cyclists over public and private motorized vehicles. With the background described, the Coalition for safe mobility in Ecuador was formed. In correspondence with the data that this organization disseminates, between 2019 and 2021, 315 pedestrians and cyclists were run over. This year, cyclists —some are professional athletes— such as Edgar Gualotuña, Andrés Criollo, Rodrigo Muñoz and Miriam Núñez were run over and are still convalescing from their injuries. For the networks of bicycle activists, they are victims of a city that delegitimizes the right to an alternative sustainable mobility.

All forms of communication play strategic roles in collective mobilizations. The symbols group and unite a social movement in front of observers and antagonists, in addition, they fix interests and concepts that make up the field of dispute in which actors, frameworks of action and moral judgments contend. Currently, it is not the flags that group the discontents, but the labels on Twitter. In the case and context of digital interactions around the cyberactivism of bicycle mobility, the anonymous and initial demands become collective, public and interorganizational.

Cyberactivism around cyclist groups in Ecuador is expressed as citizen outrage that uploads digital content to cyberspace and motivates debates and initiatives to later return to the streets and generate interaction between urban space and virtual space. It also fights for changes in power relations by demanding institutional, administrative and public transformations in relation to the safety, respect and practices of those who mobilize on bicycles. These people discover that their demands go beyond the individual sphere, they acquire a sense of collective strength and reduce their fear to request legal, urban and even cultural reforms.

However, ensuring the permanent existence of a cycling movement in the country becomes a partial analysis of this social reality. There are actions with convening power that at certain moments and contexts have political opportunities to reduce the disagreements that the networks of urban cycling activists have denounced in Ecuador for nearly thirty years. Until the end of this article and with respect to the nonviolent actions described, no authority or public institution has yet made any statement. Rather, new social organizations express their digital support for the #TodxsSomosJaime action: TANDEM Foundation, B Motion 8 Foundation, Guayaquil Critical Mass, Quito Urban Cycling and Free Activity.

This text is a contextual and empirical update of the article: “Cyberactivism, collective action and bicycle mobility, a virtual ethnography in Quito”. It was published in July 2019. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.17561/rae.v19.05

*Andres Rodriguez Mera

Researcher accredited by the Senescyt. He is a doctoral candidate in political science from Flacso Ecuador. His lines of research focus on regulatory regimes, public problems and collective action. He has written indexed publications such as The society of deliberation: strategies and limitations for pro-cannabis organizations in Ecuador.

Translated by Damian Vasquez