By Helena Rojas
“On a moonlit night in the mountains of Chiapas, Xunka’s dream gave rise to a new creation myth: a singing loom, a breathing thread, a world woven with ancestral memory. This story evokes the transition between silence and vibration, where every sound is a symbol, an echo of the earth, a gesture of resistance. The Tzotzopaztli—a vital component of the backstrap loom—becomes an ancient voice that guides Xunka in the creation of a meta-thread: a living fiber that contains the biocultural history of her people. The voices of grandmothers, prayers, rivers, birdsong, and the rustling of leaves make up this journey that intertwines matter and spirit, technique and worldview, preservation and oblivion. But the balance is shattered when external forces seek to commodify this discovery. An ethical dilemma arises: how can we share without being stripped of our heritage? Amid community tensions, fragmented dreams, and ancestral wisdom, Xunka comes to understand that not everything must be remembered; that it is also necessary to protect silence. The narrative attempts to explore the concept of the loom’s living interface and its resonance with the conceptual creation known as the “metapluriverse.”
Figure 1: Created with artificial intelligence, Gemini, 2026. Prompt used in references.
Interwoven: Stories for a Metapluriverse Under Construction.
This writing exercise emerged from an exploration of the literary field of science fiction. Cotejido stems from a forward-looking question: How might Traditional Knowledge and Expressions participate in the construction of futures by acknowledging their own technologies, without being turned once again into objects of extraction, appropriation, and decontextualization?
The narrative and the question address tensions and situate the story’s development within a broader discussion of decolonization in the ways knowledge is produced and legitimized, but also regarding the conditions under which Traditional Knowledge and Indigenous Peoples themselves are incorporated into academia, cultural industries, contemporary technologies, and the relationships of life itself.
The argument proposes that imagining pluriversal futures requires shifting Traditional Knowledge from the position of an “available resource” toward a vision of living systems of knowledge; to frame this article, this shift is termed “Cotejido,” an exercise in speculative narrative foresight that allows us to explore how Traditional Knowledge and Cultural Expressions might participate in futures without being reduced to resources. In this exercise, the metapluriverse constitutes the main conceptual framework for thinking about the coexistence of technological infrastructures (not reduced to the hegemonic concept of technology for development) and multiple worlds and ways of life, while ethical governance constitutes the political, contextual, agential, and relational problem that such coexistence must resolve. From this framework, the ethics of silence establishes the limits of what circulates, and the collaborative echo phenomenon activates its function as relational conditions and dynamics through which different forms of knowledge and worlds can encounter one another without one subsuming the other.
This approach emerges from the very act of writing, which allowed us to move beyond viewing the backstrap loom as an isolated traditional “tool” and instead recognize its nature as a cultural technology capable of articulating body, territory, memory, and language. The Tzotzopaztli (a term designating the wooden piece used to tighten the fabric on the backstrap loom) is introduced[1] as a symbolic element that creates tension between two possibilities: the opening of knowledge toward new futures and the need for preservation; coupled with the ethics of silence regarding what can, should, or should not be shared.
This dilemma takes on a political dimension when the circulation of images, symbols, narratives, and knowledge expands through digitization processes, which, while offering new possibilities for collaboration and preservation, they also contribute to the reproduction of dynamics historically marked by cultural extraction when Traditional Knowledge and Traditional Cultural Expressions are decontextualized from the multiple territories, relationships, and systems of shared responsibility that give them meaning.
For this reason, the article does not merely propose incorporating Traditional Knowledge into thinking about the future, but rather reexamining the conditions under which such knowledge is invoked to imagine the future.
The “Cotejido” perspective allows us to explore an idea: to conceive of the future as a space for negotiation between worlds, rather than as a territory with gaps available to be filled—or encompassed—by a single narrative logic of progress. At this first level—the metapluriverse—it proposes an operational category for imagining the possibility of a space of hybridization in which technological infrastructures and diverse lifeworlds can interact without the idea of hypertechnology and digitization implying the colonization of the communal. A plurality that follows the Zapatista vision of a plural and diverse coexistence in which “many worlds” can coexist (Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), 1996).
The unifying idea behind the concept—the “metapluriverse”—is understood as the articulation between the metaverse, as technological infrastructure, and the pluriverse, as the coexistence of multiple worlds and ontologies (Escobar, 2018; Escobar, 2020). From this symbiosis, the concept allows us to envision a space of cultural coexistence—to imagine futures—where the digital does not colonize the communal, challenges hegemonic practices, and enables the discursive process from a situated, non-universalizing model. At this level, it functions as a conceptual cultural infrastructure and is not limited to describing a possible future technology; it allows us to question what conditions must exist so that different knowledge systems can interact without one dominating the other.
In addition to this concept, the narrative reaffirms textile practice as an amplifying technology in relation to the body-territory and memory, and breaks with the colonial narrative of the “traditional” tool to endow it with its role as a coding system and arithmetic device, through which non-alphabetic writing creates a visual language and a cultural archive.
One of the protagonist’s reflections concerns the ethics of silence: recognizing that not everything is preserved or made available. There are forms of knowledge or practices that must or may be silenced, transformed, or allowed to disappear. This ethics of silence serves as a boundary to openness—a radical idea in contrast to the vision of a future that conceives of plurality as permanent availability. Such plurality also requires the capacity for reserve, silence, and transformation when it so chooses.
Currently, many processes have emerged from a critique of the coloniality of knowledge, driving a more critical and reflective examination of the ways in which it has been produced, reproduced, and put into action, as well as its classification and legitimization as valid knowledge. This movement has helped bring to light the multiple historical exclusions, silencing, and forms of epistemic violence perpetrated against the knowledge of Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendants, and community-based groups (Santos, 2014). This has led systems to take a growing interest in recognizing the relevance and use of Traditional Knowledge to broaden understanding of diverse and fundamental perspectives for addressing contemporary challenges—particularly those related to sustainability, interculturalism, territorial governance, community practices, and collective futures. However, this recognition can also become a new form of extraction when the power dynamics that determine who can name, use, interpret, and benefit from this knowledge remain unchanged.
In addition, Traditional Knowledge is introduced or adapted into diverse spheres—such as academia, culture, technology, and the market—as epistemological resources available to external agendas, without considering the complexities of the territories or the contextual settings in which it is produced. Its existence is sometimes assumed to be a homogeneous heritage accessible to all members of a community, when in fact its production, transmission, or transformation are shaped by differences in gender, age, lineages, ritual responsibilities, economic conditions, territorial dispossession, migration, and processes of adopting or renouncing identities.
Furthermore, in many cases, this knowledge is mobilized as a response to environmental and social crises through extractive narratives that position it—or attribute to it—the responsibility of offering solutions for the future, without simultaneously questioning the internal structures of its systems and thereby reducing it to a romanticized or salvationist dynamic rather than a tapestry of collective and consensual possibilities. In turn, as Aguilar Gil notes, this Knowledge can be constructed outside of hegemonic spaces of construction, since it is not a matter of including historically oppressed populations in narratives as an act of condescension to alleviate historical guilt (Indigenous Action Media et al., 2022).
It is at this intersection that visibility obscures responsibility; from outside Indigenous communities, we participate in the erosion of these systems. Along these lines, Rivera Cusicanqui (2018) warns of the risk that the use of “decolonial” terminology becomes a label that depoliticizes historical processes of struggle and resistance. The issue is not to abandon the incorporation of other forms of knowledge. It involves recognizing and asking ourselves who holds the authority to decide how, when, why, and under what conditions a form of knowledge or expression can circulate—and what happens to that which is incorporated.
There have always been glimpses of practices in which these pairings and exchanges have taken shape. In today’s context, the widespread use and abuse of this Traditional Knowledge raises not only the question: From what perspective do we approach Traditional Knowledge? This question is no longer merely about how to recognize it; it also involves asking under what ethical, political, and technological conditions—and from what perspective—the ontologies of Indigenous Peoples and the philosophical premises of thinkers from these territories are used as epistemological foundations for constructing other possible futures. We must prevent inclusion from becoming a sophisticated form of cultural extraction.
The importance of linguistic contextualization becomes a crucial process toward autonomy and ethical governance in management. In this sense, recognition is not the only challenge; at the same time, acknowledging the challenge posed by the structural conditions that limit autonomy—it is not about prohibiting others from naming or relating to them—but rather about opening up an understanding of agency and the standpoint from which such a relationship is established.
The dialogue at Cotejido revolved around the idea of reimagining the narrative toward communal and pluriversal futures, where fiction allows us to explore questions related to what happens when this Traditional Knowledge ceases to be objects of extraction and fetishization and instead becomes active cultural structures, capable of intervening with agency in the communication and construction of other realities.
Traditional Cultural Expressions, Indigenous Languages, Ritual Systems, and Traditional Knowledge cease to be viewed and understood solely as static remnants of the past and come to be understood as living, constantly changing structures—in contrast to a segment of society that constantly seeks to immobilize them. The very act of “cotejer” (understood here as an act of articulation and weaving) can be understood as the action of linking times, bodies, territories, and memories; uniting seemingly separate fragments to reorganize new continuities and collective meanings.
This shift encompasses contemporary debates on Cultural Intellectual Property—a concept developed by Boța-Moisin, M. (2017)—and on forms of protection, narrative sovereignty, and the circulation of Traditional Knowledge and Traditional Cultural Expressions (WIPO, 2017), where tensions or renunciations become ethical, affective, and political dimensions.
The ethical governance of Traditional Knowledge arises from an urgent need to take a stand on contemporary processes of cultural extraction, the media, obsolescence and rapid saturation, and global data economies—which commodify the Cultural Expressions of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities, generating a sequence of hierarchies and dominations outside these localities. This has intensified the transformation of cultural heritage into contested strategic, symbolic, and economic resources.
This knowledge stems from complex systems that interweave traditional knowledge, practices, indigenous technologies, artistic expressions, forms of organization, and territorial memories, transmitted across generations. It does not exist in isolation: it is deeply linked to territory, language, spirituality, and biodiversity. For all these reasons, their governance cannot be addressed solely through conventional frameworks. Ethical governance therefore involves establishing mechanisms, principles, and agreements that enable the management of access, use, representation, and circulation of Traditional Knowledge, as well as framing its use as knowledge systems rather than as readily available repositories (aesthetic, symbolic, or narrative).
Ethical governance also requires a forward-looking perspective. The ways in which culture is produced, archived, and circulated are changing; therefore, it is necessary to ask what will happen to this knowledge in increasingly digitized environments that are out of proportion to diverse territorial realities: How can we guarantee cultural sovereignty in the face of global platforms? How can we prevent new forms of data colonialism? What models will allow Indigenous Peoples to actively participate in the design of these infrastructures—and not merely as providers of cultural content? There is potential to co-construct these more just futures, capable of sustaining alternative relational forms based on dignity, reciprocity, and care. Ways to question the search for connection through the intersection and visualization of the concept: affective alliances, which presuppose bonds of affection between worlds (Krenak, 2025).
At this point, the metapluriverse takes on a second function in which it ceases to be merely a conceptual infrastructure and becomes a space of tension in the face of digital extractivism.
Speaking of futures of coexistence implies recognizing that contemporary processes do not merely produce integration. They also reproduce deep tensions between homogenization and diversity. One of the challenges facing this metapluriverse is preventing digitization from reproducing new forms of cultural extractivism through the appropriation of symbols, non-consensual use, and narrative frameworks rooted in philosophies linked to Traditional Knowledge; it can expand translocal solidarity, documentation, and creation, and open up new forms of collaboration, but these will never be neutral decisions. A digitized image can become a community archive, but it can also serve as material for algorithmic training; a cultural expression could generate new forms of exchange, but it could also circulate out of context with a commercial value. Here, the metapluriverse is not conceived as a mere technological structuring or digitization of diversity. The challenge lies in sustaining coexistence without turning difference into raw material for a universalizing system.
As the articulating mechanism of *Cotejido*, the notion of the eco-collaborative phenomenon emerges. While it addresses the acoustic trajectory of the natural phenomenon, it does not appear solely as an acoustic repetition; rather, it is organized into a relational dynamic through which one action finds resonance in another. Here, a source (emission) finds channels or media (reflection) to propose diverse and plural imaginaries (return) and ultimately encounters the reflected sound (perception), in which it is jointly re-signified through comparability—where different forms of knowledge and voices enter into relation, modify one another, and generate new possibilities, not along a linear trajectory but through the participation of multiple sources. This equivalence, in turn, resonates with the idea of a collaborative ritual and does not imply absolute equivalence nor does it seek to erase the differences between worlds. It refers to the possibility of establishing a relationship in which neither party is subsumed. It is, therefore, a complex act of listening, sharing, recognizing otherness, interpreting, reinterpreting, returning, and regenerating. Collaboration describes the joint action; the ecocolaborative phenomenon describes the dynamic
At this level, the metapluriverse ceases to be merely a conceptual space and is articulated to function as a relational hypothesis: the possibility of coexistence.
Finally, “Cotejido” could be understood as a form of decolonial narrative foresight. It involves linking conceptions of time, territories, and lexicon, bringing together elements that seemed separate to explore continuities.Fiction becomes a space for posing fundamental questions: What happens when traditional knowledge ceases to be an object of extraction and becomes an architecture of the future? How does technology transform when it is designed based on principles of reciprocity and care? What kind of humanity emerges when multiple worlds can coexist without being absorbed by a single civilizational logic? Should they be named differently? From there, the narrative not only engages in dialogue with the metapluriverse and the ethical governance of traditional knowledge, but also makes them imaginable, tangible, and politically habitable, without exhausting cultural systems.
This conclusion suggests that the metapluriverse takes on a third function: becoming a hypothesis for the future. Without imagining it as a space where all differences must be harmonized or where conflicts disappear, we should understand it as the capacity for coexistence. This metapluriverse, imagined in *Cotejido*, operates as a replica of multiple echoes. Technologies, languages, memories, and futures engage in dialogue without aspiring to a single truth. Each echo can transform what it receives; we can design futures capable of recognizing the legitimacy of diverse forms of existence, where each echo does not reproduce the past identically, but rather contributes to the creation of new possibilities for cultural coexistence in a continuous practice of ethical negotiation between worlds that share one, two, or more horizons—understanding that the future is not an empty territory waiting to be occupied, but a space of living articulation, in continuous construction.
Perhaps the question, then, is no longer how to integrate Traditional Knowledge into the future or preserve the past, but rather how to enable the necessary conditions for a multiplicity of futures characterized by dignity and reciprocity.
The conceptual progression can be summarized as follows: the metapluriverse begins as an operational definition, develops as a cultural infrastructure, confronts extractivism, resonates and finds in the eco-collaborative phenomenon a relational mechanism, and finally proposes a hypothesis for future use. Ethical governance is activated by establishing relational conditions—the ethics of silence that define and mark the boundaries.
References
Boța-Moisin, M. (2017). The 3C Rule: Consent, Credit, Compensation. https://www.culturalintellectualproperty.com/the-3cs
Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). (January 1, 1996). Fourth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle. Enlace Zapatista. https://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/1996/01/01/cuarta-declaracion-de-la-selva-lacandona/
Escobar, A. (2018). Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds. Duke University Press.
Escobar, A. (2020). Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible. Duke University Press.
Indigenous Action Media, Piña Narváez Funes, I. Y., and Aguilar Gil, Y. E. (2022). Ancestral Future: Toward a Non-White Time. Ona Ediciones. pp. 52–53.
Krenak, A. (2025). Ancestral Futures (R. Carelli, Ed.; T. Arijón, Trans.; Penguin Random House, Grupo Editorial, p. 84).
Rivera Cusicanqui, S. (2018). A Ch’ixi World Is Possible: Essays from a Present in Crisis. Tinta Limón.
Santos, B. de S. (2014). Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide. Routledge.
World Intellectual Property Organization. (2017). Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge, and Traditional Cultural Expressions. WIPO. https://www.wipo.int/tk/en/
Figures.
Image generation prompt: A speculative, biocultural science fiction illustration inspired by the short story “Woven in Code.” Xunka, a young Indigenous weaver from the Chiapas Highlands, sits before a backstrap loom in a mountainous landscape featuring bodies of water (rivers). The loom functions as a dimensional interface and an ancestral-futuristic writing system: the threads, knots, stitches, and textile patterns subtly transform into constellations of nodes, geometric codes, and networks of memory.
The Tzotzopaztli, a wooden component of the loom, appears as a central and symbiotic element, emitting delicate waves of vibration that travel through the warp and connect the fabric to the territory. From the threads emerge, in a poetic and almost phantasmagorical way, memories of grandmothers, rivers, cornfields, birds, plants, mountains, songs, and iconographic symbols. These memories should not appear as technological holograms, but rather as organic presences integrated into the fabric.
The scene should convey the idea of a “woven metapluriverse”: different layers of territory, memory, and futures superimposed within a single image. The loom is simultaneously an everyday object, a living archive, ancestral technology, an interface, and a portal between dimensions.
VISUAL STYLE: speculative science fiction editorial illustration, drawn with extremely fine, precise, delicate, elegant, and organic lines. An absolute predominance of fine lines in burgundy/deep wine (#6E1830), without a background. An almost monochromatic palette: burgundy as the primary ink, with minimal nuances of the same shade, the appearance of a contemporary hand-drawn engraving, a blend of scientific illustration, ancestral cartography, and speculative diagramming.
The composition should feel sophisticated, contemplative, and mysterious—not childishly fantastical. Plenty of negative space. The landscape, the weaver’s body, and the loom should be integrated through a continuous network of lines, as if everything belonged to the same living system. The weaver should be shown from behind, while her skirt and blouse—featuring rhomboid motifs—blend into her surroundings. The loom should also extend into the surroundings, with the threads tracing the curved shapes of rivers and mountains. Discreetly incorporate textile geometries, brocade patterns, node diagrams, and circuit-like structures—but reinterpreted through the logic of weaving rather than a cyberpunk aesthetic.
The image must convey: territorial memory, ancestral knowledge, symbiotic technology, autonomy, care, mystery, intergenerational transmission, and plural futures.
NO cyberpunk aesthetic, no neon, no robots, no screens, no conventional electronic circuits, no generic futuristic holograms, no steampunk aesthetic, no excess of elements, no photographic appearance, no caricature. Avoid depicting Indigenous culture as a decorative or folkloric element. Technology must emerge from the loom itself, from the territory, and from the practice of weaving.
Vertical format, editorial composition for a cover or centerfold illustration for a short story, high level of detail in the loom and textile patterns, very fine and consistent burgundy linework, a silent, poetic, and speculative nocturnal atmosphere.
- Tzotzopaztli, from Nahuatl. The name given to the “machete” or stick used to tighten the fabric on a backstrap loom. https://arqueologiamexicana.mx/mexico-antiguo/el-entorno-ritual-del-tzotzopaztli
