A partnership of the Arq.Futuro Cities Lab with the Computer Engineering program at Insper took students Bernardo Cunha Capoferri, Davi Reis Vieira de Souza and Francisco Pinheiro Janela to travel to the Xingu Indigenous Territory (TIX) in Mato Grosso in August. The reason: in their Final Engineering Project (PFE), the trio develops, alongside Paulo Souza Chade, also in the eighth semester — who was unable to accompany the group for personal reasons —, a communication network for an indigenous community. The group is supervised by professors Paulina Achurra and Rodolfo Avelino.

 

In 2016, Avelino worked on the implementation of a reporting application related to human rights violations and environmental crimes, the result of the work of Coletivo Proteja — then called Proteja Amazônia. Through this channel, the Munduruku people, in Mato Grosso, would forward requests to official agencies. The experience revealed the connectivity bottleneck in the region. “It is common for several people to have cell phones in the villages, but the signal from the carriers does not reach the villages and Internet connection is only possible via satellites from government digital inclusion programs”, explains Avelino.

 

Usually, the Internet works for a few hours a day, when the electricity generator in the village is turned on. “I saw the opportunity to create a communication network similar to an intranet, in which people could use some network services, such as voice, without depending on the Internet”, says the professor. Solar panels would guarantee the energy autonomy of the private communication network. The first tests coincided with the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, and Avelino was unable to return to the Teles Pires river region.

 

The possibility of restoring the project was discussed in conversations with Paulina Achurra, academic coordinator of the Laboratório Arq.Futuro de Cidades. This time, the experiment would be at TIX — for some years, the Laboratory has been in contact with indigenous communities. “The Laboratory is concerned with engaging disadvantaged communities”, comments Paulina. “Within cities we work with peripheral territories, but outside of them there are other realities that are also forgotten by society.”

 

Among the Laboratory’s partners with connections in Xingu is BEĨ Editora, whose partner and editor, Tomas Alvim, is general coordinator of Arq.Futuro. BEĨ maintains a reference collection of Brazilian indigenous art and has been working for over 15 years in social projects with TIX villages. “For two years we had been preparing a project that would address the issue of physical and economic isolation of indigenous communities and provide a unique educational experience for Insper students,” says Paulina. “Finally, the Laboratory’s desire came together with Professor Avelino’s experience in human rights and digital inclusion projects and with Alvim’s contacts.”

 

One of the purposes is for the Kamaiurá people to own the technology developed at the PFE. After building the antennas, the Insper team will teach them how to expand and maintain the network using the resources available on site. The visit to Xingu opened the first opportunity to understand the community’s needs, strengthened in remote meetings with two representatives appointed by chief Akauã Kamaiurá. The team takes advantage of these virtual meetings to pass on some prior knowledge for the future implementation of the network.

 

Paulina emphasizes the Laboratory’s concern when contacting the Kamaiurás. They were connected to the Internet, so they already had access to all the content on the web and wanted a better network. With improved connections, the good and bad sides of the Internet will cause some cultural impact, which the community will need to manage. “A very important point is to understand what the population wants, so that together we can build a solution that minimizes possible security and connectivity problems”, observes the professor.

 

According to Paulina, the PFE is the first experience of a long-term plan that can be replicated in other local populations trying to reduce physical isolation. The active participation of the Kamaiurás will be essential. “I hope that this project will also show to the Insper community the added value of thinking about science production outside a market context, solving a real problem of social relevance in a country the size of Brazil, especially in that region”, aims Avelino.

 

A surprising journey

 

Interest in the topic quickly caught the attention of student Davi Reis, who lived in Manaus (AM), to the PFE supervised by Paulina and Avelino. He often had access to indigenous villages when he visited Parintins in the Amazon, famous for the prestigious boi-bumbá festival and the hometown of Reis’ mother. “We were very well received by the Kamaiurá people”, he recalls. “It was almost an adventure to get there, because it is an isolated place. The Insper group met in Cuiabá, went to Barra do Garças and then to Canarana, the last stop before actually entering TIX. It was a five-and-a-half-hour drive to the village on a dirt road.”

 

For Bernardo Capoferri, the imagined trip to the interior became a surprise when he saw the forest on the horizon. “Living in São Paulo, we’re not used to seeing forests for more than a kilometer”, he compares. “When arriving in the village, there is somewhat of a cultural shock, even though there are some city amenities there, such as bathrooms and showers. We slept in a hammock and always ate beiju with grilled fish; there was rarely any seasoned food. They told us that they have no fixed mealtimes and eat when they are hungry. They only adapted to lunch and dinner times because we were there.”

 

Another peculiarity that caught the students’ attention was the work routine. Everyone wakes up around five in the morning and conducts their activities until noon, as the temperature reached 39°C at the time of the trip and made exposure to the sun unfeasible. “I tried to stay in the company of the chief, to understand how he performs his tasks on a daily basis”, reports student Francisco Janela. In these conversations, the Kamaiurás discussed topics such as the rituals of passage from adolescence to adulthood and family organization in village homes.

 

Janela says that, despite what he assumed before the trip, the village’s residents are interested in using the Internet and purchase broadband services and equipment. “Since that first contact, we understood that our scope is to look at what they already have and try to expand the infrastructure to improve the community’s daily life”, he points out.  Reis adds: “We saw that most people connect at times when the Internet is on and access content from social networks, such as Instagram and TikTok. There is a delicate issue of how our culture of memes and Internet slang is combined with their culture.”

 

There are two public Internet accesses in the village, installed within the Indigenous Primary Health Care Unit (UBSI), where people go en masse in the late afternoon in search of a signal. Due to competition, the connection becomes slow for everyone. The Insper group does not intend to change the speed of local data transmission, but rather to modify the type of hardware to increase the number of people able to be connected at the same time.

 

The implemented solution cannot be complex to the point of compromising the functioning of these access points, which are important for communicating with other villages and relief teams. “We also want to give them tools to better control their Internet usage time for work and leisure”, says Capoferri. “The chief is somewhat concerned about the possibility of children spending the entire day indoors, for example, instead of playing outdoors or bathing in the river.”

 

A manual or tutorial will need to take the writing barrier into account. Some older adults cannot read, and technological vocabulary can be incomprehensible even among those who read Portuguese. The strategy to overcome this obstacle involves videos and audios translated into the Kamaiurá language, from the Tupi-Guarani language family. Recordings would facilitate the dissemination of information necessary to maintain the network without the presence of specialists. As Paulina reinforces, one of the challenges is to achieve a result that avoids “the outdated division of roles, in which only one person has the knowledge, and build a relationship of trust and partnership”.