guinea pig chatting for four million of my best friends

For El País I have written about Waldir Maqque and Alessandra Yupanqui, two influencers from the Andes. The pandemic accelerated the adoption of the internet throughout Latin America, a change that occurred with particular force in rural areas; the success of these two young people and their peers is one of the many ways in which technology is changing the face of the region. The first time I saw Maqque’s videos, I was fascinated by his charisma—probably more powerful than that of most television figures today—and the fluidity with which he handled the audiovisual dialect of the internet. His videos jump between shots of clay pots, cuts of meat, and vegetables boiling in water while he whistles certain phrases—phrases that he repeats in all his videos, which have now solidified and become his trademark(™). I was thinking of the internet of 2014, 2017, 2019, when very few gringos, and no posh people, worked with that level of production. But in 2021, Maqque was doing it, and he was not

For El País I have written about Waldir Maqque and Alessandra Yupanqui, two influencers from the Andes. The pandemic accelerated the adoption of the internet throughout Latin America, a change that occurred with particular force in rural areas; the success of these two young people and their peers is one of the many ways in which technology is changing the face of the region. The first time I saw Maqque’s videos, I was fascinated by his charisma—probably more powerful than that of most television figures today—and the fluidity with which he handled the audiovisual dialect of the internet. His