Our working group is based on the relationship between social movements and spaces for academic reflection in various countries, which have been developing for years. However, it was in 2023, when these social organizations came together, that the political alliance known as Latin American Territories in Resistance (TELAR) emerged. This network brings together organizations from across the continent: the Darío Santillán Popular Front (FPDS) of Argentina, the Ukamau People's Movement of Chile, the Homeless Workers' Movement (MTST) and the Small Farmers' Movement (MPA) of Brazil, and the People's Congress of Colombia.

Since its inception, TELAR has integrated these meetings with diverse academic settings and research centers, such as the Lauro Campos and Marielle Franco Foundation in Brazil; the Institute of Latin American and Caribbean Studies in Argentina; the María Teresa Cortés Center for Social Research in Colombia; the Observatory of Social Participation and Territory in Chile; the Latin American Geopolitical Observatory of the Institute of Economic Research in Mexico; and in Uruguay, the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of

These meetings have allowed for the sharing of analyses on the last few decades, which have marked profound changes in Latin America: disputes between neoliberalism and progressivism, the rise of the far right, popular resistance, militarization, and anti-poverty policies, all against a backdrop of economic, political, health, and environmental crises. Constructing interpretations of these particularities—connected to global geopolitics—strengthens alternatives from popular sectors. In this sense, we see convergences among the different actions undertaken in the territories of the countries where we are present; actions such as community kitchens and soup kitchens to combat hunger, proposals for dignified housing (eco-neighborhoods, condominiums, affordable housing developments), and collective management (aqueducts, cooperatives, supply networks). Thus, these articulations build localized and internationalized territorial knowledge, weaving social practices into networks that generate conceptual syntheses and programmatic platforms.

An initial phase of reflection involved spaces for exchanging experiences and meetings to develop proposals. The culmination of these efforts was our participation in the 2024 grant program, "The Political Economy of Inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean: The Neoliberal Cycle and the Leftward Turn," where we organized and deepened our arguments. This process resulted in a chapter in the book of the same name, as well as an action and training plan that demonstrates how we strengthened our critical thinking and, in turn, our work in the field.

Our goal is to reflect, through dialogue between academic sectors and social movements, on the territorial expressions of popular sectors. This strengthens initiatives for mobilization, solutions, and transformation of realities through grassroots technologies and management in rural and urban areas, as well as the development of proposals by these movements. This convergence of academic reflection and grassroots political action has enhanced solutions, interpretations, and transformations in specific territories, improving our political action and recognizing knowledge as social technologies and management capacities from popular sectors. With territory and its practices as its core, it recognizes the need for platforms that foster unity, the analysis of perspectives, forms of action, and proposals to build popular power and an alternative society in the face of the imminent crisis of capitalism.

It is from this convergence of the political struggles of Latin American social movements that territorially localized and internationally articulated knowledge begins to be built. Knowledge and social practices are woven into a network, seeking to constitute themselves as conceptual syntheses and programmatic platforms.

From our perspective, these historical processes and actions form the basis of knowledge that becomes popular technologies, forming part of a kind of folk science reflected in the experiences of collective actors. These experiences serve as a reference for the design of public policies and forms of community-based management, demonstrating that communities have the capacity for management, organization, and the creation of alternatives.

This approach rejects the neutrality of Eurocentric knowledge, grounding itself in the lived realities of our peripheral geographies, where the coloniality of power persists in extractivism, inequalities, and systemic crises. Thus, we value ancestral knowledge, popular resistance, and South-South alliances as the foundation for transforming territorial realities, connecting local struggles with global geopolitics through the voices of the continent. We position socio-critical paradigms from the continent that propose the transformation of reality and participatory methodologies that allow not only the recognition of knowledge but also reflection and refinement to enable community management and the transformation of territories, gaining a regional perspective and creating alternatives to the imminent capitalist and environmental crisis, promoting urgent alternatives such as solidarity economies and ecological management that preserve life in the Global South.

The theme of the Working Group is the result of experiences from communities and popular organizations that, in dialogue with academia, have deepened their understanding of dynamics of resistance and autonomy in the face of neoliberalism and resource extraction, based on collective practices that reconfigure territories and challenge unequal power structures in contexts of impoverishment, exclusion, and environmental and civilizational crisis.

Territorialized social movements, such as those comprising the various organizations that are part of and/or orbit around TELAR (Latin American Territories in Resistance), create actions and proposals in response to neoliberal deterritorialization, promoting direct action and the reappropriation of public space. In Latin America, these actors articulate demands for autonomy and direct democracy, influencing regional and transnational political processes.

Social movements are linked to popular territorial management through collective practices that transform everyday spaces into arenas of autonomy and resistance, reconfiguring territory as a central axis of direct political action. This connection arises from the need to respond to neoliberal exclusions, where organized communities assume the administration of local resources in the face of state absence or forms of territorial appropriation that deny their traditional uses and popular knowledge of their relationship with the environment, nature, and communal life.

Social movements territorialize their demands through participatory processes such as assemblies and occupations, generating networks that evolve towards forms of participatory management and recreate the public sphere between institutions and popular bases, moving from direct actions to shared planning with the State or exercises in self-management, sovereignty and self-government

The power of communities' capacity for management and organization is also defined by how they understand and critically analyze the crises they face, the various ways these crises shape their lives, and the levels of subjugation and inequality they must endure. In the Falsbordian sense and in the context of popular management, crisis becomes the site from which this alternative, localized knowledge is constructed. By conceiving of crisis as a social reality and by acquiring full awareness of it, identifying it within a context, a historical process, and a specific political, social, and economic environment, crisis allows us to understand the need for fundamental transformations that lead to new social structures.

Crisis is not merely a conjuncture that defines or predetermines people's places, or patterns and categories for understanding social inequalities; crises shape and condition realities and become arguments that sustain community practices of resistance. Linking both requires overcoming tensions between direct democracy and institutionalization, fostering dialogues that institutionalize improvements without diluting autonomy. In Latin America, this enriches the politicization of the local, articulating the micro with larger scales to offer alternatives to extractive capitalism.

Territorial technologies refer to innovative practices of territorial appropriation by social movements, such as agroecological or grassroots urbanization strategies that counteract socio-spatial segmentation, enable political disruption, and shape collective identities, transforming territories into experimental fields against extractive capitalism. Social technology is built through collective control from its conception to its use, with the aim of social transformation linked to a new societal project rooted in the territories. Social technology is understood not only as artifacts, but also as social practices managed with and within the territories, popular knowledge, self-management, and autonomy.

The production and use of technologies in popular movements stem from a counter-hegemonic struggle against the modern, capitalist technological model, employing social artifacts and practices as political processes of collective and popular construction. Community banks, worker-recuperated factories, agroecological practices, solidarity and community kitchens, popular high schools, and cooperatives are social technologies created to resist precarity and propose radical transformations in society, forging autonomy and solidarity in the face of market rationality.

The debate surrounding the organization of productive forces and the productive matrix of our countries reflects the configuration of social power dynamics. Despite the hegemony of neoliberalism in the organization of labor relations and the direction of investments in productive sectors, as a counterpoint to the neoliberal regime and the capitalist system over the last 20 years, and throughout the history of our peoples, there have always been resistances and alternatives.

The popular economy has its limitations, but in general it has allowed progress toward autonomy, self-management, and the strengthening of grassroots organizations. In a context where capitalism is creaking and there is a multidimensional crisis affecting humanity, creating new forms of economic organization seems fundamental to us. We firmly believe that we must forge a link and connection between the solidarity-based popular economy and the productive matrix.

There are countless examples of grassroots economics in our communities, but generally, they only engage in economic exchange with other grassroots groups. Bakeries, cooperatives, and water systems exist in working-class neighborhoods; we must consider and systematize how these local initiatives, through their social relations, can shape a dignified life—that is, how they avoid reproducing capitalist logic.

In addition to considering grassroots economic initiatives in terms of productivity, efficiency, sustainability, and long-term viability, we must bear in mind that the potential of these spaces may lie precisely in their ability to offer alternatives to the capitalist system. Going even further, we believe that when we think about bakeries and any other form of solidarity and grassroots economics, we must consider how these initiatives relate to a national project and the existing production matrix. We must consider the role of grassroots economics in the domestic market, the debate surrounding food sovereignty in our countries, how we discuss access to land, and how agri-food production plays out.

Popular management involves collaborative forms of resource and policy administration, arising from activism outside of state or market mechanisms, such as local networks for access to water or housing. These are autonomous practices of collective management of territories, resources, and services, emerging as a response to neoliberal exclusion and the crisis of the state. It is collective self-management as a tool for reimagining territories, prioritizing the social reproduction of the working class through occupations, cooperatives, community kitchens, housing projects, and cultural activities, to name a few actions that create autonomy and the possibility of public-popular alliances.

Finally, we must reclaim the role of popular education and participatory action research in political formation and the strengthening of social movements. It is essential that these elements be interconnected as pedagogical and organizational processes that empower communities to resist and build collective autonomy. At TELAR, political formation through popular education, participatory action research, and exchanges strengthens collective identities and territorial technologies.