NaturalistaUY en Uruguay: un caso de ciencia comunitaria en América Latina desde una perspectiva crítica

In the last decades, citizen science platforms have been developed worldwide. However, many of the experiences with these platforms focus on collecting data in a way that is detached from local realities. Historically, Latin America is positioned from a different perspective. Given the rise of iNaturalist in the region and the launch of NaturalistaUY in Uruguay, we ask ourselves, can it be used to learn and generate new knowledge that focuses on the realities and needs of local communities? This paper presents a pioneering experience in Uruguay, which seeks to situate data collection and knowledge generation in a socio-political context. As a general observation, we found that iNaturalist attracts great interest due to its free, participatory, and community-based nature. Although the platform has a pre-established structure, which can be limiting in some respects, its community potential allows for collective appropriation.