Laboratory Note
The First Mozilla Fellow from Bolivia
The Quechua filmmaker and technologist is the first fellow from Bolivia in the history of the Mozilla Firefox program. She builds Paqarina from Cochabamba: movement data that communities govern and license.
By Sala.red — Redacción
Mozilla, the nonprofit foundation behind Firefox, presents its 2026-2027 Fellows.
Among those selected is Violeta Ayala.
The fellowship has existed for more than a decade and has supported more than two hundred people at the front of the critical conversations between technology and society.
Ayala is the first fellow from Bolivia.
Mozilla looks for people who build alternatives to dominant technology systems.
People who do not wait for permission.
Ayala's project is Paqarina: Indigenous dance ch'ixied with breaking.
Pujllay Tinku. Suri Sikuri. Kullawada.
The system turns movement into three-dimensional data. That data belongs to the communities that create it.
They decide how it gets used and how it gets licensed.
It is built in collaboration with Bolivian technologists and artists. Everything is trained locally, on their own computers and their own energy.
The methods are open. The data stays home. Our data, our rules.
“The responsibility is as big as the privilege. Proud to put Bolivia on the map where the future is designed, from my llajta. Jallalla.”
VIOLETA AYALA
The cohort
Ayala is one of the program's five independent fellows. Five more work embedded in host organizations. Nine projects stand alongside hers, from Bengaluru to São Paulo.
Opens up the adoption methodology behind Adalat AI: a playbook for getting sovereign AI running inside risk-averse public institutions.
Completes Open Elections Kenya ahead of the 2027 elections and publishes its code, data and documentation as an open blueprint for other democracies.
Adds permissioned posts to the AT Protocol, with an open specification so communities can govern their own spaces.
Produces No Clear Remedy: an investigative documentary, policy memo and law enforcement training framework to open clearer pathways to accountability.
Maps the hidden infrastructure dependencies of civil society across the WANA region with Euqda, delivering reports in Arabic and English.
Co-designs Bias Lens with Kenyan communities and pilots the dashboard with more than one hundred journalists for ethical AI adoption.
Expands Fogo Cruzado's armed violence monitoring to all 27 Brazilian states with an open, sovereign language pipeline.
Grows an open-source community around emlint, in the quantum computing ecosystem.
Audits the tools in Bellingcat's Online Investigation Toolkit and the wider OSINT ecosystem, and publishes an open security assessment framework for investigators.
Ayala is the first Quechua member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the first and only Bolivian director to hold membership.
A Salzburg Global Fellow, with a long and prestigious career in cinema that has changed society.
Prison X premiered at Sundance and Cannes. La Lucha, Cocaine Prison, The Fight, The Bolivian Case and Stolen have earned more than fifty international awards, including a Walkley.
She co-founded United Notions Film and Koa, and directs sala.red.
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