Chronicles of a biblio-naturalist

Knowledge and memory do not only reside in books and archives. They operate through processes observable in ecological systems. This blog examines those processes as mechanisms for persistence, coordination, and transmission under conditions where stability, completeness, and central control are absent.

I explore the intersections of conservation, science, knowledge management, and memory, drawing from libraries, archives, field research, oral traditions, and forgotten sources to identify and analyze forms of knowledge that remain unrecognized or underrepresented.

Linked to my work in the tropics, in Panama, this space bridges past and future, showing why knowledge —preserved, shared, and applied— is essential for resilience in the Anthropocene.

Last published posts

Series Biomimesis in Action

This series examines ecological processes as sources of operational mechanisms for knowledge and memory systems. Rather than treating nature as metaphor or inspiration, each post isolates a specific process and analyzes how it achieves persistence, coordination, or transmission under conditions where stability, completeness, and central control are absent. The objective is not to describe ecological systems, but to extract and formalize transferable mechanisms: deferred activation, distributed signaling, iterative reinforcement, or path-dependent formation, among others. These mechanisms are then mapped onto problems in knowledge organization, archival practice, and information systems, particularly where conventional models fail.

Keywords: Biomimesis | Knowledge systems | Operational mechanisms | Distributed memory | Non-representational systems | Constraint-based design | Ecological processes

Archive

To keep this website focused on the latest publications and manageable in size, while ensuring access to past content, older blog posts are periodically removed from the website and compiled into PDF files, which can be downloaded from this archive.

Series Ecosemiotic Archivistics from the Cloud Forest

In the cloud forests of the Colombian Andes, memory decomposes, regenerates, and circulates through matter. This series develops ecosemiotic archivistics — a framework that treats forests as operational models for memory systems. Through photosynthesis, decay, symbiosis, and soil formation, these ecosystems challenge archival norms of stability and control, offering alternative logics of preservation, relevance, and transformation. Rather than metaphors, these are ecological theories of documentation in a time of crisis.
The chronicles in this series are mirrored in the blog series Ecosemiotics Fieldnotes, offering parallel reflections from a critical librarianship perspective.

Keywords: Ecosemiotics | Archival theory | Regenerative memory | Epistemic infrastructures | Forest intelligence | Situated preservation | Material semiosis | Critical ecologies

  Ecosemiotic Archivistics... (08) | There is No Central Server [read]

  Ecosemiotic Archivistics... (07) | Moss is a Marginalia System [read]

  Ecosemiotic Archivistics... (06) | Frailejones Know How to Wait [read]

  Ecosemiotic Archivistics... (05) | Where the Roots Keep Time [read]

  Ecosemiotic Archivistics... (04) | The Cloud Forest Does Not Archive [read]

  Ecosemiotic Archivistics... (03) | Nothing Stands Alone [read]

  Ecosemiotic Archivistics... (02) | Light as Record [read]

  Ecosemiotic Archivistics... (01) | The Forest Does Not Forget [read]

Series Silenced Knowledges and Memories in the Tropics

For centuries, Indigenous and local communities shaped the understanding of plants, animals, climate, and medicine in the tropics. Yet their contributions were systematically dismissed, appropriated, or overwritten by colonial narratives that framed European explorers as the sole pioneers of knowledge. This series uncovers how these knowledges were silenced —not erased— and how they persist in oral traditions, landscapes, and community practices. By challenging the myth of discovery and revealing the hidden figures behind scientific expeditions, the history of knowledge can be rewritten in the tropics.
The chronicles in this series are mirrored in the blog series The Taxonomy of Absence, offering parallel reflections from a critical librarianship perspective.

Keywords: Critical librarianship | Decolonization | Epistemicide | Knowledge systems | Epistemic justice

  Silenced Knowledges... (11) | Future Spaces [read]

  Silenced Knowledges... (10) | Sonic Archives [read]

  Silenced Knowledges... (09) | Curating Biodiversity [read]

  Silenced Knowledges... (08) | Building the Living Archive [read]

  Silenced Knowledges... (07) | The Grammar of Tools [read]

  Silenced Knowledges... (06) | The Archive of Smell [read]

  Silenced Knowledges... (05) | The Language of Leaves [read]

  Silenced Knowledges... (04) | Coral Reefs That Remember [read]

  Silenced Knowledges... (03) | Fieldwork Under Occupation [read]

  Silenced Knowledges... (02) | The Forest as a Library [read]

  Silenced Knowledges... (01) | Where Knowledge Has Many Names [read]