**5.3. Digital commerce strategy for the use of technology in minorities**

The Mixtec communities have adopted the strategy of digital commerce through the Qiubo Network [23]. This strategy is aimed at small merchants ("local grocery stores and miscellaneous") and is implemented by the union of three companies: the largest bakery company in the Mexican Republic, "Grupo Bimbo," the telecommunications company "Blue Label Telecoms," and "Better than Cash," which have set out to break the barrier of natural resistance that small business owners (microentrepreneurs) have to approach for the use of technologies. This collaborative action greatly benefits localities marginalized by geographical issues.

Through the Qiubo Network, the massive distribution of point-of-sale terminals (**Figure 2**) was started among the more than 700,000 small businesses that make up the Bimbo distribution network, mainly focused on three objectives:


The sense and importance of the use of Qiubo Network technology is to meet community needs, notably for the payment of the digital television service (suppliers VeTV and Sky) and for the purchase of air time for the mobile phone. Otherwise, the community could obtain the service at a high cost in time (2 hours and 30 minutes of distance to the nearest population) and money by payment of transportation.

With the purchase of air time for the mobile phone, they gain access to social networks, textual and voice communication, entertainment applications, music in digital format, among other applications, provided by the Internet. Therefore, the use of ICT through mobile technology is promoted as an appropriation by members of the Mixtec culture and not as an imposed

**Figure 2.** Qiubo Network (Bimbo and Blue Label). Source: http://www.redqiubo.com/en/index.php.

extension of the dominant society, involving the manipulation and extermination of its cultural identity. In this connection, the Omar Dengo Foundation [24] defines social appropriation of digital technologies as "Appropriating something means making it proper to the point of being able to apply it in accordance with the requirements and characteristics of specific situations" [24].
