Kunanqa rihsisunchisya Runa
Simita, inkakunah rimayninta, Kay
musuhiianpi, Supercarretera de
Informacion, Internetpa
Kancharyninwan.
ven for those who don’t
speak a word of Quechua,
the phrase Supercarretera de
Informacion, Internetpa, is a dead
give-away. “Let’s learn Quechua,
language of the Incas, the modern
way, via the information highway
through the light of the Internet.”
The message appeared in a Lima
newsweekly last July, directing
readers to the web page of the
Peruvian Scientific Network (RCP),
a non-profit, user-financed consor-
tium of individual, academic, non-
governmental, business and public-
sector members. It was founded in
Lima in 1991 with one computer,
three modems and $7,000 in seed
money from the United Nations
Development Program (UNDP). In
1994, the RCP connected to the
backbone of the National Science
Foundation (NSF) and now includes
over 3,000 member-organizations
and nearly 60,000 individual users.
In the words of director Jos6
Soriano, it is an autonomous net-
work that strictly applies the con-
cept of the Internet-a network of
national networks that belongs to no
one and everyone.
On the telecommunications-fair
circuit where he is a frequent
speaker, Soriano makes a passion-
ate case for a regional Latin
American backbone-the neces-
sary infrastructure that would allow
the Internet to be used to the fullest
extent as a developmental tool. A
Latin American backbone would
decentralize the use of communica-
tions technology beyond the major
cities, and lessen the region’s
Barbara Belejack is a freelance writer
living in Mexico City.
“The Peace Offering. ” A
website of the
Commission to
Promote Peru
(Promperu), a
government
organization.
The website is
carried by the
Peruvian
Scientific
Network (RCP).
dependence on satellite connection
to the United States. He portrays
the Internet as a latter-day version
of Bolivar’s dream and the last
chance to reverse centuries of cen-
tralization in Peru that has concen-
trated economic development in
Lima and isolated much of the
countryside.
During the 1994 Miami Summit
of the Americas, Internet connec-
tivity was declared a priority for the
region and the Organization of
American States (OAS), the NSF
and the UNDP have been responsi-
ble for much of the recent push for
full connectivity. All countries in
the hemisphere have at least simple
e-mail connections and with few
exceptions, most are connected to
the Internet. (In September, Cuba
connected through Sprint in the
United States).
By far the most networked nation
in the region is Brazil, where the
Internet has been featured on a TV
Globo soap opera. According to
Matrix Information and Data
Systems in Austin, Texas, the open-
ing up of the Internet market in
Brazil has resulted in 2,333%
growth between January 1995 and
January 1996.
Although they may be just as
confused about the role of print
media in cyberspace as their coun-
terparts north of the Rio Grande,
most major publications in Latin
America are on the Internet, and
most have a special computer sec-
tion or at least a computer colum-
nist to chronicle the many wonders
of cyberspace. And when an attor-
ney with ties to the drug world was
shot and killed in a Monterrey,
Mexico restaurant last spring, the
newspaper El Norte obtained his
computer diskettes and published
dozens of incriminating letters on
its web site. Soon after, the gover-
nor of the state of Nuevo Le6n
resigned and was charged with
masterminding the attorney’s mur-
der.
The range of cyberactivities is
coming to resemble the computer
supermarket of the North. Brazil’s
largest bank offers electronic bank-
ing; Mexico’s largest private
university is pioneering a virtual
As Internet technology sweeps through the
continent, many of the powerless are gaining
access to communication. But the gap
between “the slow” and “the connected”
may be growing larger.
university; a Venezuelan e-zine
points readers to web sites devoted
to Hillary Clinton’s hair. And like
up north, computer-culture person-
alities have captured the popular
imagination; the Latin American
journeys of Bill Gates make for
front page headlines throughout the
region. But aside from cyberscoops
and technological prowess, what
does the Internet have to offer in the
way of culture and politics? Does it
differ from radio, television, public-
access cable television, video and
all the other technological innova-
tions touted as great equalizers and
promoters of democracy? Is there
anything really different going on
now?
While RCP prides itself on its
computer stations-cabinas pdbli-
cas-that make the Internet avail-
able to those without computers at
home, “available” is a relative con-
cept in a country where only 20%
of the population is adequately
employed and the cost of a basic
basket of consumer goods exceeds
the average worker’s salary.
According to a preliminary study of
the RCP conducted by University
of Lima sociologist Javier Diaz-
Albertini, the average individual
member is male, university-educat-
ed, 20 years old and resides in a
high-income district of Lima.
The Internet should be seen as a
tool-no more, no less, says Scott
Robinson, an anthropologist who
coordinates Mexico’s Rural
Information Network on the non-
profit LaNeta network. Robinson is
less concerned about the number of
individual users in the region than
the number of barriers that appear
when information and databases
become products in nations that
never developed a culture of free-
dom of information. And as
Soriano somewhat reluctantly
admits, perhaps it is time to start
talking about “two Internets.” The
current one, he conjectures, with all
the wonderful, full-graphic and
video applications may be confined
to North-South communication for
the elites of the region, while there
may also be a South-South Internet
of lower quality connecting Latin
American countries to one another.
“We should not simply abandon
this technology because it is unlike-
ly that all the people will have
direct access to it,” says Carlos
Alfonso of the network of the
Brazilian Institute of Social and
Economic Analysis (IBASE), a
progressive think tank and umbrel-
la organization based in Rio de
Janeiro. The fact is that popular
organizations can use the medium
and are using it as a powerful
instrument for democratization of
information and exchange of com-
mon plans, policies and strategies.
Until mid-1994, Internet access in
Brazil was limited to a select por-
tion of the academic community.
The only organization providing
services outside academia was
AlterNex, the network of IBASE.
The country now has the most
extensive regulation of the Internet;
phone companies are prohibited
from providing access services to
end users and the Brazilian govern-
ment subsidizes the development of
the Internet backbone structure.
Just as in the United States, the
Internet in Latin America is shifting
from a primarily academic-based
model, with its origins in depart-
ments of engineering and computer
science, to a commercial model. In
the United States the process took
20 years; in Latin America it has
happened much more rapidly and in
the context of privatization and
deregulation of national telephone
companies, and the specter of a
handful of corporations carving out
global markets.
One of the first countries in the
region to experiment with the
Internet was Mexico, where efforts
to connect networks at the National
Autonomous University in Mexico
City (UNAM) and the private
Technological Institute of
Monterrey (ITESM or Monterrey
Tec) began over a decade ago. In
1985, the computer science depart-
ment at the University of Chile
began experimenting with UUCP
(UNIX-to-UNIX copy program, an
early technology that uses ordinary
modems and phone lines to handle
e-mail and network news), and in
1987 Chile became the first Latin
American nation, followed by
Argentina, to enter the UUCP net-
work with access to e-mail and
USENET. (Among the factors con-
tributing to the early development
of the Internet in Argentina and
Uruguay was the return of political
exiles who had been teaching and
researching at U.S. and European
universities.) Chile’s two competing
academic networks are now com-
mercial.
To a great extent, the develop-
ment of the progressive movement
of nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs) in Latin America is a prod-
uct of the development of the “other
Internet,” the one without the glitz.
Internet connections made an
increasing number of alliances pos-
sible across borders. Alliances on
environmental, human rights, labor
and other issues have been facilitat-
ed by the Association for Pro-
gressive Communications (APC), a
global network comprised of 20
member networks in 135 countries,
including the Institute for Global
Communications (IGC), which op-
erates PeaceNet, EcoNet, LaborNet,
ConflictNet, and WomensNet in the
United States. Two of the earliest
activist networks in Latin America
were IBASE’s AlterNex and
Nicarao, the electronic mail node
established by APC in Nicaragua in
1985 in response to the U.S. hostili-
ty to the Sandinista government.
The campaign against the
North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) in the
early 1990s created alliances among
organizations in the United States,
Mexico and Canada, many of which
shared communication via APC net-
works. Those networks, along with
academic newsgroups, mobilized
almost immediately after the
A “Virtual
Gallery” of
the Work of
Peruvian
artists. From
the website
of the
Peruvian
Scientific
Network
(RCP).
January, 1994 Zapatista uprising in
Chiapas, and again in February,
1995 in the wake of increased mili-
tarization. More recently, activists
began laying the foundation for an
Intercontinental Network of Alter-
native Communication (RICA in
Spanish) as a way to consolidate
already existing social communica-
tions networks and to share organiz-
ing strategies.
Another Internet-based effort to
bypass traditional media is Pulsar, a
Quito-based project that functions
as a low-budget, grassroots news
agency for community radio stations
throughout Latin America. Financed
in part by the Canadian govern-
ment’s international-education fund,
Pulsar serves as an alternative wire
service for community radio sta-
tions, effectively bypassing the tra-
ditional wire services whose ser-
vices are too expensive and whose
stories reflect a heavy U.S. or
European bias. Using the Internet,
Pulsar staff gather stories from
newspapers such as La Jornada in
Mexico or La Repablica in Lima,
rewrite the news in “broadcast” for-
mat, and distribute the newscasts
by e-mail. The project is establish-
ing a network of correspondents
who will help pool information,
and plans call for an eventual
exchange of stories among commu-
nity radio stations throughout the
region.
Perhaps the most important role
of the Internet for grassroots orga-
nizations involves the simplest
technology-the use of e-mail-
not only to mobilize around human
rights and environmental emergen-
cies, but to cut costs. “I can’t con-
ceive of any other way of doing our
work,” explains Ernesto Morales,
who directs the Mexico City office
of the Guatemalan Human Rights
Commission. In addition to daily
correspondence, the Commission is
mandated by the United Nations to
prepare four quarterly reports a
year in English and Spanish, which
are distributed through e-mail.
Although the Commission’s
offices in Canada, Mexico, Costa
Rica and Spain have become depen-
dent on the Internet, that is not yet
the case in Guatemala, where tradi-
tionally military officials have held
high positions in the state-run tele-
PeruNet, a web-
site maintained
for investors by
the Commission
to Promote Peru
(Promperu).
phone company. Telephone service
is now privatized, but Guatemalans
have become accustomed to assum-
ing that telephones are tapped. As
Morales explains, both “a culture of
terror” as well as technological
backlog have to be overcome.
Another concern to activists and
NGOs is the growing body of
“cyberwar” and “netwar” literature
pioneered by Rand Corporation
analyst David Ronfeldt, who along
with David Arquilla of the U.S.
Naval Postgraduate School in
Monterey, California, coined the
terms in a 1993 article “CyberWar
is Coming!” In 1993, Ronfeldt was
thinking along the lines of a poten-
tial threat from an updated version
of the Mongol hordes that would
upset the established hierarchy of
institutions. He predicted that com-
munication would be increasingly
organized “into cross-border net-
works and coalitions, identifying
more with the development of civil
society (even global civil society)
than with nation-states, and using
advanced information and commu-
nications technologies to strength-
en their activities.”
By 1995 Ronfeldt was character-
izing the Zapatista activists as
having been highly successful in
limiting the government’s man-
euverability, and warning that “the
country that produced the proto-
type social revolution of the twen-
tieth century may now be giving
rise to the prototype social netwar
of the twenty-first century.”
When the cabinas ptiblicas final-
ly arrived in Cuzco last summer, they were installed with great cere-
mony by local and university offi-
cials at the University of San
Antonio Abad. Soon after, RCP’s
homepage began appearing in
Quechua, as well as Spanish and
English. Soriano insists that the
Internet must reflect local language
and culture and not just be a win-
dow for Peruvians to view the won-
ders of the United States. To
finance the growth of the Internet
and projects deemed not commer-
cially viable, RCP has begun a
series of joint ventures with com-
mercial businesses, leading to
charges that the non-profit consor-
tium is trying to dominate the
Internet in Peru.
Since its founding, RCP has bat-
tled with the various incarnations of
the Peruvian telephone company as
well as with government officials
suspicious of an independent com-
munications network that has an
obvious appeal to human rights
groups and other NGOs. Soriano
insists that the private telephone
monopoly, Telef6nica del Peni has
deliberately stonewalled on the
installation of infrastructure in the
provinces and charged steep prices
for long-distance services to cover
the inflated price at which it pur-
chased the public telephone compa-
ny. Since purchasing the state-
owned service in 1993, Telef6nica
enjoys a five-year monopoly that
Soriano describes as a modern-day
version of the Conquest. (Tele-
f6nica’s majority owner is Tele-
f6nica de Espana, whose interna-
tional division is very active in
Latin America, with a stake in the
telephone companies of Argentina,
Chile, Venezuela, Colombia and
Puerto Rico as well as Peru).
The Internet itself, of course, is in
transition. Existing main data pipes
of the Internet backbone are not
paying for themselves, and veteran
net watchers like Carlos Alfonso
foresee an eventual dual pricing
scheme, classifying services into
lower and higher priority in terms
of real-time data transfer. In the
United States, the trend is toward
increasing specialization of the
Internet, with service providers
turning into information providers
and purchasing bulk modem time
from phone companies or from
firms that buy lines in bulk from
phone companies. That trend has
not yet begun in Latin America, but
it will. In the meantime, Internet
watchers in the region would do
well to see that the growing gap
that Peruvian writer Alfredo Bryce
Echenique describes as the funda-
mental challenge for the twenty-
first century-the gap between “the
slow” and “the connected”-does
not increase.
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