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.
