Global Policy Forum

Humberto Márquez

Several Latin American governments are setting up telecentres where people can surf the Internet, often free of charge, in an attempt to narrow the digital divide within their societies, which is perhaps larger than the gap that separates them from the industrialised world.

In Venezuela, the government has set up 243 ''infocentres'' offering free access to the worldwide web, in libraries, museums, city halls and the offices of non-governmental organisations in the country's 23 states, and hopes to open 100 more in the next six months.

Last year, the Mexican government launched the E-Mexico programme, with the aim to install, by 2007, 3,200 ''digital community centres'' in schools, community centres, city halls, libraries and health clinics in rural villages and towns. The public can surf the net free of charge in the digital community centres, although fees are charged for some services.

Chile has already opened 294 telecentres that charge discounted rates in isolated rural communities or poor urban neighbourhoods, and has set up 368 in public libraries as well.

Initiatives aimed at expanding access to information and communication technologies are not exclusive to central governments. In Sao Paulo, Brazil's largest city, the local government has opened 100 infocentres where the public can surf the Internet for free.

In Cuba, access to the web is regulated by the state, and is still highly limited. Minister of Informatics and Communications Ignacio González Planas said the government of that socialist island nation would like to make access to the Internet open to the public, to the extent that it is able to overcome serious financial limitations. But for now, the priority in terms of connectivity is put on research, teaching, health and social communications institutions, including the country's 300 computer and electronics Youth Clubs. ''Our policy of giving priority of access to institutions is based on technical limitations,'' said González Planas. ''We do not have sufficient data transmission infrastructure...there are technical limitations related to the fact that we have few channels, IP (Internet Protocol) addresses, etc.''

Argentina has a high level of connectivity in the region, with four million users, amounting to 11 percent of the population. But the economic crisis that has devastated the country in the past few years thwarted a government initiative to finance widespread access to computers and the worldwide web. Another project that was cut short was a plan by Argentine businessman and philanthropist Martí­n Varsavsky, who lives in Spain, to connect 40,000 schools in Argentina to an educational Internet portal: Educ.ar.

Although 79 percent of the world's Internet users live in countries that form part of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) -- the so-called ''rich nations' club'' -- the gap between Latin America and the industrialised world has been shrinking. In the year 2002, eight percent of the population of Latin America had Internet access, compared to nine percent worldwide, according to Road Maps Toward an Information Society in Latin America and the Caribbean, a study by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

The report by the regional United Nations agency states that ''the impact of the international digital divide has been declining in our region. This trend is reflected in a variety of indicators, such as the rapid growth of Internet use in Latin America and the Caribbean, which has outstripped the growth rates seen in all others parts of the world in recent years.'' Latin America and the Caribbean have a total combined population of around 500 million. According to the New York-based firm eMarketer, which specialises in web-related statistics, the region will have 43 million Internet users by the end of 2003, and as many as 60 million in 2004.

But ''the domestic digital divide has been deepening. It is estimated that 70 percent of the richest 15 percent of the Latin American and Caribbean population will have Internet access by the year 2004, versus a 10 percent estimate for connectivity in the region as a whole,'' noted ECLAC executive secretary José Antonio Ocampo. The ''internal divide'' in the region ''is characterised by lack of effective access to the Internet by the lowest-income and most geographically remote populations, but is also associated with a growing impossibility to enjoy other services offered by information technologies,'' Venezuelan expert Ví­ctor Suárez told IPS.

In Mexico, less than 10 percent of the population knows how to use a computer. At the other extreme, 10 percent of the population is illiterate, and a similar proportion has no access to a telephone. However, the government's plan is to increase the number of people with access to the Internet from six to 30 million, out of a total population of over 100 million. But critics of Mexico's Digital Community Centres plan say there are much more pressing needs in impoverished communities. Javier Matuk, an expert on the technology market, wondered ''What are the people in a poor community going to do with the computers? Check the balance in their bank accounts? Read e-mails?''

In a slum neighbourhood on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, the non-governmental organisation La Lecherí­a obtained two computers for a programme that offers assistance to children and adolescents. They were stolen -- by people from the neighbourhood itself -- a year and a half ago. The group found another computer, but it was also stolen. The digital divide is, in essence, a by-product of pre-existent socioeconomic gaps, said the ECLAC report, which was produced for the Regional Preparatory Ministerial Conference of Latin America and the Caribbean for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), held in late January in the Dominican Republic city of Bávaro. The ministerial conference formed part of the worldwide preparation process for the WSIS, scheduled to take place in December in Geneva, Switzerland.

In Chile, a survey showed that 88 percent of homes from upper-middle and high-income socioeconomic strata had at least one computer, and 70 percent had access to the Internet, compared to 34 percent of homes in the middle socioeconomic strata, and just 10 percent of poor households. The digital divide is also linked to education, because within any income group, it is people with the highest levels of education that have Internet access. In Trinidad and Tobago, a study showed that over half of all users had completed secondary school.

In Cuba, ''greater openness to Internet access would be the result of political will, and perhaps the limitations also have to do with a question of equity,'' Uruguayan Professor Daniel de Bittencourt, who lives in the Caribbean island nation, remarked to IPS. ''There are actually very few people who can have computers in their homes.''

In some countries, the digital divide is also related to racial or ethnic questions. In Mexico and Panama, people of unmixed indigenous ancestry are five times less likely to have a computer in their homes, and two times less likely to have a TV set, than the rest of the population. The Bávaro Declaration signed at the ministerial meeting in January stated that ''The information society shall be oriented towards eliminating existing socioeconomic differences in our societies, averting the emergence of new forms of exclusion and becoming a positive force for all of the world's people.''

The ministers also said it was a priority to provide computer equipment to offer low-cost access through multi-functional community telecentres. Along that line, ''in Venezuela we have begun to create a network of facilitators who help local communities, associations, cooperatives, groups of rural and urban producers, and non-governmental organisations take the best possible advantage of the infocentres,'' Jorge Berrizbeitia, president of the National Centre of Information Technology, told IPS.

The ECLAC study pointed out that ''soft'' uses of the Internet -- general entertainment and information services, instant messaging and e-mail -- predominated in the region, and advocated efforts to promote ''hard'' uses such as economic transactions, collective problem solving and official paperwork and procedures, to benefit local economies. Besides government efforts to expand access, small businesses have contributed to that goal through a mushrooming of cybercafes in the region, where the public can visit cyberspace for less than what it would cost to have their own connection at home.

Cybercafes can be found on every street corner in Mexico City, there are an estimated 1,000 in Venezuela, and in Argentina, 46 percent of the country's four million users surf the net in small cybercafes. ''People from all social strata, from cleaning ladies and waitresses to middle-class tourists, visit cybercafes for a broad range of activities, from bank transfers to publishing ads offering their services,'' Daisy Barroeta, who runs a cybercafe on the Venezuelan island of Margarita in the Caribbean, commented to IPS.

Elderly women, for example, ''visit simply to chat and ease their loneliness,'' she added. The statistics show that although in the past a majority of users in the region were men, the number of female users is growing quickly, according to ECLAC, which reported that 45.4 percent of users in Argentina are girls and women, 43.1 percent in Brazil, and 40.1 percent in Mexico.

But despite the progress made in expanding access, Mexican expert Roxanne Blanford said ''The web in Latin America will continue being the terrain of elites, even though it has opened up to homemakers and students. It is still mainly limited to large cities, and cannot yet be considered a universal means of communication.''

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