Spatialities of the Latin American Internet 125 Diverse Spatialities of the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Barney Warf Department of Geography University of Kansas Abstract This paper explores the social and spatial dimensions of the Internet among Latin American countries. First, it summarizes the infrastructure that makes the region’s Internet possible. Second, it maps the rapidly changing distribution of Latin American Internet users between 2000 and 2008, including their collective representations on the Web, and their explosive rates of growth. Third, it explores the economic and social variables that underpin discrepancies in Internet access, including GDP per capita, literacy rates, and telephone penetration rates. Fourth, it turns to the emergence of broadband in selected countries. Fifth, it focuses on residential uses. Sixth, it examines Latin American governments’ attempts to censor the Internet, which varies markedly. Finally, it summarizes the roles of electronic commerce and governance in this part of the world. Keywords: Internet, cyberspace, telecommunications, censorship, e-commerce, e-governance Resumen En este estudio se analiza las dimensiones socio-espaciales del Internet en los países latinoamericanos. Primero, ofrece una descripción de la infraestructura a través de la cual se mantiene el Internet en la región. Segundo, hace un mapeo de la rápida y cambiante distribución de los usuarios del Internet entre los años 2000 y 2008, incluyendo sus representaciones colectivas, y su explosiva tasa de crecimiento. Tercero, explora las variables socio-económicas que sostienen las discrepancias en el acceso al Internet, incluyendo PBD per-capita, tasas de alfabetismo y tasas de cobertura telefónica. Cuarto, considera la aparición de la banda ancha en países seleccionados. Quinto, enfoca el análisis en usos residenciales. Sexto, examina los intentos de censura del Internet por parte de los gobiernos latinoamericanos en sus distintos resultados. Finalmente, hace un resumen de los roles del Internet en el comercio y la gobernabilidad en este parte del mundo. Palabras clave: Internet, ciberespacio, telecomunicaciones, censura, comercio electrónico, e-gobernabilidad Introduction With more than 1.6 billion users at the end of 2008, the Internet is now a tool of communications, entertainment, and other applications accessed by roughly 26 percent of the world’s people (www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm). Perhaps no phenomenon so clearly illustrates Castells’ (1996, 1997) famous “space of flows,” the rhizomatic networks of power and information that typify contemporary globalization. Clearly, the Internet is having enormous impacts on interpersonal interactions, commerce, community and identity formation, urban structure, and public space, unleashing new forms of knowledge production, consumption, and distribution (Crang 2000) and ushering in non-Euclidean geometries in the context of a massive global wave of time-space compression. Geographers have artfully charted the origins and growth of Journal of Latin American Geography, 8 (2), 2009 126 Journal of Latin American Geography cyberspace, its uneven social and spatial diffusion, and its multiple impacts, ranging from cybercommunities to electronic commerce (Kitchin 1998; Crang et al. 1999; Jordan 1999; Castells 2001; Kellerman 2002; Crampton 2003). This literature, however, has remained overwhelmingly focused on developed countries. This bias is perhaps understandable in light of the fact that the Internet and the World Wide Web originated in Europe and North America and in many ways are still largely dominated by those regions. This paper addresses the spatiality of the Internet across the face of Latin America. Its aim is to shed light on the unevenness of the Internet among the region’s countries and to sketch some of the ways in which places of economy, society and politics have become transformed through it. First, it offers an overview of the infrastructure that makes the Internet possible, particularly the skein of fiber optic lines that has cut across continent over the last decade, but also satellites, the impacts of deregulation, and cybercafés and telecenters. Second, it turns to the rapidly changing distribution of Latin American users with access to cyberspace between 2000 and 2008, including their respective collective representations on the Web. Third, it explores the economic and social variables that underpin discrepancies in Internet access, including GDP per capita, literacy rates, and accessibility to telephone landlines. Fourth, the paper briefly focuses on emerging geographies of Latin American broadband. Fifth, it points to residential uses, including hours spent surfing the Web and the most commonly visited websites. Sixth, it examines government attempts at censorship of the Internet, which vary markedly. Seventh, it summarizes the roles of electronic commerce and e-governance in several countries. The conclusion points to the Internet’s potential for broadening the sphere of public discourse in the region. Infrastructures Underpinning the Latin American Internet Any understanding of the spatiality of the Internet must begin with the technical and social infrastructure that makes it possible. Several dimensions of this issue are briefly reviewed here, including the region’s fiber optics networks, the seminal role played by universities, the impact of deregulation on the pricing of telecommunications services, and the role of cybercafés and telecenters. Fiber optic lines are the key technology to the Internet, especially for access to high-speed routes that link cities in which producer services tend to concentrate (Graham, 1999). Fiber carriers are heavily favored by large corporations for data transmission and by financial institutions for electronic funds transfer systems, in part because of the higher degrees of security and redundancy this medium offers. The attraction of fiber as the primary medium for Internet backbones was accelerated by the introduction of Integrated Services Digital Networks (ISDN), TCP-IP protocols, and packet switching. Worldwide fiber capacity grew explosively in the 1990s, and today faces mounting problems of oversupply. Worldwide submarine fiber optic links today straddle the globe (Figure 1). Starting in the early 1990s, Latin America’s fiber infrastructure evolved over multiple generations of lines put into place by different public and private actors, often via consortia. In the Caribbean, the Eastern Caribbean Fiber System, completed in 1995, stretches from the Virgin Islands to Trinidad, connecting Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba. The Americas1 Fiber Optic Cable System links Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, and Brazil. MAYA1, laid down in 1997, runs from Miami down the eastern side of Central America. The 8,600-km Americas Region Caribbean Optical Ring (ARCOS1) system connects 15 countries in Central America and the Caribbean. Most Caribbean countries entered licensing agreements with the British service provider Cable and Wireless, which was granted monopoly status over their telecommunications Spatialities of the Latin American Internet 127 services. Figure 1: Major Submarine Fiber Optics Lines, 2005. (Source: Malecki, E.a nd H. Wei. (2009) “A Wired World: The Evolving Geography of Submarine Cables and the Shift to Asia,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 99: 360-382. Reprinted by permission of the publisher (Taylor & Francis, http://www. informaworld.com) and the Association of American Geographers, copyright holder) In western Latin America, Global Crossing extended its Pan American Crossing (PAC) line from the west coast of the U.S. to Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, and Venezuela as well as its 12,000-mile-long South American Crossing (SAC) line, which rings the continent and extends into the Caribbean. Emergia, a subsidiary of Spanish giant Telefónica, likewise has a 25,000 km ring extending from Florida around most of South America (Mariscal and Rivera 2005). GlobeNET has a 22,000 km network stretching from the eastern U.S. through the Caribbean to Brazil. Because such networks rely on coastal landing sites, they generally do not provide comparable access in interior areas or landlocked countries, thus creating new geographies of centrality and peripherality throughout the region. Although the vast bulk of global telecommunications utilizes fiber optics lines (Warf 2006), satellites do nonetheless offer a low-cost alternative that do not require an expensive infrastructure. Indeed, early development of the Internet in the Caribbean was largely satellite-based, in part through the efforts of the Organization of American States, which financed earth stations. Today, the New Jersey-based firm O3b (for “other three billion”) has deployed medium earth orbit satellites (in contrast to expensive geosynchronous ones) to offer affordable access to sparsely populated rural areas (Cherry 2008), which are generally shunned by telecommunications firms due to the few economies of scale they offer. Frequently universities and research institutions played a key role in jumpstarting the Latin American Internet, as in the United States. In Mexico, for example, the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Continuing Studies initiated the country’s first Internet connection in 1986. Similar roles were played by the University of the Republic and the University of Buenos Aires, in Uruguay and Argentina, respectively (Zamalvide 2001). Argentina’s RETINA, Chile’s REUNA, and Mexico’s CUDI (Corporación 128 Journal of Latin American Geography Universitaria para el Desarrollo de Internet) fiber networks connect multiple institutions of higher education, comprising elements in the global Internet2 web of gigabit capacity lines. In Brazil, the Internet began in 1988 through FAPESP (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa no Estado de São Paulo), a publicly funded science institute; in 1992, management of the Brazilian net was taken over by the RNP (Rede Nacional de Pesquisa—Research National Network), part of the Brazilian Department of Science and Technology, which connects 800 academic, government, and research centers. Many other governments promoted the Internet as a means of facilitating electronic commerce, tourism, access to public services, and enhancing productivity in information-intensive industries such as producer services, airline and hotel reservations, and inventory control. The Internet in Latin America became increasingly more affordable due to price declines induced by the deregulation of the telecommunications industry, which centered upon the transformation from state-owned or regulated monopolies to competitive, private carriers. In cases of monopoly, typically in which former state-owned firms hold a dominant market position, access rates can remain high. In Peru, for example, the state-owned telecommunications monopoly was privatized in 1994, becoming Telefónica del Perú in 1995. Similarly, after Argentina privatized the state-owned monopoly Telintar in 1997, monthly prices for renting an international fiber link dropped from $32,000 to $2,000 (Nilles 1999a). Frequently new entrants (including foreign-owned ones) induce competition and lower rates. American Baby Bells, for example, such as BellSouth, have actively courted the Latin American market. Telefónica has aggressively acquired shares in several Latin American telecommunications firms. Moreover, numerous Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have sprung up throughout Latin America as the Internet has grown in size and scope. As elsewhere, many offer free email accounts, deriving revenues from web advertising, or “banners.” Because personal computer ownership rates are relatively low in much of the developing world, and because Internet Service Provider (ISP) individual access charges are often high, many users rely upon privately-owned Internet cafes for access rather than individual ISP accounts. Cafes are particularly important for those who lack dial-up access at home or at work or who simply cannot afford personal computers of their own. Latin American Internet cafes tend to be clustered in commercial districts frequented by tourists, exhibit a range of ownership from sole proprietorships to chains such as PapayaNet, and have access charges that vary widely among and within countries (Rao 1999). In countries with growing middle classes, however, home-based Internet access is more likely. In addition to for-profit cybercafés, many non-profit and non-governmental organizations have established networks of telecenters, which have played catalytic roles in community development in many areas (Hunt 2001). For example, Somos@ telecentros, a network of telecenters, allows diverse groups to share experiences and collaborate in the acquisition of information resources. Finally, the Catholic Church, which has generally been slow to embrace cyberspace, has also played a role: some churches have Internet booths that offer service free-of-charge or at a very low cost for their parishioners. Church uses of the Internet include cyberconfessions, publication and dissemination of diocese and parish documents, the use of email to inform and mobilize adherents, pastoral and outreach activities, podcasts from the Vatican, Web-based Bible study courses, religious blogs, online prayer support groups, Internet radio shows, and Christian chat rooms. However, the Church’s stance toward the Internet has been mixed, for it simultaneously allows advocates to proselytize on-line while also offering access to information that is often contradictory or offensive to official dogma. Moreover, Pentecostalists have also used the Internet effectively (Berryman 1999). Such observations point to the role of the Spatialities of the Latin American Internet 129 Internet as a contested arena in which the “real” and the virtual intersect in complex ways. Geographies of Internet Usage in Latin America Data on Internet users in Latin American countries for December, 2008 were drawn from Internet World Users Statistics (www.internetworldstats.com). The data include estimates of users in 2000 as well as 2008 as well as penetration rates. Unfortunately, they do not include data on the socio-demographic characteristics of users or their location within countries. It is important to note that while this analysis focuses on variations among the region’s states, there are equally profound differences within them, including differential access by class, gender, ethnicity, age, and persistent schisms between rural and urban areas. Long marginalized ethnic minorities and impoverished residents of rural areas or urban barrios are unlikely to have access to the Internet or benefit from its usage. For example, Friedman (2005:12) quotes the director of a network of rural women who notes “peasant women do not use computers and many do not know that this technology exists.” The lines of digital inclusion and exclusion are therefore often drawn on the same boundaries that divide class, gender, ethnicity, and political and economic power. At the close of 2008, 166,312,300 people in Latin America and the Caribbean used the Internet (Figure 2). The number of Internet users, as one would expect, is closely associated with total population, with Brazil constituting the largest single group (67.5 million), followed by Mexico (23.8 million), Argentina (20 million), and Colombia (13.7 million). Figure 2: Total Internet Users, December, 2008. (Source: http://www.internetworldstats.com) 130 Journal of Latin American Geography The region exhibits a mean penetration rate of 28.8 percent, a little higher than the world average but considerably lower than Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, and the U.S. and Canada. Penetration rates varied considerably (Figure 3), with the highest consistently found in the Caribbean, the wealthiest and best-connected region (Table 1). Outside of the Caribbean, Chile leads Latin American penetration rates (with 50.9 percent), closely following are Argentina (49.4 percent), Costa Rica (35.7 percent), and Brazil 34.4 percent). Conversely, countries with the lowest penetration rates tend to be poor, including the hemisphere’s lowest, in Nicaragua (2.7 percent), as well as Honduras (5.6 percent), Paraguay (7.8 percent), and Suriname (9.2 percent). Figure 3: Internet Penetration Rates, December, 2008. (Source: http://www.internetworldstats.com) Another measure of the extent of the Internet in the region, and its visibility in cyberspace, concerns the number of webpages associated with each country’s domain name (as found by the Google search engine). In April, 2009, Latin American countries hosted a total of more than 360 million webpages, an average of roughly 0.6 per person. The total number per country – as measured by its domain name – varied widely (Figure 4). Puerto Rico, with 164 million webpages, generated 45 percent of all Latin American webpages, stands in a class by itself. It is followed by Mexico (44.6 million), the Dominican Republic (35.9 million), Colombia (24.7 million), and Venezuela (20.4 million). The number of webpages per person, an indication of relative visibility on the Web (Figure 5), included the curious anomaly of the Falkland/Malvinas Islands, in which 2,500 residents are represented by 220,000 webpages, or 89.5 each. Following this rather bizarre observation are a group of Caribbean states, led by Puerto Rico, with 55.4 Spatialities of the Latin American Internet Figure 4: Total Webpages per Country Domain Name, April, 2009. (Source: Calculated by author) Figure 5: Webpages per Person, April, 2009. (Source: Calculated by author) 131 132 Journal of Latin American Geography pages person (Table 1). The least visible countries on the web, by this measure, are Brazil (0.05), Bolivia (.07), Haiti (.08), and Honduras (.09). The strong correlation between per capita GDP and webpages per person (r = .64, significant at the .95 level) indicates that the social and economic discrepancies that pervade Latin America are replicated in cyberspace, and the poorest denizens tend to be almost invisible there. Countries and Dependencies Antigua Bahamas Barbados Cayman Isles Cuba Dominica Dominican Republic Grenada Guadeloupe Haiti Jamaica Martinique Puerto Rico St. Lucia St. Vincent Trinidad and Tobago Total Users 2008 (000s) Penetration Rate % Growth in Users 2000-08 New Users 2000-08 (000s) Total Web Pages (000s) Web Pages per Person 60 120 180 22 1310 26.5 3,000 85.9 39.0 63.8 46.0 11.5 36.5 31.6 1,100 816 2,900 1,821 2083.3 1,225 5,354 54.5 105.3 173.8 9.9 160.0 24.3 2,944.5 703 547 671 1,220 1,400 603 35,900 10.1 1.8 2.4 25.5 0.1 8.3 3.8 23 85 1,000 1,500 130 1,000 110 57 225 25.5 19.3 11.2 53.5 32.3 25.3 63.6 48.1 21.5 461 962 16,567 2,400 2,500 400 3,567 1,529 125 18.0 76.2 994.0 1,437.5 124.8 750.0 106.9 53.3 45.0 733 420 675 743 228 164,000 697 672 978 8.1 1.0 0.1 0.3 0.6 55.4 4.0 5.7 0.9 Table 1: Summary Internet Data for the Caribbean. (Source: calculated by author) The overriding feature of the Internet, however, is its explosive rate of growth, which make it arguably the most rapidly diffusing innovation in world history (Castells 2001). In economically developed countries, the Internet has become a staple of everyday life and commerce for hundreds of millions. In the developing world, however, poverty and other obstacles often limit access to this technology. Nonetheless, fuelled by falling prices of computer hardware and software, growing computer literacy (especially among the young), and slowly, if unevenly, rising incomes, Latin American Internet usage grew explosively between 2000 and 2008. The region as a whole witnessed a growth rate in users of 672 percent, meaning the number of users increased by 29 percent annually. As would be expected, growth rates were highly uneven geographically (Figure 6), ranging from a low of 113 percent (Belize) to a high of 16,567 percent in Haiti, albeit from a modest base. Growth rates were also high in Guyana (6,233 percent), the Dominican Republic (5,354), and several smaller islands in the Caribbean (e.g., St. Lucia, Barbados, and Martinique). Such growth rates propelled countless numbers of people into cyberspace: between 2000 and 2008, more than 144.7 million new users came on-line in Latin America. The spatial distribution of this growth reflects, inter alia, population growth and changes in penetration rates, and was uneven among the region’s countries (Figure Spatialities of the Latin American Internet Figure 6: Percent Growth in Internet Users, 2000-2008. (Source: Calculated by author from http://www.internetworldstats.com) Figure 7: Absolute Growth in Internet Users, 2000 to 2008. (Source: calculated by author from http://www.internetworldstats.com) 133 134 Journal of Latin American Geography 7). In Brazil alone, more than 62.1 million people began using the Internet, followed by Mexico (20.8 million), Argentina (17.2 million), Colombia (12.8 million), Chile (6.1 million), and Venezuela (5.6 million). Although precise data of the social composition of new users is not available, anecdotal and survey information indicate that the greatest increases are to be found among the relatively young, well educated, and urbanized populations. In many respects, it is evident from these data that the most well-connected parts of the greater Latin American region lay in the Caribbean. Because this region is important in many respects with regard to telecommunications and cyberspace, and because its significance is not well reflected cartographically, a more detailed summary (Table 1) allows for a closer inspection. Average penetration rates in the Caribbean are considerably higher than in Central or South America, including Puerto Rico but also places such as Antigua (with a rate greater than that of the U.S.), Barbados, and St. Lucia. In the 2000-2008 period, more than 8.1 million Caribeños joined the global on-line community. In some cases, the high degrees of cybervisibility, as measured by webpages per person, no doubt reflect the growth of offshore banking, as in the Cayman Islands (Roberts 1995). Explaining Variations in Latin American Internet Access A growing literature has addressed the global digital divide (Wresch 1996; Schiller 1999; Warf 2001), pointing to the key roles played by variables such as wealth, literacy, and telephone penetration rates as fundamental dimensions underpinning access to cyberspace. (“Use” and “access” are admittedly vague terms, but in the digital divide literature are generally taken to mean deployment of the Internet at home or at work; rather than a simple access/non-access dichotomy, it is more useful to think of a gradation of levels of access, although data on this point are non-existent). Not surprisingly, elites situated in urban areas tend to exhibit the highest rates of connectivity. Latin American Internet penetration rates in 2008 were significantly correlated with three variables hypothesized to be directly associated with access: per capita GDP in 2007 (r = .60), adult literacy rates (r = .45), and landline telephone densities (r = .72). GDP per capita –a flawed but widely used measure of income– ranges widely throughout Latin America, from the comparatively wealthy Cayman Islands (US$43.8 thousand) and Bahamas (US$35.4 thousand) to impoverished Haiti (US$1.3 thousand) and Nicaragua (US$2.9 thousand). Similarly, variations in adult literacy throughout Latin America are enormous: many Caribbean states have almost universal literacy (e.g., Barbados, Guyana, Trinidad, Cuba), whereas in Haiti only 52.9 percent and in Nicaragua only 67.5 percent of adults are literate (Human Development Reports http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/ data/countries). Important gender differences emerge in this regard, as women are more likely than men to be illiterate and thus be denied Internet access. The density of telephone land-lines is also highly correlated with Internet penetration rates: despite the growth of the wireless telephony, relatively few people in the developing world utilize cell phones to access the Internet. The distribution of telephone land-lines per 100 people yields important insights into the geography of access to the Latin American internet (Figure 9). As with the Internet, the highest degrees of telephone connectivity are found in the Caribbean (e.g., the Cayman Islands, with 795 phones per 1,000 people), although Haiti, with 12.1 lines per 1,000 people, is also in this region. Uruguay (277), Argentina (233), and Chile (205) are relatively well-endowed in this aspect among non-Caribbean states, while at the bottom lie Nicaragua and Paraguay, with 42 and 66 lines per 1,000 people, respectively. Because wireless Internet access is generally confined to a few “hotspots” such as coffee houses or airports, most users Spatialities of the Latin American Internet 135 Figure 8: Broadband Penetration Rates for 19 Latin American Countries, December, 2008. (Source: calculated by author from http://www.internetworldstats.com/south.htm#gf) Figure 9: Telephone Land Lines per 100 Residents, 2008. (Source: The World Factbook, Central Intelligence Agency, Washington, DC.) must utilize a landline in order to access cyberspace. Thus, whereas 15 percent of Americans use the wireless Internet, in Brazil, only 2.6 percent do so, and Brazil leads the region in this respect (Nielson Mobile 2008). However, as wireless technologies proliferate, and as cell phones have surged well ahead of land-lines, Latin America may enjoy the potential to leapfrog old technologies (Davison et al. 2000). Geographies of Broadband in Latin America The latest wave of transformation in the provision of digital services is broadband technologies. As Internet material has become increasingly graphics-based, 136 Journal of Latin American Geography involving the transmission of large, data-intensive files (e.g., graphics), broadband access has become correspondingly more important. Broadband applications include high value-added services such as digital television, business-to-business linkages, Internet gaming, telemedicine, videoconferencing, and Internet telephony. Broadband technology has existed since the 1950s, but its deployment was not economically feasible until the deployment of high capacity fiber optics cable in the 1990s allowed vast amounts of data to be transferred at high speeds (up to 2.4 gigabytes per second). Broadband usage in Latin America is limited compared to the economically developed world, in which the majority of Internet users now utilize the technology. Unfortunately, complete and comparative data for the entire region are not available. However, among 19 countries that did report broadband usage in December, 2008, wide variations in penetration rates are evident (Figure 8). Belize, somewhat surprisingly, heads this list, with 20.3 percent of Internet users subscribing to broadband, followed by Mexico (20.1 percent) and Ecuador (18.3 percent). However, as the technology declines in price, as it has in North America and Europe, there is every reason to believe that broadband use, like mobile telephone and Internet, will increase rapidly in the future. Indeed, many Latin American ISPs now offer mobile global roaming services. Within the world of Latin American broadband, local wireless applications have gained ground quickly, generally among commercial establishments. For example, the title of the “world’s first WiFi-linked e-payments network” is claimed by The Mall of San Marino in Guayaquil, Ecuador (Burger 2004). Residential Uses of the Internet in Latin America For what purposes do Latin Americans use the Internet? Data on this issue are unfortunately relatively scarce and lack the detail compared to what is known about American and European users. The “average user” – if such a person may be said to exist – spends 29 hours per month on-line, compared to a global average of 25 hours (http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1531). Usage rates vary among countries: in a sample of six countries, using data for 2007, Argentines and Brazilians were the heaviest users (as measured by days and hours of usage per month), and visited the largest number of websites as well (Table 2). Country or Dependency Average Monthly Usage Days per User Average Monthly Usage Hours per User Average Monthly Pages per User Argentina Brazil Chile Colombia Mexico Puerto Rico 17.7 15.8 16.7 15.9 15.0 12.9 32 32 31 26 25 17 2,290 3,371 2,310 1,837 1,674 1,442 Table 2: Usage Statistics for Six Latin American Countries, 2007. (Source: http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1531) As Table 3 indicates, Internet portals (e.g., Google) ranked as the most commonly and heavily used site category, with 13.4 hours per visitor. Internet users also spend a significant amount of time each month sending and receiving instant messages (9.2 Spatialities of the Latin American Internet 137 hours per visitor), social networking sites (5.9 hours per visitor), and e-mail (4.1 hours per visitor). The websites that command the greatest attention from Latin American users include Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo! (Table 4). Use Hours per Visitor % of Visitors Using Function Portals Instant Messengers Social Networking E-mail Entertainment Games Photos Multimedia Online Gaming 13.4 9.2 5.9 4.1 2.2 1.7 1.7 1.4 1.1 35.8 31.6 25.9 22.1 10.0 13.0 16.0 10.2 12.2 Table 3: Categories of Use among Latin American Internet Users, 2007. (Source: http://www.hitsearchlimited.com/news/999747/) Website Total Unique Visitors (000s) Average Visits per Visitor Microsoft Google Yahoo! Terra Networks MercadoLibre Wikipedia Sites UOL Red Ares Galaxy Fox Interactive Media France Telecom 47,342 46,496 35,075 27,421 23,739 20,984 14,681 14,595 14,078 13,759 35 38 13 9 5 4 14 N/A 4 3 Table 4: Most Heavily Accessed Websites from Latin America, 2007. (Source: http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1531) Internet Censorship in Latin America Internet accessibility reflects, inter alia, the willingness of governments to allow or encourage their populations to log-in to cyberspace. Repressive governments often fear the emancipatory potential of the Internet, which allows individuals to circumvent tightly licensed and controlled media. The degree of Internet censorship obviously varies widely and reflects how democratic and open to criticism political systems are. Typically, governments that seek to impose censorship do so using the excuse of protecting public morality from ostensible sins such as pornography or gambling, although more recently, combating terrorism has emerged as a favourite rationale. A wide variety of methods are used to restrict and/or regulate Internet access, including applying laws and licenses, content filtering, tapping and surveillance, pricing and taxation policies, hardware and software manipulation, and self-censorship. 138 Journal of Latin American Geography Latin American Internet censorship is typically less egregious than that found in other parts of the world. Many governments with unsavory human rights records in the past, such as Brazil, now are remarkably open with regard to the Internet. Similarly, Argentina passed an anti-censorship decree for the Internet. In some countries, including Costa Rica, which is known for its democratic governance, journalists have been harassed by the state when exposing corruption in ruling circles on the Internet (Silenced 2003). Similarly, Brazilian courts have ordered ISPs to block access to certain blogs and YouTube videos that carry material “defamatory” to the state. The most restrictive policies are found in Cuba, where Internet and e-mail access is jealously guarded by the government, which controls the country’s only Internet gateway and four national ISPs (Kalathil and Boas 2001). Until recently, all Internet accounts had to be registered through the National Center for Automated Data Exchange at the cost of $260 a month (the average Cuban makes $240 per year). Relaxation of this restriction in 2006 helped to fuel the boom in Cuban Internet access. Less severe is the attempt of the Chilean Chamber of Deputies, which passed a bill allowing judges to punish Internet users who are “offensive to morals” or the “public order” (Cortes 2000). The order was aimed at websites located within Chile, i.e., with the .cl domain name, and was utterly ineffective against sites located outside the country. An attempt to prohibit access to Alejandra Matus’s The Black Book of Chilean Justice, an expose of the ineffectiveness of the judiciary, led to its publication on the web and even wider readership. In contrast to these measures, the Peruvian government passed the Transparency and Access to the Public Information Act, which created public access Internet terminals, and established the FITEL Program (Telecommunications Investment Fund), which is responsible for promoting universal Internet access. The FITEL fund was created to fund the provision of telecommunications services to rural regions and poor urban areas. Peru’s Transparency and Access to the Public Information Act includes the creation of public information portals and considers governmental information as accessible to citizens. The Internet can serve a variety of counter-hegemonic purposes in civil society, including human rights groups, gays and lesbians, and ethnic or religious opposition to governments (Warf and Grimes 1997; Crampton 2003). Attempts at censorship, which are often resisted, sometimes successfully, by local cyberactivists, often occur despite official guarantees protecting freedom of speech. The Internet is relatively low in cost and easy to use, and thus lowers a major obstacle to the participation in public debate by the poor. When disenfranchised groups have access to this medium, they willingly use it for their own purposes: for example, cyberspace played a significant role in the Zapatista uprising in Mexico in 1994 (Froehling 1997; Knudsen 1998). Today, throughout Latin America, numerous groups in civil society use the medium to connect isolated minorities (e.g., gays and lesbians), unite and empower women’s movements, give voice to human rights activists, and to allow political minorities to promote their own activist agendas (Friedman 2005). E-commerce and E-government A rapidly growing application of the Internet is electronic commerce (‘e-commerce’), which reduces transactions costs for business-to-business (B2B) and customer-to-business (C2B) sales (Brunn and Leinbach 2001). E-commerce takes a variety of forms, including electronic data interchange (e.g., inventory data, digital invoices and contracts, purchase orders, and product updates), Internet recruiting and advertising, web-based banking and stock trading, electronic retail shopping, and digital Spatialities of the Latin American Internet 139 gambling. For the most part, this activity is restricted to large commercial actors, although many observers hope that the Internet will open opportunities for small and medium sized establishments to reach out to national and global markets. Digital convergence of hitherto distinct media has opened new possibilities in Internet video and telephony (e.g., Voice Over Internet Protocol), which is still in its infancy, although services such as Skype have gained popularity. In Latin America, e-commerce and e-government have grown slowly but steadily. In 2007, Latin American e-commerce totalled more than US$16 billion (Table 5), a market in which Brazil comprised one-quarter (Pincept.com 2008). As in many developing countries, foreign investors often take the lead (Tigre 2003). For example, in 2000 Miami-based portal Yupi Internet launched its business-to-business portal, Amarillas, targeting entrepreneurs and small- and mid-sized enterprises in Latin America. Similarly, information-intensive sectors such as banks have played a major role, such as Bradesco, a leading private bank, which conducts e-commerce with a half million clients in Brazil. Volkswagen do Brazil used the growing Internet there to establish and extranet system of links with its suppliers (Nilles 1999b). Latin American commercial use of the Internet has focused on Internet telephony (Koprowski 2005). For example, in 1998, Colombia became the first Latin American country to offer long distance VOIP service (Peña-Quiñones 2003). MercadoLibre, the Buenos Aires-based virtual company that is roughly the Latin American equivalent of eBay, had 25 million customers in 12 countries in 2008 (Chandler 2008). On-line shopping, or “e-tailing,” however, has grown relatively slowly, in part due to consumers’ fears about web security and identity theft. Obstacles to the growth of e-commerce include poor access to the Internet and requisite technical skills, the relatively lower use of credit cards, lack of secure on-line transactions, and the lack of a critical mass of users. In many places, concerns over copyright and intellectual property rights loom large. Brazil 4,899 Mexico 1,377 Venezuela 821 Caribbean (except Puerto Rico) 818 Argentina 739 Chile 687 Central America 499 Puerto Rico 445 Peru 218 Colombia 201 Table 5: E-Commerce Revenues in Selected Latin American Countries and Dependencies, 2007 (US$ millions). (Source: Pincept.com 2008) Closely related to e-commerce is e-government, which involves a variety of new forms of interaction between states and citizens. E-government takes a variety of forms, ranging from simple broadcasting of information to integration (i.e., allowing user input), in which network integration minimizes duplication of efforts (Wagner et al. 2003). E-government allows, for example, for the digital collection of taxes, voting, and provision of some public services, particularly the provision of information, and may help to democratize decision-making in countries with authoritarian states. Such steps boost the efficiency and effectiveness of public services, allowing, for example, online registration of companies and automobiles; electronic banking; utility bill payments; applications for government programmes, universities, and licenses; access to census data; 140 Journal of Latin American Geography and reducing the waiting time as paperwork filters through government bureaucracies. By increasing the probability of discovery, e-government may lower levels of corruption, circumvent caudillo style leadership, and by making government records more open, may empower citizens to challenge arbitrary government actions. However, as Friedman (2005) warns in her study of how the Internet shapes struggles for gender equality in Latin America, there is no guarantee that cyberspace is inherently democratizing: rather than view it as necessarily emancipatory and promoting non-hierarchical interactions, as do many technological determinists, its impacts are contingent on the ideologies and skills of those who deploy it, their agendas, and the local and regional contexts. Latin American e-governance exhibits numerous manifestations. Brazil, for example, became the first country in the Americas to introduce electronic voting (Finquelievich et al. 2004). Mexico launched Mexico On-Line in 1996, which allows electronic submission of tax returns. The Brazilian government launched in 2000 an electronic procurement auction, Electronic Pregão, to expedite bids on government contracts (Joia and Zamot 2002). Some, such as Peru’s InfoDes project in Cajamarca, a World Bank project, allow rural citizens to access local libraries digitally (Wagner et al., 2003). In 1998, Argentina’s Ministry of Communications launched the Argentina@ Internet.todos program aimed at enhancing access for residents of low income rural areas. More mundanely, most cities in the region promote themselves on the Web as a means to entice tourists and foreign investors, interactive municipal sites give residents access to information about schools, libraries, and hospitals, and even downloading official forms facilitates citizen participation. Electronic payment of dues and fines, moreover, short-cuts corrupt government bureaucrats and helps to minimize corruption, and digital hotlines for submission of citizen complaints give voice to those who are typically voiceless in the circles of governance. On the other hand, the digital divide in Latin America – about which very little is known – may also enhance disparities between those who can make use of cyberspace and those who are not, reinforcing and deepening long-standing inequalities (Hawkins and Hawkins 2003). Internet-based schooling is also increasingly popular. Most national and many local governments throughout Latin America have subsidized programs to install the Internet in schools, with mixed results. In Chile, for example, over 90 percent of classrooms now have Internet-access (Arredondo et al. 2004). Argentina launched its TELAR (“Todos en la red”) program in 1994 in association with international education NGOs. Similarly, Mexico’s Red Enlaces network has significantly improved access for children in the public school system. Many schools, however, are handicapped by lack of equipment, obsolete machines, slow and inefficient maintenance, and inadequately prepared teachers; moreover, often computers may be lost or stolen. Nonetheless, computer-based courses tend to be highly popular among students, often forming the highpoint of the school week. As Cabrera Paz (2004) points out in a study of Colombian school children, Internet usage transforms their geographical imaginations, although not always for the better: The things that can be seen on the World Wide Web serve to highlight what is unavailable locally. The globalization upon which the Internet is built becomes a symbol for the limitations of one’s own space. The user’s gaze is expanded to embrace other territories, a wider place, desired objects that are beyond reach and available only in the ‘developed world’ of others. That distant and hardly imaginable space is the space of abundance, of greater pleasures, with objects that ‘we never dreamed we could explore’ [quoting a child at the end]. Spatialities of the Latin American Internet 141 Several U.S.-based distance learning firms, such as the University of Phoenix, the Thunderbird School of Global Management, and Nova Southeastern University, offer courses available to Latin Americans with sufficient funds, English proficiency, and Internet connections. Sylvan Learning Systems acquired an 80 percent stake in the Universidad de las Americas, one of Chile’s leading private institutions of higher education. Private for-profit companies, such as Brazil’s Klickeducacao.com.br, offer numerous courses in academic subjects as well as applied topics such as how to use spreadsheets. Escolavirtual.com.br, a company created by Tema Informática, offers web-based courses in 29 campuses located throughout the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan area (www.zonalatina.com/Internet.htm). Whitney International, a Bermuda-based distance learning company founded in 2005, has recently made an aggressive foray into the Latin American market (Campbell 2008); in July, 2008, it acquired the Technological University of Mexico, a major private university with several campuses, as well as the Latin University of Costa Rica, that country’s largest private institution. Such examples demonstrate the range and diversity of applications of e-commerce and e-government throughout the greater Latin American region. Conclusions The Internet has become increasingly important to the 574 million people who live in Latin America and the Caribbean. Penetration rates vary widely, of course, among and within countries, falling as low as 2.7 percent in Nicaragua to as high as 85.9 percent in Antigua. Similarly, access speeds range from low-speed dial-up connections in rural areas to high-speed broadband. Generally, the Caribbean exhibited the highest incomes, best developed infrastructure, and highest rates of usage. Central to this story, however, is the remarkable growth of the Internet in the region: fuelled by the declining prices of telecommunications services (in part brought on by the global glut of fiber optics lines) as well as ever-cheaper computer hardware and software, the number of users has jumped exponentially. Between 2000 and 2008, the number of Latin Americans on-line jumped by 672 percent; even the lowest rate of increase, in Brazil, amounted to more than 113 percent, while Haiti witnessed an astonishing 16,567 percent rise. Such growth pulled almost 145 million new Latin Americans into cyberspace. While some governments have attempted tepid forms of Internet censorship, in general Latin American cyberspace has mushroomed free of attempts to regulate its access and content. As Internet usage becomes more popular and widespread in nature, including such diverse applications as email, on-line shopping, banking, airline and hotel reservations, playing multi-player video games, electronic job searches, instant messaging, e-marketing, chat rooms, VOIP telephony, distance education, downloading music and television shows, digital pornography, blogs, YouTube and MySpace, and simply “Googling” information, cyberspace will have profound effects on Latin Americans’ social relations, everyday lives, culture, politics, and many other spheres of social activity. Indeed, for ever larger numbers of Latin Americans, “real life” and virtual life have become hopelessly entangled. For millions, access to cyberspace is no longer a luxury, but a necessity. Precisely because it allows unfettered access to information, the Internet has also been viewed with alarm by numerous governments in the region. Of course, the Internet will not automatically generate independent effects by itself (a view that subscribes to naïve technological determinism), for its information is filtered through the pre-understandings that people take with them on-line. Yet by bringing ever larger numbers of people into contact with one another, the Internet offers opportunities for expanding the sphere of politics, and may help to redefine the public sphere by pointing 142 Journal of Latin American Geography out alternative models of authority, offering the potential of challenging the political monopoly of traditional elites over the means of communication and revitalizing citizen-based democracy movements. In some respects, the growing Latin web may resemble Habermas’s (1979) “ideal speech situation” consisting of unfettered discourse is central to the “public sphere” in which social life is constructed and reproduced and through which truth is constructed in the absence of barriers to communication. By giving voice to many disenfranchised communities, ranging from lesbians to indigenous peoples to unemployed barrio residents, the Internet enables – but does not guarantee – a broadening of political views. Thus, the impacts of the Internet upon the region have just begun, and while they may be difficult to predict, it is say to conclude that they will nonetheless be substantial. Acknowlegement The author thanks David Robinson for his helpful comments. References Arredondo, M., R. Catalán, J. Montesinos and S. Monsalve. 2004. Introducing New Information and Communication Technologies in Two Rural Schools in Central Chile: An Ethnographic Approximation. 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