Publica-Tech03-Artículo

Internet a la Latina

There is plenty of local Web fare, but links are still hard to come by.

by Rene Ramos

If you want to get an idea of both the potential and the challenge facing development of the Internet in Latin America, point your World Wide Web browser to the Peruvian Scientific Network (http://www. rcp.net.pe).

You will be greeted by an image of the "Señor de Sipan," an Inca god rendered in brilliant gold, green and blue.

An impressive array of information resources is just a mouse click away. You can browse issues of the venerable magazine Caretas, as well as dive into a host of illustrated documents about the state of networking in Peru's governmental, educational and commercial sectors.

But after a while you notice that a link on several pages states: "If you prefer the English version of this document, please click here."

A large part of the information on the Peruvian group's server and many others in Latin America-is in English, geared toward a foreign audience.

Meanwhile, the average business person in Latin America has little access to electronic mail, Gopher and the WWW on the Internet.

Among the reasons is the difficulty of finding and connecting to local access providers, and the incredible expense of establishing international links.

Latin America's citizens have yet to become "Netizens."

Extending the reach of networking into the daily life of Latin Americans hinges heavily on national and international efforts to improve the region's telephone and data communications network infrastructure.

Not coincidentally, countries where commercial Internet sites are emerging are the same ones that have begun to escape the decades-old legacy of noisy lines and elusive dial tones.

Just as in North America and Europe, the driving force behind the development of the Latin American networks has been scientific research and education, rather than commerce.

Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica and Mexico scored some of the early successes in this area. Then, in 1991, the Organization of American States began to build RedHUCyT (the Spanish acronym for Hemisphere-Wide Inter-University Scientific and Technological Information Network), allocating the money to connect member countries to the Internet.

Through a series of projects and seminars, RedHUCyT has fostered in Latin America an increasing awareness of the Internet, along with the establishment of some key nodes and services.

Combined with other national and regional efforts, the results of the OAS's efforts have been dramatic. Today, every country in the region has achieved at least E-mail connectivity to the network. Most have full Internet connectivity.

The Internet Society's Latin American Chapter has also been lobbying countries to ease the regulatory and tariffing barriers to using the Internet.

And this year, rules and tariffs in such major markets as Argentina and Brazil began to allow the creation of new commercial Internet service providers. Latin American countries with more advanced commercial Internet markets include Mexico and Chile.

Now, Latin American Web sites are proliferating, creating an "Internet a la Latina." Here are just a few sites, many of them only months old:

Argentina: The WWW server of the Ministry of the Economy and Public Works provides access to statistics on investment opportunities, mining, tourism, cultural information and more (http:// www.mecon.ar/).

Also in Argentina: Elecciones Presidenciales 1995 is still on-line following the May elections. It looks at a groundbreaking experiment in electronic democracy and is operated as a joint venture between El Clarin, the daily newspaper, and the University of Buenos Aires (http://www.uba.ar/elec95/ homepage.html).
Costa Rica: San Jose's daily newspaper La Nacion posts its principle articles and photographs (http://www.nacion.co.cr).
Cuba: See the "Fidel for U.S. President 1996" home page, from the "politics makes for strange bedfellows" school of thought (http://www.slugs.com/image-smith/fidel).
Dominican Republic: It burst on the scene earlier this year with the inauguration of four servers in just two months. They are operated by All America Cables & Radio Internet Service (http://www. aacr.net/ ), a telephone company; Listin Diario (http://www.nando. net/prof/caribe/Listin/listin.html ), a Dominican daily newspaper; Compania Dominicana de Telefonos (http://codetel.net.do), the dominant telephone company; and Tricom (http://www.tricom.net), a third phone company serving the small Caribbean island.
Mexico: Football lives on the WWW, brought to you by the Monterrey Institute of Technology (http://131.178.14.111/rlopez/SOCCER.html.)
The Latin American and Caribbean Center (LACC) of Florida International University, in Miami: This organization is preparing for the arrival of a Free Trade Area of the Americas by the year 2005, as put forth during last year's Summit of the Americas. As part of the project, LACC is assisting the Miami consulates of all 33 countries of the hemisphere in creation of a WWW page (http:// americas.fiu.edu).
The Inter-American Development Bank: It includes statistical information on Latin America (http://www.iadb.org).

For more about the Internet in Latin America, browse Directorio de America Latina Global Net (http://www.globalnt.com), which provides a selection of servers, broken down by categories.

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