LxC Tasks 5+6: Internet in Latin America

The Latin American people have only recently begun to adopt a full fledge internet service throughout the continent. Only recently, with the dawn of newer, cheaper, and easier technology has the 3rd world begun to start teaching technology in schools and in communities. The problem in Latin America is that while it is easy to buy a computer, acquiring internet access is a very difficult. There are countless challenges with the internet in South America - it is expensive and very slow. Most Americans are used to internet services that deliver speeds in excess of 1mB/s (one megabyte per second, 1000kB per second). However, the Latin American population is still reliant on slow 56K connections that deliver under 56kB/s of data, approximately 5% of the speed that we receive here in the states. World Internet Usage Statistics [1] shows that the internet using population in Latin America increased by 1,038.2% between the period of 2000 and 2010, while only 34.5% of the population has access to the internet. Of the world population that has internet access, the Latin American population only accounts for a mere 10.8%.

In addition, services such as Facebook, Skype, and other social media tools have only recently expanded to South America.[2] The reason is that laws that govern privacy and personal information in countries other than the US require a separate entity of a company to run the appropriate software and hardware that does not disobey local laws.

The majority of people in 3rd world countries, especially those in Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and Columbia access the internet at so called "internet cafes". Here, they pay a few pesos per hour of using the internet - albeit the internet is till slow and not consistent. However, this is the best and cheapest way to access internet in the 3rd world. Internet cafes have become the hub of internet dispersion in the Latin American world.

Searching through the internet, I could not exactly find any sources on citizen journalism in the Latin American countries. This is mostly due to the fact that the internet there is used mostly for chatting, playing games, and listening to music. Most Latin American news outlets are controlled in one way or another by the government, thereby citizen journalism becomes very hard to disperse due to the conservatives and corruption in the government. Most people in the Latin American countries are scared of their government and it's power - they do not attempt citizen journalism because if their articles are not liked by the government, they could be jailed or killed.


[1] World Internet Usage Statistics - http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.html
[2]Fosk, Alejandro. "Situación De Internet En Latinoamérica June 2010