[nettime-lat] RV: [media-news] In Mexico, Net Not a Priority

["pedro lopez casuso" <pedropez@cantv.net>]

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De: George Antunes <antunes@pdq.net>
Para: media-news@egroups.com
Asunto: [media-news] In Mexico, Net Not a Priority
Fecha: mart., 16 ener 2001 03:40 pm


In Mexico, Net Not a Priority
by Julia Scheeres
Wired News

Jan. 16, 2001


How do you digitize your country when you can't even supply clean water and
electricity to a large slice of the population?

That's a major issue facing Mexico at the dawn of the 21st century, but one
that has received surprisingly little attention from the Mexican government.

Only 10 percent of the Mexican population has access to telephones and 5
percent to computers. But bridging the digital divide was not a hot topic
in the last presidential elections, nor is it a major item on President
Vicente Fox's agenda.

In fact, when PRI candidate Francisco Labastida announced during the
campaign that his goal was to make sure every Mexican child had access to
the Internet and computers, he was roasted by the national media.

"The schools are adobe, they don't have paper, pencils or books, so it's
preposterous to talk about the Internet," said Antonio Puertas, senior
editor of Punto-Com, a magazine that tracks technology matters in Latin
America.

Since Labastida was blasted, the subject has basically been dropped,
Puertas said. Functionaries refer obliquely to "incorporating new
technology" and toss about ideas such as creating an e-ministry or an
e-czar, but no "big plan" has been mapped out. Attempts by Wired News to
discuss the topic with Fox's press secretary were fruitless.

Puertas believes that Mexico's technological evolution won't occur at the
behest of government at all.

"I would expect that (Fox) will leave the job to be done by the private
sector, not by the government," Puertas added.

Indeed, Mexican nonprofits such as the Union of Businesspeople for
Technology in Education have managed to pry donations from the hands of
billionaire multinationals -- such as Microsoft -- with some success.

But on a larger scale, Mexico's future may well reside in free software as
well as hardware donations, said Gary Chapman, director of the 21st Century
Project, a nonprofit research and education program on science and
technology policy based at the University of Texas at Austin.

The standard MS Office price tag is $250. It would take the average Mexican
-- earning $5 a day -- almost 2 months to buy it.

Chapman calculates it would cost about $300 million to outfit Mexico's
notoriously under-funded schools with Microsoft applications -- the same
amount Microsoft claims to lose to piracy in Mexico each year.

The rampant proliferation of cracked software -- and the fear that
international companies would choose to do business elsewhere --
precipitated the passage of a law last year that makes it easier to
prosecute piracy crimes. But many observers believe that with so many
corrupt officials who can be paid to look the other way, the law is largely
unenforceable.

"Open source software would solve that (piracy) problem," Chapman said.
"You can get all the functionality without paying the software fees."

In fact, Red Escolar, a project that aspires to wire every Mexican school
to the Internet, uses free applications Linux and Gnome on its computers,
he said.

"Mexico could become an example for other countries around the world,"
Chapman said.



=======================================================
George Antunes                 Voice: 713-743-3923
Political Science Dept        Fax:   713-743-3927
University of Houston          Internet: antunes@uh.edu
Houston, TX 77204             or       antunes@pdq.net



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