Latin America On-Line: The Internet, Development, and Democratization

Increasingly, aid agencies are turning to information technology as a key to promoting development and political reform. Internet proponents view information as critical to solving such problems of environmental destruction, disease, and authoritarianism. While the Internet poses intriguing possibilities for enhancing economic competitiveness and political pluralism, it is also creating new forms of exclusion and may lead to the neglect of other basic development issues. Moreover, the proponents of the Internet expansion in the Americas risk exacerbating rather than diminishing the dependency and uneven growth of previous development schemes. This article explores the current state of the Internet in Latin America and identifies some of the contradictions which are apparent in the discussion and use of this new technology in the region.