Revista_andrade

8/7/2019 Revista_andrade

1/3

Journalism of the americas

36 ReVista spring | summer 2011 photo by kara andrade

In OctOber O 2009, my husband and I drOve

back down to Guatemala, the country of

my birth, 3,118.5 miles, 53 hrs 1 minute of

driving according to BING maps, all the

way from California. While Id made sim-

ilar drives with my mother, this time we

werent headed down to bring back some

family member or to be at the mercy of

U.S. immigration ofcials to determine

our legal status in the United States. This

time we werent leaving because we were

sick of being treated like mojados and

maybe we just wouldnt come back.

This time I was driving down to Gua-

temala as a Fulbright scholar, on a grant

awarded by the U.S. State Department,

making me a diplomatic representative

of the United States (the irony doesnt es-

cape me). My Fulbright project was to re-

search online citizen media and to create

a collaborative citizen journalism web-

site for Guatemalans to share informa-

tion from their mobile phones to a web-

site. With all my community organizing,

nonprot and journalism background, I

was going down to listen, to learn and to

orchestrate an online participatory space

for civic issues in Guatemala.

I already knew that one of Guatema-

las biggest problems was internal com-

munication (the reason why someone in

Puerto Barrios has no clue what is hap-

pening in San Marcos), the lack of which

is then exacerbated outside the country.

Communication was prohibitively ex-

pensive so people often could not obtain

information outside their municipali-

ties. They often turned, as they do now,

to community radio stations, many of

them deemed pirate stations by the gov-

ernment. My family in the United States,

myself included, wanted to know what

was happening in Bananera, in Chiquim-

ula, in Puerto Barrios, in Guatemala City.

We wanted to share mundane events like

the patron saint festivals, las ferias, the

processions, and to nd out news about

catastrophes. Cheap, easy communica-

tion was essential for those living within

the country and those trying to maintain

a transnational connectedness.

It is also important to address com-

munication and access when looking at

the rise of citizen journalism, participa-

tory media and citizen mediainfor-

mation produced by people who are not

professional journalists or reporters. Af-

fordability and ubiquitous access such as

Internet cafes, Telecenters and mobile

phones democratize information. For

much of the time Guatemala and the rest

of Central America werent part of the in-

formation revolution.

Citiz MiMobile Phone Democracy By Kara andrade

Neto exhibits his iPhone with the backdrop

of Antigua, Guatemala.


2/3

drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline ReVista 37

But communication has changed in

Central America. Guatemalas evolving

mobile sector, representative of the re-

gion, shows how this technology can of-

fer unprecedented participation in bothlocal and global civic conversations and

actions. It is presenting an opportunity

for nation-building (however nascent)

and democratization that neither the

Guatemalan government nor U.S. and

European foreign policy have been able

to do.

It became obvious things had changed

when Twitter user Jeanfer was arrested

by Guatemalan authorities on the charg-

es of intent to incite nancial panic for

sending out this tweet: Primera accin

real, sacar el pisto de Banrural y que-

brar el banco de los corruptos. First real

action, to take the money out of Ban-

rural and break the bank of the corrupt.

He was arrested and spent the night in

jail, whereupon the Twitter community

raised funds to help him pay for a lawyer.

In the same month that many human

rights and mining activists had received

death threats via SMS (the acronym for

Short Message Service or text messages,

prominent lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg,

allegedly fearing he would be killed, re-corded a YouTube video blaming Presi-

dent Colom and his wife for such a deed.

The video was released the same week-

end Rosenbergs body was found shot in

Guatemala Citys wealthy Zone 10.

These examples show how the priva-

tization of telecommunications creates a

competitive market for citizens to express

themselves, to communicate and to ac-

cess much needed information. In many

ways its an awakening in Guatemala, to

the rst brick or foundation of a demo-

cratic society, of the right to express ones

opinion publicly and for that opinion to

play a role in ones own community and

in self-governance.

A social fabric or an imagined social

community is being spun from pixels

thousands of people who are creating

their own Wordpress.com or Blogger.

com, creating civic group Facebook Fan

pages like Movimiento Cvico Nacional

and Voces de Cambio, organizing collec-

tive actions on Twitter and Facebook like

the protests in Guatemala City asking

President Colom to step down because of

Rodrigo Rosenbergs YouTube video al-

legations. There are Twitter hashtags tofollow impunity efforts, national emer-

gencies, trafc, weather, tax season.

In many developing and emerging

markets with a lack of infrastructure and

investment in traditional communica-

tion networks such as landlines and oth-

er cable-dependent communication, the

telecom sector leapfrogs into the mobile

phone arena. Investors, government and

consumers shift quickly toward mobile

communication because of convenience,

affordability, and accessibility. The table

on the following page illustrates the sur-

prisingly large penetration rate and the

very impressive annual growth rate in

Central American countries.

This development means that the new

technology is received with much more

ease than in already existing well-es-

tablished communication markets. This

process has been helped quite a bit by the

surrounding countries of Brazil, Venezu-

ela and Mexico, as seen in the table on

the following page.

I got a glimpse of how much Guate-malas telecommunications had changed

in 2006 on a reporting assignment on

deforestation in Petn. On the top of an

excavated Mayan pyramid called El Ti-

gre, one of three pyramids in a remote

archaeological site deep in the Guate-

malan jungle of Mirador Basin, I rested

my legs weary from hiking 27 miles in 90

degree heat. I was barely able to raise my

head enough to see someone holding up

a mobile phone. Josu Guzmn was one

of the Guatemalan archaeologists I was

accompanying into this ancient Mayan

city and he was sending a text message to

his girlfriend.

In Guatemala were very connected,

he told me. Thats when I started to be-

lieve that mobile phones and the devel-

oped telecommunications industry in

Guatemala were one of the reasons for

this interconnectedness. It gave me faith

in mobile technology as a tool for jour-

nalism and democratic development.

At that moment I imagined what news

would look like if everyone who had a

mobile phone or at least access to one,

could send, share, distribute and re-

port events they witnessed via a mobilephone to a website and also receive that

information. I soon realized that long

after the asphalt and pavement ends,

the mobile phone networks in Guate-

mala extend deep into the mountains,

with 99.7 percent penetration of mobile

service in a country with an estimated

population of more than 14 million in

2009, according to the World Bank De-

velopment Indicators. In 2007, the Su-

perintendencia de Telecomunicaciones

(SIT) registered 4.7 million more mo-

bile users, indicating that 9 out of every

10 Guatemalans own or have access to

a mobile phone. Much to the surprise

of many of its Central American neigh-

bors, Guatemalas telecom sector is one

of the top four in Latin America, accord-

ing to Fundacin2020 consultant Mario

Marroqun Rivera. This gure contrasts

with high-speed Internet access at only

7.7 percent and highly concentrated in

large urban areas.

In 2001, Appalachian State Universi-

ty anthropologist Tim Smith traveled toGuatemala to research social movements

and democracy among indigenous com-

munities. I had Mayas asking for my

cellphone number and pulling out their

ip Motorola when in 1997 and 1998 I

had to get on a bus and show up to their

houses and that was the way to get in

contact with anyone, said Smith, who is

currently traveling in Guatemala study-

ing post-war Maya activism and electoral

politics. Smith believes all this texting,

blogging, and buying of smartphones

will lead to big changes.

Part of me wants to say something

along the lines of the use of mobile

phones and now online networking sites

for democratic participation and mobili-

zation in this election coming up is prob-

ably akin to the rise of print capitalism in

Latin America, he observed.

Smith believes Guatemala should be

seen as a model in the use of this tech-

nology in the upcoming election in Au-

new voices


3/3

Journalism of the americas

38 ReVista spring | summer 2011

gust 2011in particular the use of these

tools by ordinary citizens who are using

the Internet and smartphones and blog-

ging to get vital information out. Mayas

are sitting in Mayan-owned and oper-

ated Internet cafes blogging in Maya and

texting; it was unimaginable ten years

ago! It has the potential to shake up the

election and not lead us to another 1999

result. Mobile phones lessen the urban-

rural dichotomy, allowing communities

to organize themselves.

News organizations such as Emisoras

Unidas, Radio Sonora and El Peridico

provide breaking news via text or SMS

alerts and ask listeners to contributenews, comments and trafc reports that

are often read out on-air. During a ma-

jor four-hour electrical blackout that af-

fected 17 departments in October 2009,

people texted in their messages to radio

stations that were reading them out loud

while listeners tuned in via their $10 mo-

bile phones bought at the local market.

For the National Movement of Radio

Stationsrepresenting 20 of the 22 de-

partments and 168 radio stationsmo-

bile phones are vital tools for airing lo-

cal broadcasts in indigenous languages.

In late January I witnessed about two

dozen community radio stations vol-

unteers crowding around a speaker to

broadcast live from their mobile phones

to their communities from Guatemala

Citys Congress. Every few minutes they

would translate by phone into their com-

munitys language, and then put the mo-

bile phone back to the speaker. On the

other end was the station volunteer put-

ting the mobile phone the radio reporter

had called on to the microphone that was

connected to the radio transmitter and

the message was broadcast live. It was

their version of the one to many model,

and their mobile phones were the inter-

mediaries making that possible.

Some municipalities such as Maza-

tengo and Chinaulta use Twitter to deliv-

er local news and events. Guatemala City

sends out trafc alerts throughout the

day to Twitter and users also contribute

news about protests, blockades and con-

struction on the roads. Mobile phones

also provided a trail during CICIGs in-

vestigative work in tracking the truthabout the murder, later uncovered as a

plotted suicide, of Rodrigo Rosenberg.

Twitter in Guatemala only works via

online access or other enabling applica-

tions. As more smartphones are sold in-

cluding the recently introduced Android-

powered modelsmore people are able

to browse and use mobile phones beyond

just telephony. For example, anyone can

buy a mobile phone in Guatemala with-

out a plan, deposit or credit, pre-paysaldo

or funds, and sign up for unlimited WAP

by texting 805 wap. For about 60 cents

daily, that person can browse the Internet

and have unlimited access. Thats cheaper

than texting and MMS.

This trend in Central America falls

in line with the trend in the rest of the

world. The next two billion Internet us-

ers will be people who make less than

$4,000 a year, according to Don Derosby

of Monitor GBN. Its not about the net-

work, its about the cheap mobile device,

he stated in his report on The Evolving

Internet: Driving Forces, Uncertain-

ties and Four Scenarios to 2025 at UC

Berkeleys School of Information in 2010.

That future is already here, maybe un-

evenly distributed, but here.

The numbers above clearly show that

penetration and growth are rising in

Central America, and are making some

people in Latin America, like Mexican

businessman and media mogul Car-

los Slim, extremely wealthy. The region

welcomes information services that are

transformative because they provide a

quantum leap for disadvantaged individ-

uals, enabling them to participate in gov-ernance, to gain an economic advantage,

to transmit culture, to create literacy and

to make the unattainable, attainable.

Kara Andrade is an Ashoka fellow

working in Central America. Previ-

ously she was funded by the U.S. State

Department to implement a mobile-

based citizen journalism website called

HablaGuate. She was the community

organizer for Spot.Us, an open source

project that focuses on community-

funded reporting. She graduated from

the University of California at Berkeley

with a Masters in Journalism and has

ten years of experience in nonprot

development, public health and com-

munity organizing. She has worked as

a multimedia producer and photojour-

nalist for Agence France-Presse, France

24, the Associated Press, the San Jose

Mercury News, Contra Costa Times and

the Oakland Tribune.

Source: https://www.budde.com.au/Research/2008-Latin-America-Telecoms-Mobile-and-Broad-

band-in-Central-America.html

moi pio go i c ai oi

sp 2007

cOuntry PenetratIOn annual GrOwth

bliz 53.3% 14%

Cs ric 31.9% 1%

el Slv 65.8% 51%

Guml 61.4% 47%

hus 46.3% 80%

nicgu 40.2% 42%

pm 72.4% 29%

li ai fx i po oi po ipio:

2009

Sources: Euromonitor International from International Telecommunications Union/World Bank/

trade sources/national statistics

Documents

Revista_andrade