The Other Side of the River: Cyberspace Comes to the Amazon

Published in the Association for Progressive Communications News, this article describes the effects of introducing telecentres in the Amazon region in the northern Brazilian state of Pará.

Caetano Scannavino, coordinator of the Saúde e Alegria (Health and Happiness) Project, is quoted as observing unexpected results: "In the beginning, we feared that the telecentres would open up such a new world for these communities that they would absorb - or suffocate - all the traditional culture of these populations." However, he notes that, "[i]nstead of weakening traditional knowledge, the opposite has happened: members of the communities ... have succeeded in better identifying who they are. They now want to launch community sites to present their reality to the world."

The author provides an overview of the programme, in which Saúde e Alegria partners with the Third Sector Information Network to introduce telecentres and provide increased wireless coverage throughout the area. This programme uses the groundwork provided by the federal government's E-Governance Citizen Support Service (Gesac) project, but builds on that work by creating new telecentres and introducing wi-fi technologies to expand coverage from existing telecentres to other communities.

This article describes some of the challenges faced in setting up these systems, and the solutions developed to solve them. Advantages of the new system are described, including exposure to cultural materials from outside the area and access to vital medical information. One case history is described in detail, in which the internet provided access to the latest snake bite information after a local girl was bitten.

The local communities are said to be enthusiastic about access to both computers and the internet. Communities neighbouring the telecentres are also described as curious, with financing cited as the primary challenge to expansion.