~ Both man and jug are made of clay, but the clay is not the same ~

The profound economic crisis that Argentina is undergoing at the moment hung like a cloud over the congress, but this did not prevent more than 500 delegates representing virtual citizen networks from all five continents reaching conclusions that will, undoubtedly, "invade" the Net soon and project a very different vision of the globalisation process from those hidebound by narrow economic perspectives. Despite the effects of 11-S/01, the war in Afghanistan, US attempts to interfere in and criminalise the Internet, the Buenos Aires meeting managed to show us the other face of cyberspace: a mutlilingual, multicultural network, inhabited by people actively involved in the Knowledge Society and determined to build a different world to that which politicians and the media most often try to sell us - a world in which we become nothing but consumers.

This II Congress agreed to establish a "Global Citizen Network Partnership" open to all citizen network organisations, individuals, public and private academic organisations, governments and businesses. The Partnership, a kind of consortium committed to community action via information an communications technology (ICT) was concieved as "a new experimental framework to be invented together (instead of copying traditional formulas)." This conclusion was reached after we had been presented with a flood of wonderfully varied experiences, from the jungles of Papua New Guinea and the Peruvian Amazon, from neighbourhood centres in Dakar and the poor areas of big US cities, education groups from Argentina, Brazil and Equador, telecentre networks scattered all over Latin America and India and a multitude of other social movements determined to battle the devastating effects of poverty and underdevelopment through the Internet.

The need to reflect the activity of these virtual worlds in the real world was one of the hottest topics under debate at the Congress. Social movements with very different objectives and agendas cohabit on the Net. As one of the participants pointed out, creating networks in cyberspace is quite different from occupying it. This difference was most clearly illustrated by Eusebio Mino Castro, a representative of the Asháninka people from the Peruvian Amazon. Mino started off by explaining the role that the Net has begun to play in this community. "Thanks to the Internet we have learned how to do research", he said. He explained how the two most cited obstacles to the use of the Internet in circumstances such as his own, backwardness and the lack of electricity, had been overcome. Neither had stopped this community from managing to find the needed resources for accessing the Net via wireless radio and satellites in Peru and Sweden. As a consequence, they have established a telework centre from which, amongst other things, the tribal elders can disseminate their knowledge to other communities.

Mino defended the concept of "two-way research". On a visit to Oxford to present the Asháninka experience, he came across numerous research projects on his people, all of them in English. He asked they be translated and was surprised to uncover a rich source of own knowledge and others from the same region that they had been unaware of or which had not been systematised so far. As he said, "The Net has also taught us to negotiate". An agreement was thus reached for local communities to actively partcipate in this research and also benefit directly from what came out of it. "Only via virtual networks it is possible to take full advantage of this two-way research", said Mino, after he had told us of his dream to create an online university for indigenous peoples.

The II Global Congress of Citizen Networks, transmitted live via videoconference to all the Argentine provinces, clearly highlighted the serious economic recession affecting the host country. Nonetheless, as Susana Finquelievich, researcher and organiser of the congress, explained in a detailed report, citizen networks are constantly on the increase in Argentina and they are becoming centres for local community living and development.

Finquelievich pointed out that at this stage a high degree of self-sufficiency is very difficult, making outside financing essential via either state or business. Thus, as had already been suggested in numerous workshops, she proposed that business instituted "social action" of different kinds in order to participate in micro community projects undertaken by citizen networks.

Despite all the difficulties and enormous social divisions that make these objectives so complicated, the Buenos Aires congress demonstrated that there are very lively places on the Net which have hardly any repercussions in the real world. While the economic evolution of the Internet has been the main subject of debate over the last few years, behind the scenes thousands of networks of all kinds have been weaving a rich tapestry of social action that projects a very different world from that we are constantly presented with in the media. A part of this reality is described in the book "Movimientos Sociales en la Red" ("Social Movements on the Net") by Osvaldo León, Sally Burch y Eduardo Tamayo and published by the Agencia Latinoamericana de Información. The book is proof of the extent to which information technology, in general, and the Internet, in particular, are seen as tools to be used in the defence and development of civil rights that would otherwise become merely rhetorical.

Related articles:

The Maturing of Citizen Networks, by Luis Angel Fernández Hermana, in editorial (7/11/2000)

Interview to Susana Finquelievicht, investigadora sociológica y arquitecta, by Karma Peiró Rubio (22/09/1998) "Todos necesitamos encontrarnos cara a cara"

"Redes ciudadanas.Construyendo nuevas sociedades de la era digital", by Artur Serra(14/11/2000)

Interview to Rabia Abdelkrim, investigadora y coordinadora del proyecto Cyberpop/Bombolong de Senegal, por Karma Peiró Rubio. (21/11/2000) "La inteligencia de las mujeres, como la de África, tiene que estar en Internet"

Interview to Antonia Stone, fundadora de CTCNet (Community Technology Centers' Network), por Karma Peiró Rubio (22/08/2000) "El uso de la tecnología hace capaces a las personas"

Interview to Mátyás Gaspár, director de la Corporación de Telecentros de carácter público de Hungria, por Karma Peiró Rubio (21/09/1999) "El proyecto de telecentros húngaros puede evitar la división digital"

Source: Social Institutions on the Net.