Abstract
This chapter analyzes in detail how each country of Central America connected to the Internet. The discussion follows two parallel processes. On the one hand, the chapter explains the singularities of local connection projects in each country. It analyzes the motivations and challenges involved in local networking initiatives. On the other hand, the chapter also focuses on the transnational flows of people, knowledge, and technologies that cut across the isthmus to make local projects possible. More than departing from a transnational approach, the discussion of each country individually demonstrates how transnational flows and exchanges between countries materialized in specific ways at the local level. The chapter makes visible the singular approach to integration that becomes clear when regional networking initiatives are examined through a transnational lens.
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Notes
- 1.
In addition to the countries analyzed in this work, de Téramond’s task force consulted on or participated in the connection of countries such as the Bahamas, Belize, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago, among others.
- 2.
Chronologically, this process to privatize telecommunications was brought about on the following dates: Guatemala (1998), Panamá (1997), El Salvador (1998), Nicaragua (2001), Honduras (2003), y Costa Rica (2007).
- 3.
According to Hopmann, this required the aid of UUNET and of several German academic institutions, given the American intervention in Nicaragua. These entities acted as intermediaries so that the United States Department of Defense (DDNMIL) would give the TLD to UNI (Arce & Hopmann, 2002).
- 4.
This is an ongoing controversy that has persisted up to the present.
- 5.
The agreements made in this meeting were the subject of dispute in the subsequent months among several members of MayaNet and the OAS project.
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Siles, I. (2020). A Central American Internet. In: A Transnational History of the Internet in Central America, 1985–2000. Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48947-2_5
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