In a public library in Magdalena, a town of roughly 20,000 people in the state of Jalisco, Maria Magdalena Ceseña Barajas is learning to use a computer.
Maria, 42, left high school and married young. She now cleans a small cocina (restaurant) that sells prepared meals. Maria and her husband, a bus driver, are raising three teenage children in a rented house. The children share two small bedrooms while the parents use a makeshift bedroom in a hallway. With her new computer skills, Maria hopes to qualify for a higher-paying office job that might enable the family to afford a larger house of their own.
Maria is among tens of thousands of people throughout Mexico who are benefiting from a program that provides free access to computers and Internet connections in the country’s public libraries. The program has its roots in a partnership between the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Mexican government. In 2002, the foundation made a $30 million commitment to the National Council for Culture and Arts (CONACULTA), the agency that oversees Mexico’s public libraries. The Mexican government agreed to match the $30 million through national, state, and municipal sources, and Microsoft Mexico donated an additional $9.9 million in software. When the program is completed in 2007, more than one-third of Mexico’s 7,210 public libraries will be connected to the Internet, representing a substantially higher number of libraries than first planned.
Narrowing the Digital Divide
In the world’s 13th-largest country, where the terrain ranges from coastal plains to rugged mountains and transportation from donkeys to sports utility vehicles, access to information technology has varied widely. In 2001, fewer than four percent of the country’s 100 million residents had access to the Internet, with figures ranging from 27 percent in the relatively developed northeast to zero percent in areas of the south and southeast.
To narrow the digital divide, President Vicente Fox launched the e-Mexico program in April 2002. The goal of the initiative was to create 10 million Internet users by the end of 2006 and link 90 percent of the population to the Internet by 2025. E-Mexico also committed to providing Internet connectivity to public libraries participating in the foundation-funded project.
Atemajac de Brizuela, Jalisco, a town of roughly 6,000, is one community that has benefited from the foundation’s investment. Its small 20-year-old library is a popular resource within the community and over the years, demand for its services outgrew its capacity. To expand the library, librarians set up a tent as a temporary annex. Eventually, during a governor’s visit, hundreds of sign-carrying townspeople—mostly students—gathered in the main plaza to ask for a new library building. The governor heard their request, and the new two-story library opened just in time to benefit from the foundation’s grant program. Today, the new computer lab has turned the library into a bustling hub of activities, including classes and community meetings.
Spreading the Word
Library supporters are equally resourceful when publicizing their libraries’ new capacities. Handmade posters and flyers in schools, buses, and town plazas, newspaper ads and articles, and invitations to teachers and principals are just some of the ways they spread the word among residents about the availability of new computer services. In one town, a voceador (street hawker) in a car equipped with megaphones drove around broadcasting a recorded message.
Although the foundation’s investment is now complete, the new services continue to benefit people throughout Mexico, and the government is considering expanding the program. A comprehensive evaluation of the program is underway, and initial results are promising. More than 15,000 computers in 2,728 public libraries have been installed. Over the last two years, library staff and volunteers have received over 300,000 hours of technology training; library users have received roughly 450,000 hours of computer instruction. The libraries will receive an estimated 15 million visits in 2007.
But individual stories may speak more eloquently than statistics to the effects of the program.
Senora Beni, a poor woman in Culiacán, Sinaloa, grew up thinking a computer was a cosa del diablo (an instrument of the devil)—until she was unable to answer a question from her nine-year-old daughter’s homework. Helping her daughter study was the inspiration she needed to learn how to use a computer and the Internet, which she now also uses to communicate with faraway relatives via email.
In Santiago Ixcuintla, Nayarit, 58-year-old Margarita Macías used to talk to her son in Africa by phone every other month—the most they could afford. Now she has learned to use the library computer, they exchange email every week.
Changing Lives
Such stories are common to Jorge Hernandez Calva, a Mexico libraries program manager. He remembers a woman who had not seen her husband for several years after he migrated to the United States. The local librarian in Mazatepec, Morelos helped her set up a videoconference using a computer and the Internet. When she saw her husband’s face on the computer screen, the woman burst into tears.
“The program in Mexico is helping those who had few opportunities for education and job skills find an open door,” Hernandez said. “That was unimaginable only a couple of years ago.”