ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas) is an organization designed to foster co-operation amongst Latin American countries and currently includes Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Cuba, Honduras and Dominica as member states.

In response to the controversial Organization of American States, which is viewed by many in Latin America as a way for the United States to apply economic and political pressure against countries in the region, ALBA has a released a statement which strongly condemns the recent OAS summit and pronounces their world view.

In their statement, which covers a broad range of issues, ALBA calls for universal access to telecommunications (phone, internet, etc) as a human right in a world which increasingly relies on networked communications:

Basic education, health, water, energy and telecommunications services should be declared human rights and cannot be subject to private deal or marketed by the World Trade Organization. These services are and should be essentially public utilities of universal access.

This ideal has driven many of the policies of Latin American countries inside and outside of ALBA, including Brazil.

FLISOL - The Latin American Festivals of Installation of Free Software are install fests organized by the regional free software communities since 2005. The event is the largest distributed free software event in the world — last year, there were install fests in more than 200 cities in 18 countries in Latin America.

The goal of the event is to promote the use of free software, so the general public can know its philosophy, install GNU/Linux on their computers, learn about the applications and understand how they are developed by volunteer communities. Every install fest is free of charge in every location and they also include lectures, presentations and workshops.

Check out the list of countries hosting the event:

In the interest of discussing software freedom, this bit of news is both surprising and challenges the ideas that we hold about freedom & democracy as “exports” from the United States.

Currently, President Obama is attending the Fifth Summit of the Americas, where Heads of State from 34 countries in the Americas meet to discuss regional policies for North, Central & South America. All of the countries of the Americas are represented - except Cuba.

These summits have a history of controversy and violence. During the Fourth Summit of the Americas, held in Argentina in 2005, large protests over the Free Trade Area of the Americas and the policies of the Bush Administration in Latin America led to pitched battles in the streets, complete with tear gas and Molotov cocktails. The Third Summit of the Americas became known as the Battle of Quebec, with similar violence erupting out of large-scale protests.

The Fifth Summit is being closely watched because of the significant political re-alignment of the Americas since these “siege summits” happened. Along with the new leadership in the United States, the wide-scale shift to the left in Latin America has meant that people like Evo Morales (who was one of the protesters during the last two summits) are now participating in the summit as Heads of State. Because of this shift, there is heavy pressure on the United States to end their 50-year embargo on Cuba and insistence that Cuba be banned from the Summit of the Americas.

In a related issue, bloggers are starting to take notice that countries like China are not the only ones to enforce a “national firewall” - as every sysadmin knows, a firewall controls both incoming and outgoing packets! And the “United States firewall” has been exposed by LinkedIn’s official policy of banning users from Cuba, Syria, Sudan, Iran and North Korea. Apparently, Google and Sun also ban users from these countries because of U.S. embargo laws.

Here is the official support response from LinkedIn to a user from Syria who lost their LinkedIn account:

Dear Anas,
Per the terms of our User Agreement, use of LinkedIn services, including our software, is subject to export and re-export control laws and regulations. This includes the Export Administration Regulations maintained by the United States Department of Commerce and sanctions programs maintained by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. Under the User Agreement, LinkedIn Users warrant that they are not prohibited from receiving U.S. origin products, including services or software. As such, and as a matter of corporate policy, we do not allow member accounts or access to our site from Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, or Syria.
Regards,
Kelly
LinkedIn Customer Support

On Dec. 9, standing before the flags of their countries, the presidents of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay and Venezuela, along with a representative from Uruguay, gathered in Buenos Aires and signed the founding charter of the Banco del Sur, or the Bank of the South.

With the creation of the Banco del Sur, the current progressive leaders from Latin America have taken another step at institutional independence from the economic colonialism that had survived the era of overt colonialism. As the U.S. loses more of its ill-gotten profit from Latin America, what impact will that have on the U.S. economy?

First, we should disclose that this weblog is operated by the northxsouth group — we’re a for-profit free software consultancy. We have done free software migration work in Brazil and other places in Latin America and we want to continue doing that! That said, we are also free software activists. We are active with the San Francisco Community Colo as well as numerous non-profit tech groups working in North & South America, like the birosca server collective and techmeet summit. We encourage you to get in touch with us just to say hello — we’re interested in meeting everyone who is involved with free software projects in Latin America.

The topic of this website is free software in Latin America. Free software refers to a type of computer program that meets certainly qualifications which are listed in this definition from the Free Software Foundation. In general, free software is available at no cost and comes with rights not normally granted to the user: the right to inspect the source code, the right to redistribute the code and the right to run it however the user wishes. Compare this to Microsoft Windows Vista which costs over $200, does not come with the source code and must be registered and can only run on certain computers used by certain people.

In Latin America, a social and political phenomenon has been occurring for the last 10 years or so. After decades of being ruled by repressive military dictatorships, Latin Americans have overthrown almost all of them and instituted radical forms of democracy that go beyond even what exists in the United States. These new democratic initiatives have swept in a new type of Latin American leader who defies the stereotypes of the corrupt “banana republic” despots of the past. As part of these sweeping social changes, many Latin American governments have challenged the notion that their computer networks should be subjugated to expensive licenses which give them no control over the software that runs them. Could you imagine the United States Secret Service, for example, running their operations with software purchased from a foreign country? Software which they could never really know what its doing because the source code is secret?

Venezuela, Brazil and Cuba have been the leaders in a movement to ban Microsoft products on government sector and public industry systems. Movements in Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile and Mexico are quickly growing. And free software is rapidly becoming popular throughout all of Latin America. Please continue reading: “Why Free Software Makes Sense for Latin America“.