Digital inclusion

The fight of the Brazilian Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) can be described with two words: citizenship rights. The citizen has the right to have the means for surviving, instruction, transports, health system, credits. And Internet? The rural workers appear condemned to be exluded from the digital technologies because economic and logistic reasons. The cost of a computer science center (hardware and software) is much too high and the settlements of the MST are often far from the city centers, it is than impossible to use the traditional cupper-cable for Internet connectivity. A plan guided from the Swiss Pascal Daniel Angst, working in Brazil thanks to the ONG e-changer (http://www.e-changer.ch) aims to supply to the settlements of the MST some “Technologies of Computer science and Communication”: is the “Inclusão Digital do Trabalhadores das Areas de Reforma Agraria” plan (Digital Introduction them of the Workers of the Agrarian Reform Areas). The statal bank “Banco do Brasil” has supplied 2500 used computers that will be used in the main structures of the organization (schools, secretariats) with the creation of Information Centers. The Brazilian Ministry of the Communications has supplied, at the moment, 10 satelite accesses (with antennas and complete equipment) and others 110 accesses are forseen starting from January 2004. The Secretariat for the Peach (and agriculture) contributes moreover to the plan.

From this promising network of computers, connecting thousend of computers in a region so big as Europe, the big software companies are exluded. The plan works on one own distribution of GNU/Linux, called MSTIX, with Mozilla (Browser), Gaim (Client Messenger), OpenOffice.org (Office Suite) between others. Heart of the plan is the courses, where the students learn how to be a advanced user. Impossible? Rosalinda, 20 years, contacted via Gaim is astonished: “I do not understand as people can say that Linux is hard to use. It is a universe: you can do whatever you like!”.