Policy Interventions to Address Digital Inequalities in Latin America in the Face of the Pandemic

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to analyse policy interventions to address digital inequalities in five different Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico) during the first months after the outbreak of COVID-19 reached the region (March–June 2020). The study draws on an analysis of the set of regulations and specific policy-making actions introduced in the field of digital connectivity in the countries under review, as well as official documents prepared by the public and private sectors, and statistics on ICT access and usage in the region. The main argument put forward is that Latin American governments responded quickly to the spike in demand for connectivity posed by the context of the pandemic, partly because they had learned from what had happened in other latitudes, and partly because of the legacy of public policies resulting from previous experiences in the sector. However, the digital divides that persisted from previous structural inequalities lessened the impact of the actions implemented during the pandemic emergence. Likewise, these actions revealed that inequalities tend to increase, as a digitally underserved segment of the population becomes deprived of access to education, health information, entertainment, and work-from-home services in their various forms in this context.