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Researcher Profile: Carlos Afonso

2002-05-10

"Communication technologies have always fascinated me: when I was 11 years old, I set up an unlicensed radio station. I had signed up for a correspondence course in radio techniques, and built the equipment from a kit of components that came by mail. What were we broadcasting? Country music!"

Who would have thought that from such beginnings, Carlos Afonso would become the man many call the Father of Brazilian Internet? His career has paralleled Brazil’s recent history. In the 1960s, he studied engineering, entering university in 1964, the year of the military coup that marked the beginning of 20 years of dictatorship. Twenty years during which Carlos Afonso worked hard at putting technology at the service of citizens and communities, first in Brazil as a student union activist, and later in Chile, where he took refuge in 1970, working for three years with the Allende government.

In 1973, General Augusto Pinochet took power in a coup d’état, and Afonso once again opted for exile, this time heading for Canada. "It was the only choice open to my family and me. We arrived in Toronto with two other Brazilian families, quite illegally, thanks to members of a religious order who spirited us aboard a plane en route from Jamaica: none of us had proper documents. Later, your then Prime Minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, rectified our legal status," he jokes.

Carlos Afonso settled in Toronto, studying economics at York University. He worked with Brazilian sociologist and fellow exile Herbert de Souza, known as Betinho, a legendary figure among Brazilian popular and resistance movements. Together they founded a Brazilian studies institute in Toronto, devoted to critical analysis of the dictatorship and to the fight for freedom. "That was in 1974; this was my very first nongovernmental organization! The Institute, later integrated into York University, eventually became CERLAC, the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean."

The 1979 amnesty made returning to Brazil a possibility. Herbert de Souza and Carlos Afonso agreed to head for home, where they jointly founded IBASE, the Brazilian Institute for Social and Economic Analysis. It was then that the idea of tapping into communication and information technologies to advance the cause of Brazilian society was born. "I came home, late in 1980, with an Apple II computer in my luggage. It had 64 Ks of RAM, which was considered huge at the time," Carlos Afonso recalls. "I had, in addition, two floppy disks and a printer. That is all we had in the way of equipment, to begin with. Things were made all the more difficult by the extremely severe regulations restricting equipment imports in those days."

IBASE was already well established by 1985 when civil democracy returned to Brazil. Carlos Afonso's next step was to set up the necessary infrastructure for the exchange of mail through an emerging media called the Internet: this is how AlterNex, Brazil's first Internet server, came to be officially inaugurated in July 1989. "In the early days, AlterNex had fewer than100 users. We didn't even own any modems! Twice a day, we connected to the Internet by phoning abroad to San Francisco. We would then transmit our messages. We had no end of problems with our phone lines: the authorities were extremely suspicious. They would say that they were having technical problems, but we were quite sure that the interruptions were deliberate."

The Rio Summit

The great leap forward happened during the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development– the Earth Summit – held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Carlos Afonso's dream was to connect the entire planet to the city of Rio. He travelled to Geneva to present his idea to the UN personnel organizing the event. "We had quite a time convincing them. At first they thought the idea outlandish. Next, we had to convince the Brazilian authorities to allow the necessary infrastructures to be set up. The combined pressure from the UN and the academic community in favour of establishing a permanent connection to the Internet finally won out. Embratel agreed to set up two dedicated Internet lines: one in São Paolo, the other in Rio." This was how a new tradition was born, which has since spread globally: it is now commonplace for planetary happenings to unfold on the Web as they are taking place. And as a side-effect, Brazilians now have online access 24 hours a day. "The rest is history," Carlos Afonso smiles. "Internet use has, since then, continued to grow exponentially."

In the aftermath of the Rio Earth Summit, the AlterNex network applied itself to disseminating its technology. Carlos Afonso's aim was to make sure Brazilians became familiar with the use and possibilities of this new media. This also would serve to dissuade the state from over-regulating of this field of activity. "We were betting that this was the best way to ensure the future of this technology and to provide access to the greatest possible number of people. We were also fighting the Rio academia, who wanted a state monopoly over Internet access, as was already the case with telephone service. I fought this tooth and nail, because such an approach is contrary to the spirit of the Internet." The state finally gave in: as a result, the network of networks is not under state monopoly – another feather in Carlos Afonso's cap.

The Move to RITS

In 1996, IBASE sold its subsidiary, AlterNex, to private interests, and Carlos Afonso no longer felt at home. RITS had just been established, and Carlos Afonso soon chose to reconnect with the early object of his affections, combining new technologies and social action. Since 1998, he has been in charge of the organization's technological development.

Chantal Srivastava is a freelance writer based in Brazil.

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