Internet Necesario and the Mexican Netroots

On Tuesday, the Mexican Senate unanimously passed a resolution urging President Felipe Calderon to withdraw from negotiations over the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). The grounds of their opposition? Concern about the treaty's restrictions on privacy on the internet and free access to information.

If that sounds like an uncommon concern of the Mexican Senate, you would be right. So how did we get here? Come back with me to October 2009...

A year ago, the Mexican Senate proposed a new excise tax of 4% on all telecommunications. After a minor outcry, they revised the rate down to 3%, but it was hardly the cost that rankled Mexico's netroots-- the tax would add just a few pesos to their monthly bill. Rather, the devil lay in the scheme of the tax, which put telecommunications-- including internet access-- in a category typically reserved for tobacco, liquor, and luxury items.

It's hard to imagine an opportunity more ripe for web-based protest, and the Twitter users of Mexico coalesced around the hashtag #internetnecesario ("the internet is a necessity").  In a week in late October, thousands of irate Mexicans pushed the phrase into Twitter's trending topics-- one of the first times a Spanish phrase had made the cut-- and brought the proposed tax to the attention of the media and the Senate itself.

By week's end-- the last day of the legislative session-- "Internet Necessario" had surpassed negotiations over the federal budget as the country's top political story, and Mexican Senators were getting crash courses in the internet age. With many of the capital's Twitterati sitting in the room for negotiations over the tax, the proceedings were broadcast live across the internet, and the Senators' words were subject to instantaneous scrutiny, ridicule, or praise: an unusual circumstance for policymakers who typically operated at a distance from their constituents.

In the end, the tax was voted down unanimously, and the idea of the internet as a "luxury" was cast out of the discourse with derision. The lesson for the Senators was clear: don't mess with the internet, because people are paying attention, and can make their voices heard in ways previously unimaginable.

Senator Francisco Javier Castellón Fonseca, Chair of the Senate's Science and Technology Commission, was a leader in the fight against the telecommunications tax. He was also a leader in social media-- a year ago, he was the only member of the Senate on Twitter; now over 40 Senators are tweeting madly. By all accounts, Senators are engaging with citizens over Twitter to an extent that has never been seen before in Mexican democracy.

The end of this story (for now) is of course that ACTA suffered a harsh blow from the Mexican Senate this week. A year since this country's netroots first made their voices heard, they have enjoyed ever more direct contact with their government, and were able to successfully mobilize for a cause once again. The Calderon government is likely to continue negotiations over the treaty, despite the unanimous resolution against it.  Still, a treaty like this would require ratification from the Senate, so its chances of passing into law here seem far dimmer since the Mexican netroots made their voices heard.