Wired

Recently, the house two doors down opened a small internet cafe. They charge 10 pesos an hour and every afternoon we see lots of the kids in the neighborhood sitting there in front of a computer connecting to.....well to the world.

This seems to have sparked more connections. We're watching our calle get wired. One house and then another, the families are connecting to cable and to the internet.

When we moved into our house, it and the one across the street were the only ones we could see that were connected to the internet. You can tell who is and who isn't because if you have cable internet, the cable coming into the house is blue, like really blue. I always thought that this was strange because it was like announcing to the world, "Hey robbers, this house has an internet cable so therefore it must have a computer."

Maybe this doesn't seem like much to some of you, but I can tell you this is an event here. It means that the family who lives in a very modest Mexican house where we seldom see more than one light bulb (florescent light) on in the house at a time, has bought some kind of computer and made a commitment to get an internet service provider. The cost is huge for the family because the cost of cable TV and internet is basically the same as it is in the USA. From a cultural and educational standpoint what will it mean? That I can't answer. All I can do is report that here in San Miguel the middle class want to be connected.