Despite the very real concerns about the politics of connectivity in Latin America (outlined in the introduction to this volume), in this chapter I intend to challenge such pessimistic visions, arguing that, by hook or by crook, grassroots and activist organisations in the region have contrived to make strategic use of the Internet – and earlier, more localised networks – for pro-democratic networking and consciousness-raising activities, as well as some hactivism proper, since the late 1980s. In so doing, I thus hope to counter the prevailing misconception that only the educated and wealthy elites of such countries have access to the Internet, as well as the misconception that corporate interests preclude democratic uses of the new medium. Ultimately, I will argue that this kind of Internetbased activism is Latin America's most important contribution to global cyberculture, and, although far from being the only, the first, or even the most innovative activist group in the region, it was the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) [Zapatista National Liberation Army] of Southern Mexico – or the Zapatistas as they are more informally known – who turned themselves into a household name through such means, to the extent that Zapatismo and Internet-based activism have come to be seen as practically synonymous.

Social Netwar, Cyberprotest and Other Neologisms

Before embarking on a critique of the Zapatistas’ contribution to Internet-based activism, it is worth exploring the plethora of often overlapping and confusing neologisms that have sprung up to define the conjunction of the Internet with a range of activities from the non-violent expression of alternative political ideas, to civil disobedience, and to out-and-out terrorism.

Some of the first terms to be coined in the field were David Ronfeldt and John Arquilla's ‘cyberwar’ which was used from as early as 1993, thus predating the Zapatista Uprising of 1994, and ‘social netwar’ which they have used in publications from 1996 onwards, almost exclusively in conjunction with analyses of the Zapatistas’ strategies (see Ronfeldt et al. 1998). Ronfeldt and Arquilla (and their colleagues) define ‘cyberwar’ as a ‘concept that refers to informationoriented military warfare’ (Ronfeldt et al. 1998: 8), the best example of which is perhaps the conduct of the war in Kosovo in 1999, where both sides used the Internet for the purposes of spreading propaganda and disinformation, as well as to hack into each other's computer systems (Denning 1999).