Perhaps the only two evils of the Internet that have eluded the community so far are the proliferation of fake news and cyber fraud.
Yet the satellite internet, which is spreading like wildfire across the Amazon, remains the last straw for the basin’s countless indigenous cultures, which have been under siege since the rubber boom began in the 19th century. Maybe.
That process of cultural loss is now being accelerated by the Internet and the hyperactive and distorted worldviews Hispanophone and Lusophone provide to young people in remote communities like Parotoa-Teparo.
Among them are Pablo Chagueva’s two children. A living link to a bygone era, before Europeans first arrived in the New World, he speaks only Machigenka, does not know his age and has no national identity card. This means that his presence has not yet been registered by the Peruvian state.
For him, unable to speak Castilian, unable to read or write, and without the means to purchase a cell phone, the Internet remains as mysterious and inaccessible as the Mariana Trench. But now his two children, ages 8 and 14, attend school in the village and are trying online for the first time.
Communities are currently on the brink of a second information revolution, with the potential for connectivity to increase by literally orders of magnitude.
