Barton-Garcia: Colonia residents helped me appreciate how great the Valley’s digital divide was

SAN JUAN, Texas – Holding an RGV Broadband Coalition meeting at the headquarters of La Unión del Pueblo Entero brought it all back home for Jordana Barton-Garcia.

Barton-Garcia is director of the coalition and the group’s immediate goal is to make sure federal maps accurately reflect the digital divide that exists along the South Texas border region. For this the coalition wants to hear from local residents.

In an interview with the Rio Grande Guardian after the meeting concluded, Barton-Garcia acknowledged that it was talking to the members of LUPE and other colonia groups a decade ago that she first learned about the region’s digital divide.

At the time, Barton-Garcia was working for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and she was working on a study that came out in 2015. It was titled, Colonias in the 21st Century – Progress Along the Texas-Mexico Border.  The digital divide was huge back then. The McAllen, Brownsville, and Laredo metropolitan statistical areas were among the least connected regions in the country.

“When I was with the Federal Reserve, I worked closely with LUPE. At that time, I was conducting the Texas border colonia study, and it was the residents of the colonias (that brought it up),” Barton-Garcia recalled.

“I was not asking that question. I hadn’t thought of that question. But they were talking to me about the digital divide, about the fact that their kids couldn’t do their homework. We were having a focus group, and a mother would say, mijita, can you make my phone a hot spot so that my little boy can do his homework,” Barton-Garcia recalled.

“Of course, I didn’t know how, but my intern knew how. But she couldn’t get connectivity (because) it (the mobile phone) didn’t have the data plan for it, and all of that.”

So, Barton-Garcia recalled, the cell phone didn’t help the mother in her quest to help her child do his homework.

“I kept seeing that over and over again. I was conducting research in the six border counties with the highest concentration of colonias, including Cameron, Hidalgo and Starr. And it (the digital divide) kept coming up. So, I had to hear it. I had to listen to it,” Barton-Garcia explained.

Barton-Garcia likes to hold what she calls participatory action research sessions. 

“So, we had a conference about the study when it came out in 2015 and the people, some of the colonia residents, LUPE, wanted to get together. They wanted to close the digital divide,” she said. “But we needed to understand, how do you do that? A lot of the solutions that had been brought were band aids, like passing out computers to the kids. But what if they don’t have connectivity at home?”

Barton-Garcia said there are various components that go into making a digital inclusive community. She said a community has to have affordable broadband. “That is the infrastructure needed for economic development and people and businesses and residents.” The residents also have to have training in digital skills, she argued.

Once basic digital skills training has been put in place, Barton-Garcia said, residents can decide if they want to go on and get a degree in IT or cyber security, or if they want to build and design broadband networks. 

“We are going to help create those pathways, but, naturally, you’re going to have a cohort who wants to go on and learn more. And so that’s how we’re thinking of workforce development with regard to digital skills in the coalition. And the kind of funding that we want to attract, to create this continuum, that people can get the basic skills,” Barton-Garcia aid.

Editor’s Note: Here, below, is a video recording of the first part of the Rio Grande Guardian’s interview with Jordana Barton-Garcia. In the interview, Barton-Garcia explains the work of the RGV Broadband Coalition, and the studies Valley counties have undertaken to prove the digital divide still exists.

Editor’s Note: The above video story is the first in a four-part series on the work of the Rio Grande Valley Broadband Coalition. Part Two will be published in our next edition.

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