In several countries in the hemisphere, the basic internet architecture is mostly owned by a single state telecom or distributed across a small number of private companies. In many cases, there country's connection to the internet moves through one or two chokepoints, making the potential for censorship or a kill switch by the government quite possible.
Internet censorship has been limited so far in Latin America (at least compared to the Middle East or China), but these potential technical restrictions should be a concern to activists who worry that governments or corporations will censor their speech and activity.
It's quite possible that parallel networks will spring up in the coming five to ten years. Civil society groups and technology companies may look to satellite providers or, more controversially, try to bring internet across other borders outside the chokepoints to which governments have access. Being that telecom regulations are often behind the curve in many countries, governments may be caught off guard by the new internet access routes that citizens find and create.
The censorship battle used to be between big media outlets and governments. With citizens now key producers of their own content, the censorship battle is going to look quite different than it did ten years ago. It's nowhere near as simple for a government to block citizen media as it was to seize a television station or block a newspaper from printing.
UPDATE: To follow up on this, read Alison Powell's blog post on darknets and super-encryption. The downside to activists creating the tools to escape government action is that it breaks apart some of the open communications of the internet. It also creates and enhances tools for criminals to operate online.
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