AmigoLatino Provides Low Cost Video Link
between Latin America and the United States
Service increasingly popular as people avoid
air
travel due to international tensions
www.amigolatino.com
San Francisco, CA: Until last week, Osberto and Connie Juarez, natives
of Guatemala, had not seen their kids in four years, not since they left their
Central American home to work in the United States. Now, they are "virtually"
inseparable - literally. Last week, the whole family was re-united for Blanca
Estela's birthday party at the offices of AmigoLatino, a new business aimed at
uniting South, Central and North America via low-cost video-conferencing and other
services.
"Most of our clients cannot afford to travel," says Gabriel
Biguria, founder of the San Francisco-based AmigoLatino. "And, even if they could,
the current political situation in the world and in their home countries makes
it untenable. What we provide them is a real time, real-interaction with their
families that they can really afford."
According to Biguria, AmigoLatino's
initial line of services -- videoconferencing and video-messaging -- are already
changing the way Hispanics in the U.S. interact and communicate with their families,
friends and communities in Latin America.
"Of course videoconferencing solutions have been around
for some time now," says Biguria. "However, they have been mainly accessible to
executives of large corporations and formal institutions. With AmigoLatino, we
are expanding the access of those services to the people that need them the most,
the many Hispanic families that have become separated as a result of the migration
of one or more family members into the United States."
Moreover, with the increasingly tough economic and political
conditions faced by many Latin Americans, the number of broken families due to
migration of a member into the U.S. is expected to increase according to Biguria.
Currently, the Latino / Hispanic population is the largest minority group in the
United States.
Launched just last October with a link between their
San Francisco offices and a site in Guatemala City, AmigoLatino has since added
outlets in Mexico, Guatemala, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua,
Spain, Japan and several U.S. cities.
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