(Lack of) Patterns in Commitment: Data Protection in the Latin America and Caribbean Personal Data Protection Laws

What are the data protection policies in the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region? The developments over the last two decades on massive data collection, as well as the developments in computational power and data science methods appropriate for extracting insights from digital trace databases, have led to increased importance on the protection of the data of citizens, particularly sensitive data. In this exploratory study, I adopt an inductive thematic analysis approach to create a qualitative matrix based on the current version of the primary legislation protecting personal data for each country in the LAC region. Through a thick description of similarities and differences in the laws, I identify dimensions of variation in the commitment to data protection, such as the moment of approval, the existence of data protection agencies and their resources, the existence of registries, and the type of consent needed from citizens. A mapping of commitment to data protection does not show clear subregional patterns. Still, the adoption of data protection laws grows over time, and it appears to be in part propelled by the economic need to rise to the data protection standards of the European Union.