Wired, Wired Youth.

COMPETITION, CLASS AND, ABOVE ALL, COMMUNICATION--these are the hallmarks of the eternal teen struggle for all things cool. LATIN TRADE correspondent Julie Dulude spent some time on the road in Central America, talking to kids about their favorite techie toys, like cell phones, Web-based mail and beepers. We got enough drama to write our own telenovela Kids are chatting up foreigners, keeping tabs on lovers, showing off and generally misbehaving--and using the latest in communication tools to do so. Let's listen in:

GUATEMALA

LESTER ASTURIAS AND CARLOS TRUJILLO SOCRATES BAR, PANAJACHEL

Lester Asturias and Carlos Trujillo of Guatemala City, both 20, talk about their cell phones as if they were modern-day leashes. "Our parents gave them to us to control us," says Trujillo. Many parents used to keep tabs on their kids with beepers. But cell phones are so cheap now that one hardly ever sees beepers anymore. Trujillo's dad pays about US$20 per month for the cell phone, only $2.60 more than for a regular line. "Now that you can leave messages on cell phones, beepers just aren't popular," Trujillo says.

ISAAC AND ABRAHAM TOL RAMOS CHICHINET INTERNET CAFE, CHICHICASTENANGO

The artisan markets of Chichicastenango draw thousands of visitors each year, and Isaac Tol Ramos, 17, seems to have befriended every last one of them. The young Guatemalan spends at least an hour each week e-mailing people he has met from the United States, Canada, Europe and Mexico. When he's not logged onto Web-based Hotmail, Ramos spends his time in the Sala Internacional of Yahoo! Chat, talking online. "I've made a lot of friends that way, just being here in Chichi," he says. His parents. gladly pay the eight U.S. cents per minute as long as Ramos also researches the movie schedule on DirecTV This week: Wild Wild West and Fight Club. Ramos is already teaching his brother Abraham, 11, how to work the Web, an Internet rite of passage his own friends gulded him through soon after Chichinet--the town's only Internet cafe--set up shop a year ago.

LYONEL GARCIA GONZALEZ, CHRISTIAN PAREDES MOLINA AND FRIENDS

LA FONDA DE LA CALLE REAL, ANTIGUA

Party, party, party. There seems to be little else on the minds of Lyonel Garcia Gonzdlez and Christian Paredes Molina, both of Guatemala City. Their cell phones help them squeeze in as much of it as possible. On any given night, the two 18-year-olds and their group of 10 split up to cruise the city. When one finds a good party, he rings the others. "That's howl found out the plan tonight was to meet up in Antigua," Garcia points out. The phones, gifts from their parents, have also been life savers--like when Garcia totaled his father's Audi on the way home from a New Year's party at a beach house and called home for help. "We got very drunk," he says with bravado. "Very drunk." Much to their dismay tonight's gathering breaks up at an early 10:30 p.m. when one of the teens gets an angry "get home" call from dad. Since he's the ride for half the group, the partying screeches to a halt. "I always check to see who's calling, and if it's my dad, I just let it ring and tell them there was no signal," grumbles Pare des.

JULIO ESQUIVEL AND LUIS ALBERTO

EL CAPITAN COMMERCIAL CENTER, GUATEMALA CITY

Bad boys, bad boys, watcha gonna do? For the parents of Julio Esquivel, 17, of Guatemala City, the answer was to buy their son a cell phone. "I go out a lot at night, and come home pretty late," says a grinning Esquivel, in his fourth year at military school. Esquivel used to carry a beeper, but he says he didn't receive many of his messages. His parents were already paying US$19.50 a month for the beeper, and only $6.50 more got them 100 minutes of cell time, so forking out the extra cash for the phone was worth it, he says.

HONDURAS

PAOLA RODRIGUEZ,AMPARO LEMUS AND DUNIA MEJIA OUTSIDE THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, TEGUCIGALPA

"My boyfriend gave it to me when I moved here to study. Me tiene controlada," giggles Paola Rodriguez, 20, of Santa Rosa de Copan, as she dials on her Nokia 280 cellular phone. The apartment she shares with two other pharmacy students has no telephone, she explains, and it doesn't look like they'll have one in the near future. "It's really hard to get lines here, and it's actually more expensive to call Copan from a normal phone than from a cell phone," she says. On the cell phone, however, it's costlier to call within the city than it is on a fixed line. So Rodriguez relies on the cell phone to call home and a pay phone for local calls. The hardest part of keeping costs down is saying no to friends. "Other people are always trying to take advantage of it for a llamadita," she says, "but they're not the ones paying the bill."

JOSE ISRAEL REYES ESCOBAR AND FRIENDS METRO CENTRO MALL, SAN SALVADOR 

Jose Israel Reyes, 19, says he's using technology to get ahead in the world. The day before a big test, the second year med student from San Vicente crams his electronic agenda full of information he's afraid he'll forget. Since electronic agendas double as calculators, the professors won't take it away. "I can't remember everything," he says with a grin. While students no longer pad themselves with handwritten cheat sheets, they also don't need to risk glancing over at someone else's answers. With their phones on vibrator mode, he and his friends taking tests in large auditoriums can confer without fear of discovery That said. how come Israel only scored a 92 on his statistics test? Maybe he knows not to push his luck

ALEYDA FLORES INTERNET CAFE IN METRO CENTRO MALL, SAN SALVADOR

If flirting over the Internet were a sport, Aleyda Flores, 17, could turn pro. The cyber coquette is wrapped up in several electronic romances, all of which began in a Yahoo! chat room. "I meet people from all over the world this way:' she says of her suitors, who hail from Aruba, Spain and the Netherlands. When she's not chatting, Flores researches foreign universities where she might study, reads up on the latest fashions and checks MTV's music pages for news on her favorite singers. "I I-o-o-o-ve reggae music," she croons, as she tries to buy a T-shirt from a Bob Marley Web site. But the site doesn't have El Salvador registered in its scroll-down list of countries. She tries to type her address in manually but gets disconnected, over and over again. Aaah," she says in frustration, "this always happens to me. No one ever has El Salvador:'

NICARAGUA ANA YANCIS SOLORZANO AND ADA FRANCIS SANTANA INTERNET CAFE OF THE UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL AUTONOMA, LEON

Uh-oh. Eighteen-year-old Ada Francis Santana's boyfriend has misbehaved. What he did, she declines to say But, as she opens up an apologetic e-mail greeting card, all is forgotten. Later I find out maybe Francis, from Chichigalpa, should be the one sending the electronic bouquets. As it turns out, she has two cyber beaus--one in her hometown and another in the United States. Francis and her friend Ana Yancis Solorzano, an 18-year-old from Chinandega, spend about five hours a week on the Internet, at a cost of just 8 U.S. cents an hour Most of that time is earmarked for class research. The two are studying computer programming at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma in Leon. The Internet is helpful, for example, in learning more about a new computer language, they say

CARLOS MONTIEL AND LUIS ERNESTO LOPEZ PEDESTRIAN MALL, GRANADA

"It was a necessity," says Carlos Montiel, 20, of the used Nokia 6120 his mom bought him for $60. Luis Ernesto Lopez, who shares a cell phone with his father, agrees. The friends, who attend universities in Managua, leave Granada every day at 6 a.m. and often don't return home until 9 at night. Without their cell phones, they would be incommunicados. Neither Montiel nor Lopez makes many calls, averaging between $10 and $20 each month using pre-paid phone cards. But they receive calls and entertain themselves with games during the bus ride between Granada and Managua

COSTA RICA PABLO RETANO FONSECA MALL SAN PEDRO, SAN JOSE

Pablo Retano Fonseca, 16, wouldn't be caught dead without his beeper, which cost him $45. It's an essential fashion accessory "I bought it so my friends can see me with it' Fonseca says. The beeper is also a way to keep up with the news. A hardcore soccer fan, the $16 a month he pays to local company Tico Pager is well worth it for regular updates on sporting events, breaking news and lottery results. And the beeper has come in handy when he forgets his keys at home, as he did last Sunday (His mom beeped him to say she would leave the keys with a neighbor because she was leaving for the weekend.) What Fonseca really wants, however, is a cell phone. Or, rather, a cell phone line. He bought a cell phone from a friend nearly a year ago, he says, but because the government monopoly Costa Rican Electricity Institute can't keep up with demand, he was told he'd have to wait until next year for a cellular line. Until then, he'll have to find other ways to impress his friends.

DANIELA RODRIGUEZ AND SYLVIA CALDERON MALL SAN PEDRO, SAN JOSE

A cell phone equals freedom for Daniela Rodriguez, 12. Since her father bought a Nokia 38120, her parents allow her to stay out by herself later at night. "Before, one of them used to come with us," she says, grimacing. And when she needs to be picked up, she doesn't have to rely on undependable pay phones. "Public telephones here no sirven," explains her friend, Sylvia Calderon, also 12. "Different ones work with different cards, some only take coins and a lot are out of order." It may seem like a perfect parenting tool, but many adults fear cell phones will make their children targets for robbery so beepers are more common, Sylvia says. "I'm always worried about losing it," Daniela adds. While most would say it's an advantage, Sylvia and Daniela say caller ID is actually a drawback-at least when they're doing the calling. Her parents weren't too happy when they received an angry phone call from someone she and her friends had phoned as a prank, Daniela confesses. Her only other complaint? That she has to be home by 9 p.m.