A transnational protest against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was organized through Facebook last week. (Image: No Mas Chavez/Facebook)

Darlene Garcia, a 56-year-old woman who has lived in Queens, NY for the last 18 years, remembers the days when communicating with her family in Guayaquil, Ecuador was an odyssey.

“I used to talk to my mother from a local pay phone once a week, and to my sister maybe once a month. They would keep me informed about the lives of my cousins, uncles, other family members, old neighbors and friends,” she told FI2W recently.

“Now everyone in Ecuador is on Facebook and we talk all the time.”

Facebook is helping immigrants get back in touch with less-immediate family members with whom it was virtually impossible to keep an ongoing relationship before the arrival of new technologies. About 70 percent of the social network’s 250 million active users are outside the U.S.

“Facebook hasn’t changed the way I communicate with my mother, I still talk to her on the phone, but I was very worried about missing my nephews’ growing up. Now I can see their pictures on Facebook, and I feel like I’m missing fewer things,” said Andrea Moreno, a 37-year-old Venezuelan actress who moved to New York in 2000 before her siblings had children.

The stories of Garcia and Moreno are pieces of a bigger picture: Facebook is not only for younger, tech-savvy users. Those 35 and older are Facebook’s fastest-growing user group. A July study by Anderson Analytics, a research firm specializing in generational issues, found that more than 40 percent of older generations use the network to “stay in touch with family.”

Nestor Cristancho, a 40-year-old Colombian journalist and photographer in New York, said that Facebook helped him reconnect with “many cousins I had not been in touch with for many years. It has even helped me improve my relationship with some of them.”

Samantha Rapolla, a 33 year-old Venezuelan-Argentinean self-described creative healer who lives in The Bronx, has been contacted via Facebook by family members she didn’t even know.

“I’ve gotten messages from people with my same last name and after several exchanges we realized that we are related,” she said.

Facebook has not only improved immigrants’ relationships. It also keeps them immersed in public affairs back home.

Immigrants use Facebook as a transnational platform to build networks of co-nationals living abroad, discuss issues of interest among themselves and with those back in their homeland, formulate causes and generate change.

A Venezuelan couple joins a protest against President Hugo Chavez from Romania - Photo: No Más Chavez/Facebook

Thousands of Venezuelans living abroad, for example, used Facebook last week to learn about and participate in an international protest against President Hugo Chavez. They set their Facebook status to the demonstration’s slogan: “No Más Chavez” (No More Chavez.)

The use of Facebook and other social networks by the Venezuelan opposition had already become so prominent by July this year that the Venezuelan government responded with an official statement. In response to the September march, it also launched its own Facebook campaign.

Immigrant advocacy groups in the U.S. are also using Facebook to increase their visibility and mobilization.

Make the Road New York, a New York City-based immigrant advocacy organization, is exploring the idea of incorporating Facebook training in its computer literacy workshops for immigrants and revamping its presence on the social network. The idea came from Mauricio Rocha, 24, who arrived in Queens from Colombia three months ago. Rocha thinks Facebook can contribute to the organization’s effort to mobilize immigrants.

“Every person of my age uses Facebook, not only on their desktops or laptops but on their phone and handhelds,” said Rocha. “Older people learn and adapt very quickly to this technology. In Colombia, Facebook helped organize a million-person movement against the FARC. We can do the same here in Queens.”

A random search on the “Facebook Groups” option will bring up congregations of Mexican Jews, Haitians in Connecticut, Indians Abroad, Colombians in London, Israelis in the World — all sorts of nationalities and movements have created their own Facebook public square.

A search of the word “immigration” this week showed almost 7,000 groups.