Note: Since March 2011, CLARA and the advanced network that is operated and managed by it have a unique name: RedCLARA.

RedCLARA -Cooperación Latino Americana de Redes Avanzadas (Latin American Cooperation of Advanced Networks)- is a non-profit International Law Organisation, whose legal existence is dated on 23 December 2003, when it was acknowledged as such by the legislation of Uruguay.

The RedCLARA vision is to serve as a Latin American collaboration system by means of telecommunications advanced networks for research, innovation and education.

RedCLARA develops and operates the only Latin-American advanced Internet network that was established for regional interconnection and linked to GÉANT2 (pan European advanced network) via the ALICE Project (which –until March 2008- was co-funded by the European Commission through its @LIS Programme) in 2004.

RedCLARA is constituted by 15 Latin American countries and its Assembly –where each country has representative- meets every six months to define courses of action and the policies to be implemented. The organisms of the RedCLARA institutional government are the Board (higher organisms constituted by: President, Vice president, Secretary, Treasurer and one Director), a Fiscal Commission (constituted by three Assembly members who are not Board members) and a Technical Commission (with seven members, corresponding to engineers from the networks connected to RedCLARA, oversees the network’s development and its technical and security implementations). The Executive Office is the organisms in charge of the Executive Direction of RedCLARA, a post under the trust of the Board and the Assembly.

The initial idea for the formation of RedCLARA  arose in June of 2002 in the Toledo meeting (Spain), organized within the framework of the CAESAR Project -financed by the DG IST program of the European Commission-, the study that took to the generation of the ALICE Project (América Latina Interconectada Con Europa - Latin America Interconnected With Europe). In that occasion the representatives of the main Latin American academic networks were confront with the opportunity to get one historical revenge. That is to say: to constitute, finally, the Latin American network that so many times had has been tried to bring into being.

After the Toledo meeting there were carried out meetings in Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Santiago of Chile and Mexico. In them, the idea of the Latin American network was taking body, until becoming which today it is: a reality that empowers the work of the academic advanced networks of the region.

Only a year after the regional cooperation works for the creation of this new infrastructure started, on June 9th of 2003, in the meeting of Mexico, the Statutes of the organization were signed. Therefore, the formal constitution of this Civil Association denominated as Cooperación LatinoAmericana de Redes Avanzadas (CLARA; since March 2011: RedCLARA) -Latin American Cooperation of Advanced Networks- was obtained.