By ARK
Radio replaces telephone and newspaper in Oaxacan indigenous villages.
Alfredo Landa walks into a small room, the walls of which have been covered with egg cartons.
Landa sits in front of the microphone and chooses the same song he starts every morning with. At seven o’clock, the community radio of San Juan Guichicovi plays the Mexican national song in local Mixe indigenous language. Mixe is one of the many indigenous languages spoken in the state of Oaxaca.
This morning, Landa plays the interviews he did the night before by phone. In the interviews, people who participated in a demonstration against the Oaxacan governor describe the day. According to Landa the television presents the Oaxacan conflict purely from the point of view of the government.
After his shift is over, Landa sits down to talk about the importance of the radio to his village. “In this area, media is a tool of power. That’s why the community radio is significant. It can work to raise people’s consciousness, to tell people about the right to organise and the right to a better life. In small villages, the common cold still kills people. On the radio, we can educate people about prevention of diseases.”
Landa maintains that, in villages, formal education is less important than the education that happens in the family.
“If you study primary school, secondary school and high school, it is so that you can leave the village. The point of the radio is to educate those who stay in villages.”
In many isolated villages the real power isn’t held by the democratically elected local politicians, but caciques, PRI-linked informal leaders who govern like the mafia. Radio Ayuuk has criticised openly both caciques and the formal administration of Oaxaca. This has earned the radio reporters death threats – given by supporters of the PRI.
”Radio Ayuuk is an important change agent in this area, and this is why it has been threatened. It is only intimidation. I just have to change my style of speaking, stand in front of the microphone and make sure that the listeners don’t hear my fear,” Landa says, with a determined look in his eyes.
The community radio is open to all those who are interested in participating, but the programmes are made mainly by young people. “A lot of people think that we’re just fooling around. But at home they have their radios turned on. We know that 10 000 people listen to us daily.”
One can’t help but wonder what drives Landa to make radio programmes voluntarily, without pay.
”I’m a Mixe. The Spanish never conquered us, because we hid on our lands, rose up to the mountains. So I’m a winner. At present, it’s not the Spanish who try to conquer us, but multinational companies, caciques, Wal-mart, Plan Puebla Panama. We refuse to let them conquer us.”
Education of indigenous languages in the radio
In the city of Oaxaca, Laura Victoria Chávez Salar is soldering copper pipes. “This will be the antenna,” the 17-year-old explains. She is taking part in a workshop, in which she is building a radio transmitter and antenna for her village, together with her neighbour.
Chávez Salar hopes that the radio could be a tool in sustaining the local culture. One custom she would like to see kept in alive is “padiush”. “It means that when there’s a party in the village, local people share their food with those who come to visit. Guests go from house to house and the village residents give them a bit of tortilla or beans”
About 70 per cent of Oaxacans are indigenous. This is the largest proportion in the whole of Latin America. Despite this, the indigenous face widespread racism in the society. Many hide their origin in job interviews and fewer and fewer parents teach their mother tongue to their children. Chávez Salar, a speaker of Zapoteco, sees the importance of her mother tongue. “Through radio, we could also teach zapoteco to those who do not speak it.”
Some years ago Chávez Salar’s home village, Tanetze de Zaragoza was violently split in two. A part of the village supported a cacique who declared himself the village chief without any democratic process. Many of those who resisted were thrown into jail. In potential future conflicts, the radio could be of help.
“The radio could unite people by being neutral. It could remind people about the importance of village unity. The village would have already gained so much if it had been united.”
Chávez Salar is one of the few female participants of the workshop.
”In many villages machismo still remains, the idea that men have to do the village business. Fortunately in my village women are also involved.”
Many women around the world are shy of technology. “Without taking risks one never learns,” Chávez Salar says, and speaks from experience. A few hours after the interview, her transmitter is ready to be taken home to Tanetze.
The most democratic media
On the other side of the room, I find Stephen Dunifer, who teaches the radio workshop. Before coming to Oaxaca, he has taken radios to Haiti, Mali, Venezuela and East-Timor – just to name a few. “The purpose of the workshop is to start equipping people with their own small community radio stations. Equally important is the empowerment that it gives to people. Most of these people have no prior experience in this sort of thing. The idea is that we can take people through a five day process, at the end of which they have built their own transmitter. That is very empowering.”
In the villages chosen for the workshop, many people are committed to participate in the future radio. This is one principle of a community radio: it is organised by the community, not by one or two people.
The villages voted to choose their representatives for the workshop.
Building community radios is cheap. A transmitter and an antenna that cover an area of 10-12 miles can be built for about 1000 dollars. The training is organised by TUPA- Transmitters Uniting the People of Americas. For the participating villages, the workshop is free of cost. Funding comes from small foundations and individuals in the United States.
The experienced radio activist criticises Mexican legislation that makes it difficult to legalise community radio stations.
“In Mexico there are a lot of technical and reporting requirements. Basically, it is designed to put roadblocks in people’s way. It is unnecessary. Why do you need spectrum allocation in the middle of the Sierra here?” Dunifer asks.
In Oaxaca, almost all community radios function without a license. Some radios have been destroyed and shut down by authorities.
Legal or not, Dunifer believes that people have the right to communicate, and radio is by far the most democratic media to do so. Many villages lack phones and newspapers. To listen to the radio, on the other hand, one only needs a five dollar radio.
“Community radios engage the community in dialogue and exchange. In El Salvador, someone loses a herd of pigs and they can announce it on the radio. It can be as simples as that.”
All around the world news in TV and newspapers report stock exchange fluctuation. This serves the minority that buys shares. Community radios, however, serve normal people in the countryside.
“In Haiti, in the 1990’s, buyers would come to buy crops, fruit and vegetables. Farmers didn’t really know the market prices of their crops. So these buyers were taking advantage of them. The radio station started broadcasting the crop prices and the farmers could negotiate better deals. That shows the power of the radio.”
Even though Dunifer sees the radio as the superior media in developing countries, he sees possibilities in synergistic use of technologies. A community radio station in Mexico could put its stream on the internet, and a radio in the US could be transmitting it in California. This way, migrants could stay in contact with their communities and maintain their local languages.
Community radios are an example of technology that can truly make a difference. More are built all the time, and many communities have shown interest in starting a radio station. Hopefully in the years to come they will also have the support of a just and practical law.
