The Evolution of Popular Communication in Latin America (Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change) 3030625567, 9783030625566

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements
Praise for The Evolution of Popular Communication in Latin America
Contents
Notes on Contributors
Chapter 1: Introduction: Popular Communication, an Epistemological Debate between South and North
The Bottom-Up Approach: An Epistemological Root
The Attachment to Social Struggles: A Battle Around Meanings
An Alternative to Mainstream Media: The Occupation of the Public Sphere
An Epistemology of the South from Media and Communication Studies
The South and the North: An Epistemological Debate
Popular Communication and the Perspective of Communication for Social Change
Popular Communication and the Perspective of the Right to Communicate
Final Considerations
References
Part I: The Roots of an Epistemology
Chapter 2: Thinking about Communication from the Global South. Subjectivities Construction in Latin America: An Overview
General Presentation
Background: Experiences in Latin America
New Thoughts and Practices Questioning Eurocentric Models
The Countryside and Socio-cultural Transformation in the Cities
Popular Latin America Communication: A Genesis Proposal
Some Constituent Elements of Popular and Decolonizing Communication in Latin America
References
Chapter 3: Popular and Communitarian Communication in Rural Social Movements: Beyond “Diffusionism” to Emancipatory Participation
Introduction
Brief Theoretical Foundation
The Roots of Communication for Development
An Alternative View: Toward Emancipatory Communication
The Impulse of “Another Development” from Practices
Contextual Aspects
Changes from the Point of View of the Practices
Farewell to the Diffusion of Innovation Model
How Does Participatory Development Affect Grassroots Communication?
Final Considerations
References
Chapter 4: Faith, Communication and Commitment to Liberation
Communication in the Political Social Context
How to Understand Communication?
An Option for the Poor: The Centrality of the Announcement of the Gospel
Grassroots Ecclesial Communities: The Practice of Liberation
Popular Communication and Christian Commitment
Closing Notes
References
Chapter 5: The Vestiges of the Concept of Popular in Latin America
Some Images Around the Meaning of Popular
Main Critics to the Popular Field
The Validity of Popular for Critical Sectors
References
Part II: A Method, a Pedagogy, a Practice
Chapter 6: Disenchantment as a Path Toward Autonomy: Orlando Fals Borda, Participatory Action Research, Communication and Social Change
My Mom Saved Me
A Disorganous Agent
A Church Not of Dogmas But of Music
An Incompetent State Function
A Routine Academia Far from Reality
The Dangerous Scientific Self-Deception of Value Neutrality
Goodbye to the Academic Sociologist with Prophylactic Gloves
References
Chapter 7: A Praise of Dignity in Educational Practice
Part I
Part II
About the Praises
The Praise of Proximity
The Praise of Difference
The Praise of Serenity
The Praise of Clarity
The Praise of Writing
Emergence of the Voices
The Praise of the Intellectual
The Praise of the Educator’s Time
The Praise of the Pedagogic Gaze
Praise of Dignity
About Pedagogic Mediation
Chapter 8: Popular Radios: Constants and Tensions
Differences/Distances
A Constant: The Matter of Power
The Power to Know
The Power to Speak
The Power to Be and to Act Collectively
The Constituent Tension
References
Chapter 9: Popular Communication in Latin America: A Look at the Actors Who Build Bridges
The Context
The Popular in Latin America
Who Is the Popular Communicator?
The Cause and the Activist
Field and Habitus
The Communicator’s “Works” by Certeau
Locating the Field and the Popular Communicator’s Habitus
Forged in the Field
The Communicator as a Bridge and Metamorphosis
References
Part III: Decolonial Perspectives
Chapter 10: The Decolonial Nature of Comunicação Popular
Introduction
What Does “Decolonial” Mean?
Comunicação Popular as Decolonial Action
Decolonial Comunicação Popular Against Coronavirus in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro
Final Considerations
References
Chapter 11: Digital Media and Emancipation in Latin American Communication Thinking
Emancipation in Latin American Communication Thinking: A Story about Innovation, Resistance, and Hope
The Irruption of Digital Media: Possibilities, Challenges, and Struggles
Conclusion: Is There Emancipation in Digital Media?
References
Chapter 12: Communication and Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir: In the Care of Our Common Home
In Order to Read Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir
Origins, Appropriations, Re-creations
The Foundational Moment: The Legacy of the Abya Yala People
The Contributions of the Anti-systemic Movements
The Contributions of the New Constitutionalism
The Contributions of Theology
Communication for Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir
Horizons of Communication of Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir
Know How to Communicate
Know How to Speak: Knowing How to Listen
Know About That of Which One Speaks
Think with Feeling
Know How to Dream
Support Words with Actions
Know How to Share
Know How to Live in Harmony and Complementarity
The Methodology of Community Coexistence: The Tetralectic Logic
Feel/Think
Decide/Act
Return/Coexist
Celebrate/Hope
The Care of the Communal Home
References
Index

Citation preview

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN COMMUNICATION FOR SOCIAL CHANGE

The Evolution of Popular Communication in Latin America

Edited by Ana Cristina Suzina

Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change Series Editors Pradip Thomas University of Queensland Brisbane, Australia Elske van de Fliert University of Queensland Australia

Communication for Social Change (CSC) is a defined field of academic enquiry that is explicitly transdisciplinary and that has been shaped by a variety of theoretical inputs from a variety of traditions, from sociology and development to social movement studies. The leveraging of communication, information and the media in social change is the basis for a global industry that is supported by governments, development aid agencies, foundations, and international and local NGOs. It is also the basis for multiple interventions at grassroots levels, with participatory communication processes and community media making a difference through raising awareness, mobilising communities, strengthening empowerment and contributing to local change. This series on Communication for Social Change intentionally provides the space for critical writings in CSC theory, practice, policy, strategy and methods. It fills a gap in the field by exploring new thinking, institutional critiques and innovative methods. It offers the opportunity for scholars and practitioners to engage with CSC as both an industry and as a local practice, shaped by political economy as much as by local cultural needs. The series explicitly intends to highlight, critique and explore the gaps between ideological promise, institutional performance and realities of practice. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14642

Ana Cristina Suzina Editor

The Evolution of Popular Communication in Latin America

Editor Ana Cristina Suzina Loughborough University Loughborough, UK

ISSN 2634-6397     ISSN 2634-6400 (electronic) Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change ISBN 978-3-030-62556-6    ISBN 978-3-030-62557-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62557-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the ­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and ­institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Merrill Images / Getty Images Cover design: eStudioCalamar This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To every popular communicator in Latin America who inspired the reflections presented in this book

Acknowledgements

This book comes from a history of close relationship with the field that turned into a research path. I am deeply grateful to practitioner and academic peers with whom I have exchanged so many reflections about how to make popular communication more significative to social change processes and how to develop its conceptual framework. Editing this book in English means to me an opportunity to reverberate all these voices in a larger arena, where often times they get lost or become invisible. Thus I would like to thank Pradip Thomas and Elske van de Fliert, editors of the Palgrave Series Studies in Communication for Social Change, for hosting this project and providing the resources to make it real. My deep gratitude extends to each of the contributors for their trust, their commitment with this editorial project, their efforts to improve each version of the manuscripts, and their patience during the process. I feel honored to work with such great authors who have also been a reference to me as a practitioner and as a researcher. In March 2020, I presented the first draft of the Introduction as well as the summary  of this book in a meeting with members of two Brazilian research groups: the Núcleo de Estudos de Comunicação Comunitária e Local (Comuni), coordinated by Professor  Cicilia Peruzzo, and the Interculturalidade, Cidadania, Comunicacao e Consumo (Deslocar), coordinated by Professor  Denise Cogo. I want to thank the generous feedback of colleagues from these groups that contributed to clarify and improve the reflections presented here. I also want to thank the translators who worked with several chapters, and to recognize their huge contribution in organizing the ideas vii

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contained within, while preserving their epistemological roots. The length and style vary quite a lot between the contributions. The experiences are diverse and imprint the reflections as well as the way they are expressed. There is a red line between all texts, but that diversity was preserved with the support of the translators. Thanks to Jim McDonnell for proofreading the Introduction and for the longstanding partnership. Finally, I am grateful for the work of the Palgrave Macmillan team who worked with me along the way. Mala Shangera Warren, Liam McLeam, Emily Wood, Divya Anish, and those others whose names I don’t know, but were there backing copyediting, design, production, printing, distribution, and other vital tasks. It is also important to say that the references mobilized in this book are evidently not exhaustive. Authors talk extensively about Juan Díaz Bordenave and Orlando Fals Borda, but usually not much about Paulo Freire and Luís Ramiro Beltrán, for instance. The evidence applies to several other great names of the literature of popular communication in Latin America. Aníbal Orue Pozzo makes an extremely important footnote in which he points to the lack of general reference in the literature to the women who contributed to build this field. We count on the contributions of great ones for this book, but many others are missing. We are aware of the limitations of this work in the face of the richness and diversity of this school of thought, and highlight the articulation with other important works already in existence (e.g., Stephensen and Treré, 2020; Pertierra and Salazar, 2019; Martens, Venegas and Tapuy, 2020), and those that might hopefully appear in the future to fulfill a more complete framework.

Praise for The Evolution of Popular Communication in Latin America “Popular communication is about communication processes in which cultures that are marginalized are allowed to express themselves and breathe. Addressing the histories and epistemologies of popular communication in Latin America, this book is a breath of fresh air at a time when people from many corners of the world are fighting colonial oppression. It offers an important contribution to the field by embracing diverse writing styles and lived experiences whilst promoting important global dialogues.” —Andrea Medrado, Tenured Assistant Professor, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Vice-President of IAMCR “In Latin America, an autonomous and critical scientific thought has been based on popular communication practices that have reoriented communication as culture and as a political ground for the production of power, struggle, and resistance. The texts gathered in this work revisit the Latin American communicational thought and invite to a South–North dialogue that resignifies popular communication as a decolonial epistemology and in the scope of the rearrangements produced by globalization and the processes of life digitalization.” —Denise Cogo, Professor at ESPM and researcher at CNPq, Brazil “This is a timely and relevant book that makes a valuable contribution to the field of Communication and Media Studies from a Latin American Perspective. It offers an array of experiences anchored in historical, cultural, and social contexts that provide a sound discussion about popular communication. It presents voices from the margins of society and academia to broaden the sources of knowledges from which we all should learn.” —Claudia Magallanes-Blanco, Profesor, Universidad Iberoamericana Puebla, Mexico “This volume makes a decisive contribution to theoretical and practical efforts to refound democratic communication at the service of those—working classes, women, minorities—who are on the wrong side of social relations of domination. If social sciences usually feed a certain pessimism of reason, the contributions gathered in this volume deliberately choose, in the struggle against the global violence of neoliberal capitalism, the optimism of the will.” —Benjamin Ferron, East-Paris University, France

Contents

1 Introduction: Popular Communication, an Epistemological Debate between South and North  1 Ana Cristina Suzina Part I The Roots of an Epistemology  27 2 Thinking about Communication from the Global South. Subjectivities Construction in Latin America: An Overview 29 Aníbal Orué Pozzo 3 Popular and Communitarian Communication in Rural Social Movements: Beyond “Diffusionism” to Emancipatory Participation 51 Cicilia M. Krohling Peruzzo 4 Faith, Communication and Commitment to Liberation 73 Washington Uranga 5 The Vestiges of the Concept of Popular in Latin America 91 Santiago Gómez Obando

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Part II A Method, a Pedagogy, a Practice 107 6 Disenchantment as a Path Toward Autonomy: Orlando Fals Borda, Participatory Action Research, Communication and Social Change109 Jair Vega-Casanova 7 A Praise of Dignity in Educational Practice129 Daniel Prieto Castillo 8 Popular Radios: Constants and Tensions141 María Cristina Mata 9 Popular Communication in Latin America: A Look at the Actors Who Build Bridges159 Nívea Canalli Bona Part III Decolonial Perspectives 175 10 The Decolonial Nature of Comunicação Popular177 Leonardo Custódio 11 Digital Media and Emancipation in Latin American Communication Thinking191 Dorismilda Flores-Márquez 12 Communication and Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir: In the Care of Our Common Home209 Adalid Contreras Baspineiro Index229

Notes on Contributors

Nívea  Canalli  Bona  Brazilian journalist Canalli Bona  holds a PhD in Communications from Brazil. She studies Communication in Social Movements, and Alternative, Community and Popular Media, among other subjects. She has three books published, was chair of a Journalism Program in Brazil and researched in Spain and the United States. She believes another communication is possible. Jair Vega Casanova  Sociologist, professor at the Department of Social Communication, researcher at PBX Communication and Culture Research Group and director of the Master on Communication at Universidad del Norte, Colombia, Casanova holds a master’s degree in Politic and Economic Studies. His research areas can be articulated within communication, participation and social change. Daniel Prieto Castillo  Prieto Castillo is an educator with a PhD in Social Communication, Emeritus Professor at the National University of Cuyo (Mendoza, Argentina). He has worked as specialist in educational communication in several projects in different countries of Latin America. He has published 48 books with theoretical, methodological and practical contributions to the relationship between communication and education, in formal and non-formal education. Adalid Contreras Baspineiro  Bolivian sociologist, specialist in communication for development and communication strategies, Contreras Baspinero is attached to the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar and the Latin American Council of Social Sciences. He is  visiting professor in xiii

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­ ostgraduate courses at Latin American and European universities, and p author of 30 books and a hundred academic essays. Leonardo  Custódio Custódio  is a postdoctoral researcher at Åbo Akademi University, Finland. He also coordinates the Anti-racism Media Activist Alliance (www.armaalliance.fi) together with Monica Gathuo, and is the author of Favela Media Activism: Counterpublics for Human Rights in Brazil (2017). Dorismilda  Flores-Márquez  Flores-Márquez  is associate professor of Communication at the Universidad De La Salle Bajío (León, México). She holds a PhD in Social-Scientific Studies (ITESO, 2016) and is the author of Imaginar un mundo mejor: La expression pública de los activistas en Internet (ITESO, 2019). María  Cristina  Mata Marita Mata  is a consultant professor at the National University of Córdoba (Argentina) and director of the Specialization in Management and Production of Audiovisual Media. She directed the Master in Communication and Contemporary Culture and the Communication and Citizenship Program of that university. Researcher specialized in public, mass and popular media. Santiago  Gómez  Obando Gómez Obando is  Popular educator  and occasional professor at the National University of Colombia. He is member of the collective Dimensión Educativa, Centro de Pensamiento en Políticas Públicas de Educación Superior (C3PES) and Centre de recherches interdisciplinaires: Démocratie, Institutions, Subjectivité (Cridis). Aníbal  Orué  Pozzo  Orué Pozzo is a  Faculty member  of the graduate Program in Latin American Interdisciplinary Studies, Federal University of Latin American Integration, and at the Graduate School, East National University (UNE), Paraguay. He is  Researcher at Paraguayan Agency on Science and Technology (CONACYT) and at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Rural Studies (CERI), Paraguay. Cicilia  M.  Krohling  Peruzzo Khroling Peruzzo is  PhD in Communication from the University of São Paulo (ECA-USP), visiting professor at University of State of Rio de Janeiro, researcher at CNPq. Author of the books Relações públicas no modo de produção capitalista (Public Relations in the Capitalist Mode of Production), Comunicação nos movimentos populares  – a participação na construção na cidadania (Communication in Popular Movements—Participation in the Construction

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of Citizenship) and Televisão comunitária—dimensão pública e participação cidadã na mídia local (Community Television—Public Dimension and Citizen Participation in Local Media). She organized some book collections and has articles published in several national and international scientific journals. Ana  Cristina  Suzina Suzina  has a bachelor’s degree in Journalism (Universidade Estadual de Ponta Grossa, Brazil) and a PhD in Political and Social Sciences (UCLouvain, Belgium). She is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Institute for Media and Creative Industries at Loughborough University London. Her research focuses on the relationship between communication, social movements and democracy, with special interest in Latin American societies. Washington  Uranga Uranga  is a Uruguayan, resident of Argentina, journalist, teacher and investigator of communication. He was vice president of the World Catholic Association for Radio and Television (UNDA) and President of the Latin American region of the same organization. Author of several books on topics of communication, popular movements and religion.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Popular Communication, an Epistemological Debate between South and North Ana Cristina Suzina

There are many ways in which popular communication can be defined.1 As the contributions that form this book testify, it is a theoretical framework capable of preserving some fundamental pillars while hosting a diversity of understandings that come from a rigorous engagement with the context in which practices and concepts emerge and develop. As a summarizing proposal, I advance that popular communication refers to dynamics that are guided by three main principles: a bottom-up approach, that requires embracing the diversity of knowledge; a strong connection with social struggles, conforming with a “communication movement” in a struggle 1  Acknowledgements to the members of the Brazilian research groups Comuni, coordinated by Professor Cicilia Peruzzo, and Deslocar, coordinated by Professor Denise Cogo, with whom this article was discussed in March of 2020. Their comments and questions contributed to clarify and enrich the ideas and debates exposed here.

A. C. Suzina (*) Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. C. Suzina (ed.), The Evolution of Popular Communication in Latin America, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62557-3_1

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around meanings; and an alternative configuration to mainstream media, guided by the will of occupying the public debate. In the sequence, I will unfold these principles and reflect upon how they inform an epistemology of the South coming from communication and media studies, exploring some fruitful dialogues with other currents in the field.

The Bottom-Up Approach: An Epistemological Root In 2015, I had a great exchange with Vivian, a journalist working at the Centro Popular de Mídias, in São Paulo. It was one among several other very inspiring conversations that I had the luck to have in the context of my doctoral research.2 Vivian shared with me an internal debate about the employment of the notion of the popular in their mediatic production. At a certain point, she advanced a notion of her own, that of of “poor journalism” that goes as follows: New journalism? I don’t know what it is currently. Some people say that it is A Pública.3 I agree, but I would like to do the ‘poor journalism’, that is directed to the real poor, the one in which we go there and put our feet in the mud. And there is neither the concern to compete to know who gets more clicks. […] It is to understand that there is a cultural exclusion in Brazil that is associated with an economic exclusion that is associated with a social and geographic exclusion—these people usually live in the periphery. Understand that this situation exists and that we want a dialogue with these people. And it does not mean that we will ‘descend from our position of lords of knowledge’, but that there is a proper language. […] This is to make an effort to listen to the other. […] Because I know about my condition. I am a white middle class girl with a university degree. My text will never or will hardly touch someone who is black, poor, did not go to the university and is pregnant at 16 years old. I didn’t live it. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what text or image will touch this person. (Vivian, Centro Popular de Mídias 2015)

In a certain way, this notion of “poor journalism” reflected many normative definitions expressed by several other Brazilian popular communicators among the fifty-five I have interviewed from 2013 to 2017 (Suzina 2  My doctoral research was funded by the Brazilian agency CAPES—Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior. 3  Brazilian news agency of investigative journalism. Available at: https://apublica.org/

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2018). Many of them used terms similar to this idea of putting “the feet in the mud” that she expressed to describe a golden rule for anyone searching to do a communication related to or supporting processes of social change. The “feet in the mud” summarizes the bottom-up principle of popular communication. It refers to a posture of getting into deep contact with the realities of marginalized people and honestly listening to them in order to incorporate their voices in the communication or, ideally, engaging them in the process of doing communication in any platform chosen. It is about getting impregnated with these realities and, beyond narrating them, sharing the feeling of living them and the urgency of changing them. Joelma, from Rede de Notícias da Amazônia, during that same research, told me that this is a more cherished skill than any university degree, which relates with the idea of a communicator forged by/in the field, as described by Nívea Canalli Bona (2020), in this book. Another aspect of this refers to our work in popular communication in a way that it is directed to the reality of that community, the people, that it really approaches what people experience. […] The popular communication highlights the diversity and you make it for the people and with the people. (Wellington, Landless Workers Movement, October 2015)

The idea of “feet in the mud” is close to the very sense of love that we can find in Paulo Freire (see e.g., Freire 1967, 1992, 2017) and in the works of bell hooks (see e.g. hooks 2001), in which it represents a mindful engagement with liberating the other while also liberating oneself. What we can see in Vivian’s, Joelma’s and other popular communicator’s words is that this communication does not change just the other who might need help to reach better living conditions. It summarizes the comprehension that while the other is marginalized, I am marginalized as well, everyone is marginalized, and transformation is required for all. The bottom-up approach is about the source of knowledge mobilized, breaking barriers that define whose voices have worth. Gilberto Gimenez proposes a conceptual definition of popular communication that seeks to distinguish it from a kind of dominant “popular communication,” frequently used by elites in order to approach the masses. The latter is a top-­ down popular communication in the sense of having the people as destiny of the messages. According to Gimenez, “it is a relationship that is established between cultural constellations not only different, but also ‘uneven’” (Gimenez 1980, p. 12).

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For this author, on the opposite, the liberating popular communication is made of a “political conversion” (idem., p.16) because of its critical perspective. On the top of highlighting the popular culture and knowledge, it embraces the effort of transforming the oppressive realities. The popular communication “implies breaking the logic of domination and develops itself not from above, but from the people, sharing as much as possible their own codes” (idem.). This is the essence of the bottom-up principle that also included the Latin American tradition of popular communication in the larger “participatory paradigm” of communication.4 In this sense, the analysis of the evolution of popular communication under the light of the current digital disruption necessarily pushes the debate about participatory issues, present in the reflections and promises of both popular communication and the digital culture. Within the latter, there is an emphasis on the enlargement of individual expression, such as in the concept of self-massive information described by Manuel Castells to talk about the potential of individually reaching large audiences through the Internet (Castells 2013). The alluring potential of digital technologies may however blur the idea of process approximating communication and media back to the principles of the diffusionist model, in which the objective was to create appealing messages capable of being reproduced independent of their pertinence to the public. This is a much cherished debate under the perspective of popular communication, that can be found in the seminal works of Paulo Freire (2013) and Juan Díaz Bordenave (Orué Pozzo A. 2014), for instance. Even though the perspective of popular communication also defendes the dialogical process where receivers also produce information, participation is better related to dynamics of collective construction of messages (Cogo 2009). Within this tradition, participation is necessarily associated with the incorporation of grassroots perspectives and experiences in the appropriation of communication and media. Flores-Márquez (2020) highlights, in this book, that beyond increasing visibility, popular communication embeds necessarily processes of resistance and hope. Out of this complex articulation, there may be use of communication and media platforms, but they will lack a political character that allows the constitution of an identity of struggle.

4  Other “images” of popular that apply to this reflection can be found in Gómez Obando’s contribution to this book.

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The Attachment to Social Struggles: A Battle Around Meanings The political character of popular communication lays down in the way the appropriation of communication turns into a full component of the social change pursued by a social collective. It goes beyond using communication devices or platforms as tools to make struggles or issues more visible. It means introducing a social complaint into a struggle around meanings. Through popular communication, social actors engage in a dispute around the grammar of arguments. Living in asymmetric democracies (Suzina 2016, 2018) they face relations of oppression, where there are distributive and recognition issues that disable parity of participation (Fraser 2010). An important part of society is denied its right to speak for themselves and to contribute in the debate and definition of social arrangements. The problem is in the heart of contemporary social struggles all over the world, expressed by demands such as the “reclamation and expansion of citizenship” (Gerbaudo 2017, p. 3). The communication that emerges from these emancipation processes is pregnant of symbols, voices, and hopes of these peoples, and plays internal and external roles within a social struggle. From one side, it exists to wrap up a cosmovision that will, at a moment, nurture and confirm individual and collective subjectivities, and from the other, it supports the constitution of a public representation of themselves and their utopia. Even if concrete transformations, such as making a demand for health or education visible, figure among the main popular communication objectives, the process of recognizing rights and becoming a subject is considered as more important than the material improvement itself (Gumucio-Dagron 2014). In this sense, the improvement of living conditions is always associated with an increase in political participation, as Peruzzo’s and Mata’s contributions to this book describe. In a very Freirean sense, it is about replacing oneself in the world as a subject who can name things, instead of an object who is named by others. Popular communication supports individuals and collectives to recover their own voice and perspective, frequently blurred by dominant ones imposed over them. The term ‘popular’ is very cherished by us. Joana, the editor of Brasil de Fato in Minas Gerais, classifies our work as popular. I think it is alternative. These are never ending discussions, but the reason for employing popular is

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that we already use ‘popular movement’, we build a popular project for the country, we define ourselves as part of the popular field, everything for us ends up in the popular. Everything is popular. If there is a hegemonic vision, what is our vision? The popular one. […] For us, today, a popular vision of Brazil and of the world is charged with this sense of entwining the people in this construction. (Vivian, Centro Popular de Mídias 2015, my highlights)

This understanding enlarges the scope of initiatives that can be considered within the spectrum of popular communication, focusing more on the attachment to the struggles themselves than in the institutional profile of the organization. The common principle between the practices is that of resistance that supports the construction of a counter power that may take different forms according to contexts and subjects of struggle. The will to bring about transformation is the main shared feature and communication practices mirror it, recovering perspectives and experiences that endorse it. In his defense of the method of Investigación Acción Participativa, Orlando Fals Borda considers that the development of this counter power, as a popular power, is directly associated with the retrieval of the Other and the power of popular sectors. For him, recovering local knowledge and practices makes the path for fighting top-down and asymmetrical relations that configure the domination of hegemonic forces in societies (Fals Borda 1985, 1987; see also Jair Vega Casanova, in this book). In this sense, the long-term appropriation of communication within social struggles can also contribute to the reflections about the use of media during periods of latency of social movements (Melucci 1985), i.e., those periods between the peaks of public mobilization and visibility. The political character of popular communication contributes to analyzing the use of these platforms beyond the notion of tools or strategies, but as a full component of the process of social change claimed by social movements, as we can see in Peruzzo’s contribution to this book. It embeds a comprehension that every change must include a shift in the frame designing, to employ Nancy Fraser’s concept (2010); it is about changing the collective meanings that inspire and guide a society. Therefore, the internal role is deeply related to the external role. Evolving continuously throughout periods of latency and visibility, popular communication practices support a public struggle in the definition of meanings. This idea is very important in this debate, while there

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is a search of recognition of each voice, as a process of subjectivation and intervention in the social order. Meaning is what gives us sense of our own identity, of who we are and with whom we ‘belong’—so it is tied up with questions of how culture is used to mark out and maintain identity within and difference between groups. (Hall 2013, p. xix)

Considering the high concentration of argument producers and a variety of barriers regarding the legitimacy of the speakers in the public sphere, the aim of having their own say confirms a demand for representation. The claims of social actors against mainstream media, for instance, correlate to the issues of “normative legitimacy” and “political efficacy” of public opinion, as conceptualized by Fraser (2010, pp. 93–99). The problem is that inequalities in local and global public spheres are still producing political asymmetries while excluding particular social groups—especially disadvantaged ones—from the community of fellow members allowed to interfere in the frame designing (Suzina 2016). Popular communication initiatives are shaped by the way each social group dialogues with and challenges its context. It participates, then, in the construction of a language and a narrative to produce enough dissonance (Suzina 2019, 2020) and confront hegemonic visions.

An Alternative to Mainstream Media: The Occupation of the Public Sphere John D.  H.  Downing has organized an entire encyclopedia gathering analyses about the multiple models of appropriation of media by social actors in different countries and historical times (Downing J. D. 2011). As varied as their formats, methods and results are the concepts applied for describing and analyzing them. In a compilation discussing the epistemology and the implications of such a variety of terms and definitions, Benjamin Ferron retrieved around fifty different concepts applied to this genre of initiative (Ferron 2006). Regina Festa identified thirty-three different terms used only in Latin America (Dornelles 2007, p. 5). According to Ferron’s compilation, the definitions provided by scholars can refer to a variety of characteristics:

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• their differences compared to mainstream media: in this sense, they could be named as “alternative media,” because of their subaltern or dissident origins and approaches; • their economic conditions: in this case, they could be referred to as “independent media,” for their autonomy regarding capitalist ownership and partisan attachments or not-for-profit status; • their editorial approaches: here, they could be defined as “radical media”—the term coined by Downing himself (2001)—regarding their critical engagement in diffusing alternative perspectives about reality and the social order; • their relations with audiences: referring to situations where they could be called “participatory media” because of their efforts to include the audience in the news routines, or “citizen media”—the term coined by Clemencia Rodríguez (2001)—for their capacity of transforming audiences into producers and broadcasters of information from their own experience and perspective; among others. There have been attempts for establishing one normative model to be applied in the field and Downing’s encyclopedia is a recent example of this, while he proposes to talk about “social movements’ media.” As observed by Ferron, definitions can be understood in many senses, but in general they play an important role in the (de)legitimation of these operations as a field of study as well as in their consideration as full agents in the media and the public spheres. And this is the main aspect of the whole reflection. I define the third principle of popular communication of a will to appropriate media as a quest to occupy the public debate. At a certain point in my exchanges with popular communicators from the Landless Workers Movement, one of them said “we know that occupying land is dangerous but we do it; the same goes with occupying media,” placing communication actions at the same level as the main historically political action of the movement. When it comes to the appropriation of media platforms, in general, popular communication is presented as an alternative to mainstream media, in ownership models, format, and content. In fact, it fights power asymmetries in the participation in the public sphere. Throughout this whole book, “popular communication” might be the first most mentioned term. The second, I would guess, might be “inequalities.”

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The sense of developing popular communication within the Movimento Sem-Terra is exactly to democratize it, the media, which means that all men and women will have access to means of communication. […] In the popular communication, we understand that we must have access to these media that already exist and build new ones also. (Wellington, Landless Workers Movement, October 2015)

Already in the 1980s, the MacBride Report denounced the concentration of media ownership in the world and praised alternative initiatives developed by social groups (Otre 2015). The challenge persists, along with the resilience of grassroots actors who become even more conscious of its role within social change processes. When it comes to the practice, format and content are influenced by the straight connection with the social groups with which the practice is connected. It means that the choice of technological and communication platforms and the way they will be used, as well as the subjects covered, take into account aspects such as cultural traditions, socioeconomic conditions, particular interests, the social struggle in question, and everyday experiences. However, historically, the concept did not refer to productions necessarily made to compete with any other kind of media (Peruzzo C. M. 2014). There are two remarks that may be made around this aspect. Some popular media initiatives develop the perspective of providing an alternative source of information independent of any competitive concern with mainstream media. However, despite criticism and awareness, traditional media models can be employed by popular communicators which does not necessarily prejudice their projects of resistance. These aspects may be observed with attention, because the quality of analysis may be enriched with a greater understanding of the normative feature of “being alternative.” Considering the possibility of rivalry with mainstream media, even when popular communicators develop a consistent criticism regarding the mainstream approach, frequently, their main concern is to build something in which the local community is able to see for themselves and can talk about their particular issues, as discussed by Bona (2020), in this book. They are aware that mainstream media have a high penetration among their audiences and, generally, do not try to replace sources of information and entertainment with popular media. They recognize that the game is not fair, considering the availability of resources that make

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their productions less financially secure and, therefore, less stable and sometimes less technically qualified. However, they make efforts to offer a complementary source that breaks misinformation and highlights the value of local and alternative experiences and perspectives. The examples presented by Custódio (2020) in this book, in the context of the coronavirus crisis, are illustrative. This is the point where the alternative to mainstream media must be analyzed beyond models, which leads to my second remark. I argue that the idea of popular as an expression of resistance must consider also aspects of assimilation and hybridization. In this sense, the concept of mediation in the work of Martín-Barbero (1987) can be helpful. Talking about content reception, he affirms that there is never a complete subordination, but a resignification of contents. The practice of popular media suggests that the incorporation of mainstream models and practices may also be resignified and support the emergence and consolidation of the initiatives, based on the connection to social struggle and on the bottom-­up approach. It suggests a resistance that is rather rooted in content, approaches, and managerial aspects than in technical and technological formats. Ferron makes a critical discussion about the normative aspects in alternative media studies and highlight three main premises: heterodoxy/ autonomy, unity/cooperation, and democratic/grassroots (Ferron 2010, p. 136). This set of premises generally overlaps the principles of popular communication, which suggests another rich international dialogue. However, the “opposition” to mainstream media models is a central point in the alternative media approaches, while it is rather a principle dependent upon the other two—the bottom-up approach and connection with struggles—in the context of the popular communication tradition.

An Epistemology of the South from Media and Communication Studies The term “popular” in comunicación popular, in Spanish, and comunicação popular, in Portuguese, refers to the culture of the so-called popular classes in Latin America—which includes indigenous people, those living on the peripheries and in the suburbs, campesinos, and all groups that are excluded from the dominant elite culture. We talk about popular communication to discuss the general use of communication processes—including media, but also any communication tool such as theater, music, interpersonal communications etc.—to empower citizens within a

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historical and socioeconomic context through participation. We talk particularly about popular media to discuss the appropriation by these groups of media outlets to produce or highlight a narrative opposed to a dominant one (González 1990; Peruzzo C. M. 2008). It also refers to operations seeking the emancipation and the improvement in the conditions of life of these groups (Gimenez 1984; Festa 1984; Otre 2016). As mentioned before, if there is one main common root between the definitions of popular communication that are diversely expressed across the eleven contributor-chapters in this book, this is an awareness of inequalities and a genuine engagement with those who suffer them. It appears in a frequent recall of historical and deep structural inequalities in Latin America, associated with a violent process of colonization that persists in forms of coloniality up until our day. Aníbal Orué Pozzo (2020) summarizes the evolution of policies and politics since the 1950s, highlighting projects of development that did nothing more than sustaining structures of economic and cultural dependency. Leonardo Custódio (2020) traces the meaning of colonization and coloniality that feeds the latter since the arrival of colonizers in what Santiago Gómez Obando (2020) calls “Our America.” But this common root is also expressed by the reference to a number of efforts to break this dependency coming from different social sectors. Washington Uranga (2020) recalls the Theology of Liberation as a fertile soil in which grassroots communities have awaken to a reality of oppression and for a collective response to it, including a creative and critical appropriation of communication. Jair Vega Casanova (2020) describes the path of Orlando Fals Borda in the search for a research methodology in the social sciences that leaves room for the emergence of the voices of marginalized and frequently invisible social actors. Daniel Prieto Castillo (2020) shares a long path of construction of a pedagogic mediation in which “communicators-educators” create a space of encounter and learning exchange that praises dignity for all. All the authors talk about recognition and full adhesion to forms of knowledge that combine rational arguments with a mystique that encompasses feelings and beliefs, as condensed in the notion of buen vivir, presented by Adalid Contreras Baspineiro (2020). The focus of the studies about popular and alternative communication, according to Fernando Reyes Matta (apud Festa 1995, pp. 131–132), was to understand this new phenomenon in the life of Latin-Americans and walk

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together in the common search of liberation utopias. Essentially, this communication from the social looked for changing the unjust, changing the oppressor, changing the historical inertia that imposes suffocating dimensions, through a liberation vocation nurtured by a multiplicity of communicative experiences. (Peruzzo C. M. 2008, free translation)

While reflecting upon the reasons why critical actors still appropriate and make sense of the notion of popular in Latin America, Gómez Obando (2020) attributes its pertinence and relevance to “the affirmative, articulating and mythical possibilities that the popular guarantees for the set of discursive formations in which they are produced and articulated.” In short, the sense of popular communication continuously produces and is produced by the sense and the direction of social struggles. Cicilia M.  Krohling Peruzzo (2020) describes this process based on two case studies that demonstrate how popular communication takes form embedded in moments of latency and visibility of social movements, becoming an integral part of their dynamics. Following these premises, popular communication constitutes one epistemology because these roots forge a method, a pedagogy, and a practice coherent with the mud in which they step in. They are forcibly engaged, without losing rigor. And although deeply marked by these roots, the approach proposed by popular communication dialogues easily with contexts and issues—in social and academic terms—beyond its Latin American birthplace, as we will see below. Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2019) recently offered a large recognition to the works of Paulo Freire and Orlando Fals Borda for their contribution to his definition of epistemologies of the South. As it happens with popular communication, these epistemologies are enough flexible to capture the spirit and dynamics of social struggles across the world. The epistemologies of the South refer to the production and validation of knowledge anchored in the experiences of resistance of all social groups that have been systematically victims of the injustice, oppression and destruction caused by capitalism, colonialism and patriarchy. I call the vast and very diverse scope of these experiences an anti-imperial South. It is an epistemological, non-geographic South, composed of many epistemological souths that have in common the fact that they are knowledge born in struggles against capitalism, colonialism and patriarchy. They are produced wherever these struggles occur, both in the geographical north and in the geographical south. The aim of Southern epistemologies is to allow oppressed social

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groups to represent the world as their own and on their own terms, as only in this way will they be able to transform it according to their own aspirations. (Santos 2019, p. 17, free translation, my highlights)

Additionally, as for the epistemologies of the South, the concept of popular communication does not search for the absolute, rather recognizing itself as one part, one perspective, dialogical—although necessarily critical—in its constitution and in the relation with other currents. However, it is important to observe how the constitution of one field of research integrates the decolonial character of popular communication. Dorismilda Flores-Márquez (2020) highlights in this book a “double way of resistance.”. While “communities resisted to oppression with creativity … Latin American scholars resisted the Anglo and Eurocentric theoretical production, by exploring, analysing and explaining their own context, by reformulating or discussing concepts, and particularly by articulating the practical projects with the theoretical production.”. The trajectories of scholars such as Juan Díaz Bordenave, as commented by Orué Pozzo (2020, this book), and Fals Borda, as summarized by Jair Vega Casanova (2020, this book), as well as the dynamic and critical coexistence with the current of communication for/and development and social change, as discussed by Peruzzo (2020, this book) illustrate this productive tension. The development of the concept is straightly connected with the experiences and reflexivity in the field. Uranga (2020, this book) and Prieto Castillo (2020, this book) highlight that the practice came before the theory. The number and the relevance of popular radio stations within historical social struggles in Latin America, as described by María Cristina Mata (2020, this book), illustrate this process. It is a particular theoretical development embedded in a Latin American school of thinking, that emerged in the 1960s, with the creation of Ciespal (Centro Internacional de Estudios Superiores de Comunicación para América Latina) in Ecuador and followed by other research centers in countries such as Chile, Venezuela, and Mexico. The work of scholars such as Luis Ramiro Beltrán, Antonio Pasquali, Fernando Reyes Matta, Armand and Michelle Mattelart, among others, contributed to build and disseminate an approach that searched to discuss communication developments in relation to the political and cultural context of the region. Since the beginning, there was a concern related to the incorporation of technologies within processes of domination and dependency, which were deepened by the dictatorships.

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Opposite to the functional-diffusionist conception propitiated by the North American agencies in those years that, when identifying Latin American countries as underdeveloped, tied “development” directly to the quantitative growth of the number of copies of newspapers sold or the number of radio and television sets per inhabitant, the “theory of communication” that originated in these countries provided a historical-social approach that made it impossible to isolate the action of media from the political context and processes of the region. What finally caused a dispute about Latin American research during its first years was not the weight of media in the modernization of these countries but the purpose of communication in the emancipation of our societies. The academic formation on communication was born under the sign of a double function: to study the action and conformation of mass media, most of them commercial, with an intent to introduce into their pages and programs the voices of social agents that had been usually absent, and working in the creation of alternative media which were to be democratic right from the start. (Martín-Barbero 2014, p.  22, free translation, italics in the original)

Christa Berger (1999) highlighted that this was a generation that discussed Latin America from the perspective of the communication, as well as the global process of communication from the perspective of Latin America. A diversity of initiatives and associations make efforts to overcome what José Marques de Melo defined as the “complex of the colonized,” searching for what he summarized as “(1) work on the nature of the communication process; (2) theoretical autonomy and the promotion of methodological criticism, and (3) the rescue of empirical knowledge in its triple dimension: autochthonous, mestizo and popular” (Mattos 2019, p. 63). In 1980, the MacBride Report, from Unesco, suggested a New World Information and Communication Order and enhanced this process with a strong support to alternative forms of communication coming from marginal voices. The critical analysis of a global and unequal flow of information led to a theoretical perspective engaged with a political project very close to popular movements. Taking advantage of this window of international visibility and of a new wave of thinkers, such as Jesús Martín-Barbero and Néstor García Canclini, the concept enjoyed a recognition that positioned it in global literature and consolidated it as an internal reference to scholars in the region. As described by Thomas Tufte, the tradition of popular communication embedded in the Latin American school of thinking, constitutes “a groundbreaking work of the late 1980s on rehabilitating popular culture

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and reassessing the political potential of everyday social and cultural practices, not least communicative practices” (Tufte 2017, p. 45). Florencia Enghel and Martín Becerra (2018) recall a study from the 1990s that identified an autonomy of reciprocal references between Latin American thinkers in relation with a previous centrality of European and North American peers. From the 1980s to the twenty-first century, the perspective of popular communication continued to develop all over Latin America, evolving and establishing dialogues with complementary approaches. It represents a strong field of research in the region. In Brazil, between 1972 and 2012, more than one hundred Master and PhD dissertations analyzed these kinds of practices (Otre 2016). It became, however, together with other Latin American contributions, rather invisible in the international literature of communication and media studies (Enghel and Becerra 2018; Ganter and Ortega 2019). Despite this invisibility, the popular communication tradition addresses one of the main challenges that came with the recent wave of scientific interest in the appropriation of digital media by communities and social movements, as observed by Clemencia Rodríguez, Benjamin Ferron, and Kristin Shamas. The authors invite scholars to take into account historical processes, economic and political contexts, a wider understanding of communication, and the need to ground research in the field in order to better understand and analyze the use of media in the context of social change (Rodríguez et al. 2014, p. 3). The combination of young and more experienced authors in this book demonstrates the permanent evolution of practices and reflections, reflecting this continuous dialogue with realities.

The South and the North: An Epistemological Debate Bringing popular communication into a global debate can prove challenging. From one side, it can be easily misrelated to the “dominant popular communication” as defined by Gimenez (see above) and then associated with the mass media. From the other side, it can also be related to Latin America to the point of being perceived as a too-located and dated perspective. Considering that mainstream theoretical approaches are not labeled with their Anglo-Saxon and European origins, the identification of popular communication with a particular geographical region incurs the

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risk of justifying a peripherical position. Under the principles of the epistemologies of the South, the correlation is worth it because it underlines the key contextual inputs that build its rationale while placing itself as one knowledge that integrates an ecology of coexisting knowledges. The strength of this theoretical framework comes from the fruitful dialogue that can be developed with other approaches in which participation is a core principle. The concept of popular communication was built upon dynamics of participation and conflict. Mario Kaplún talks about a people who assume a protagonist role and like this author, Regina Festa and Gilberto Gimenez speak of a communication coming from the bottom of society, enhancing popular codes and triggering awareness and reflexivity (Peruzzo C. M. 2006, p. 3). Historically, the adjective popular meant “communication of the people,” made by them and for them, through their emancipator organizations and movements towards the transformation of oppressive structures and inhuman living conditions. (Peruzzo C. M. 2006, p. 2, free translation)

Two globalized approaches seem particularly suitable and largely intertwined in this field. The approach of communication for social change places popular communication in an historical epistemological debate in which communication and media reflections and practices take part in processes of transformation on different levels. The approach of the right to communication inserts popular communication in a global debate from the perspective of the peripheries. Popular Communication and the Perspective of Communication for Social Change In their anthology of communication for social change, Afonso Gumucio-­ Dagrón and Thomas Tufte define a most distinctive character for the initiatives in this field. According to them, for the most part, this kind of media configures communication processes “which allow people themselves to define who they are, what they want and need, and how they will work together to improve their lives” (Gumucio-Dragon and Tufte 2006, p. xiv). The richness of this conception is that it leaves plenty of room for the reflexivity of the actors and the consideration to the context, configuring also a concrete path of dialogue with the concept of popular communication. Tufte has developed a tri-dimensional model where communication

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for social change is also associated with the “liberation pedagogy” and “dialogical principles” of Paulo Freire (Tufte 2013, pp. 80–81). I argue that there are three general conceptual approaches that can be represented in a model of three generations. The first generation refers to the diffusion of innovations, focused in the dissemination of information and closely linked to the Communication for Behavior Change. The second focuses on communication skills, promoting the development of competencies more or less general; it is mainly associated with Media Literacy. The third is the Communication for Social Change, which emerges from Paulo Freire’s liberating pedagogy and the principles of Dialogical Communication. (Tufte 2013, p. 80, free translation)

If based on Freirean principles, communication for social change pursues community development, common ground, and linkage of groups together in pursuit of social justice, economic inclusion, and political participation for all. The debates in this field also include a tension and a dialogue with the improvement of living conditions. Its history is closely connected with the field of communication for development, which is very related to research and practice of communication within more institutionalized initiatives searching for the transformation of realities—such as those managed by international aid organizations and cooperation. Under a shared umbrella, the large field of communication for development and social change combines an approach more generally related to the diffusion of technological innovations, as analyzed by Everett Rogers (Rogers 1974), with another approach closer to the participatory models, although the limits between one and another may be very blurred in some reflections and configurations. Victor Manuel Marí Sáez (2014) mentions two studies conducted by Jo Ellen Fair, in 1989, and later by Fair and Hammant Shah, in 1997, in which they recovered academic research in communication and development. The first period, between 1958 and 1986, highlights the perspective of diffusion, revealing a high level of trust in communication strategies for changing individual and collective attitudes and, consequently, pushing transformations in underdeveloped regions of the world. The second, between 1986 and 1997, points the emergence of participatory paradigms in the field (idem., p. 62).

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The role of technology is another important subject of debate in the large field of communication for development and social change. Marí Sáez (2014) recalls the importance of the pioneer community radios in Latin America as a turning point in the definition of the model of development in the region (See Mata 2020, this book). In short, technological advances are taken as core resources within social change actions. Their availability represents an enlargement of possibilities for organizing these actions, for reaching audiences and getting them on board, as well as for improving the visibility of their demands (See Flores-Márquez 2020, this book). For Marí Sáez (2014), the choice of technologies can be more determinist or sociocritical, depending on the centrality of the technical solutions. In the first, technology moves or strongly influences the social change, while in the second the context imposes conditions on the choice and on the efficiency of the technology. Jo Tacchi (2017) recalls the importance of a weighted observation about the effect of the increasing use of technology in relation to local needs and appropriations of different devices. For her, a “balance is needed between what technologies provide in terms of affordances as the possible properties of technologies and broad and specific contextual constraints and opportunities” (Tacchi 2017, p. 106) In Latin America, the concept of communication for development was largely avoided by scholars and practitioners, following a critical reflection regarding programs and policies of development recommended or even imposed by international institutions to the countries in the region. As mentioned before, the emergence of the concept of popular communication took place with the creation of Ciespal and other local organizations that gathered researchers and field practitioners interested in developing and disseminating a concept and methods to confront international domination and dependency, strengthening local and regional experiences and knowledges. Only later in the 2000s, the notions of communication for development and social change started to be applied in the region, exploring potential associations with the local schools of thinking and translating it to regional contexts and experiences. Scholars such as Uranga propose a step forward in “fragmented perspectives” in order to dialogue with enlarged communication processes (Uranga 2016).

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We want to recover a more integral view of communication, related to the essential condition of the human being who lives in community, who is constituted as an actor in a relational manner, who generates networks and organizational processes based on conversational exchanges and who, through collective production of senses, constitutes and constructs the culture that contains him/her and that, at the same time, forges him/her in a characteristic way. (Uranga 2016, p. 17, free translation)

For the author, the popular communication is not in opposition to massive, industrial, and institutional forms of communication. It is a perspective of communication for social change that incorporates other analytical frameworks while preserving and strengthening popular roots. Popular Communication and the Perspective of the Right to Communicate The “right to communicate” or “communication rights” consists of another international approach that is close to that of popular communication, as they both conceive communication in relation to the subjectivation and agency of social actors. One particularity of this approach is that it is strongly related to the establishment of laws and policies for guaranteeing the right conditions for the access to and production of communication. Another of its features is a claim for recognizing communication as a human right, connecting all peripheral processes and battles searching for the constitution and recognition of a political voice to marginalized actors, as with the case of popular communication. The rights-based approach gives a legal entitlement for communication, requiring and legitimizing claims and policies that grant access to production and use of information by all members of a society. It takes communication to a metalevel of rights that deal with asymmetrical relationships, claiming that all human beings should be able to express their feelings and thoughts regarding the way a society is organized and, mainly, the way this social order affects their lives. As summarized by Seán Ó Siochrú (2016), the “right to communicate” is about deepening and expanding other human rights. The right to communicate is generally formulated as laws and policies allowing and protecting the freedom of expression, as is the case in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is, nevertheless, unfolded in all legal regulations regarding the ownership of media, the rules for

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producing and diffusing information, as well as policies and direct actions enabling the expression of marginalized groups, among others. Additionally, it includes a concern regarding the consideration of the contents expressed, claiming the recognition of the diversity of perspectives. It foresees an equal-based dialogue and response from powerful actors to whom messages are addressed. In short, the “right to communicate is, in the end, not just about being heard: it must also mean securing access to the information you need; and being listened to by those in power with due consideration for your views.” (Ó Siochrú 2016, p. 6, italics in the original) The collective Intervozes, one of the main social associations campaigning for the right to communicate in Brazil, has identified seven axes for struggles and debate in this field. They are (1) freedom of expression, (2) public communication, (3) alternative and community communication— which contains the approach of popular communication, (4) the link between media and human rights, (5) the regulation of broadcasting initiatives, (6) access to the Internet, and (7) issues regarding privacy and surveillance (Intervozes 2007–2014). The lack or the nature of the laws ruling the practices in the field of popular communication has a great influence on the conditions for developing each action. The difficulties of getting a license for launching a community audiovisual outlet constitute a clear example in this sense and affect most of the countries in Latin America. The predominance of market-­oriented policies consists of another problem. For instance, leaving to the private sector the decision of where and how to develop media outlets contributes to the constitution and maintenance of “deserts of news,”, that are places in which there is none or very few local producers of information (Pimenta et al. 2017). However, field actors do not frequently declare a clear affiliation with the concept, something that was observed during a global evaluation of projects financed by the World Christian Association for Communication (WACC) in 2015 (Ó Siochrú 2016). The report suggested that the idea of communication rights was not widely understood by actors in the field and that it was not easily operational in daily based practices. As observed by Peruzzo, popular communication consists of a great variety of practices that enable debates and the development of the right to communicate (Peruzzo C.  M. 2016). The dialogue with this globalized approach explores the cross-fertilization between the field of concrete experiences, the constitution of legal frameworks, as well as the appropriation of the idea of the right of communicating.

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Final Considerations Many of the characteristics attributed to particular theoretical approaches, such as popular communication or communication for social change, are found intertwined in the field of experiences, which suggests two reflections. The first is that the categorization might be rather used to identify patterns of experiences in relation to the contexts and to the balance of power that can interfere in the evolution of the practices. It means that, more relevant than establishing categories to classify the experience, is understanding how a concept fits and may be transformed in relation to particular features of social and historical contexts. The second reflection is, nevertheless, that the development of concepts is still important to contribute to the consolidation of a full field of research and social action that becomes increasingly relevant in a highly mediatized society. The cross-­ fertilization between theoretical concepts and information coming from the field can contribute to the development of reflections about both the communication practices themselves and the influence of communication in general in the construction of social order. Ferron (2010) highlights a remark made by Clemencia Rodríguez and Chris Atton, for whom it is imperative to stop defining this kind of initiative by what they are not (i.e. they do not search for profit, they are not big, they are not professionals, etc.) and privilege conceptualizations that define them for what they actually are and do, for instance, for their opposition to a symbolic domination coming from mainstream media and for their potential for empowering social groups. Popular communication is above all a bottom-up oriented theoretical and empirical approach that leads to a variety of perspectives in permanent evolution. From Mario Kaplun, and his Cassete Foro method, to Jorge Gonzalez and his concept of cybercultur@, it analyzes the evolution of the practices—frequently searching to contribute with it—but also seeks to incorporate new analytical challenges in a permanent dialogue with the social and political context. This diversity of approaches constitutes an epistemological field that paves the way for a rich dialogue between North and South, local and global approaches.

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Festa, R. (1984). Comunicação popular e alternativa: a realidade e as utopias. In Dissertação (Mestrado em Comunicação Social), 290. São Bernardo do Campo: Instituto Metodista de Ensino Superior. Flores-Márquez, D. (2020). Digital media and emancipation in Latin American communication thinking. In A. C. Suzina (Ed.), The evolution of popular communication in Latin America. An epistemology of the south from media and communication studies. Palgrave Macmillan. Fraser, N. (2010). Reframing justice in a globalizing world. In N. Fraser (Ed.), Scales of justice. Reimagining political space in a globalizing world (pp. 12–29). New York: Columbia University Press. Freire, P. (1967). Educacao como Prática da Liberdade (1st ed.). Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Freire, P. (1992). Pedagogia da Esperança. Um reencontro com a Pedagogia do oprimido. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Freire, P. (2013). Extensao ou Comunicacao? (1st ed.). (R. D. Oliveira, Trans.) Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Freire, P. (2017). Pedagogia do Oprimido (63a ed. ed.). Rio de Janeiro/Sao Paulo: Paz e Terra. Ganter, S. A., & Ortega, F. (2019). The invisibility of Latin American scholarship in European media and communication studies: Challenges and opportunities of de-westernization and academic cosmopolitanism. International Journal of Communication, 13, 68–91. Gerbaudo, P. (2017). The mask and the flag. Populism, citizenism and global protest. London: Hurst Publishers. Gimenez, G. (1980). Que es la comunicación popular alternativa? (Vols. 1— Documentos para la Discusión). ECO—Sercivio Educación y Comunicaciones. Gimenez, G. (1984). Notas para uma teoría de la comunicación popular. In Que es la comunicación popular y alternativa?: Dos documentos para discusión (2nd ed., Vol. 1). ECO Servicio de documentación: comunicación y solidariedad. Gómez Obando, S. (2020). The vestiges of the concept of popular in Latin America. In A.  C. Suzina (Ed.), The evolution of popular communication in Latin America. An epistemology of the south from media and communication studies. Palgrave Macmillan. González, J. A. (1990). Sociología de las culturas subalternas. Mexico: UABC. Gumucio-Dagron, A. (2014). Comunicación, Desarrollo y Cambio Social. In C. Bolaño, D. C. Druetta, & G. Cimadevilla (Eds.), La contribución de América Latina al campo de la Comunicación. Historia, enfoques teóricos, epistamológicos y tendencias de la investigación (pp. 578–619). GRC—Alaic Edic. Gumucio-Dragon, A., & Tufte, T. (2006). Communication for social change. Anthology: Historical and contemporary readings. New Jersey, USA: Communication for Social Change Consortium.

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Peruzzo, C. M. (2008). Conceitos de comunicação popular, alternativa e comunitária revisitados. Reelaborações no setor. Palabra Clave, 11(2), 367–379. Peruzzo, C.  M. (2014). Comunicação Popular, Comunitária e Cidadania. In C. Bolaño, D. C. Druetta, & G. Cimadevilla (Eds.), La contribución de América Latina al campo de la Comunicación. Historia, enfoques teóricos, epistemológicos y tendencias de la investigación (pp. 546–577). GRC—Alaic Edic. Peruzzo, C. M. (2016). La comunicación en los movimientos sociales y el derecho a la comunicación: Señales de un derecho de ciudadanía de quinta generación. Commons, 5(2), 8–36. Peruzzo, C.  M. (2020). Popular and communitarian communication in rural social movements: Beyond ‘Diffusionism’ to emancipatory participation. In A. C. Suzina (Ed.), The evolution of popular communication in Latin America. An epistemology of the south from media and communication studies. Palgrave Macmillan. Pimenta, A., Varoni, P., Garcia, A., & Belda, F. (2017). Atlas da Notícia. São Paulo: Instituto para o Desenvolvimento do Jornalismo & Observatório da Imprensa. Retrieved January 18, 2018, from https://www.atlas.jor.br/ index.html. Prieto Castillo, D. (2020). A praise of dignity in educational practice. In A. C. Suzina (Ed.), The evolution of popular communication in Latin America: An epistemology of the south from media and communication studies. Palgrave Macmillan. Rodríguez, C. (2001). Fissures in the mediascape. An international study of citizen’s media. New York: Hampton Press. Rodríguez, C., Ferron, B., & Shamas, K. (2014). Four challenges in the field of alternative, radical and citizens’ media research. Media, Culture and Society, 15, 1–17. Rogers, E.  M. (1974). Communication in development. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, The Information Revolution (Mar., 1974), 412, 44–54. Santos, B. d. (2019). O fim do império cognitivo: a afirmacao das epistemologias do Sul (1st ed.). Belo Horizonte: Autentica Editora. Suzina, A.  C. (2016). Digital resources in popular media practices in Brazil: Strategies to reduce asymmetries in the public debate. Observatorio (OBS*), 10, Special Issue. (Media, Internet and Social Movements in the context of asymmetries), 11–34. Suzina, A.  C. (2018). Popular media and political asymmetries in the Brazilian democracy in times of digital disruption. Dissertation, 482. Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium: Universite catholique de Louvain. Suzina, A.  C. (2019). Dissonância crítica e solidária: a contribuição das mídias populares ao processo de mudança social. Chasqui. Revista Latinoamericana de Comunicación, 140, abril–julio 2019, 14, Sección Monográfico, 147–162.

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PART I

The Roots of an Epistemology

CHAPTER 2

Thinking about Communication from the Global South. Subjectivities Construction in Latin America: An Overview Aníbal Orué Pozzo

General Presentation Beginning in 1492, from the occupation of the territory initially named America by Spaniards and Portuguese—and then by British, French, and Dutch, among other imperial powers—the occupied territory was subjected to various impositions of new subjectivities, by different forms of physical and symbolic violence. While the processes of building and imposing subjectivities go through multiple instances, and involve the combination of a number of factors, what I will try to develop relates more directly to the communication processes that are inserted in the newly occupied

A. Orué Pozzo (*) Graduate Program on Interdisciplinary Latin-American Studies (IELA), Federal University of Latin-American Integration (UNILA), Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil Graduate School, East National University (UNE), Ciudad del Este, Paraguay e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. C. Suzina (ed.), The Evolution of Popular Communication in Latin America, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62557-3_2

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territories. More specifically, I will try to develop the impositions of new subjectivities from the popular perspective, that is, from the processes that are installed and developed within what is called in a very broad and vague way “the people,” as opposed to hegemonic and dominant sectors in Latina American society. I analyze and discuss some moments and situations that arise in Latin American social theory and, specifically in the communication field in the region, from the 1950s approximately (and perhaps a little earlier). This cut has two aspects: one exogenous and one endogenous to the Latin American region. Among the exogenous aspects to the region it is possible to highlight two moments: 1. The end of the Second European War, with the emergence of a new imperial power: The United States (1945). 2. As a result of this situation, the United States assumes the role of new imperial power, consolidating and promoting the development of a number of institutions in Latin America—and also in other world regions—in order to expand its physical and symbolic presence in different areas; the “internationalization” of its presence. As for the endogenous context in the Latin American region, it is possible to highlight: 1. A slight industrialization process that, since the 1930s, is expanding mainly in some countries of the region such as Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. 2. Emergence of an autonomous proposal of Latin American socio-­ economic thought in the mid-twentieth century, which involved, among other things, the creation of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC)  in 1948, and,  at the same time, its “critical” side: Theory of Dependency. 3. The emergence of autonomous social grass-roots movements, campesinos, indigenous peoples, women, and others, that question impositions (social, political, and cultural) external to the region. 4. The Cuban revolution in 1959, as a first practical response to Latin American thought in the region; the imperial reaction: The Alliance for Progress, in March 1961 that seeks to “transform” the continent, “modernizing” the productive structure, mainly that related to agriculture.

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Undoubtedly, it is important to note that these changes and transformations have a continuity in time; they are not isolated processes. This paper will allow me to think about the region and then focus on discussing some elements present in the Latin American and Paraguayan experience, so that I can reflect on the constitution of a critical social thinking and, further, a popular and grass-roots communication thought and practice in the region. To this end I will seek to discuss not only some concrete experiences, I will also highlight certain thinkers who laid the constitutive foundations for, or rescued, the existence of social and communication theory in the region. At the same time, the chapter points toward a Latin American communication process, questioning models imported into the region and moving away from them, mainly from those related to Euro-­ American models. Such is the case with Juan Díaz Bordenave, Luis Ramiro Beltrán, and Orlando Fals Borda.

Background: Experiences in Latin America From the 1930s onward Latin America went through a series of social, political, economic, and cultural transformations, which have again a profound relationship with the emergence of new subjectivities in broad popular sectors of the region. In the following pages, I will introduce evolutions in several fields of thought and research in order to situate, from this point of view, the emergence of popular and grass-root communication within this context. With the end of the Second Eurpean War, the United States succeeded in taking over political, economic, and cultural control in almost every region of the world from the British Empire, assuming leadership as an imperialist power (Dos Santos 1998). This has direct consequences for Latin America. The subtle and contradictory move towards autonomous industrialization in the region is questioned and consequently a model is “suggested” in order to increase the presence of US capital in important areas of the Latin American production apparatus. In other words, the United States seeks to somehow regain the prominence in the region which, because of its active participation in the European war, had shifted its interest to other territories; it deepens the internationalization of its presence, including Latin America. A new concept of development is introduced, underpinned by the aid and cooperation of more “advanced” countries, based mainly on the contributions that the United States can give to different regions so that they

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reach, or attain, levels close to those that the new hegemonic power and other industrialized countries of Europe possess. In this way, a “new era” begins, one that holds the United States as expanding its model to different regions of the world. A very contradictory situation, for this country’s past places it as one of the first in America that managed to become independent from British colonialism and has no colonies.1 In parallel with this process of consolidating the new imperial power, there are several situations in Latin America that, in some ways, seek to advance a more autonomous and independent spectrum. The experience of the years leading up to the Second European War (1939–1945) and, even experiences during it, contribute to raising this expectation of autonomy in the region, but not that much. The “Manifest Destiny” of the United States—which follows the implementation of the so-called Monroe Doctrine in the former nineteenth century—which was that of “the colonization and possession of the continent” (Morales Duran 1991)— becomes more effective and present since the end of the European conflict by 1945. These years have been extremely fruitful for Latin American thought. Likewise, some countries in the region have promoted several processes of autonomous and independent development (Marini 1974; Dos Santos 2020). With the end of the war, the United States reassumed its leadership in the region. However, in the face of its active participation in the European conflict, and in the face of the need to increase its global economic and political control, the country focused its main attention on regions outside Latin America. This enabled the region to emerge with lukewarm and contradictory processes of independence toward the US empire, which in some countries strengthened autonomous processes at the society level, as well as social and political thinking of its own.

New Thoughts and Practices Questioning Eurocentric Models Since the establishment of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in 1948, there has been an intense discussion about the economic and political problems of the region and how to 1  However, from the beginning of the twentieth century, Puerto Rico became a United States colony, going through various legal situations until reaching that of “Associated State,” a colonial euphemism.

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overcome them. In the early years, the great discussion was organized around the industrialization processes (Bielschowsky and Torres 2018). In one article, Prebisch2 stresses the importance of initiating a process of industrialization, as part of a new dynamic to overcome the specific role attributed to countries on the periphery, which is to produce food and raw materials for large industrial centers. At the same time, and questioning the international division of labour, the article argues that “the enormous benefits that derive from increased productivity have not reached the periphery” (1962, p. 1), concentrating it in industrialized countries in the North. There is an imbalance in this exchange, “a fact which, whatever its explanation or justification, destroys the basic premise underlying the schema of the international division of labour” (1962, p. 1). In this way, the industrialization of the countries of the region is fundamental. This means abandoning growth dynamics driven from the outside by exports; it is necessary to grow inward through industrialization. These ideas end up permeating the entire structure of this multilateral institution during the first years, as noted above. One of ECLAC‘s main objectives being to “carry out and promote research on economic and technical problems and on economic and technical development within the territory of Latin America” (Prebisch 1949, p. i. Presentation), it is important to consider those who develop it, that is, the subjects who drive it. In this regard, he argues that: The greatest difficulty is perhaps the small number of economists capable of an original approach to the specific problems of these countries. For various reasons, it has not been possible to supply the lack by training an adequate number of young men of high intellectual calibre. Considerable progress has been made by sending them to the great European and American universities, but this is not sufficient. One of the most conspicuous deficiencies of general economic theory, from the point of view of the periphery, is its false sense of universality. It could hardly be expected that the economists of the great countries, absorbed by serious problems of their own, should devote preferential attention to a study of those of Latin America. The study of Latin America’s economic life is primarily the concern of its own economists. Only if this regional economy can be explained rationally and with

2  Raul Prebisch, Executive Secretary of ECLAC 1950–1963, and one of the main theorists on the process of industrialization by import substitution in Latin America, and the concept of center and periphery, as part of the international division of labor.

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scientific objectivity, can effective proposals for practical action be achieved. (Prebisch, 1962:4. Footnote)

Briefly, Prebisch holds two aspects as fundamental to advancing “Latin America’s economic development”: (i) a process of industrialization, (ii) the non-universality of economic theory, mainly Anglo-Saxon theory, and the creation and strengthening one’s own economic knowledge, outside the thinking of “the economists of the great countries.” Undoubtedly, it introduces a break in the dominant paradigm in the 1950s, stating that economic relations between the center and the periphery tend to reproduce underdevelopment and increase the gap between developed and “developing” countries. With these theoretical-practical developments, Latin American social thought takes important steps. Years later, these proposals initially developed by Prebisch from within the ECLAC were subject to harsh criticism from different sectors. The economic crisis of the 1960s opened the gate for several researchers to question certain postulates of the industrialization that underpinned the thinking of Prebisch and ECLAC. These criticisms argue that the process of industrialization that emerged in Latin America, in the interregnum between the two European wars, takes place on a different basis from those developed in Europe. In this context, a very weak industry emerges that only “widens” from crises and external situations, as was in some cases the situation of war in Europe, or trade crises (Marini 2015). Thus, for example, Marini disputes the premise that “the economic and social problems afflicting Latin American social formation were due to an inadequacy of capitalist development” (Marini 2015, p. 137) and that, in order to overcome them, it would suffice to accelerate capitalist development in the region. These structural weaknesses would appear to be corrected—according to certain understandings of Prebisch and ECLAC—if the countries of dependent capitalism were oriented in the direction of classical industrial countries. However, the industrialization incipiently implemented in Latin America between the 1930s and 1940s served as the basis for new postwar industrial development and ended up being articulated with the expansive movement of international capital, whose core was made up of multinational companies created between the 1940s and 1960s. This new reality opened the way for understanding development and underdevelopment as the historical result of the development of capitalism, a world system that produced both conditions (Dos Santos 1998). We could then understand,

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from the criticism of these sectors, that underdevelopment is the “dark side” of development, that is, there is no development without underdevelopment as Dos Santos emphasizes. In this sense, economic choices become political choices, and there is no neutrality in development. These criticisms give way to the Theory of Dependence, which arises in the second half of the 1960s and represented an effort to understand the limitations of development, constituted under the hegemony of imperialist forces in the process of decolonization in other regions of the world (Dos Santos 1998). Dependence “in simple terms expresses the subordination of economic structures (and not just them, since there are others that reinforce it and make it possible: politics, culture) to the hegemonic center” (Faletto 1980, p. 16).

The Countryside and Socio-cultural Transformation in the Cities These ways of rethinking the region from the region itself, or studying Latin American reality from perspectives other than both classical or traditional ones—whether from a liberal perspective or even within Marxism in the region—are impelled to be studied according to the more active “alluvial” presence of large popular sectors of Latin America in the cities. In this sense: The eruption of the masses is linked to the time of the country–city migration immediately after World War II, and to the campesinos mobilization with its pressure for land reform. The process has long standing, and certain Latin American political moments, such as Varguism, Peronism and the Bolivian revolution, are inscribed in this context. (Faletto 1980, p. 25)

In this way the campesinos’ presence, and popular movements with their demands, put in check the existing model and opened a crisis in the urban alliance then constituted to promote industrialization. These developments brought important changes in the campesinos’ private sphere and in Latin American cities, redefining the family nucleus. At the same time, traditional forms of political control were broken, and new models and forms of consumption and cultural practices emerged in these reconfigured social spaces. The increase of the university population and student mobilizations since the reform of Córdoba in 1918, brought a great deal of pressure

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within the main elites, questioning the role of professionals who graduated from these institutions. These, in turn, also put pressure on the dominant elites, as there was a scarce and limited labor market for them. According to Quijano, the Latin American political crisis began as a crisis of the oligarchic state (Quijano 1976). This movement of flows and internal displacements in various countries of the region is rethought and repositioned as an “innovative” process and different from that of the countries of European modernity. Jesús Martín Barbero—an important Latin American communication and cultural researcher—refers to the situation described above by Faletto, as a permanent process of “simultaneous discontinuity,” from which Latin America carries out its modernization. Discontinuities on three levels: in the time between state and nation—some states become nations much later and some nations will take time to consolidate as states—, in the deviant mode as popular classes enter the political system and the process of formation of national states—rather as a result of a general crisis in the system that confronts the State than by the autonomous development of its organizations—, and in the political and not only ideological role that the media plays in nationalization of the popular masses. (Martín Barbero 1987, p. 165)

Martín Barbero argues that these flows and migrations, just like the new modes of work, lead to the “hybridization of popular classes” (Martín Barbero 1987, p. 171), that is, a new way of becoming present in cities, and also new forms of reconfiguring social processes in the field. The city is transformed—along with the countryside—and the massive becomes a hybridization of the national and the foreign, be that in cultural terms as well as political. The “wretched of the earth” go on to assume new identities according to the new territories occupied after their own expulsion (Martín Barbero 1987; Gutiérrez and Romero 2007). The national state and the nation-space is questioned, as well as the different forms of presence of the popular in the city assume very different connotations to those that marked the steps in industrialized Euro-American countries. This alluvial population was generally understood as the presence of the “countryside in the city”, that is, as the displacement of large population groups expelled from their small rural properties, which will “take refuge” in the periphery of the great cities. While this is correct, very few studies carried out highlight that much of this population belonged to indigenous

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groups—or constituted direct heirs to them—that is, ancestral populations of the continent that were settled in those territories since long before the European colonialist invasion. Now their lands were being hoisted by capital, seeking to expand areas of influence and production in regions beyond cities: capital goes to the countryside, while the countryside goes to the city, that is, the population of these regions go—in fact are expelled and forced to violently dislocate—to the peripheral pockets of the cities. This is what can be observed in the mid-nineteenth century in Paraguay. Thus, the great offensive of the Paraguayan government of Carlos Antonio López3 in the mid-nineteenth century, occupying lands and vast indigenous wastelands, forcing them to become Paraguayan citizens, imposing on them another identity and, at the same time expropriating and confiscating their lands, is nothing more than a small example of the process vastly implemented by the dominant Latin American elites in the post-­ independence years—and throughout the twentieth century—upon ancestral populations (Pastore 1972). These transformations underway in Latin America from the 1930s, when the process of industrialization began, are also moments of authoritarian imposition of models. The national states that were built in the region as a result of the independence movements of the nineteenth century emerge with several “defects of origin”. One of them is that they are states that from the beginning were responsible for excluding important groups of populations. Several of the excluded populations had already inhabited these territories for centuries, as is the case for indigenous peoples, for whom Afro-descendants, and women and people with other gender identities are added (see Custódio, this book). The emerging national post-independence state did not intend a radical break with the scheme and thinking of metropolitan imperial society; in some cases, they were even “inspired” by them to establish new relationships between hegemonic sectors on both sides of the ocean;  the social science still miss a study of how some important movement in Europe, as the French Revolution for instance, has been influenced by Latin American indigenous liberation movement such as the Tupac Katari insurgence (1781), and the Guarani’s War (1753–1755).

3  Carlos Antonio López was president of Paraguay, after the death of José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia (1813–1840). He ruled the country between 1844–1862, and led the conservative restoration process in the country, after the long years of Francism.

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Sometime later, in the first decades of the twentieth century, the “strategic” alliance between dominant sectors that support incipiently industrialization process and those displaced sectors from the countryside that now occupy cities, allows an autonomous proposal to go forth in some regions of Latin America. However, with the alluvial presence of different groups traditionally occupying the countryside—now in the cities—this pact cracked into pieces and the alliance is refocused between poor sectors of different regions: el pueblo. The Bolivian revolution of 1952, the process initiated by Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in the 1950s and finally the Cuban revolution in 1959, are made up of major turning points for these movements. In this sense, it is possible to understand that the movement had already begun years ago. What was initially proposed from the work of Prebisch and ECLAC—an independence in the approach of Latin American reality by Latin American economists—stimulates and is stimulated by the similar movements in the fields of intellectual, cultural, and political production (see Vega Casanova, this book). Thus, some Latin American cities, such as Mexico D.F. and Buenos Aires, become publishing centers in which important materials that make up a more “Latin American” thought are published, also followed by São Paulo, to complete the Ibero-American spectrum. In the 1920s, Mexican muralism is constituted in a great movement of resistance and orients new ways of approaching the aesthetic and the artistic from the local, that is, from Latin America (Mandel 2007; Feria and Campillo 2010). Also, for those same years, artistic production and narrative in general, is questioned by the Paulista urban intellectuality looking for paths of its own: the Modern Art Week in 1922 (Andrade 1976). In the field of music, an even paradoxical situation arises: a city of the emerging imperialist center, New York, becomes a space for the reinvention of Latin American music. “In addition to Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro and Havana, the development of a widely Latin American music had a fourth port city center of enormous importance: New York, but more than for the sailors, for emigration” (Quintero Rivera 2009, p. 125). The presence of inhabitants of their colony, Puerto Rico, in this country (US) who obtain citizenship status makes this “alluvial population” possible in some way. Thus, various movements arise in the field of music, rescuing various aspects of popular feelings of the region, taking on melodies and indigenous rhythms of its own. It is also the case with tango and candombe in the Río de la Plata (García Brunelli 2015; Martín Barbero 1987), of the guarania in Paraguay (Noguera 2019), the samba in Brazil (Miceli 1984;

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Martín Barbero 1987), of salsa and merengue in the Caribbean (Quintero Rivera 1998, 2009), and so many other new rhythms that emerged throughout the continent. As noted above, the Cuban revolution of 1959 is an important turning point in different fields of cultural activity and Latin American thought. Just four months after the triumph of the revolution, Casa de las Americas is founded in Havana, an institution that in a short time constitutes a space of dialogue between countries in and outside the continent, also in a meeting point of artists and intellectuals in general. In the mid-1960s, perhaps one of the most profound discussions about Latin American development, its characteristics, and how to promote it from heterodox schemes and thoughts, is the exchange of ideas about Cuban development that took place between Ernesto Che Guevara and Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, then in the leadership of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform of Cuba (Tablada Pérez 2017). In this way, the Cuban revolution from its beginnings gave rise to a reformulation of traditional orientations not only of traditional sectors, but also had great influence on other groups such as middle sectors and even in the bourgeoisie itself (Faletto 1980). It rethinks, in this sense, the problem of radical transformations, also that of alliances between groups and social classes. Various areas of social and intellectual production were affected, as Gilman (2012) pointss out in her very interesting work: The studies dedicated to this period, the generalization of which, as “the sixties” should be explained and analyzed, have considered different types of objects, including intellectuals, literary production and magazines, to be relevant. While it is certainly difficult to classify them as single-entry studies, the different approaches made by specialists are overprinted, involved with each other and, in general, thematic differences are resolved in important consensus about the uniqueness of the period. (Gilman 2012, p. 15)

One of these “entries” is that of communication and popular culture— theory and practice—that, whether in its daily bases, also in its conceptualizations, undergoes important changes accompanying the process outlined above. There emerges a thought and a practice in the field of popular and grass-roots communication that also incorporates the possibility of self and autonomous thinking in relation to the one developed outside the region, mainly Euro-American practices and theories (see Peruzzo, this book). I will present, in the following paragraphs, some

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milestones and some experiences that led to consolidating the field as a process that is strengthened from their own paths and thoughts, questioning and moving away from certain postulates that until then dominated the field of communication in Latin America.

Popular Latin America Communication: A Genesis Proposal It is possible to point out that the emergence and development of a new popular and grass-roots communication proposal in Latin America, has as an immediate reference to the Cuban revolution; the second reference is the Second Vatican Council (1963–1965) and the Second Episcopal Conference of Latin America, held in 1968 in Medellin, Colombia (Orué Pozzo 2017; see also Uranga, this book). The transformations underway in Latin America since the 1930s of the last century, and presented above, involved in some way great migration movements, in the sense that both the city and the countryside were changing, concentrating people, on the one hand, expelling them on the other. An important part of the communication thinking in the region comes from people who accompanied these interventions in rural Latin American areas. Some of them were working in international agencies, others getting directly involved with social movements in the conflicting territories. Thus, between the years 1960–1980 social and communicative thinking in Latin America had several changes and transformations in relation to previous periods. The processes of incipiently developing industrialization in some countries, at the same time as the hoarding of large tracts of land by national and international capitals to the region, the creation of ECLAC in 1948, and finally the imposition of the Alliance for Progress program in the early 1960s, “stimulated” while also challenging national states and their technicians to think of ways to accompany these transformations. This means that they have to develop and design different supports to the subjects in question: small farmers stalked by the great capital, in the process of increasing pauperization. Strong criticisms emerged from the practices of the national technicians accompanying the actions in the field. Briefly, I will present and develop a genesis of these critical emerging practices and thoughts, which are then consolidated into the broad field of communication and social sciences. To this end, I will work with three

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thinkers who, in my opinion, represent and explain the criticisms of the then current hegemonic process, while constituting themselves as critical theorists-facilitators of understandings that, either from the national state or from multilateral agencies, were driven in the region: Juan Díaz Bordenave, Luís Ramiro Beltrán, and Orlando Fals Borda.4 For these social and Latin American thinkers, the two immediate references placed above—the Cuban revolution and the Second Vatican Council—are key references in the constitution of independent ideas and thoughts, far away from their Anglo Saxon academic origins. All three come from a religious tradition that gives way and critically assumes the social shift of their church’s practices (see Uranga, this book). Díaz Bordenave and Beltrán, from Catholicism and later the experiences of the basic communities developed extensively by sectors of the Catholic Church and other Christians in the continent, and Fals Borda from the Methodist tradition, strongly present in family terms.5

Some Constituent Elements of Popular and Decolonizing Communication in Latin America In the following paragraphs I will develop an idea that a horizontal, participatory, and sentipensante (thinking-feeling) communication, i.e. a non-­ hegemonic and at the same time non-Western communication, would not be possible without the critical efforts, research, and work of these thinkers. In the 1970s, Díaz Bordenave already proposed the need for new communication models, specifically those oriented to rural development in Latin America. The trajectory of this Paraguayan social thinker is interesting. His professional involvement with the field began by working with small rural producers in the area of agricultural information in the mid-­1950s, together with an institution created by US cooperation in Paraguay, the Technical Service Inter-American Agricultural Cooperation 4  Despite the great importance of these thinkers to the Latin American social sciences, there is no shortage of more research that deepens and enthuses the presence of women in this critical elaborations of Euro-American theories, such as Rosario Castellanos in Mexico, Lélia Gonzalez in Brazil, and Serafina Davalos in Paraguay, among others. 5  It is interesting to note that some of the critical thinking of the second half of the Latin American twentieth century has its “roots” in these two great historical events in the region: the Cuban Revolution and the Second Vatican Council. These events radicalized social sectors, on the one hand, and on the other, pushed broad religious sectors into the struggle for political, social, and spiritual liberation, in the understandings of Liberation Theology.

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(STICA). His work with small producers in Paraguay led him, years later, to strongly question the communication process implemented by US agencies in Latin America, based on postulates developed by theorists and researchers in the United States. In papers published in the mid-1970s, he suggests that the diffusionist model and the “transmission mentality” model in education and communication should be replaced by another liberating form of communication, focused on dialogue and receiver-­ oriented; the ideas of the Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, were present in a transversal way in all these works of Díaz Bordenave (Orué Pozzo 2017). In short, for Díaz Bordenave: the technification or adoption of innovations cannot be understood as an end in itself, but as part of a broader social transformation, involving an awareness of small farmers, their organization and politicization. (Orué Pozzo 2017, p. 63)

From these placements, Díaz Bordenave begins a process of systematic criticism of the Euro-American model of rural communication that agencies—inspired by US consultants and researchers—seek to impose as a strategy in order to strengthen their proposals in the Latin American field. In an article published in 1976, he claims the need for new models of communication delinked form traditional Euro-American models: Latin America carries the imprint of the U.S. “classical” diffusion model. Latin American communication scholars must overcome their mental compulsion to perceive their own reality through foreign concepts and ideologies, and they must learn to look at the communication and adoption of innovations from their own perspective. (Díaz Bordenave 1976, p. 145)

At the same time, he maintains that “needed are models concerned with what happens to the person who adopts an innovation to his society” (Díaz Bordenave 1976, p. 148). Slowly, a turning point toward thinking about communication and the social processes as subject-centered not object-centered, begins. According to Díaz Bordenave, this radical reaction against Euro-American models did not emerge as isolated criticism but from a larger and more specific context of revising concepts on development from Latin American researchers. He highlights some of these forerunner Latin American thinkers: Theotonio dos Santos, Celso Furtado,

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Fernando Enrique Cardozo, Raul Prebish, Anibal Quijano, among others (Díaz Bordenave 1978). From reality to reality, this was his fundamental thought about the edu-­communicational process: the arc model: starting from reality, theorizing, and finally to reality again (Díaz Bordenave and Martins Pereira 1985). He built, endorsed, and practiced a proposal that he called “Problematization Pedagogy.” According to this Paraguayan thinker the relationship “between communication and education has been discovered by popular communication practitioners as Mario Kaplun, Carlos Nuñez Hurtado, Francisco Gutierrez, Daniel Prieto Castillo among others” (Díaz Bordenave 2011, p.  18). So far, we have three fundamental issues that have a strong presence in popular and grass-roots Latin American communication that also points toward a decolonization model in the field: (i) a questioning relationship between subject–object, as an axis supported modernity; (ii) a critical review of the universal model of understanding history and development; (iii) an understanding that these new ideas did not come from universities or research centers but from the outside, i.e. from popular movements: social, indigenous peoples, campesinos, and women resistances (see Vega Casanova, this book). During those same years, the Bolivian thinker and researcher Luis Ramiro Beltrán also began to develop highly critical proposals to the dominant communication scheme that derived from northern countries. In the late 1970s he published a text that can be considered also a turning point in Latin American communication thinking: Farewell to Aristotle. A definition of communication, according to Beltrán, can be traced back to Aristotle who wrote that “rhetoric as being composed of three elements: the speaker, the speech and the listener” (Beltrán 1979, p.  2). In this paper—which also begans with a quote from Paulo Freire—he proposes to move away from the methods and schemes that a vertical communication develops, recommending a new horizontal, non-hegemonic and dialogical model. This implies, for Beltrán, a move away from Western thinking, developing a model focused on dialogue, participation, and assuming communication as a right for broad popular sectors of Latin America. He observed that the communication field used to be an area of still water. No longer anymore, because: The developing countries had realized long before 1970 that their economic and political life was dominated by the developed countries to such a degree that development was impeded. What is new is the full realization that such

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a situation of dependence also exists in the cultural sphere. Moreover, the acknowledgement that communication serves considerably to promote all three types of neo-colonial domination clearly came about with this decade. (Beltrán 1979, p. 1)

A few lines later the Bolivian researcher maintains that the traditional conception and the classical paradigm of communication were the result of experiences involving communication in the US and Western Europe. Research is not the only area where this traditional model shows “stubborn endurance”: “the practice of international communication constitutes an eloquent example of how at the international level also communication occurs essentially in a one-way flow from de developed to the under developed countries” (Beltrán 1979, p. 7). Communication in his understanding is a matter of social relations, not a unilateral exercise of individual influence. He also points out that virtually all Latin American criticism may be summed up in the expression “vertical communication”; that is, from the top down, domineering, imposing, one-way, and manipulative; in short, undemocratic. Communication, in this sense, is not a technical question: It is a political matter which is largely determined by this structure and which, in turn, helps to perpetuate it. Thus, the search for a way out of such situations is focused on moving from vertical/undemocratic communication to horizontal/democratic communication. The search began mainly in the present decade, in several places, taking forms that varied in scope and approach but coincided in their aim: to democratize communication in its conception and in its practice. (Beltrán 1979, p. 14)

So, a democratic communication model is a horizontal and democratic process with three conditions: it must have public access bases, be sustained by dialogue, and include participant movement. Beltrán is also known by his work in the field of communication policies. In an article that presents a kind of synthesis of the last fifty years of communication thinking in Latin America, he points to some forerunner experiences in the “communication turn”: the radio schools of Colombia, an example of educational communication to promote rural development; Bolivian mining radios that, by the end of the 1950s, had managed to form a network of more than thirty stations that also broadcast in indigenous languages; and finally, the experiences in agricultural extension,

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health education, and audiovisual education, which, although initiated as communication bodies of the agricultural extension promoted by American agencies, in a short time developed not only a local character, but also a model different from the one initially proposed (Beltrán 2005). It also highlights several theorists in the United States, as references in the field of rural communication to and finally from experiences in the region, move forward with a model focused on Latin American regional processes; not imported from Euro-American experiences and theorists. Both thinkers, Juan Díaz Bordenave and Luís Ramiro Beltrán, are thus considered as the researchers who, from Latin America, reconfigured and resignified the emerging field of communication for development. Somehow these thinkers assume what the original and indigenous peoples have been developing on the continent for centuries, laying the groundwork for decolonizing, non-Western communication. Also in the 1970s, a Colombian researcher, Orlando Fals Borda—who, in the face of strong political pressures, was forced to leave the university and work for more than fifteen years in the Caribbean region—produces one of the most challenging proposals based on his experience with rural sectors on the Atlantic coast (see Vega Casanova, this book). This researcher takes important steps in this “non-Western turn” of Latin American social sciences, which are collected by researchers from the communication field. He argues that the “object is also subject” (Fals Borda 2015, p. 313), breaking the classic separation of Western science between the subject and object of research. Deepening his critique of Eurocentrism, he argues that: Even admitting the positive harmony with that beacon, it would be sad to stay in the paradigms already surpassed by modern technical-scientific developments, and to continue to repeat and imitate authors, philosophers and ideologues whose validity may be debatable. Why continue to bring flowers to dubious idols, uncritically cite obsolete writers, or elevate as teachers colleagues whose thinking has been echoed or developed from our own analyses, an echo sometimes expanded by the resonance of hegemonic devices? (Fals Borda 2015, p. 379)

In one of his major research books, Double History of the Coast (Fals Borda 1979–1986), published in four volumes, he also points out non-­ Aristotelian, i.e. non-Western approaches, such as the participatory research-action (IAP) proposal.

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The strategy of thinking and writing breaks with several schemes in the social sciences, as well as the understanding of Western normal science rationality-oriented. At the same time, not separating sentiment from reason, integrating both aspects of the subject that the Western sciences since Descartes have taken care of, introduces one of the strongest criticisms of the Eurocentrism of the Western sciences, questioned from local practices. The feeling thus constitutes one of the sharpest proposals that, on the other hand, has been present in the way of thinking and acting of the Latin American population for centuries. In this way we can, without any doubt, emphasize that the presence of these three Latin American thinkers in the 1960–1970s, in different areas of communication and social sciences, has contributed to the development of an autonomous and independent Latin American communicative thinking: from them, the foundations for a popular and grass-roots communication have been laid. These thinkers are three examples. But, at the same time, it is important to note that they do not in any way exhaust the “non-­ Western” traditions of communication in Latin America. What is presented above is the questioning of the ways in which the process of colonization builds subjectivities throughout all these years. In reality, it is not just a change in the way of accessing knowledge. Colonization introduces the imposition of subjectivities other than those existing in the indigenous peoples of Latin America; it is imposed on them violently, ending all vestige of a precolonial past. These forms persist despite the political independence of Latin American countries throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, through what González Casanova (2007) has called internal colonialism (see Custódio, this book). Undoubtedly, at various times the reactions and resistance were also the results of violent actions by the local population, but nothing is comparable to the action of the invaders. The recovery of this memory, also the development of self-thinking, autonomous in different areas of knowledge, was a slow but sustained process. Step-by-step, a new episteme emerged—or maybe always existed at the surface but was ignored and silenced by the hegemonic elite. It is necessary to recover these old and new traditional way of thinking and practices in order to build a society based on solidarity and justice for all the “wretched of the earth” in the Fanonian sense. This was the path that Díaz Bordenave, Luis Ramiro Beltrán, and Orlando Fals Borda pointed to years ago.

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In this sense, communication theory and practices in Latin America, and specifically popular, grass-roots and decolonial communication thinking-feeling—an inter- and transdisciplinary field—emerge from vast and diverse practices. These new subjectivities exploded and consolidated at the beginning of the twenty-first century. What we see is the return of the popular, the indigenous, and an autonomous presence of the people at the national scenario. Brief but deep experiences in Bolivia, Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador, and Paraguay shows us that the 1950s were strongly present in the twenty-first century, as critical and strong theories and practices that reshape the building of a world in which various worlds coexist: the transforming subjectivities come to stay.

References Andrade, O. (1976). Manifesto antropófago e Manifesto da poesia pau-brasil. In G. M. Telles (Ed.), Vanguarda europeia e modernismos brasileiro: apresentação e crítica dos principais manifestos vanguardistas. Vozes: Petrópolis. Beltrán, L. R. (1979). Farewell to Aristotle: ‘Horizontal communication’. Paris: UNESCO (International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems, No. 48) Beltrán, L. R. (2005). La Comunicación para el Desarrollo en Latinoamérica: un recuento de medio siglo. Documento presentado al III CONGRESO PANAMERICANO DE LA COMUNICACIÓN, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Julio. Retrieved febrero 15, 2020 en, from https://www.infoamerica. org/teoria_textos/lrb_com_desarrollo.pdf. Bielschowsky, R., & Torres, M. (Comp.). (2018). Desarrollo e igualdad: el pensamiento de la CEPAL en su séptimo decenio. Santiago: CEPAL. Díaz Bordenave, J. (1976). Communication of Agricultural Innovations in Latin America. The need for new models. Communication Research, 3(2), 135–154. Díaz Bordenave, J. (1978). Comunicación y desarrollo. In Estrategias de Comunicación para el Desarrollo Rural. Primer Seminario Nacional (pp. 25–51). Caracas: IICA-Ministerio de Agricultura y Cria. Díaz Bordenave, J. (2011). Aportes a la comunicación para el desarrollo. Asunción: Secretaría de Información y Comunicación para el Desarrollo. Díaz Bordenave, J., & Martins Pereira, A. (1985). Estrategias de ensino-­ aprendizagem (7th ed.). Petrópolis: Vozes. Dos Santos, T. (1998). La teoría de la dependencia. Un balance histórico y teórico. In F.  L. Segrera (Ed.), Los retos de la globalización. Ensayo en homenaje a Theotonio Dos Santos. Caracas: UNESCO. Dos Santos, T. (2020). La teoría de la dependencia: balance y perspectivas. In T. Dos Santos, Antologia Esencial, Vol. II. Buenos Aires: CLACSO.

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Faletto, E. (1980). Dependencia, democracia y movimiento popular en América Latina. In E. Faletto, C. Franco, S. de la Peña, et al. (Eds.), Movimientos populares y alternativa de poder en Latinoamérica. Puebla: Universidad Autónoma de Puebla. Fals Borda, O. (1979–1986). Historia doble de la costa. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia-Banco de la República-El Áncora Editores. Fals Borda, O. (2008). Aplicación de la Investigación-Acción Participativa en América Latina. In A.  Gumucio-Dagron & T.  Tufte (Eds.), Antología de Comunicación para el Cambio Social. La Paz: Plural—Consorcio de Comunicación para el Cambio Social. Fals Borda, O. (2015). Una sociología sentipensante para América Latina. Buenos Aires: CLACSO. Feria, M.  F., & Lince Campillo, R.  M. (2010). Arte y grupos de poder: el Muralismo y la Ruptura. Estudios Políticos, 21, 83–100. García Brunelli, O. (2015). Los estudios sobre tango observados desde la musicología. Historia, música, letra y baile. El oído pensante, 3(2). Retrieved febrero 15, 2020, from http://ppct.caicyt.gov.ar/index.php/oidopensante. Gilman, C. (2012). Entre el fusil y la pluma. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI. González Casanova, P. (2007). Colonialismo interno (uma redefinição). In A. Borón, J. Amadeo & S. González (Eds.), A teoria marxista hoje. Problemas e perspectiva. Buenos Aires: CLACSO. Disponible. Consulta: febrero 12, 2020, from http://bibliotecavirtual.clacso.org.ar/ar/libros/campus/marxispt/ cap. 19.doc. Gutiérrez, L., & Romero, L. A. (2007). Sectores populares, cultura política. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI. Mandel, C. (2007). Muralismo mexicano: arte público, identidad, memoria colectiva. Revista Escena, 30(6), 37–54. Marini, R. M. (1974). Dialéctica de la dependencia. México: Era. Marini, R. M. (2015). América Latina. Dependencia y globalización. Buenos Aires: CLACSO-Siglo XXI. Martín Barbero, J. (1987). De los medios a las mediaciones. Barcelona: G. Gili. Miceli, S. (Org.) (1984). Estado e cultura no Brasil. São Paulo: Difel. Morales Duran, J. M. (1991). Aspectos ideológicos del intervencionismo norteamericano en Latinoamérica 1823–1914. Norba Revista de Historia, 11–12, 331–342. Noguera, C. (2019). La canción de la resistencia. Asunción: Arandura-Asociación Cultural Canto de Esperanza. Orué Pozzo, A. (2017). Pensamiento crítico, comunicación y desarrollo: los aportes de Juan Díaz Bordenave. Quórum Académico, 14(2), 58–78. Pastore, C. (1972). La lucha por la tierra en el Paraguay. Montevideo: Antequera. Prebisch, R. (1949). El desarrollo económico de la América Latina y sus principales problemas. Santiago: CEPAL. consultado February 14, 2020, from https://

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repositorio.cepal.org/bitstream/handle/11362/30088/001_es.pdf?sequenc e=11&isAllowed=y. Prebisch, R. (1962). The economic development of Latin America and its principal problems. In Economic Bulletin for Latin America (Vol. VII, pp.  1–22). Santiago: Economic Commission for Latin America. Quijano, A. (1976). A crise imperialista e classe operária na América Latina. Coimbra: Centelha. Quintero Rivera, A. (1998). ¡Salsa, Sabor y Control! Sociología de la música “tropical”. México: Siglo XXI. Quintero Rivera, A. (2009). Cuerpo y cultura. Madrid: Iberoamericana-Vervuert. Tablada Pérez, C. (2017) El pensamiento económico de Ernesto Che Guevara. Barcelona: Edhasa-Ruth Casa Editorial. Primera edición 1987, premio Casa de las Américas.

CHAPTER 3

Popular and Communitarian Communication in Rural Social Movements: Beyond “Diffusionism” to Emancipatory Participation Cicilia M. Krohling Peruzzo

Introduction This text addresses a critical perspective of communication in Latin America, which is aligned with popular, community, and alternative communication, or participatory communication, communication for citizenship, and communication for social change, to mention some of the terms Research developed with the support of the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq—acronym from the Portuguese). Partial and modified version of the Spanish text entitled “Comunicación popular y conocimiento en movimientos sociales rurales: el adiós al modelo de ‘Difusión de Innovaciones’.” C. M. Krohling Peruzzo (*) University of State of Rio de Janeiro, Vitória, Brazil Federal University of Espírito Santo, Vitória, Brazil e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. C. Suzina (ed.), The Evolution of Popular Communication in Latin America, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62557-3_3

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widely used to characterize this phenomenon in the Latin American region. Expressions like these indicate that communication is practiced and studied in the context of communities, popular social movements and other non-profit civil organizations, in their struggles to change situations of disrespect for human rights in different social spheres, for example, the lack of access to collective goods (education, health, etc.), gender and cultural discrimination, work and income issues, lack of political participation, etc. It is, therefore, a communication strategy that develops its own forms and means, and uses them according to its own worldviews and communication needs. (See Bona, this book.) We start with the following research question: how is the process of renewing traditional patterns of using “communication for development” to become “another communication” linked to the interests and needs of the social movements themselves? The objective is to understand the popular communication perspective, developed from the grassroots, in the territories being studied, contrasting community organizational praxis with the original concepts of “communication for development.” The specific objectives are as follows: (a) to understand the main forms of popular/community organization of rural workers (farmers’ families); (b) understand how popular and community communication is inserted into activities that lead to significant changes in the lives of people who participate in new community work practices; (c) identify the forms and means of communication linked to the processes of generating collective knowledge and systems of cooperation; (d) analyze the contrasts between the praxis of popular communication and that of “communication for development” within an analytical and theoretical framework. The territories to which we refer are the experiences of rural community development in the semiarid region of north-eastern Brazil, where the Borborema Union Pole operates in Borborema, Paraíba state, and the Copavi1 settlement community, in Paranacity, Paraná state. The study is based on bibliographic and documentary research, direct unsystematic observation, and in-depth interviews with community leaders based on reports of practices (Bertaux 2005), although the present text is limited to a more analytical perspective.

Brief Theoretical Foundation From the conceptual point of view, the phenomenon of popular, communitarian, and alternative communication, or in Mario Kaplun’s (1985) words, “another communication,” is mainly related to two 1

 Cooperativa de Produção Agropecuária União da Vitória.

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theoretical-­epistemological matrices. The first theoretical perspective is based on the concept of citizenship, and is characterized by the joint use of three terms, “popular,” “community,” and “alternative” communication, or by the specific use of one of these three terms, depending on the context of social practices and of the theoretical foundations which inspire them. In a broader sense, in Brazil and in some other Latin American countries, they are practices known (and recognized) as “communication and citizenship,” “communication for citizenship” or “communication for social transformation.” Fundamentally, it is about communication linked to social movements and non-profit popular organizations, oriented toward the transformation of reality, understood in the sense of deepening and broadening the achievement of citizenship rights. When referring to this popular and alternative phenomenon, Mario Kaplun (1985, p. 7) claims it is about a “liberating, transformative communication, in which the people are generators and protagonists.” The second theoretical perspective is of “communication for development and social change,” an expression broadly used since 2000 in many countries of Latin America and Europe to characterize similar communication processes in communities and social movements. It is a theoretical approach that arises out of the reframing of conceptions of “communication and development.” This is understood as a process of desired changes from a type of (sub) development of precarious conditions of existence to another reality through the search, with broad popular participation, for solutions to local socio-economic problems. Originally, the  so-called “communication and development” approach was created in the context of the interest in social “modernization.” Later, this perspective was reformulated to “social change communication.” However, both these expressions continue to be used in different countries, sometimes with different meanings, sometimes not.

The Roots of Communication for Development The first theoretical perspective – popular, communitarian and alternative communication  – has been used more in Brazil and Argentina, among other countries, but the second  - communication for development and social change - permeated research on “another communication” across Latin America and other continents, such as Europe, Africa, and Asia. Nowadays, both theoretical perspectives can refer to the same process: communication by communities and organized segments of civil society,

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such as social movements and similar popular organizations. Historically, however, in the 1950s and in the following decades, the conceptual matrices of the second perspective were marked by a distinct epistemological position, denominated “communication and development.” However, the latter was born out of different purposes from those of “communication for citizenship” and “communication for social transformation,” which are both forms of emancipatory communication in the face of concrete realities of oppression. The idea of “communication and development” appears in mid-­ twentieth century literature (end of the 1940s and during the 1950s) in an instrumental sense: the objective was to use the communication media as instruments for spreading information, ideas, and modern values favorable to capitalist development, based on the standards of Western “developed countries,” such as the United States and European nations. Besides the involvement with the implementation of development programs, from governmental and private institutions, the communication media would act as mediators in order to persuade populations in favor of developmentalism, the diffusion of technological innovations, industrialized products, and new customs. The foundation was the theory of modernization, which defends the necessity of “modernizing” societies based on the conception of development as progress, and of progress as technological and economic development. In this conception of development, nations which do not reach the same standards of development as rich or developed countries would be underdeveloped or peripheral, and so, to escape this fate, should follow the industrialization models of central countries and adopt their technologies and standards of production and consumerism. The background strategy was the expansion of capital and the monopoly of the capitalist market in favor of large North American and European corporations. What can be seen is the expansion of technologies, products, and services, not the transfer of know-how (see Orué Pozzo, this book). This strategy also produced the diffusion of an epistemological position, an ethnocentric view of the world that never recognized the cultures and the type of knowledge and development of the countries where it has taken place as worthy of respect. On the contrary, these peoples were seen as being behind the times, with traditions that could prevent development, and who thus needed to change (see Custódio and also Contreras Baspineiro, this book). The strategy was not equal development of these countries, but the expansion of capital to the benefit of developed countries, beginning with the United States. As Paul Baran (1964) said, the

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“main deterrents to development are not the lack of capital and management capacity, as supported by the modernization theorists, but […] that the development of the centre determines and perpetuates the underdevelopment of the periphery” (apud Servaes 2004, p.  31). According to Celso Furtado (1973, p. 8), therefore, underdevelopment is a creation of development: besides supporting the production logic of the countries at the center, it generates a dependency on foreign capital. Besides not taking into account local cultures or their specificities, the diffusion model does not respect the environment, or workers’ and public health, as pesticides and other chemical products are strong components of this policy. Certainly, together with technological and technical innovation, the promoters of this model disseminated a socio-political culture through new views of the world, as well as despising local knowledge. Advertisements, the news, and films disseminated by the mass media contributed to this purpose, in the same way that institutional information was transmitted by staff of public and private organizations. So, initially, communication for development was associated with being at the service of the diffusion of innovation. It was seen as something important to instrumentalize—inform, call people together, “spread ideas,” “broaden horizons,” “change attitudes,” “help to form tastes” (Schramm 1976), with the intention of facilitating the implementation of development program policies and practices based on the promise of progress. The outstanding exponents of this theoretical approach, the pioneers Everett Rogers, Daniel Lerner, and Wilbur Schramm, handed on concepts of communication and development2 that influenced practice and research around the world. Schramm even had his communication for development proposal adopted by the United Nations after the Second World War (1945). He believed that the media had “the role to accelerate economic development, overcoming steps in the process of cultural socialization” (Peruzzo 2014, p. 16). In short, this development model, which expanded in different continents, has left harmful footprints. If, on one hand, it benefited and made a lot of money for some sectors, on the other hand, it caused the impoverishment of a great part of local populations, besides the destruction of the environment, and increasing pollution and risks to public health. 2  See Gumucio-Dagron and Tufte (2008), a work that gathers their contributions and those of another 147 authors.

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An Alternative View: Toward Emancipatory Communication Following the example of the Non-Aligned Movement, critical reactions appeared on many fronts, both at level of the analysis of macro configurations of the world’s communication media and in proposals for concrete initiatives for alternative and community communications and media. The debate generated studies about the International Information Order (IIO) and the proposal for a New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO). One of the most significant documents of research at an international level was the MacBride Report, One World, Many Voices,3 finalized in 1979, which besides diagnosing the unidirectional flows of international information put forward alternatives, including national communication policies and the establishment of a democratic right to communicate. All over the world, and with the involvement of the United Nations (UN), international conferences, work of commissions, conventions (Biodiversity, Agenda 21, etc.) helped formulate new forms of development: human, endogenous, local, sustainable, holistic, participative, among other terms. There was even talk of “another development.” So, as communication is embedded in different “models” of development and in a debate about development at different times, it has been influenced by the different concepts of development that have emerged. For instance, since the 1980s and the 1990s, there has appeared, at least in Brazil, the idea of “communication for citizenship,” an expression that counterbalances the original “communication and development” model adopted in other parts of the world for at least the three previous decades. In the 2000s, in other Latin American countries, “communication and development” was reframed as “communication for development and social change,” despite the fact that some of the social practices had moved in the direction of “another development” under the same traditional denomination. However, it is necessary to recognize that all these proposals followed the perspective of Western development, that is, without disconnecting themselves from the ideas embedded in the development model of rich countries (Silva 2011). At the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, there are signs of trying to change this perspective as expressed in the concept of “living well” (Schavelzon 2015; Esteva 2009) or, in other 3

 Available on: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0004/000400/040066sb.pdf.

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languages, sumak kawsay (Quechua) or sumaj qamaña (Aimará) (see Contreras Baspineiro, this book). Returning to the question of “communication for social change,” Amparo Cadavid (2014, p. 41) clarifies that it is not a “new way to name an old concept, but a new name for a new understanding of the strength and capacity of communication which comes from the people.” However, this is not a unanimous view. Victor Marí (2016, p. 160) believes that the debate between “communication for development” and “communication for social change” is “sterile, as long as, in the words of Florencia Enghel […] they are inadequate and insufficient expressions to confront socio-­ political problems.” To Marí (2016), and in Chaparro’s (2015, p.  77) words, “the fundamental problem of the term ‘social change’ is that the meaning of the word ‘change’ does not move in a concrete direction and can be promoted from many positions across the ideological spectrum.” That is, the term can refer to a change only within the parameters of development, not, therefore, substantially transforming the structures of domination. The central aspects of the theory of “communication for social change,” according to Alfonso Gumucio-Dagron (2014), are inscribed in democratic participation, horizontality of decision-making, the recognition of identities and cultures, and dialogical relations. In this perspective, when praxis has an emancipatory character, the concepts of popular, communitarian, and alternative communication intertwine with the concepts of “communication for social change,” but they distance themselves from it when they identify with developmentalism. This is the reason why popular communication is more intertwined with the concepts of active citizenship than with those of development. To sum up, popular communication expresses the action of segments of the population as forms of resistance to oppressive political reality, to precarious living conditions, low-paid jobs, lack of access to land, social discrimination, and the problems faced by young people and children. At the same time, popular communication also includes wider struggles for the achievement of human and citizenship rights and for the transformation of social reality. In Brazil, this transformation developed through social movements and communities mainly came into being from the end of the 1970s, despite the oppressive context of the military dictatorship (1964–1985). Therefore, popular communication, communitarian, or alternative communication, as it has been reformulated over time (also sometimes called participative, participatory, dialogical, group, horizontal,

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or educative communication), is considered as a Latin American approach4 promoting transformation in the context of social struggles where the activism of popular sectors is developed in communicative tasks, based on the autonomy and active participation of the “receivers” of communication, who also become, according to Kaplún (1985), communicators in their own right. The participation to which we refer means the real participation of people, with power of decision-making, in the process of communication. A pedagogic and educative approach, in part inspired by Paulo Freire, helped to develop participative methodologies. Participation can be on many levels, but it is accomplished only when based on a methodological strategy and as expression of a universal right. According to Juan Díaz Bordenave (1983, p. 84): in participatory communication all the interlocutors freely exert their right to self-expression, as a permanent and inalienable social function; generate and interchange their own themes and messages; in a spirit of solidarity create knowledge and wisdom, and share feelings; organise themselves and acquire collective power; they solve their common problems and contribute to a transformation of the social structure in a way that it becomes free, fair and participative.

Historically, participatory popular communication expresses itself through direct, face-to-face or handmade and technologically based communication media. However, popular communication is not limited to communication media, that is to communication channels used as instruments to disseminate content intended to create awareness and to mobilize people. It is also a communicative process intertwined in awareness-organization-action processes (Peruzzo 2004, 2008) developed by communities, social movements, and related community associations. Such processes happen in an integrated and continuous way and depend on the presence of a fabric of structures (community associations and social movements) with a temporal stability and durability, which distinguishes social movements from mere public demonstrations or protests. In an effort to explain that the social movements are not merely phenomena for mobilization, Alberto Melucci, as long ago as the 1980s, 4  Hopefully starting to be recognized as a component of “Southern Epistemologies” (Sousa Santos and Meneses 2009).

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related them to the network concept, as a structure of “collective action” characterized by a bipolar model: latency and visibility. For him (1987, pp. 61–62), latency corresponds to the phase of construction of cultural elements—the elaboration of meanings and the creation of new codes of identity. It is the period in which relationships are more restricted to the interpersonal and informal, when there is a need to establish relationships on a small scale up to the level of “submerged networks.” In his own words: Latency enables people to experiment directly with new cultural models—a change in the meaning system that, frequently, opposes the dominant social pressures: the meaning of sexual differences, of time and space, the relationship with nature, with the body, successively. Latency creates new cultural codes and incentivizes individuals to practice them. (Melucci 1999, p. 37)

The pole of visibility is characterized by Melucci (1989, 1999) as the collective public mobilization phase that has a symbolic function. That is, it is expressed in public demonstrations and other forms of pressure and intervention, in the communication media, for example, involving engagement and mobilization. “Visibility shows opposition to the logic that informs decision-making in public policy. At the same time public mobilization indicates to the rest of society that the specific problem is connected to the general logic of the system and that alternative cultural models are possible” (Melucci 1999, p. 37). However, these two poles, visibility and latency, are reciprocally correlated. Latency feeds visibility with resources of solidarity and with a cultural structure for mobilization. Visibility reinforces submerged networks. It provides energy to renew solidarity, facilitates the creation of new groups and the recruiting of new activists, attracted by the public mobilization that already flows in the submerged network. (Melucci 1999, p. 37)

Latency is an appropriate category to explain the future dimension of a social movement, but it is not a matter of understanding it as if it were the whole trajectory while it is not on public display, because, in fact, it implies distinct phases of mutation. That is, latency always gives rise to an internal process as a mechanism for continuous making and remaking, according to circumstances and short-, medium- and long-term strategies, not necessarily restricted to a limited number of people. It is natural that social

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movements5 develop beyond a latency phase, periods of greater emphasis in qualifying and consolidating their internal processes, self-organization, expansion, strengthening their identity foundations and relationships, and sometimes, their institutionalization. The Landless Workers Movement (acronym in Portuguese: MST),6 for example, had its latency period and, subsequently, lived through a consolidation period after its birth in the 1980s, although it gained greater visibility only during its moments of public demonstrations, as part of its dynamics and related to specific strategies and purposes.

The Impulse of “Another Development” from Practices Contextual Aspects Borborema is a region of North-eastern Brazil in the state of Paraíba, formed by twenty-one counties and with a population of 671,244 inhabitants, of which 21.34 percent live in the rural area. In this rural area, there are 24,725 family members of farmers and 1,661 families of settlers (of MST) and three quilombolas7 communities (O TERRITÓRIO n.d.). This research outlines the part played by the Borborema Union Pole,8 an organization that operates in fifteen of the twenty-one counties of the territory. It is formed by a network of unions for rural and non-rural workers, though not all such workers are members, as there still are unions following the standards of traditional rural unionism, and approximately 150 community associations. The Union is advised by NGOs, such as the Brazilian Semiarid Articulation (in  Portuguese: Articulação Semiarida Brasileira—ASA)9 and AS-PTA—Family Agriculture and Agro ecology (in Portuguese: Agricultura Familiar e Agroecologia).10 The territory of Borborema is located in the Brazilian Northeast, a semiarid region, because of the dry and hot climatic conditions most of the year, and also known as the hinterland. Added to this geographical setting are other 5  We refer to the so-called social movements, not to the large public demonstrations that happened around the world in the last decades, mainly, those mobilized with a great deal of help from digital social networks. 6  MST is the social movement to which COPAVI is linked. 7  Communities formed by remaining quilombos, or communities with a predominantly black population, descendants of ex-slaves. 8  See: http://aspta.org.br/category/videos/?programas=programa-paraiba. 9  See: http://www.asabrasil.org.br/. 10  See: http://aspta.org.br/.

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factors, like the concentration of land ownership and the spread of policies that favor land erosion, partly due to the regular use of pesticides, soil exhaustion caused by monocultures, and the discretionary extraction of water resources. The Borborema Union and the unions that form it have created collective forms of organization and community practices, besides being committed to the promotion of family farming based on agroecology, which have generated improvements in the living standards. The Cooperative of Agropecuary União da Vitória (in Portuguese: Cooperativa de Produção Agropecuária União da Vitória, Copavi Cooperative of Agropecuary União da Vitória) is a self-managed community originating in one of the settlements of the Landless Workers Movement (MST).11 It is located in Paranacity, in the northwest of Paraná State, in the south of Brazil. Originally (in 1993) it was a farm that became unproductive and was occupied by activists of the MST. The original owners lost their land because of bank mortgages made as guarantees for loans during the period of developmentalism, encouraged by the military government in the context of the strategy of modernization and industrialization of the country, within the framework of the expansion of international capital that we presented at the beginning of this article. Copavi12 adopted collective ownership as it is a settlement of rural workers connected to the MST. However, it is also composed of around twenty farmers’ families. Each family receives a small piece of land where they have their house, but the farmland and production spaces are held in common. Copavi is defined as a business in the solidarity economy, but in truth it is a community where there are political and ideological identities, shared interests, and a high level of participation from all, both in working and in decision-making. It is organized for work and collective management from the self-management point of view. All the products of this work are shared equally, and there is a rotation of management and production functions. Changes from the Point of View of the Practices Before discussing the changes, we will briefly introduce the central aspects of the forms of organization and the strategies for action adopted by each 11  MST was created in January 1984 and it is nowadays one of the most successful social movements in Brazil. 12  See: http://cirandas.net/cooperativa-de-producao-agropecuaria-vitoria-ltda.

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of the experiences considered in this text. Both carry out programs that involve farmers. In the Borborema Union, farmers have small plots of land, where they work independently to support themselves, and in Copavi, farmers work cooperatively on an area of collectively owned property, where they extract resources for their own livelihood. Specifically, at the Borborema Center, each of its programs, like the Seed Bank, production of agroecological fertilizer and insecticide, construction of cisterns (rain water reservoirs), Solidary Rotating Fund, commercialization, and knowledge exchange amongst the farmers, has its own objectives and an important role in the whole. For example, the Seed Bank is a community bank that gathers seeds produced without pesticides by the farmers to be distributed during the sowing season. They are called “Seeds of Passion” because they represent a love-letter both to the knowledge of their ancestors (family heritage) and to the crop species most suited (in adaptability and productivity) to the conditions of the semiarid climate. With more than sixty units in over forty years, these banks hold and conserve seeds of beans, corn, etc. in family environments, in order to share them, for free, among the farmers who participate in the program.13 From the organizational point of view, each family contributes by donating a small part of their produce and, during sowing, receives another portion of properly conserved seeds. This strategy is an alternative to and, at the same time, a rejection of the offer of transgenic seed by governmental programs that support agriculture. Therefore, it is a way to say “no” to a development program derived from the diffusion and modernization schemes we have mentioned. It is necessary to clarify the aspects that characterize the organization led by the Borborema Union. It is a trade union organization, community based, formed by farmers’ families, owners of small properties. Therefore, the commitment is to family agriculture and collective forms of organization in the face of rural problems. One of the achievements is provision of alternatives in the semiarid region that enable survival and, also perhaps, a reduction in the desire to emigrate. The Copavi programs are geared toward the production of sugar cane, cachaça, and brown sugar, livestock, dairy and cereal farming, vegetable and food production, and support of internal jobs in management, technology, and the commercialization of their own production. These 13  There are similar projects in other parts of Brazil and, in general, they are called “Creole Seed.”

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programs are carried out based on strategies collectively discussed and implemented by the active participation of everyone. The produce is for the families’ consumption. The surplus is sold commercially and the resources it generates allocated to wages for work, maintenance, and reinvestment in the cooperative. As we have explained earlier, Copavi adopts the formal organizational system of a farmers’ cooperative, but acts as a self-managed community. This means that there is no authoritarian hierarchy, but active participation of everyone in all decision-making processes, there are alternating functions (everyone works in different types of jobs), and equitable remuneration (though slightly higher for heavier work). There is also freedom of membership (the permanence or not as a member of the cooperative is optional). There is a clear option for agroecological production in both experiences, both in supplying healthy food for themselves and in offering high quality products to society at large. The changes in social reality produced by both experiences are very significant, at different levels: in terms of overcoming difficulties (poverty, exhausted land, sexist and individualist culture, stereotypes, etc.), in a better quality of life, in organizational development from a popular base, in the reframing and generation of knowledge, agroecological production, the active role of women, the creation of a collaborative and community character, as well as the changes in knowledge construction and communication. Farewell to the Diffusion of Innovation Model The Borborema Union and the Copavi experiences represent a questioning of the premises and strategies of the modernization theory and of the consequent strategy of diffusion of innovation from Western countries to Latin America, which in Brazil gained strength from 1960, and then under the military dictatorship (1964–1985). There are several reasons for this. First: these experiences express the rejection of agribusiness, instituting family agriculture and agroecological production. They oppose the monoculture of cotton, tobacco, sugar cane, soya, etc., the use of chemical products, and the export of raw material by business groups and even foreign capital. By contrast, they manage, on the basis of family groups (small private property or collective property), many types of agriculture with the main objective of producing food, besides developing systems for

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land fertilization and natural pesticides with local natural resources. Instead of transgenic seeds supplied by big companies, they use native seeds, free from chemical products. Instead of buying seeds or using those donated by government programs, they distribute them for free through the cooperation system of the community seed banks. Second: these experiences, while they question a development “model,” also make explicit that it is possible to construct concrete alternatives for community development. The alternative they offer is participatory development, in which the benefits return to the people who generated them and which implies respect for nature as it is agroecologic and, therefore, does not cause environmental destruction, something that would not occur in the modernizing system based on developmentalism. In relation to Copavi, there is another type of challenge to the traditional model: the private property system14 is checked by the establishment of collective ownership of the land on which agricultural families live and work. Facing this whole transformation process, we should ask: what is the new “model” of development that is being built? It is not possible to term it a development “model,” as the experiences carried out are closer to participatory development proposals (Servaes 1996; Peruzzo 2014). They have a local stamp, are self-sustainable, transcend the economic, favor the integral growth of people and are of a community nature. In summary, in both experiences there is the development of cooperation (between unions; associations; farmers and NGOs; civil institutions; federal and state government agencies, etc.); sharing (building cisterns, seed banks, solidarity fund, sharing of products and of profits from work, sharing of knowledge); active participation (open to all and in different situations and projects); and respect for local conditions (recovering the productivity of land, appreciation of native species, and solutions based on natural resources).

How Does Participatory Development Affect Grassroots Communication? In the examples studied, popular and community communication is manifested like this:

14  Collective ownership is a characteristic of all MST settlements. In general, when they settle on the land, the land is shared amongst settlers.

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(1) Communication is a process—understood as something dynamic, with multiple facets, inserted into the broad dynamics of mobilization, organization, and community action. Processes include communication as part of: practices capable of being recognized as spaces of interaction between actors in which there are processes of production of meaning, creation and re-­ creation of meaning, which generate relations in which the same actors (protagonists) are constituted individually and collectively. Practices in which the media intervenes, as a fundamental component in a society that we call “mediated” as an unquestionable part of the construction process of the real, but never as the only variable. (Vargas and Uranga 2010, p. 85)

Therefore, communication manifests itself as a process and, in social organization processes, as a facilitator of collective, interpersonal, intraand intergroup relations. It also helps to weave relationships and to coordinate actions (see González 2012), like mediation in informal education and in relations with external sectors of the municipal and state educational system, and public organs of government, etc. In this context, there is a very strong educational dimension, in which the intersections between communication and education are visible (see Deliberador and Rampazzo 2006). They are present at the level of informal and non-formal education in both experiences. It is a dimension that is inserted into the dynamics of daily life (see Bona, this book). On the other hand, at Copavi, formal education is also highly valued, through young adults and adults graduating from university, and through reinforcement of what is taught in school to children. The development of knowledge in this context acquires a revolutionary perspective when compared to a traditional conception of its transmission by those who possess it. First, because the dominant tendency of taking knowledge as something that exists on a higher level, elaborated by “elites” and handed down to the people, is subverted by valuing local knowledge, including ancestral knowledge; by rescuing the wisdom related to native species that are better adapted to drought; by adopting traditional conservation techniques for seeds, and using the practical knowledge acquired in dealing daily with semiarid conditions (see Contreras Baspineiro and also Vega Casanova, this book). Second, there is a construction of collective knowledge generated in organizational processes faced with finding solutions to problems and

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challenges that affect the “communities,” as these involve knowledge exchange enhanced by the cooperation and active participation of members through interpersonal and group communication. Paulo Freire (1977, p. 67) recognizes the importance of communication when affirming that “it is not possible to comprehend thought outside its dual function: cognitive and communicative.” Third, when reclaiming accumulated knowledge and valuing the knowledge of local actors, while engaging with insights provided by technical-scientific knowledge, new knowledge is also generated, for example, in agroecology, the ability to lead, understanding the political and economic situation, development of forms of cooperation, and so on. (2) Communication as dialogue. Paulo Freire (1977) criticizes the vertical communication (information and knowledge transmission) from the agronomist to the farmer, when trying to convince the latter to change habits and traditions and to adopt new work standards with the land, according to the diffusion framework (see Peruzzo 2014) and its approach to modernization (see Orué Pozzo, this book). In contraposition to this type of cultural invasion, Freire considers human communication as a dialogue, which implies recognizing the other as a subject and not as an object. To be dialogical, to Freire (1977, p. 43), “is to live the dialogue, neither to invade nor manipulate, even less to impose. It is to commit to the constant transformation of reality.” Group communication, dialogic communication, face-to-face, in groups and between groups and institutions, is the most important form of communication for the experiences that have been studied. It is interpersonal and group communication, mainly oral and face-to-face, that makes viable the dissemination of information, knowledge exchange, and decision-making. A process inserted into daily life, it helps to mobilize people and, in the end, facilitates the coordination of actions, such as the high communicative expression of resilience. It is produced both through direct contact between people and in face-to-face gatherings (meetings, exchange of knowledge and ideas,15 educational and political activities, discussion of topics of local interest and the orientation of proposals, 15  Exchange that dialogue favors, but it is possible to go beyond that. For example, at the Borborema Union there is a programme called “Experimental Farmers,” which consists in a concrete exchange experience based on practice. For example, if a farmer or a community implemented a new orchard irrigation system, the experience is shared with farmers from other areas, as forms of instruction and socialization of knowledge.

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­ lanning, evaluation, etc.) and through gatherings mediated by communip cative forms like the Marcha das Margaridas (collective public demonstration for women’s rights and against sexism), music, banners, and poetry, besides incorporating technological media such as mobile phones and smartphones which are more and more common within the rural population. (3) Forms and means of communication that are more frequent. As we have shown, dialogical, interpersonal, group, and intergroup communication is extremely important in the groups studied. However, it exists alongside other forms of communication and incorporates means of communications such as printed newsletters,16 posters, documentary videos, radio programs,17 and, depending on the conditions, but on a small scale at least at the moment, sites and blogs on the Internet and digital social media profiles. These spaces on the Internet, as well as the videos, are developed by advisory groups and collaborators (people and institutions), more than the local organizations but, in general, they participate as protagonists in the production process. This technological support is more useful in external public relations, that is, in the relationship with public and private institutions, and with the general public; in spreading forms of action and discussing matters of social interest and, in this way, communicating with society and public authorities, according to the needs and strategies of each situation. As a whole, these dimensions of popular communication, face-to-face and mediated by technology, are evident as communications of the people, made by the people and for the people (Peruzzo 2008), one reason they are seen as popular and community based. The local social movement structures its communicative dynamics according to broader demands for a better quality of life and to talk about itself, its proposals, and its worldview aimed at bringing about necessary changes through agroecological production, the cooperative economic model, and engaging the commitment of people to the common good.

16  The printed newsletters are not of the traditional informative type. They are documentary newsletters as they talk about successful experiences in general, using examples of families who innovated in their practices. 17  Produced by a member of the movement in the name of Workers and Rural Workers Union of Remigio, Paraiba, and was broadcast by local radio.

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Final Considerations Even though there are forms of participatory development in progress that are grounded in agroecologic family agriculture focused essentially on food production, the experiences referred to in this text are not free from interference from a surrounding environment predominantly favorable to monoculture and agribusiness. On one side, following modernization theory, which generated the logic of the diffusion of innovation embedded in development policies, the conventional communication media (radio, television, magazines, newspapers, etc.) operate as channels of ideas and values’ transmission promising progress, well-being, and the advantages of consumption of industrialized products, from chemicals to children’s milk. But the apparent objective to favor social well-being and the progress of all is subverted by the aim of increasing the concentration of profit and the expansion of international capital. On the other side, there are changes in conventional standards of farming and land ownership. Popular knowledge is valued and renewed, and reality is transformed as other perspectives of development are implemented. Popular communication is constituted in a process inside other processes and merged with them. Popular communication and knowledge interconnect in the building of alternatives. In this context of community development and of social movements and organizations, which prioritizes a solidarity economy, as we have demonstrated, popular and community communication is part of a process of popular mobilization, organization, and action to create awareness, mobilize, plan, exchange knowledge, and weave relationships, but with a human purpose. It develops in line with the conditions and needs of the movements and the communities themselves. It is predominantly horizontal, dialogical communication that incorporates other significant tasks, such as facilitating coordinating actions, as well as integrating other channels and communicative forms according to the needs and conditions of the movements and communities. In other words, popular communication works organically in the communities and social movements both in their periods of latency and continuous (re)configuration and consolidation, and in times of greater public visibility. In this way, it lives with the opportunities presented by public policies, the difficult circumstances, daily difficulties and defeats, but also cultivates resilience, happiness, and achievements. In this sense, the praxis

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of popular communication is revealed as epistemological resistance because it conceives communication as a human process in its intrinsic sense of something common, of reciprocity and dialogue, that uses technological mediation but goes beyond it, besides valuing and systemizing knowledge situated and rooted in the local context, without disregarding and using accumulated empirical and scientific knowledge. The communication processes constituted in the context of social movements emphasized in this research matches the praxis of participatory development enabling the traditional view of “communication for development” to be displaced and an epistemology linked to popular, communitarian, and alternative communication to be consolidated.

References Baran, P. (1964). A economia política do desenvolvimento (2nd ed.). Rio de Janeiro: Zahar. Bertaux, D. (2005). Los relatos de vida. Perspectiva etnosociológica. Barcelona: Edicions Bellaterra. Cadavid Bringe, A. (2014). Los actuales debates sobre ‘comunicación, desarrollo y cambio social. In B. A. Cadavid & A. Gumucio Dagron (Orgs.), Pensar desde la experiencia. Comunicación participativa en el cambio social (pp.  37–54). Bogotá: Uniminuto. Chaparro, M. (2015). Claves para repensar los medios y el mundo que habitamos. La distopía del desarrollo. Bogotá: Desde Abajo. Deliberador, L. Y., & Rampazzo, A. C. (2006). Comunicação e educação para a cidadania em uma cooperativa de assentamento do MST. Comunicação & Educação, USP, ECA, a.XI(n.3), 341–352, set. Diaz Bordenave, J. (1983). Além dos meios e mensagens. Introdução à comunicação como processo, tecnologia, sistema e ciência. Petrópolis: Vozes. Esteva, G. (2009). Más allá del desarrollo: la buena vida. América Latina en Movimiento, Quito, ano 33, n. 445, pp. 1–5, jun. Freire, P. (1977). Extensão ou comunicação? (3rd ed.). Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Furtado, C. (1973). A hegemonia dos Estados Unidos e o subdesenvolvimento da América Latina. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira. González, J. A. (2012). Entre culturas e cibercultur@s: incursões e outras rotas não lineares. Editora Metodista: São Bernardo do Campo. Gumucio-Dagron, A. (2014). Comunicación para el cambio social: clave del desarrollo participativo. In G.  J. M.  Pereira & B.  A. Cadavid (Eds.), Comunicación, desarrollo y cambio social. Interrrelaciones entre comunicación, movimientos ciudadanos y medios (pp.  19–35). Bogotá: Pontificia Univ. Javeriana.

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Gumucio-Dagron, A., & Tufte, T. (2008). Raíces e importancia: introducción. In A.  Gumucio-Dagron & T.  Tufte (Orgs.), Antología de comunicación para el cambio social (pp.  16–45). New Jersey/La Paz: Communication for Social Change Consortium/ Plural. Kaplun, M. (1985). El comunicador popular. Quito: CIESPAL. Marí Sáez, V. M. (2016). Comunicaciones Ininterrumpidas. Madrid, Ppc. Melucci, A. (1989). Um objetivo para os movimentos sociais? Lua Nova: Revista de Cultura e Política, São Paulo, CEDEC, n.17, jun. Disponível em. Retrieved March 12, 2020, from http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pi d=S0102-64451989000200004. Melucci, A. (1999). Acción colectiva, vida cotidiana y democracia. Cidade do México: El Colegio de México. O Território. (n.d.). Portal da Cidadania. Disponível em. Retrieved June 13, 2014, from http://www.territoriosdacidadania.gov.br/dotlrn/clubs/territriosrurais/borboremapb/one-­community?page_num=0. Peruzzo, C. M. K. (2004). Comunicação nos movimentos populares: a participação na Construção da Cidadania. 4.ed. Petrópolis: Vozes. Disponível em. http:// w w w. 4 s h a r e d . c o m / o f f i c e / h I I t K g _ o / C O M U N I C A O _ N O S _ MOVIMENTOS_POPUL.htm. Peruzzo, C.  M. K. (2008). Conceitos de comunicação popular, alternativa e comunitária revisitados. Reelaborações no setor. Revista Palabra Clave, Universidad de La Sabana, 11, 1.2, pp.  367–379, Disponível em. Retrieved March 17, 2020, from https://palabraclave.unisabana.edu.co/index.php/palabraclave/article/view/1503/1690. Peruzzo, C. M. K. (2014). Comunicação para o desenvolvimento, comunicação para a transformação social. In A. Monteiro Neto (Org.). Sociedade, política e desenvolvimento. Desenvolvimento nas Ciências Sociais: O Estado das Artes, Livro 2 (pp. 161–195). Brasília: Ipea. Schavelzon, S. (2015). Plurinacionalidad y vivir bien/buen vivir. Dos conceptos leídos desde Bolivia y Ecuador pos-constituyentes. Ecuador/Buenos Aires: Abya-­ YALA/CLACSO. Schramm, W. (1976). Comunicação de massa e desenvolvimento: o papel da informação nos países em crescimento (2nd ed.. Tradução de Muniz Sodré e Robert Lent.). Rio de Janeiro: Bloch. Servaes, J. (1996). Introduction: Participatory communication and research in development settings. In J.  Servaes, T.  L. Jacobson, & S.  A. White (Eds.), Participatory communication for social change (pp. 13–25). London: Sage. Servaes, J. (2004). Comunicación para el desarrollo: tres paradigmas, dos modelos. Revista Comunicação Midiática, Bauru, UNESP, a. 1, n. 1–2, pp. 19–53. Silva, J. de S. (2011). Hacia el ‘dia después del desarrollo’. Descolonizar la comunicación y la educación para construir comunidades felices con modos de vida sostenibles. Campina Grande: Asociación Latinoamericana de Educación Radiofónica (ALER).

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Sousa Santos, Boaventura, & Meneses, M. P. (Orgs.) (2009). Epistemologias do sul. Coimbra: Almedina/CES. Vargas, T., & Uranga, W. (2010). Gestión de procesos comunicacionales. Una estrategia de intervención. In G.  Cicalese (Coord.), Comunicación comunitaria. Apuntes para abordar las dimensiones de la construcción colectiva (pp. 77–93). Buenos Aires: La Crujía.

CHAPTER 4

Faith, Communication and Commitment to Liberation Washington Uranga Translated by Gustavo Andújar

The Latin American and Caribbean journey of what we generically call “popular communication” is inevitably marked by two intrinsically linked central ideas that have always intersected these practices: social and political liberation; and democratization of communication. There are not, however, many theoretical elaborations on this topic. Fundamentally because the popular, community, or alternative communication—different denominations by which experiences in this area are known to the world— was first a practice, a way to be and to act in the territory, committed to popular actors and, only later, subject to systematization, analysis, and theoretical construction. We can affirm that popular communication grew and consolidated out of the concern for change and social justice,

W. Uranga (*) Universidad Nacional de La Plata and Universidad de Buenos Aires, La Plata and Buenos Aires, Argentina e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. C. Suzina (ed.), The Evolution of Popular Communication in Latin America, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62557-3_4

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accompanying political, social, cultural, and also religious experiences that were, either demanding communication to make sense of their action, or using it as an information-diffusion tool. It can also be said that those practices found in the communicational environment a favorable and necessary scenario to transcend, consolidate, and permeate the citizens and society as a whole. For this book I have been asked to focus especially on the links between popular communication and the Catholic religious experience in the region, in particular the connections between these communicational practices and the so-called “theology of liberation” or, with similar meanings, the theology of the people, or the theology of culture. According to experts in religious or theological subjects, conceptual and positioning differences exist among them that we prefer to obviate in this case because they do not relate to the core of the question as to the topic at hand. In all the cases we will be referring to a way of understanding Christian life from the perspective of present and active participants in history, and to theology as an approach to and a reading of the Gospel of Jesus Christ of that same Christian practice. Then, when thinking of the genesis of popular communication—also called communication for social change by other authors—in this part of the world, at least three mutually imbricated threads of thought can be analyzed: the practice of communication and the evolution of critical thought on the matter; the political, social, and cultural realities in which the communicational processes considered are developed; and lastly, the incidence that, at least partly, the Catholic religious experience has had in the region and the theological thought around it (see Contreras Baspineiro, this book). We will develop this reflection based on the analysis of these three factors.

Communication in the Political Social Context It is impossible to understand the course of popular communication if you do not consider it in the political-social and economic context in which each response took place. In the 1970s, the exhaustion of the development pattern imposed on Latin American and Caribbean countries was evident: fiscal expense grew over-the-top and the crisis of the foreign debt occurred. What happened in fact was that the pattern of “economicist development,” unjust and inequitable in itself, that the countries of the region had imported

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uncritically starting from the proposal of economic developmentalism, failed. It sought—so went the argument—the modernization and productive reactivation of the middle sectors: on account of an overflow effect, this would necessarily arrive—so it was said—to the poorest. It was the idea of developmentalism. Serious mistake. Not only did it not happen, but our countries entered instead during the 1970s into a serious crisis; the consequences of which we are still experiencing. Then the terrible night of military dictatorships and national security regimes occurred, sowing death and forced disappearances, imprisonments, tortures and, in general, violations of human rights and basic freedoms in most countries. Justice and dignity were enslaved, but also the right to communication and freedom of speech. Then communication went through times of resistance, and popular communication became a refuge and, often from clandestinity, a tool in the struggle for liberation. Nowadays, past that stage, in the dawn of renewed democracies, the proposal for political democratization in later years has pointed to understanding development well beyond its strictly economic aspects. There was talk of participatory processes and socio-political changes that would sustain what was stated in the strictly economic sense. Results were not obtained, or they were meager, and the crisis dragged on without improving the living conditions for most of the population. At the same time, already since the 1970s and still under the dictatorships, the movement promoting the democratization of communication experienced significant growth in the whole region. It can be said that it was based on resistance, in the cellars of society, but also in the development of a critical Latin American thought. Simultaneously, two not always connected currents were developing. On one hand, there was the transformation in education experiences through the media, in popular communication realities, using radio for its main support. On the other hand, there were practices of communication linked to popular agents (peasants, aborigines, workers in general). In these cases, the presence of the Catholic Church and of Christian grassroots movements inspired by the theology of liberation and grassroots ecclesial communities (acronym in Spanish: CEBs) was important and significant. But at the same time Latin America became a cradle of critical and creative thought on communication and the debate was extended to the national communication policies based on a New International News Order (NOII), and in a New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO or NWIO). Thinkers but also politicians of the region were integrated in that global dispute and

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participated in the international forums. Nevertheless, achievements and specific progresses were low in number. Furthermore, only a few isolated, not very significant experiences, managed to endure. In the first case it was the experience of the literacy teachers themselves and their closeness to the most popular sectors that yielded the transformation into a perspective of popular communication. The proposal of national communication policies found its political basis in the idea of liberation, its theoretical foundation in the critical Latin American school of communication and their practical references in the experiences of alternative communication that had been previously sowed in the region since the 1950s, starting with the works of education through Radio Sutatenza (Colombia), a Catholic Church radio station, and communication experiences then called alternative. There was, however, a dissociation between political discourse and practice. The great majority of Latin American governments participated in the San José Conference in Costa Rica (1976), that focused on communication policies, and subscribed to its declarations on NWICO. However, almost none of them exhibited later the capacity and political zeal necessary to apply the required transformations. For example, there was no effective modification of the media system beyond experiences that did not reach a true transformative capacity, as it happened to the ASIN1 and ALASEI2 agencies and the ULCRA3 network. Neither was there an impulse and a concrete support for national radio and television systems of public service. In a dialogue held between the author and Luis Ramiro Beltrán in 1990, the Bolivian investigator claimed that “alternative proposals at that time did not even reach a 5% of the total media in each country.” Many political and theoretical-political discourses  on NWICO and communication policies in the continent did not keep in mind, in a real and concrete way, the grassroots experiences of communication that had been developing in the region. But also, for those who made grassroots communication, for those who lived popular communication as a political 1  ASIN (Acción de Sistemas Informativos Nacionales) (National Informative Systems Action). 2  ALASEI (Agencia Latinoamericana de Servicios Especiales de Información) (Latin American Special Information Services Agency). 3  ULCRA (Unión Latinoamericana y Caribeña de Radiodifusión) (Latin American and Caribbean Union of Broadcasting).

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experience and as a tool for social change, the discourse on the New Order sounded, more than once, as a distant, alien, or empty claim. Beyond this dissociation between practice and discourse, communication experiences were at the time directly linked to the political debate: at the level of the superstructure, because the discussion on the New Order and on national communication policies mobilized interests and promoted confrontations; at grassroots level, because communication became a full part of  the struggle against social injustice and in favor of democratization.

How to Understand Communication? As already stated, there is a practice of communication in Latin America closely linked with political practice and with popular struggles. This is because there were and there are protagonists of communication who, in the midst of the political debate, conceive it as a fundamental human right and, therefore, a political perspective of civic construction. The above-mentioned supposes leaving aside any reductionistic and information-related approaches to communication, restricting it to the use of media and technologies, to understand it substantially as a connection between actors, a dialogue that gives purpose to social, cultural, and political life; including media but not limited to them. It is at the same time, a way to understand communication processes historically, as the fabric of history, and not just isolated, incidental events; it is to understand communication as a narrative arising from experience and practice, from the daily life of subjects. It is not about an isolated cry, but about a call to a dialogue woven into the actions of the actors in history, turned into an event through the action of popular actors (see Peruzzo, this book). As we pointed out in a previous work, communication is “a social process of production, exchange and negotiation of symbolic forms, a constituent phase of man’s practical being and the knowledge derived thereof” (Uranga 2016, p. 30). Departing from that same approach, we claimed then that “communication is defined by action” and thus, through our actions, we proceed configuring ways of communication. Adding that “the communication that we turn into our action, the language that we use, constitutes the purpose and contents of our action” (Enz  et  al. 2006, p. 40).

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This perspective of communication is clearly related with the Latin American experience of popular communication. It is supported by a practice which cannot be interpreted separately from the social and political experience of its protagonist. Thus, popular communication is also communication for social change, because social agents are symbolically built and constituted there, they arise as protagonists, and they impregnate with purpose the historical processes in which they participate, including their struggles, their quests, their aspirations. This way, communicational processes give life to a cultural-­political methodology in which history ceases to be the sum of small daily facts or extraordinary big events without any articulation to each other to introduce a new perspective to the way of acquiring knowledge, to the form of appropriating historical events as a form of accumulation of knowledge by the participant agents and society as a whole. Starting from its practices, popular communication invites to reconstruct the narrative of history from the communicational processes, allowing facts to intertwine with each other, which supposes weaving the peculiar history of every one of the social agents into the political, social, and cultural collective history. When we speak about this type of communication we are not referring strictly to media, but rather to a communicational process into which those media are inscribed and of which they are a part. What we are concerned about is a communicational process that is constituted of and which, at the same time, builds the historical narrative (see Custódio, this book). The popular and the communitarian are directly linked to the political vocation, in terms of construction of citizenship and social participation in a continent where inequalities are evident and become more and more pronounced by the day. Where the claim for justice is clamorous in the demands made by the poor and the excluded. The political construction there is not linked exclusively to the traditional political organization but is rather related to the achievement of the common good, a task that can move along very diverse roads, all intersected by the struggle for power. Disaggregating popular communication from the struggle for power would mean emptying it of purpose and losing the direction of social change. Without disregarding that, although communication collaborates to the construction of consensus, it also contributes to the constitution of a space of dialogue in the difference.

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An Option for the Poor: The Centrality of the Announcement of the Gospel It is not difficult to establish links between popular communication and Christian commitment in Latin America because both are experiences that have been intertwined without major difficulty in the recent history of our countries. People, institutions, alliances, ways of construction which are common to both occur. But what exists, most of all, is a common epistemology that is born out of recognizing the poor as actors and protagonists of both social change and religious Christian practice. The II General Conference of Latin American Bishops (Medellín 1968) 1968) was a transcendent landmark for Catholicism in the region because it settled the perspective of the option for the poor. The III General Conference (Puebla 1979) would inscribe itself years later in the same theological and ecclesiological, but also political and cultural, line of reflection. Both, although they were encounters of the Catholic hierarchy, express in diverse ways a religious practice of the whole faithful people, an experience of faith extended long and wide across the Latin American continent and of proximity with and commitment to the popular sectors. Quoting the documents of the Latin American church, Salvadoran theologian Jon Sobrino (n.d.) remembers that: the option for the poor has arisen in Latin America, a continent for the most part poor and Christian. Puebla refers it to Medellín, ‘that made a clear and prophetic option of preference for and solidarity with the poor’, (Puebla 1134) and it consecrates the expression ‘preferential option for the poor’ in the context of the evangelizing mission of the Church. That option refers to the addressee as much as to the content of evangelization. The objective of the preferential option for the poor is the announcement of Christ the Savior Who will shed his light on their dignity, support them in their efforts of liberation from all their wants and take them to the communion with the Father and their brethren, by means of the living of evangelical poverty (Puebla 1153). (Sobrino, J. Relat No. 251)

And he adds that: the foundation of this option is in the evangelization by Jesus himself (Puebla 1141) and in the defense and love of God toward them for the mere fact of being poor (Puebla 1142); it is historically demanded ‘by the scandalous reality of the economic imbalances in Latin America’ (Puebla 1154). As

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a pastoral option, this option is preferential, not excluding; it does not mean, therefore, to disregard the evangelization of others, although it is insinuated that even for the evangelization of those who are not poor this option is very important and necessary. (Sobrino, J. op. cit.)

For Sobrino “the option for the poor is an option for a life and a faith” organizing the action around that fundamental decision. And the Central American theologian adds that, “in current language, the ‘poor’ are in the first place the socio-economically poor ones, a language that should not surprise or be crossed out as ideological, because what is behind the socio-­ economic thing is the oikos, the home, and the socium, the partner; that is to say, the two fundamental realities of every human being: life and fraternity” (Sobrino, J. op. cit.). This evangelical perspective is supported by a practice putting the historical reality of the people in the center of the preoccupation and the commitment of Christians. Liberation, in consequence, was transformed into a concrete, historical, social, and cultural horizon, and not just into a utopia projected toward the transcendent. The above-mentioned supposes to “take care of reality” which implies to take reality as “principle and foundation of all activity,” just as pointed out by Alberto Moliner (n.d.). The option for the poor enables the theological perspective of the liberation, since it includes the practice as a social process, a natural environment for the transformation of society. Peruvian Gustavo Gutiérrez in his original work on the theology of liberation wrote that: theology as a critical reflection of historical practice is thus a liberating theology, a theology of the liberating transformation of the history of humanity and, therefore, also of the portion of it—gathered in ecclesia—that openly confesses Christ. A theology that is not limited to think the world, but rather looks to be situated as a moment of the process through which the world is transformed: opening up—in the protest in the face of the tramped dignity of humans, in the struggle against the looting of the immense majority of men, in love that liberates, in the construction of a new society, fair and fraternal— to the gift of the Kingdom of God. (Gutierréz 1972, pp. 40–41)

Years later, when reissuing the same work in Peru, Gutiérrez reaffirmed that: the theology of liberation is closely bound to this new presence of those who were always absent from our history. They have transformed little by little

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into active actors of their own destiny, initiating a process that is changing the condition of the poor and oppressed of this world. The theology of liberation (expression of the right of the poor to reflect on their faith) is not the automatic result of that situation and its changes; it is an attempt to read the signs of the times […] in which a critical reflection is made in the light of the Word of God. It takes us to seriously discern the values and limits of this event. (Gutiérrez 1988, p. 16)

Regarding communication, also the fundamental documents of the contemporary Latin American Church, settled a position that contributes in the aforementioned sense. In Medellín (1968) the bishops pointed out that “in Latin America the media is one of the factors which have contributed and continue to contribute the most to raise the awareness of the masses on their conditions of life, raising aspirations and demands for radical transformations.” They also acknowledged, perhaps in a self-referential fashion regarding the practice of the Church itself, that these media “although in incipient form, have been acting as positive agents of change by means of grassroots education, formation programs and public opinion.” Not forgetting that “however, many of these media are linked to economic and political groups, national and foreign, interested in maintaining the social ‘statu quo’” (II Conferencia General del Episcopado Latinoamericano, Documento final, 1968, Apartado sobre Comunicación, No. 2). In 1977, the Department of Social Communication of the Latin American Bishops’ Council (acronym in Spanish: CELAM) produced a preparatory document for the III General Conference of Latin American Bishops (Puebla 1979). That text was not widely publicized, but it had the merit, on one hand, to collect the communication experience of the Church from Medellín and, on the other, to bear influence on the final document of Puebla as well as on the pastoral work of the particular churches. That work reflects, in general, the liberation perspective that intersected the ecclesiological experience of the region at that time. By way of example we can mention a section in which it is claimed that “social communication will make evident the situations of injustice, dominance and extreme poverty to which important sectors of the Latin American community are subject to.” Adding that “it should also collaborate to the creation of a liberation project able to assure peaceful, fair and fraternal conditions of living for our peoples” (DECOS-CELAM 1979, p. 49).

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This approach also impelled the institutional support of Catholic organizations in the apostolate of communication, with institutions such as the International Catholic Association for Radio and Television (UNDA), the International Catholic Organization for Cinema and Audiovisuals (OCIC), and the Latin American Catholic Press Association (acronym in Spanish: UCLAP), in whose ranks acted militants (lay, priests, and religious) clearly identified with experiences in grassroots ecclesial communities and in the theology of liberation. Luis Liberti, a specialist on the subject of communication and the Church in Latin America, claims that in the years after Medellín (1968) “in the cultural field we noticed the profound influence of the thought of Brazilian Paulo Freire, educator, sociologist and philosopher; his proposals have been widely accepted in the continent, bringing about widespread awareness and a remarkable change in the appreciation and analysis of the Latin American situation.” And he adds that Paulo Freire “inspired the initial quest for models of horizontal and dialogic communication” also in the Church environment. (Liberti 1995, p. 38) The document of the Latin American bishops in Puebla (1979) gathers only partially the rich experience of the Church on the subject during the preceding years. However, in the part of the pastoral recommendations it can be read that “given the situation of poverty, marginality and injustice, and of violation of human rights, in which large Latin American masses are submersed, the Church, by the use of its own media, should become, every day more, the voice of those deprived, even with the risk that it implies” (Conferencia General del Episcopado Latinoamericana, Documento final, 1979, Puebla, 1082).

Grassroots Ecclesial Communities: The Practice of Liberation The evangelical option for the poor was expressed in different ways in religious Latin American practice but it had in the Grassroots Ecclesial Communities (Spanish acronym: CEBs) one of its most important manifestations. They expressed, apart from the centrality of the commitment to the poor, understood as a popular actor, organization forms for political action, even though these were not always associated to specific parties. Already in 1968, the Latin American bishops had defined CEBs as “the initial cell of ecclesial structuring and focal point of evangelization and, at

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the moment, a primordial factor of human promotion and development” (Medellín, 15). In 1979, the same bishops said that “the Grassroots Ecclesial Communities that in 1968 were barely an incipient experience, have matured and multiplied, mainly in some countries, so that now they constitute a reason of joy and hope for the Church. In communion with the Bishop and as Medellín requested, they have turned into focal points of Evangelization and motors of liberation and development” (Puebla, 641). Bolivian theologian Gregorio Iriarte understands by grassroots ecclesial community (CEB) “a small group in which members know each other, share their life, celebrate their faith and help each other to fully live their commitment to the construction of the Kingdom” (Iriarte 2006). In practice, these communities arose in Latin America in the light of a double perspective: to live their faith next to their neighbor, their near one, but also with the decision to put reality at the center of their concerns. CEBs have also been expression of the ecclesial novelty contributed by the Vatican II Council (1962–1965) portrayed in Latin America in the 1960s, when, just as it was pointed out above, the development project promoted by the United States for this part of the world began to show its weakness (See Flores-Márquez, this book). The poverty of the peoples of the continent set the demand for liberation over any proposal of development, that was shown to be not only insufficient by itself, but also unfair, given the existing conditions of exploitation and dominance. It is at that point in time when the theology of liberation finds a historical cultural pattern. In the CEBs, a theological practice is shaped that arises from the concrete history of the people but that, at the same time, is a way to live life from the perspective of the poor. Thus, the theology of liberation cautions about the necessity to live a Christian faith without separating it from the existential specific conditions of most of the Latin American people. And the CEBs are, at the same time, a manifestation of a new way to understand the Church, a new ecclesiology that is also a fruit of the application of the Vatican II Council in Latin America. An ecclesiological perspective that puts the emphasis in the community inserted in the people, in the history of the people, as a center of the experience of faith. The Grassroots Ecclesial Community—claims Alberto Moliner—integrates as a community its families, adults and youths in an interpersonal intimate relationship in the faith. Because it is ecclesial, it is a community of faith,

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hope and charity; it celebrates the Word of God and is nurtured by the Eucharist, pinnacle of all the sacraments; it carries out the Word of God in life, through solidarity and commitment to the new commandment of the Lord and it makes present and acting the ecclesial mission and the visible communion with the shepherds, through the service of approved coordinators. It is at the grassroots, constituted by few members, permanently and in the fashion of a cell of the great community. (Moliner, op. cit)

And Moliner underlines that CEBs develop: lay ministries and recover the charismatic and diaconal dimensions of the Church, playing an important critical-prophetic and liberating role. Aware that the political solutions to which they offer their support do not have an absolute character, they emphasize historical mediations. These communities are the presence of the Church in the popular movements of struggle for just claims, where the conscience of liberation lies. (Moliner, op. cit.)

It can be said then that the experience of CEBs was the form of portraying in Latin America the reformations of Vatican II, in an original way and collecting the religious practice and the politics of this part of the world. And, at the same time, they constituted a way of proposing another model of Church from the perspective of the poor as the actor and protagonist of history. It is the Church that is part of the people, that assumes their pains and their struggles because its members suffer the condition of dominance and the sufferings of the poor. For that reason, the faithful gathered in the CEBs work in favor of a new type of society that looks to overcome the situations of injustice and dominance, for itself and for society as a whole. And it was the theological reflection of liberation that systematized this practice in order to transform it into a proposal, enabling a critical reflection on Christian practice from a liberating perspective. It is not only a way to reflect about life, but a different way to live life in the history of the people. It was a time during which a lot of emphasis was placed on the social, political, and revolutionary commitment from faith. Some Christians chose the way of armed struggle and the repression of the “national security” governments fell on them as well as on others with different options, considering them, in general, “subversive.” Many Christians died or were victims of abuses.

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This way, the CEBs became a novel experience which, following the teaching of the first Christian communities, reinforced also the commitment to the option for the poor that, inspired by the Vatican II Council, was portrayed in Latin America through the teaching of the bishops. This was also supported by the theological reflections of liberation in their diverse tendencies and significances.

Popular Communication and Christian Commitment But the CEBs also participated in experiences of popular religiosity, in which popular culture was synthesized with religious culture and with the language of the people. This was a communication experience in the double sense of the small community but also popular culture as a form of expression and manifestation of the life of the people. These communication experiences rooted in Christian life moved to the radio stations, to community centers, to the communication practices that these Christian militants displayed in different environments. For British Jesuit Robert White, social communicator with a long experience in Latin America, particularly in Central America, the CEBs were a basic experience in communication. In general, he claims, with the use of participatory methods they achieved “a more horizontal communication than in the vertical pattern of information, up from the priest to the bishop, and then down, to the people” (White 1988, p. 152). According to White, the CEBs were transformed into an environment of democratization of the word and shared responsibility, and in many cases that experience was projected into the generation of their own media, from printed bulletins and debate forums to countless community radios with a social projection. For White “popular communication impels a systematic organization of the media produced by the poor and relatively uneducated; it financially controls and supports simple mimeographed newspapers, popular theater, posters, simple slide projections, marionettes, etc.” (White p.  160). An express review of emergent experiences of community radio in Latin America and the Caribbean shows the Catholic Church as an enormous protagonist, from the pioneer Radio Sutatenza (Colombia), to Radio Santa María (Dominican Republic), and Escuelas Radiofónicas de Bolivia (ERBOL). These and many other initiatives of popular and community radios gave origin to what would become ALER (Latin American Association of Radio Education) one of the most important networks of

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popular communication that still exists on the continent, initially constituted for the most part by media institutions of Catholic origin, whether or not institutionally linked to the Church. The option for the poor and the theology of liberation are the very episteme of its generation. Accordingly, the practice of communication of a sector of the Catholic Church and progressive Christianity in the region was, through this connection, intrinsically related to the idea of social change in different forms. The magazine UNDA-AL, journal of the Catholic Latin American Association for Radio and Television, published in Bogotá and Buenos Aires between 1980 and 1989, stated this perspective in many of its articles. As an example, it is worth summarizing what Mexican Jesuit priest and theologian Fernando Espinosa wrote in it in 1981, pointing out that popular communication will “only end up being genuinely popular to the extent that it seriously assumes the task of liberating the oppressed classes, transforms itself into a medium expressing its own interests and breaks up with the oppression and the manipulation of the ruling class.” And he added that: popular communication will have to be intimately related and integrated with all the movement of organization and reinforcement of social practice at a political level. Communication alone will not change society, no matter how well it is carried out: it merely belongs to the superstructure. Somehow it will be necessary to impact the social relationships of production. (Espinosa 1981, p. 19)

And the following year, in the same publication, the Hispanic Venezuelan Jesuit priest and theologian José Martínez Terrero, in the article “Popular communication in NOMIC” claimed that “the communicational practice of popular groups that struggle for liberation goes […] along the line of a new communicational and group-oriented popular process,” pointing out that “the most important thing is that the oppressed people voice their own words” and that communication “is oriented toward the popular organization for a macro structural liberating change in which the organized sectors themselves have control on the media.” He concluded by stating that popular communication is defined as “the communication of the oppressed people who express themselves and demand their defrauded rights, using for this purpose those media that may be the

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most helpful in order to achieve their liberation” (Martínez Terrero 1982, pp.  46–48). And later on, the same author stated that “the practice of popular communication is in the frame of the relationship of the Church with the poor” (op. cit. p. 54). In 1992, in a text reflecting on 500  years of evangelization in Latin America, I wrote that it was “the Latin American Catholic Church, the place where many popular and professional communicators—especially the first ones—found support for their demands in favor of the right to communications and to develop communication experiences that were alternative to the system,” underlining that “this has been one of the most valuable contributions of the Church in that respect” (Uranga 1992, p. 420). A recognition that, from a distance, confirms what we have kept supporting regarding the importance of the contribution of committed agents of the Catholic Church and of Christianity in general, to popular communication in the region.

Closing Notes Throughout this text we wanted to make evident that, as far as the Latin American and Caribbean region is concerned, the practice that we have called popular communication (also called community communication or communication for social change) has been clearly linked with the theological and ecclesiological perspective built around what the documents of the Catholic hierarchy designated as “preferential option for the poor,” and was synthesized by theologians in the theology of the liberation with its variants of theology of the people or theology of culture, depending on the authors. Similarly, those who have reflected about communication recognize signs of this thought, but they also assume that they have incorporated practices coming from Christian organizations and movements committed to the popular sectors. The choice of the poor as the history building actor, but also as the main author of its change, becomes the common epistemological axis around which the Christian practice of liberation, the popular communication and the processes toward social change in Latin America are organized. In order to understand the poor, those who suffer dominance, as liberating actors and promoters of the historical-cultural changes, the key has been the interpretation of social processes of popular origin. It is the

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same key of interpretation that you apply to communicators and popular communicators in the long path from “giving a voice to those who do not have a voice” down to the acknowledgement of the popular agent as the subject of the right to communication. But it is the same epistemological root that gives sense to the theology of liberation understood, as Gustavo Gutiérrez says, as the intelligence of Christian practice lived in the midst of the poor, their culture, and their social reality. This synthesis has also occurred in the life and experiences of communicators who enrich the theoretical tradition of the field in Latin America. Without pretending to make a full list—and apologizing in advance for the inevitable omissions—it is worthwhile to mention some of the names of professors of communication in Latin America of well-known identification with Christian faith, who integrate into their teachings, texts, and practices, the synthesis we are referring to: Jesús Aguirre (Venezuela), Rosa María Alfaro (Peru), Jesús Martín-Barbero (Colombia), Fernando Reyes Mata (Chile), Regina Festa, Cicilia Peruzzo, Attilio Hartmann, José Marques de Melo, Ismar de Oliveira Soares (Brazil), Juan Díaz Bordenave (Paraguay), Luis Ramiro Beltrán (Bolivia), Mario y Gabriel Kaplún (Uruguay), Daniel Prieto Castillo, María Cristina Mata (Argentina). There are many, many more, but those mentioned suffice as evidence of what was affirmed previously. All of them forged the Latin American communicational thought, but they also have been and are pioneers of a perspective of popular communication and their roots were, earlier or later, linked to the Christian practice of liberation. All of the above hardly exists anymore in theoretical exercises. It exists in countless experiences linking grassroots ecclesial communities, other Christian communities, organizations, and ecclesial movements with practices of popular communication and communication for social change. Also, examples of Christian fighters who ended up giving their life at work, in communication, for the liberation of their peoples. Maybe one of the most outstanding examples is still that of Bolivian nationalized Spanish Jesuit religious Luis Espinal Camps, poet, journalist, and film director. On March 21, 1980, he was kidnapped by the paramilitary from the door of the 6 de Agosto cinema in La Paz, and the next day his body was found in the Achachila region with twelve bullet shots. He was a Christian communicator and martyr of communication who is in himself, in his life and death, a synthesis of faith, communication, and commitment to liberation.

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References DECOS-CELAM. (1979). Evangelización y comunicación social en América Latina, Ediciones Paulinas, Bogotá Enz, A. et al. (2006). El cambio social como acción transformadora. Buenos Aires: Cumunia-La Crujía. Espinosa F. (1981). Boletín UNDA-AL, No. 3, UNDA-AL, Bogotá. Gutiérrez, G. (1972). Teología de la Liberación. Perspectivas. Salamanca: Sígueme. Gutiérrez, G. (1988). Teología de la Liberación. Perspectivas. Lima: CEP. Iriarte, G. (2006). Qué es una Comunidad Eclesial de Base? In Redes Cristianas. Available at http://www.redescristianas.net/%C2%BFque-es-una-comunidadeclesial-de-base-gregorio-iriarte/ Liberti, Luis O. svd (1995). La pastoral de la comunicación social en torno a Medellín, Puebla y Santo Domingo [1966–1992]: una visión teológica de la búsqueda de un modelo y estilo pastoral para la comunicación solidaria e inculturada del Evangelio en la Iglesia latinoamericana. Tesis de licenciatura— Universidad Católica Argentina, Facultad de Teología [on-line]. Available at: http://bibliotecadigital.uca.edu.ar/repositorio/tesis/pastoral-comunicacionsocial-medellin-puebla Martínez Terrero J. (1982). Popular communication in NOMIC, In Boletín UNDA-AL, No. 7, UNDA-AL, Bogotá. Medellín. (1968). II Conferencia General del Episcopado Latinoamericano. Bogotá: CELAM. Moliner, A. (n.d.). Los procedimientos de la teología de liberación. Relat Revista electrónica latinoamericana de teología No. 378 En línea: http://www.servicioskoinonia.org/relat/378.htm. Puebla. (1979). III Conferencia General del Episcopado Latinoamericano. Bogotá: CELAM. Sobrino, J. (n.d.). Opción por los pobres. Revista Koinonía 251. En línea: http:// servicioskoinonia.org/relat/251.htm. Uranga, W. (1992). Evangelizar é Comunicar. In Beozzo J. O. et al (1992), Vida, clamor e esperança: reflexões para os 500 anos de evangelização a partir da América Latina. São Paulo, Loyola. Uranga, W. (2016). Conocer, transformar, comunicar. Buenos Aires: Editora Patria Grande. White, P., R. SJ. (1988). La iglesia y la comunicación en América Latina: Treinta años en busca de modelos. Publicado en Teoría y Praxis de la Iglesia Latinoamericana en Comunicaciones Sociales (Consejo Episcopal Latinoamericano de Comunicación Social). Colección DECOS 2 (pp. 129–167). Bogotá, Colombia: CELAM.

CHAPTER 5

The Vestiges of the Concept of Popular in Latin America Santiago Gómez Obando

The popular communication as well as other theories and critical approaches that emerged in Our Latin American ontext during the second half of the last century such as Liberation Theology (see Uranga, this volume), Popular Education (see Prieto Castillo, this volume), Participation Action Research (see Vega, this volume), Liberation Philosophy or the Theatre of the Oppressed integrated the concept of popular as one of its referential frameworks to carry out the emancipatory ethical-political intentions that encouraged its emergence and subsequent development. According to Marco Raul Mejia “These processes in different dimensions of knowledge inaugurate from our reality a critique of an episteme of knowing that is located as unique and that excludes the others that are generated in places other than it. Therefore, within the proposal of each one of them as a form of research and production of knowledge from the practices of subordinate groups and accompanying

S. Gómez Obando (*) Dimensión Educativa, Bogotá, Colombia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. C. Suzina (ed.), The Evolution of Popular Communication in Latin America, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62557-3_5

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the action in a conceptual way that the proposals outlined in their own contexts and in other contexts carry out on a daily basis and in other latitudes, a discourse is emerging from this work that, when discussing the episteme of scientific knowledge, locates its legitimacy in a historical context, in which the beginning of European modernity takes shape as the way to explain and understand the world, as part of the control of capitalism.” (Mejía 2011, p. 30)

However, generally speaking, it is possible to affirm that a theoretical comprehension about the meaning and importance of this concept does not exist. Thus, the concept of popular in many cases could be associated commonly with “the people”, especially with those sectors and popular groups that live in “marginal” areas in the city or in the countryside.1 Furthermore, in the last thirty years, the concept of “popular” has been replaced by the concept of “subaltern” in Our Latin American academic context and by the concept of “multitude” in the Euro-Western context. The straight relation that some authors see between people as a category and the very existence of the nation-state, the broad and vague that might seem this concept in a critical Latin American tradition or its inclination toward establishing a totality over the multiple—meaning a superiority of the singular and standard over the dynamic plural—has led many writers to prefer the use of more convenient terms that could be less problematic, polysemic, and polemic. For this reason, the following question emerges: Why is the concept of popular still being used within political projects by critical actors in Our Latin American context, when academia seems to have condemned its death? The effort to answer this question is the primary intent of this chapter. In order to do it, I have opted for dividing the text into three major sections. In the first section, I present some of the most important images about what the popular has meant. In the second section, I will introduce some of the main critiques that have emerged in relation to this concept and finally, in the third section, I will expose the reasons why I argue that the concept of popular is still valid for critical actors in Our Latin America.

Some Images Around the Meaning of Popular In Our Latin American context, the meaning of popular can be organized around at least eight images. I will dedicate this first section to present what each of them consists of, seeking thereby to characterize the main uses of the popular in everyday language and, above all, in the language  Using interchangeably categories like popular, social, subaltern, dominated, excluded, and marginalized. 1

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employed by intellectuals, academics, and social scientists. In addition, I propose a short interpretive synthesis in which I establish the importance that the concept of popular has had in the process of constructing narratives about those sectors and subjects that have historically been considered as “subalternized”, excluded, dominated, or exploited. If we were to ask common people2 what the meaning of popular is, probably most of them would connect the concept with someone who has acceptance, respect or fame in a local, regional, national, or transnational level. A song, an artist, a soap opera, or a magazine are “popular” because they have a certain renown within a specific population. Consequently, keeping in mind the frame associated with this first image, popular could be characterized as everything that has relevance—popularity—in the public spaces, cultural industries, or in the market. The theoretical approaches close to the political, cultural, and economic marketing have been pioneers in studies of the leaders’ popularity, be they politicians, brands or celebrities. For instance, the paradigmatic works of Mueller (1970), Goodhart and Bhansali (1970) and Kramer (1971) introduced in the field of political science the study about the popularity of politicians, governments, and political parties in relation with the management of economic issues. A second common image, especially in Our Latin American socio-­ political context, relates popular to poverty and its effects—marginalization and exclusion. It is the case of some public policies searching to improve life conditions of some groups, with the main intention of helping to mitigate the negative effects that “developmental” policies produce at the local, regional, or national level. Such policies usually associate the notion of popular with social groups that live in vulnerable conditions or regions, for instance, popular neighborhoods or marginal zones in the countryside. Despite being rare in theoretical assumptions, these positions that reduce the popular to a sense of poverty can be found, in Our Latin America, in some public programs and policies that aim at the poorest populations. Policies offering “popular housing” in Colombia (1942) and in El Salvador (1992), the Peruvian “popular dining rooms” (1976) and the “popular health insurance” in Mexico (2011) illustrate well how the notion of popular is used in association with poverty. The third image of popular relates this concept with the one of folklore. It emerges in the field of cultural studies approaching ethnic groups. This analytic perspective approaches peoples and native or traditional communities from a viewpoint in which they are represented as “primitive” and “pure” without any kind of miscegenation, cultural hybridization, or 2

 Under the sense developed by British Marxist historians. See e.g.: Kaye (1989).

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political domination. Thus, this kind of academic and scientific production is characterized by social constructions that appreciate mainly “the myths, legends, celebrations, craftworks, habits and institutions” (García Canclini 1987, p.  2). The pioneer works in the study of folklore, according to Renato Ortiz (1992) were conducted by Thoms in 1846 and John Brand in 1857 who wanted to collect and classify the popular knowledge from an antiquarian perspective. In Our Latin America—specifically in Brazil— Ortiz (1992) places Silvio Romero’s and Gilberto Freyre’s works as paradigmatic examples of an approach that searched a new balance for regional knowledges within the Brazilian culture. García Canclini (1987) argues that Vicente Teódulo Mendoza (1939, 1956), Martínez Peñaloza (1943, 1972, 1980, 1981, 1982) and Rubín De La Borbolla (1947, 1949, 1950, 1952) are the best examples of the Mexican anthropological folklorism. The fourth image tends to associate the concept of popular with that of mass. The frame of reference includes, in this case, elite theories (Spengler 1923; Ortega y Gasset 1955), the democratic perspective of the social masses (Arendt 1998) and the later reformulations of the collective behavior in the North American sociology in the 1960s (Smelser 1963; Kornhauser 1969). In these approaches, the popular is related with the behavior of the masses,3 suggesting that irrationality, alienation, atomization, resentment, discredit, and social isolation could be the main reasons for the creation and participation in “extremist” groups risking liberal freedom and order. Therefore, participating in popular or “mass” groups would be one of the ways with which certain individuals who have failed or feel bad about their lives would fill a void, by appealing to the group image as an effective substitute for their own image. Consequently, according to these approaches, the multitude of apathetic and resentful people would be the main support of social and popular movements. Another current within this approach sets the production of popular in the actions of mass media. In the image emerging from the theory of social behavior, the massive becomes the social ground in which radical perspectives emerge to question the establishment, while the one emerging from the folklore refers to popular as a result of the traditions and give it a meaning based exclusively on its premodern character. Unlike the 3  According to William Kornhauser (1969), “A high proportion of mass behavior can be expected when both elites and non-elites lack social isolation; that is, when the elites are accessible to the direct intervention of groups that do not form elites, and when the latter are at the disposal of the elites for direct mobilization” (p. 40).

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latter, in this perspective, the popular is actively produced by cultural industries benefiting from the passivity of the masses homogenized by their power. The functionalist theory in the sociology of communication is considered to be the best exponent of this approach. Its most paradigmatic authors are, among others,  Lasswell (1985), Lazarsfeld (1940, 1985), Wright (1960, 1978) and Merton (1949). According to García Canclini (1987), from this perspective: […] contemporary popular culture is constituted from electronic media, it is not the result of local differences but of the homogenizing action of the cultural industry. Thanks to research on mass communication, central aspects of popular cultures have become evident that do not come from the historical heritage of each people, nor from their insertion in the relations of production, but from other spaces of reproduction and social control, such as they are information and consumption. These studies provide valuable insight into media strategies and the structure of the communication market. But their way of dealing with popular culture deserves several criticisms. On the one hand, they tend to conceive mass culture as an instrument of power to manipulate the popular classes. They also adopt the perspective of message production and neglect reception and appropriation. Finally, they tend to reduce their analysis of communication processes to electronic media. (p. 3)

The fifth image defines popular as a national people, i.e., like an indivisible unity whose existence is necessarily related to the emergence of the modern nation-state. Some of the expressions of an approach that understands the people and the popular as a monolith without gaps or fissures that legitimizes the existence of a State and its sovereignty are: the understanding of people as “a unit, which has a single will, and to which a common action can be attributed” (p.  158) in the absolutist theory of the State of Thomas Hobbes (1998); the construction of the general will and the expression of popular sovereignty in Rousseau’s social contract (1999) that argues that “it would be convenient to examine the act by which a people is a people; since being this act by necessity previous to the other, it is the true foundation of society” (p. 18); the idea according to which “the State is the special condition of a people, and namely: the determining condition” (Schmitt 1998, p. 10), provided that it is considered as a politically united entity and ready to fight for its existence and for its independence, taking into account that “by autonomous decision it has determined what that independence and that freedom consists of” (p. 26) in the theory of the friend-enemy of Carl Schmitt.

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The sixth image of popular is associated with kindness and truth. Closely related to folklorism—although not necessarily or only with it— there has been a theoretical-practical tendency of a “populist” nature4 that has characterized popular sectors as good in themselves. Consequently, those groups rise as the main—sometimes the only ones—bearing the wisdom and the truth. This conception emerges as a reaction against elite, messianic, and/or avant-garde perspectives—both from the right and the left—that consider the people as ignorant, passive, or alienated,5 being this the reason why a structure that enlightens and fills the popular groups and sectors with content was required. According to Germán Mariño (2006) in the educational field: Transmissionism epistemologically corresponds to what Not would call “hetero-structuring.” In such a fundamentally empiricist perspective, the subject is conceived as a blank photographic film on which the light (information) that comes from the “outside” is printed and where, in addition to being recorded (forever), it magically transforms their attitudes and practices. Ignorance (or ideologization) and passivity, are then its two basic postulates […] For various reasons and not always in a linear way, populism arises concomitant with transmissionist messianism. In some contexts, it does so precisely as a reaction to messianism and in others out of a naive humanism that mythologizes the student. For populism, “the truth hides in the people as the seed hides in the fruit” […] and the educator’s task is to help it to emerge. It is also about “letting go”, to avoid distorting their innate wisdom. (p. 3)

A variant within this image includes the popular as a dominant form of representation, in which the emergence of the people in the political processes organized by caudillistas leaders during the first half of the twentieth century, in Our Latin American context, was based on a hierarchical scenario in which, at the same time that politics was massified and the cultural expressions of the popular sectors were recognized, there was an intention of leadership on the part of the national elites, who abrogated the right to teach and guide this “child-people” who were beginning to be 4  The term “populism”—between quotation marks—used here, is far from the sense in which Laclau (2005) conceives populism as a legitimate way of doing politics, in which a partial-totality—the people—is used to oppose and fight against what is excluded or denied— the oligarchies, the elites, the ruling classes, etc. 5   In other words, they consider the people as a mass in the sense developed by Kornhauser (1969).

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recognized and exalted in official circles. The genealogical work of Renán Silva (2000) on the Colombian popular culture, in the period known as the Liberal Republic (1930–1946), is a good example that illustrates the way in which the dominant sectors made use of the popular with the practical purpose of rethinking and reconfiguring traditional forms of dominance and hegemony. The seventh image of the popular—which could be considered critical or emancipatory—relates this term to the existence of social classes, power and/or social confrontation. In this regard, it is important to note that this has been one of the most prolific and polysemic images in relation to the use and circulation of this term in Our Latin American context (see Flores-Márquez, this book). In this sense: –– the popular class of Father Camilo Torres (1965) intended to foster the articulation between a diversity of members of political and social organizations, while seeking to bring closer together sectors and actors not aligned or affiliated with existing participation and mobilization structures; –– the understanding of the popular as that antagonistic pole in relation to what is defined as the Other-dominant in the theoretical proposal developed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (1987); –– the construction of the concept of popular power in practices inspired, above all, by Marxism Leninism (Leiva 2007), having as a main reference the accumulation of forces between the organs of power of the people and the revolutionary party—duality of powers; –– the proposals of the popular movement of Camacho (1989) and Leopoldo Múnera (1993), based on the articulation and unification of different social sectors, or on the recognition of logics of exploitation and other type of domination that is exercised over certain social sectors that are organized and who organize struggles; –– the theoretical development of the people and the popular in the philosophy of liberation of Enrique Dussel (2007), starting from the recognition of the existence of a confrontation between the ruling classes and those organized social sectors that are oppressed from the moment in which occurs the division of the political community;

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–– or the use and understanding of the concept of popular in the Liberation Theology, popular communication, popular education, liberation psychology, and the theater of the oppressed, where it has tended to give recognition and prominence to actors that suffer the effects of domination and exclusion in the process of knowing, organizing, fighting and subverting their own reality and that of society as a whole (2011). All of these approaches are erected upon critical proposals in which the popular is permanently articulated in one or more of the following fields: relations and struggles between classes, historical processes of domination and resistance, hegemonic and subordinate constructions, and/or forms of social articulation and collective action. Finally, there is an eighth image in which a cultural approach to the popular is carried out. The pioneering works of Jesús Martín Barbero (1984, 1987) and Néstor García Canclini (1982, 1989) inaugurated a new paradigm in the study of this concept in the region. During the development of their proposal, these authors build a way of understanding popular cultures in which the massive works from within, without necessarily implying the submission of these cultures to the cultural industries of entertainment and information. In this way, the popular is permanently and conflictively built by the weight of traditions, dominations, resistance, affirmations, challenges, and reproductions of the social order. Despite this, as will be seen later, García Canclini (1989) was one of the authors who most vigorously and rigorously questioned the analytical-political relevance of making use of this category. The route made up to here, allows us to understand the repeated use that the concept of popular has had, both in everyday language and in science. This is largely due to the polysemy and elasticity that terms such as people and popular allow. In this way, the popular has been used to frame and interpret cultural practices, processes of resistance, forms of protest and social articulation, undertaken by sectors that do not belong to the political elites and/or the ruling classes. Likewise, terms such as popular classes, popular movements, popular culture, among others, have had constant and repeated use by social actors who seek to build stories, information, and senses of reality about those who consider themselves dominated, excluded, or inferiorized. Finally, this concept has been used as part of the political languages that have allowed the popular sectors to build the horizons of meaning in which their social action is framed.

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Main Critics to the Popular Field Despite the importance that the popular has had for the structuring of political and scientific languages in Our Latin American context, in the last thirty years this concept has been a recurring target of criticism in the academic field. Because of this, I consider it convenient to dedicate this section to the presentation of some of the questions raised by social scientists who “decreed” the crisis of the popular, or proposed replacing it with other apparently less problematic terms from a political or analytical point of view. In the Euro-Western context, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2004), for example, chose to continue the analytical path proposed by Hobbes,6 in order to question the way in which the category of people has served to legitimize the creation of sovereign power, under which all subjects or citizens should voluntarily subordinate themselves.7 Likewise, these two authors consider the popular as that element of identity that enables the existence of an undifferentiated agglomeration of subjects, which is why they propose to replace the term people with that of a multitude, considering that: […] people has traditionally been a unitary conception. The population, of course, is characterized by differences of all kinds, but “the people” reduces that diversity to unity and gives the population a unique identity. “The people” is one. The multitude, in contrast, is many. The multitude is composed of innumerable internal differences that can never be reduced to a unity or a single identity. There are differences in culture, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, different ways of working, living, seeing the world, and different desires. The multitude is a multiplicity of such singular differences. (p. 16)

From another perspective, some academics, such as the Colombian historian Mauricio Archila (2005), have criticized the concepts of people and popular from the approach or perspective of subalternity. For Archila, 6  Baruch Spinoza is the other author that they take as a starting point and reference. Despite this, the differentiation between people and multitude could hardly be made in Spinoza’s work, taking into account that this author makes use of these two terms interchangeably. 7  For Hardt and Negri (2004), “Frequently, ‘the people’ serves as an intermediary between the consent given by the population and the command exercised by the sovereign power, but more usually the word designates a claim aimed at validating the dominant authority” (p. 107).

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these two categories are problematic for the following reasons: (1) they are polysemic concepts that vary according to the sectors that are included or excluded, (2) in common use they assume the false homogeneity of those who constitute them and, (3) they are a gateway to revive the illusion of a Latin American revolutionary subject, capable of radically transforming a social order that is considered unjust. On the other hand, in relation to the concept of popular movement, this author maintains that although it may become more relevant, the fact that it continues to transpire “something of the homogeneity and revolutionary teleology attributed to the category people” is still problematic (p. 81). For this reason, Archila prefers to use the concept of subaltern sectors, bearing in mind that for the study of social movements this category would have the following practical consequences: (1) it does not imply a socio-economic determination of the groups designated by this name and, (2) there is no possibility of intersectoral unification until they become a State. Finally, in the attempt to reconfigure the popular from the perspective of cultural hybridizations and intercultural intersections, Néstor García Canclini (1989) ends up dismissing the use of this concept.8 For him, the crisis of the popular lies in the fact that “it does not have the univocal meaning of a scientific concept, but the ambiguous value of a theatrical notion” (p.  259). Therefore, in light of this redefinition, the popular would have a serious and structural problem of analytical rigor on the theoretical level. Meanwhile, on the political level, the premise according to which “the popular designates the positions of certain actors, those that place them before hegemonics, not always in the form of confrontations” (p. 259) poses serious dilemmas to all critical actors who aspire to carry out some type of counter-hegemonic articulation, bearing in mind that “Even in the most direct and self-managed experiences there is action and performance, expression of one’s own and incessant reconstitution of what is understood by one’s own in relation to the broader laws of social dramaturgy, as well as reproduction of the dominant order” (p. 260). As could be seen in this section, the criticisms of the popular refer to the close relationship that some authors find between the emergence of the people and the legitimation of the nation-state, the hopes of unification of the different actors that could be included as part of the people or 8  This position coincides with that of the British Marxist historian Peter Burke regarding popular culture. In this regard, see: Florenzano and Somarriva (November 5, 2006).

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the popular movements, or how broad and diffuse this concept could be to characterize what could be considered as “one’s own” of the popular sectors. Despite this, as will be seen in the next section, the popular continues to have relevance in the structuring of the political languages used by critical Latin American actors, due to a series of affirmative and imaginative possibilities that the use of said concept allows or enables.

The Validity of Popular for Critical Sectors Despite what many intellectuals think or aspire to, reality is not solely and exclusively what they believe or say it is. Therefore, although the positions and debates in the academic field are relevant, they are still one of the multiple registers that contribute to the social construction and structuring of reality by the actors who dispute the meaning and orientation of the world in a specific space–time. The latter is related to the way in which political concepts are understood and worked in the so-called new intellectual history,9 since the existence of different semantic layers that contribute to the realization of discursive formations is recognized—beyond academic productions that scientists and philosophers organize—while questioning the “coherence mythology” (Skinner 2007, p. 131), the “fallacy of the lexicographic definition” (Fernández and Fuentes 2002, p. 11), the “constant scales of ideas that remain unchanged” (Koselleck 1993, p. 113), or the “understanding of works as autonomous theories of a more global social imaginary” (Rosanvallon 2003, p. 45). In the specific case of the Colombian context, the historical study of the use of this concept by critical actors10 allows us to point out at least four main reasons why the people and popular semantic containers continue to be valid today. In the first place, although terms such as popular sectors and subordinate sectors tend to mean the same thing, the designation of something or someone as subordinate is a way of naming the Other— almost never himself—from the position of suffering, subordination, lack, or condition of inferiority in relation to exercise and, above all, the effects of power. For this reason, in terms of use of language, it is not common  Regarding the new intellectual history category, see: Solís (2013).  Based on research on the uses of popular in the Colombian context by six critical academics, six left-wing newspapers and magazines, and three popular organizations, in the period 1991–2016, that I am currently conducting. Likewise, to see the preference that the use of popular has had for critical social actors in the Brazilian context, see: Suzina (2018). 9

10

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that critical popular sectors consider themselves as subordinated, unlike what happens when they pronounce phrases such as “We, the people, will continue resisting” or “Here we continue fighting, the popular sectors of the countryside and the city.” It could be said then that the popular— unlike the subaltern—is characterized by affirmatively designating that which includes and integrates diffusely.11 Second, unlike what Hardt and Negri (2004) argue, only taking into account the use of categories such as people and popular from the perspective of domination, critical actors use the popular in order to articulate the multiplicity of sectors and collective actors that continuously carry out and recreate the struggles of the people. Therefore, from the point of view of counter-hegemonic actors, people, and multitude, they would be two concepts that could be used interchangeably since they have the purpose of enabling the encounter of differences, the realization of the common power of singularities, or the differentiated cohesion of what is recognized as diverse. However, in Our Latin American context, concepts such as people and popular have had significantly greater hold and political relevance than multitude,12 as evidenced by the vast number of communicative pieces—books, articles, songs, poetry, radio programs, etc.—in which there is a constant appeal to the need to carry out joint struggles against the different types of domination that critical actors have historically defined and interpreted. Thirdly, unlike what Archila (2005) maintains, the relationship that the popular has with asymmetries, distinctions, inequalities and socio-­ economic differences, enables the popular sectors to differentiate themselves from other social actors when they organize certain processes of struggle. In this sense, the experience of the Popular Women’s Organization (OFP) of Barrancabermeja—Colombia—is a good example to illustrate the way in which the popular is used, in some cases, to affirm and position the existence of certain base works that are qualitatively different from those carried out by academic feminism or by non-governmental organizations (NGOs). In this way, the popular ends up being an element that 11  The condition of subalternity—as happens in the case of belonging to the popular—varies according to the sectors that one decides to include or exclude in the analyses or discourses. Because of this, I consider that the opposition that Archila (2005) makes between the popular and the subaltern, at least, at this point is not valid. 12  Except in the case of Bolivia, where the concept of multitude has been constantly used to frame anticolonial struggles in a universe with a different meaning from that of the socalled national-popular revolution of 1952.

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allows the differentiation of the class actors from the rest of the subjects that make up a sector or social movement. Finally, unlike what García Canclini (1989) maintains, one of the great advantages and potentialities that the concept of the popular has is its polysemic and mythical character. The ambiguity and lack of lexicographical precision regarding the meaning of what is popular—that which worried Canclini so much during the 1980s—as well as the existence—since the birth of Euro-Western modernity—of a way of imagining the people as creator and destroyer of the social order, are two factors that make possible the grouping or inclusion of different sectors and experiences by critical actors, attending to the needs and purposes that they establish at specific moments of confrontation with state institutions and/or those actors who are defined and interpreted as dominant. Consequently, it could be concluded that popular has been a fundamental concept in the process of framing and guiding anticolonial struggles in Our Latin American context, and an idea-force that has made it possible for protagonists to enter the political arena of all actors on whom the weight of injustices, domination, and violence historically produced and institutionalized rests (see Custódio, this book). In short, semantic containers as people and popular have served to feed illusions and dreams, to articulate works and struggles, to differentiate and affirm the place of enunciation of the class actors, and to diffusely and creatively delimit those who fight from those against whom we fight. In this sense, what is popular in the use and circulation given to it by critical sectors of Our Latin America continues to be in force due to the affirmative, articulating, and mythical possibilities that the popular guarantees for the set of discursive formations in which collective actions are produced and articulated, seeking resistance or emancipation against a state of affairs that is perceived by a segment of society as unfair or oppressive. Hence, what is popular for critical sectors is a way of naming and putting into play the transgressive possibilities of a series of actors that could be themselves or the “friendly” part that makes up this broad, diffuse, and heterogeneous segment of the population. By way of conclusion, it could be said that what is popular—in the specific use that has been given by the critical actors of Our Latin America— resembles Pablo Neruda’s poem “Oda al hombre sencillo,” in which the following is established:

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[…] Come, come with me, come with everyone who looks like you, the simplest, come, do not suffer, come with me, because even if you don’t know, I do know that: I know where we are going, and this is the word: do not suffer because we will win, we will win, the simplest ones, we will win, even if you don’t believe it, we will win.

References Archila, M. (2005). Idas y venidas vueltas y revueltas. Protestas sociales en Colombia 1958–1990. Bogotá: ICANH—Cinep. Arendt, H. (1998). Los orígenes del totalitarismo. Madrid: Ediciones Taurus. Camacho, A. (1989). Introducción. En A. Camacho & R. Menjívar (Coords.), Los movimientos populares en América Latina. Argentina: Siglo XXI. Dussel, E. (2007). Política de la Liberación. Madrid: Trotta. Fernández, S., & Fuentes, J. F. (2002). Diccionario Político y social del siglo XIX español. Madrid: Alianza Editorial. Florenzano, C., & Somarriva, M. (5 de noviembre de 2006). Cultura popular y alta cultura. Entrevista a Peter Burke. Buenos Aires: La Nación (online). Recuperado de: https://www.lanacion.com.ar/cultura/cultura-popular-yalta-cultura-nid855501/. García Canclini, N. (1982). Las culturas populares en el capitalismo. México D.F: Nueva Imagen. García Canclini, N. (1987). Ni folklórico ni masivo: ¿qué es lo popular?. Diálogos de la Comunicación, 17, 1–8. Disponible en. Retrieved from http://dialogosfelafacs.net/wp-­c ontent/uploads/2012/01/17-­r evista-­d ialogos-­n i-­ folklorico-­ni-­masivo.pdf. García Canclini, N. (1989). Culturas híbridas. Estrategias para entrar y salir de la modernidad. México D.F: Grijalbo. Goodhart, C. A. E., & Bhansali, R. J. (1970). Political Economy. Political Studies, 18, 43–106. London: London School of Economics and Political Science. Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2004). Multitud. Guerra y democracia en la era del Imperio. Barcelona: Cultura libre. Hobbes, T. (1998). Tratado sobre el ciudadano. Madrid: Librería UNED. Kaye, H. (1989). Los historiadores marxistas británicos. Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarias. Kornhauser, W. (1969). Aspectos políticos de la sociedad de masas. Buenos Aires: Amorrortu. Koselleck, R. (1993). Futuro pasado: para una semántica de los tiempos históricos. Barcelona: Editorial Paidos. Kramer, G.  H. (1971). Short-term fluctuations in U.S. voting behavior, 1896–1964. American Political Science Review, 65, 131–143.

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Laclau, E. (2005). La razón populista. Buenos Aires: FCE. Laclau, E., & Mouffe, C. (1987). Hegemonía y estrategia socialista. Hacia una radicalización de la democracia. México: Editorial Siglo XXI. Lasswell, H. (1985). Estructura y funcion de la comunicacion en la sociedad. In M. De Moragas (Ed.), Sociología de la comunicación de masas (pp. 192–206). Barcelona: Gustavo Gili. Lazarsfeld, P. (1940). Radio and the printed page. New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce. Lazarsfeld, P. (1985). La campana electoral ha terminado. En: De Moragas, M. (ed.). Sociología de la comunicación de masas (pp. 394–409). Barcelona: Gustavo Gili. Leiva, S. (2007). Teoría y práctica del poder popular: los casos del Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR. Chile, 1970–1973) y el Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores—Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (PRT—ERP. Argentina, 1973–1976). Tesis para optar al título de magister en Historia. Santiago: Universidad de Santiago de Chile. Mariño, G. (2006). El diálogo en educación: recapitulaciones sobre la construcción de una propuesta dialógica. Bogotá: Dimensión Educativa. Martín Barbero, J. (1984). Cultura popular y comunicación de masas. Revista Materiales para la comunicación popular, 3. Martín Barbero, J. (1987). De los medios a las mediaciones. Comunicación, cultura y Hegemonía. México: Ediciones G. Gili. Martínez Peñaloza, P. (1943). La nacionalidad mexicana: Notas para un ensayo. México D.F: s. l.. Martínez Peñaloza, P. (1972). Arte popular y artesanías artísticas en México. Un acercamiento. México: Dirección General de Prensa, Memoria, Bibliotecas y Publicaciones. Ediciones del Boletín Bibliográfico de la Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público. Martínez Peñaloza, P. (1980). Tres notas sobre el arte popular en México. México: Porrúa. Martínez Peñaloza, P. (1981). Arte popular de México. La creatividad artística del pueblo mexicano a través de los tiempos. México: Panorama Editorial. Martínez Peñaloza, P. (1982). Artesanía Mexicana. México: Ediciones Galería de Arte Mirachi. Mejía, M. R. (2011). Educaciones y pedagogías críticas desde el sur (cartografías de la Educación Popular). Panamá: Consejo de Educación de Adultos de América Latina (CEAAL). Mendoza, V.  T. (1939). El Romance Español y el Corrido Mexicano: Estudio Comparativo. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Mendoza, V. T. (1956). El corrido de la revolución mexicana. México: Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de la Revolución Mexicana. Merton, R. (1949). Patterns of influence: a study of interpersonal influence and of communications behavior in a local community. In P. Lazarsfeld & F. Stanton

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(comps.), Communications research, 1948–1949 (pp.  180–222). New  York: Harper & Brothers. Mueller, J. E. (1970). Presidential popularity from Truman to Johnson. American Political Science Review, 64, 18–34. Múnera, L. (1993). De los movimientos sociales al movimiento popular. In Revista Historia Crítica, 7. Bogotá: Universidad de los Andes. Ortega y Gasset, J. (1955). La rebelión de las masas. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe. Ortiz, R. (1992). Rômanticos e Folcloristas. San Pablo: Editorial Olho D’Agua. Rosanvallon, P. (2003). Por una historia conceptual de lo político: Lección inaugural en el Collége de France. México: Fondo de cultura Económica S.A. Rousseau, J.  J. (1999). El contrato social o principios de derecho político. El Aleph.com. Rubín De La Borbolla, D. F. (1947). Obras maestras del arte indígena de México. Monterrey: Universidad de Nuevo León. Rubín De La Borbolla, D. F. (1949). Las castas y las costumbres de México a través de su pintura: El arte plumario en México. Monterrey: Universidad de Nuevo León. Instituto nacional de antropología e historia. Rubín De La Borbolla, D.  F. (1950). Arte popular mexicano. Monterrey: Universidad de Nuevo León. Rubín De La Borbolla, D. F. (1952). Arte popular mexicano. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Schmitt, C. (1998). El concepto de lo político. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, S. A. Silva, R. (2000). República Liberal y cultura popular en Colombia 1930–1946. Documento de trabajo (p. 53). CIDSE-Universidad del Valle: Cali. Skinner, Q. (2007). Lenguaje, política e historia. Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de Quilmes. Smelser, N. (1963). Theory of collective behavior. New York: The Free Press. Solís, C. (2013). La relación contexto-sujeto en Quentin Skinner. Revista Región y Sociedad, 56, 269–297. Spengler, O. (1923). La decadencia de Occidente. Bosquejo de una morfología de la Historia Universal. Madrid: Calpe. Suzina, A.  C. (2018). Popular media and political asymmetries in the Brazilian democracy in times of digital disruption. Lovaina la Nueva: Presses Universitaires de Louvain. Torres, C. (1965). Consignas: Camilo Torres. Chile: Archivo Chile. Historia político-social. Movimiento Popular. Wright, C. R. (1960). Análisis funcional y comunicación de masas. En: Miquel de Moragas (ed.). Sociología de la comunicación de masas, v. 2, Barcelona: Gustavo Gili: Barcelona. Wright, C. R. (1978). Comunicación de masas. Buenos Aires: Paidós.

PART II

A Method, a Pedagogy, a Practice

CHAPTER 6

Disenchantment as a Path Toward Autonomy: Orlando Fals Borda, Participatory Action Research, Communication and Social Change Jair Vega-Casanova Translated by Camilo Pérez Quintero When we talk about communication and popular education in Latin America, one of the recurring referents is Orlando Fals Borda. His contributions have been very important as a worldwide pioneer of the so called Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach. Among its more relevant contributions is his criticism of the coloniality of positivist research methods, which he did not consider pertinent for addressing conflicting realities such as those in Latin America, so he proposed instead an This work is part of the project “Orlando Fals Borda’s contributions to the field of communication and social change,” research directed toward the doctorate in communication from the Universidad del Norte. J. Vega-Casanova (*) Department of Social Communication, Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla, Colombia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. C. Suzina (ed.), The Evolution of Popular Communication in Latin America, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62557-3_6

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epistemological, methodological, and political commitment to social research, that transcends the interpretation of these realities towards their transformation (see Custodio, this book). One of the essential conditions of this approach is the participation of the appropriate actors in each context, from the knowledge production process to its incorporation in social transformations. This way, PAR has become the basis for the articulation between knowledge and power in the communication and popular education processes in the Latin American region. In fact, Boaventura de Sousa Santos in his recent publication The End of the Cognitive Empire: the Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the South (2018) dedicates a chapter to Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed and Fals Borda’s PAR. Although he points out that there are important differences between these Latin American approaches with his proposal of “the epistemologies of the South,” he concludes that the latter would not be possible without the former two proposals that became its foundations. On the path followed by Orlando Fals Borda to consolidate his proposal for PAR (with all its sources and derivatives), one can identify a confluence of disenchantments. And nothing could have more strength to sustain the forcefulness of its proposed alternatives than the combination of three experiences: his complete conviction of the transformative capacity of the modernizing project; the fact of having been situated in strategic instances so that he had ample opportunities to promote it; and the disappointments, frustrations, and disagreements in each of those efforts. Although there is abundant literature about the three experiences, the present work is intended to delve into his disappointments and misunderstandings, which, although one could try to describe them in a chronological way, the truth is that they appear in a more interspersed manner throughout the course of his personal, professional, and academic life. They are included here: (1) his abandonment of a military career for literature and music studies; (2) his way of assuming subversion in a disagreement with the armed struggle; (3) his religious vocation committed to the people as opposed to a segregationist religious institutionality; (4) his disenchantment with the transformative possibility from the intellectual institutionality; (5) his distance from an academia that he considered far removed from reality; (6) his break with a scientific method incapable of understanding our contexts in conflict; (7) the emergence of a transformative relationship of communication in the social sciences.

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My Mom Saved Me As stated in an interview, thanks to an act of “salvation” by his mother, Fals Borda left a military career, to which he was committed, to devote himself to study an undergraduate degree in literature and music at the Presbyterian University of Dubuque, Iowa, where he had his first contact with sociology (Fals Borda 2012, p. 25). This decision marked his sensitivity regarding the importance of aesthetics and of different cultural expressions in the lives of individuals and communities. Not surprisingly, one of the constants in the environments in which he spent his youth was participating in choirs or playing an instrument in local Presbyterian, and even Catholic, religious congregations. In his investigations, this assessment is already reflected in his first great sociological study of the Saucío village, Peasants of the Andes (Fals Borda 1961a), in which he includes a chapter on symbolic institutions, analyzing topics such as language, music, and dancing, and popular beliefs. In his writing, as he expressed it, his intellect was moving away from “too Eurocentric writers”, and approaching Latin American referents such as Eduardo Galeano, Gabriel García Márquez, and Carpentier. Also Julio Cortazar, from whom in the work Rayuela he acknowledges having take the polyphonic methodology, as can be seen in the Double History of the Coast (Fals Borda 1979, 1981, 1984, 1984, 1986a), trying to “add local history to literary morphology” (Fals Borda 2012, p. 18).

A Disorganous Agent Fals Borda’s military past was also material for conjecture. In the 1960s and 1970s, critics of the social commitment of Fals Borda questioned him why, having had military training (which for instance Camilo Torres Restrepo did not) he had not been an active part of any armed leftist group in Colombia. Gabriel Restrepo (2016) explained the profound vocation of Fals Borda for nonviolent means as a “vital predestination” of his mother’s opposition, creating outlets for his son against the previous military dispositions of his father. Obviously, the PAR has a great deal of resistance and commitment to subversion from civility.1 1  The concept of “civility” implies that subversion is understood not strictly as armed struggle, but with more emphasis on the processes of popular empowerment and the transformation and democratization of State institutions.

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Although Fals Borda recognized that guerrillas could be considered as one of the disorganous actors of subversion, he never personally took this path as a mechanism for social transformation. Of course, the premature death of Camilo Torres (who was his committed partner for several years) had a great impact on him after he joined the newly created National Liberation Army (acronym in Spanish: ELN). In fact, although Fals Borda and his wife Maria Cristina, were persecuted and imprisoned, accused of being members of the M19 movement, their positions were always associated with non-violent subversion. Specifically, between 1967 and 1969, Fals Borda made his first conceptual approximations to his concept of subversion, in a text which was republished and reworked the following year and also published in English (Fals Borda 1967, 1968, 1969). In this text, he condensed his disenchantment with his institutional commitments to social change that he had tried to implement from the Ministry of Agriculture in favor of the peasants. An example was the Community Action Boards (acronym in Spanish: JAC), which faded or were instrumentalized in favor of traditional groups of power, during the Frente Nacional (National Front) era. Here, he gave up his hope on the reformist liberal elite, which he believed to be acting in contradiction to the democratic principles he was proclaiming. In his book, also emerged a criticism of the submission of this national elite to the decisions of imperialism. Although the text was dedicated to the memory of Camilo Torres, it does not strictly refer to his option of armed confrontation. On the contrary, it assumes subversion as a sociological concept, defined in a positive way, as a situation that reveals the contradiction of a social order, at the moment when new utopias of social change come into conflict with the traditional elements of the dominant order (Pereira 2008, p. 395). When conceiving subversion as the right of a people to fight for their freedom and autonomy, the disorganous agents are strategic “insurgent social subjects: intellectuals, politicians, anti-elites, revolutionary parties, guerrillas, unions, peasants, students, among others, who can maintain a rebellious action toward changing the traditional order” (Pereira 2008, p. 395). These reflections were beginning to justify the role of the intellectual in the processes of social change, a role that he would assume. However, they also constituted a critique of leftist movements of the 1960s, which he considered doctrinaire, dogmatic, and obsolete.

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A Church Not of Dogmas But of Music In the case of the Church, Fals Borda affirmed that he was linked to it more through music and singing than by its dogmas. During his studies at the American School in Barranquilla, his teacher and advisor was Richard Schaull, whom he would encounter at various moments of his life and who is considered one of the forefathers of liberation theology (Fals Borda 2012, p. 26). After being excommunicated by a fundamentalist sector of the Presbyterian church, Fals Borda kept his distance from the Church for more than thirty years, affirming instead his commitment to liberation theology (Púa 2010). He considered his religious beliefs to be largely the source of his engagement with the less favored sectors (see Uranga, this book). Upon expulsion, the somehow “sacred character” of the Church was lost for him. This turned the practice of his religiosity around, opting for the poor, “a sign of predestination,” distancing himself from the concept of religiosity associated with capital and power explained by Max Weber (Restrepo 2016, p.  207). Paradoxically, Rodrigo Parra (1985) stated that the christianity of Orlando Fals Borda and Camilo Torres Restrepo conferred on them a Weberian sense of work ethic, expressed in their charismatic leadership as intellectuals.

An Incompetent State Function It is evident that Fals Borda was disenchanted with the state function. During the 1950s and early 1960s he had a fierce belief in institutional reformism from below. He had the opportunity to push for major reforms from the state, as general director of the Ministry of Agriculture, a position he held in parallel with the direction of the sociology program at the National University of Colombia, of which he was also the founder. Within these efforts were the creation of the Community Action Boards JAC (Fals Borda 1961b), which was promoted in the 1960s during the National Front era as a model of community engagement, and whose purpose was to institutionalize the organization of groups of neighbors to function as a contact between neighborhood and community bases and state institutions in order to solve problems such as those related with public services, and to advance the pacification of conflict (López 1983). Within this commitment to institutional change, in addition to the JAC, there was the Program of Agrarian Social Reform, INCORA (acronym in Spanish), and

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the programs of the rural directories and the neighborhood councils, among others (Ocampo 2009). However, for Fals Borda, these efforts led to great frustrations with regard to changes in the realities of the peasantry, a situation that caused him to break with the government, inasmuch as the implementation of these projects of community action were instrumentalized by clientelist and bureaucratic interests, which some sectors had criticized, as this institutional reformism had its limits in pacts between the elites of the National Front governments (Palacios 2003). In the opinion of Fals Borda, there was an adverse environment during the mid-1960s in Colombia, generated by the discomfort produced by “an academy routinized and distant from reality, an incompetent state, and a dogmatic and obsolete left” (Fals Borda, cited by Vizcaíno 2008). A quarter of century later, the type of state power to which Fals Borda (1993) aspired after the 1991 Constitution, and which he saw beginning to appear in some contexts, was one less centralized, vertical, or elitist, which recognized the autonomy of the regions, provinces, and other territorial entities, passing from the nation-state to the region-state as an expression of democratic self-determination. Precisely this type of state had been conceived as a goal of PAR. The creative dynamics that unfold with PAR can also lead to proposing the constitution of a new type of state that is less demanding, controlling and arrogant, inspired by positive root local values and fed by indigenous cultural currents consistent with a human and democratic ideal. This would try to better distribute power-knowledge among its constituents, to ensure a healthy balance between state and society, with fewer leviathan central controls, more creativity in the bases, less Locke and more Kropotkin, that is, a return to the human scale that has been lost with the passage of recent history. (Fals Borda 1986, pp. 133–134)

In fact, it is possible to understand the participation of Fals Borda as a member of the Constituent Assembly that drafted the constitution, on behalf of the M19 Democratic Alliance, because he considered that in conflict situations such as in Colombia, “prudence, coalitions and dialogue with institutions” can give results only within their tolerance margins to exercise the implicit “right to moral subversion”. PAR practitioners can thus make a consideration in established institutions and put into practice a reverse cooptation (Anisur Rahman and Fals Borda 1988).

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A Routine Academia Far from Reality He also reaffirmed his disenchantment with academia, in which he had the possibility of being founder and dean of the Faculty of Sociology of the National University of Colombia, historically the most important in the country, from where he was later essentially expelled because he was considered an infiltrator of North American imperialism. His posture of disenchantment can be seen in his letter of resignation (1970) from the position of full professor of this faculty. Jaime Eduardo Jaramillo (2017) showed how by mid-1965, “anti-­ imperialist” currents of the student movement within the Faculty of Sociology had developed a sort of hostility to Orlando Fals Borda. He was seen and accused of being a religious pastor, with ties to American institutions such as the Ford Foundation, which made him an “agent” of the United States government. “For the revolutionary it is irrelevant to distinguish between democratic reformism and the anti-subversive struggle. Under the premise that democratic institutions are an elitist masquerade, gradual social change is perceived as collaborationism” (Rudas, p. 81). This situation was leading students to veto some of his classes, such as rural sociology, which led him to request in 1966 an “ad honorem” commission of studies in several countries of Latin America and Europe. In his absence, the sociology program he had created was transformed into one more antagonistic to the state; they submitted international researchers to a “public trial,” cooperating international organizations were expelled, and there was a subsequent exodus of researchers trained in the Fals Borda school of thought, like Jorge Ucrós Arciniegas, Cecilia Muñoz, Carlos Castillo, and Rodrigo Parra, among others (Rudas 2019). In this context, on his return, in his resignation letter, Fals Borda addressed, among other aspects, the restructuring of the sociology program: It is a return to disquisition without rigor, eighteenth-century style, which considered that the only advance of modern sociology was functionalism, whose models had begun to be rejected among the faculty in 1962 because of their inapplicability to the Colombian reality. (Fals Borda, in Rudas 2019 p. 86)

Nicolás Rudas (2019) asserted that this was not a distancing from sociology but from sociological institutionality. In fact, just before returning

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from Switzerland, where he was director of the United Nations Institute for Social Development, foreseeing his inconvenience in returning to this university context, Fals Borda, together with other Colombian researchers from various social sciences, conceived the creation of the La Rosca Foundation for Research and Social Action (Parra 1983). This foundation was legally formed upon his return to Colombia in 1970, which, along with other organizations created later, would be the basis for his pioneering investigations applying PAR (Fals Borda 2012). These would have their greatest expression in his work in the Colombian Caribbean between 1979 and 1986, among which one of the major ones was The Double History of the Coast. Orlando Fals Borda, after much insistence from his current colleagues, only returned to the National University of Colombia in 1986, not to the Department of Sociology but to the Institute of Political Studies and International Relations (IEPRI), where his first publication, Insurgency in the Provinces: Toward a New Territorial Planning for Colombia (Fals Borda and Guhl 1988), capitalized on one of the important reflections from fieldwork during his research, especially on the existing contradictions between the limits of institutional politics and cultural dynamics in the definition of the territories. In fact, many of us who studied sociology in Colombia in the 1980s, especially in the Caribbean region, the cradle of his PAR approach, and had the opportunity to connect with some of the work of Fals Borda, did so from heresy. At the time, neither the Double History of the Coast nor the PAR—with all its references such as: Knowledge and Popular Power (1986), By Praxis: The Problem of How to Investigate Reality to Transform It (1986), Local Science and Intellectual Colonialism: New Directions (1987)—were part of the sociology programs. It was debated whether these texts were the product of sociological research or political activism, and we accessed them in alternative spaces to the academy, supported even by the professors themselves (Correa De Andreis 2016).

The Dangerous Scientific Self-Deception of Value Neutrality On the path to his concept of the PAR, one of Fals Borda’s most far-­ reaching disappointments was with positivist research methods. He was heir of the functionalist tradition of classical North American sociology,

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through both his Masters in Sociology at the University of Minnesota (1953) and his Doctorate in Latin American Sociology at the University of Florida (1955). From here, he made his first approaches to the reality of the peasants in the Colombian Andes, but thereafter it was insufficient for him to understand the structural inequities of that peasantry. His Master’s thesis Peasant Society in the Colombian Andes: A Sociological Study of Saucío Village, published in 1955 by Florida University Press and in 1961 in Castilian by the National University of Colombia (Campesinos de los Andes. Estudio sociológico de Saucío), plus his doctoral dissertation The Man and the Land in Boyacá: Socio-historical Bases for an Agrarian Reform, published in Castilian (Fals Borda 1957), have been considered classic texts of rural sociology from a functionalist perspective. In fact, in the presentation of Campesinos de Andes, he makes it explicit: The approach was sociological in the Comtian sense, that is, it encompassed research from a wide range of social aspects. The modern sociological approach, with its analysis, study of processes, interpretation of statistics and attempts at prediction, is essential for the determination of many problems in Colombia. As far as possible, the peasant from Saucío is presented without bias or prejudice, as he really is. (Fals Borda 1961, pp. xix, xx)

Veronica Giordano (2012) states that although the intention of Fals Borda was “to make an objective science, respectful of the functionalist sociology in which he had been shaped, which would avoid subjective ‘interpretation,’” his commitment to the explanation of sociological type was overwhelmed because geography, anthropology, and history seeped into his work, as argued in a criticism done at the time by researcher Eric Wolf (1956), in his review of this book. Gonzalo Cataño (2008), on the other hand, considered that Orlando Fals Borda, with “that singular combination of sociological perspective with the historical and anthropological, raised his name to the pinnacle of Latin American social science when he was barely thirty years old” (p. 80). As noted above, in these first studies Fals Borda had already turned to anthropology and history to address symbolic institutions, among which he included language, music, dance, and popular beliefs. Likewise, he included aspects such as culture and personality, within which he analyzed, in the training of the peasant, elements such as: camaraderie, adult life, old age and death; religion, with topics such as reverence and fear, resignation

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and fatigability; as well as within the ethos of the peasant, aspects such as the conflict and synthesis of cultures, democratic imbalance within the organization, its relationship with the parties, and its passivity. As Dean of the Faculty of Sociology, he linked a major group of international leaders in the social sciences. Gonzalo Cataño (2008) asserted that thanks to his prestige, he could count on the Englishman Andrew Pearse, the German-Brazilian Emilio Willems, and the Americans Everett Rogers, Arthur Vidich, Aaron Lipman, Eugene Havens, William Flinn, and his professor T. Lynn Smith (p. 82). It is important to highlight the presence of Everett Rogers, author of the Theory of Diffusion of Innovations, which was based on Merton and Lerner among others, and which was an important support for the worldwide promotion and dissemination of ideas about development. Specifically, through Paul Deutsch, Fals Borda approached the theory of Rogers, and also conducted in Saucío a study based on it, published in 1962—the same year that Rogers published his classic Diffusion of Innovations—by the National University press with the title The Communication of Ideas Among Colombian Peasants: A Socio-­ statistical Analysis. This little-known study is transcendental as it reflects the searches of Fals Borda at that time. In an interview conducted by Raúl Fuentes (2005), Rogers describes how in 1961 he met Fals Borda at the Congress of the American Sociological Association, where he invited him to come to Colombia as a Fulbright professor, a fellowship that materialized two years later: I read the presentation and then a handsome young Latin American came over to shake my hand and say in perfect English that he liked my work. He left me his business card, which on one side said, in gold letters: “Orlando Fals Borda, Dean,” and on the other side, written in pen: “if you want a drink of good whiskey, come to room 631.” My colleague liked whiskey, so we went to room 631 of the hotel. There was Fals Borda, indeed with a bottle of good whiskey in hand. I said to him: “You must be the Fals Borda who collaborated with Deutschmann in his diffusion study.” He said “yes” and also, “I want you to come to Colombia to do diffusion studies and teach my students to do them.” (p. 109)

Several authors agree that one of the first texts to reveal the disenchament of Fals Borda with the functionalist method and his search for a more relevant methodological approach to Latin American realities, was his pioneering study Violence in Colombia, conducted with Camilo Torres

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and published with Germán Guzmán and Eduardo Umaña (1962). Regarding the sociological approach of this study, Fals Borda stated: But the time came when the application of the framework that originates from a functionalist analysis of a more or less stable society like the United States, a model of social balance, of order in society, not of disorder; conflict is left out as something harmful, something marginal, inconvenient or dysfunctional, as was said then, not functional for society. If one applies it to a conflictive society, in the midst of violence, a model that was designed to understand social balance, not social change and less conflict, then there is an obvious flaw, a mismatch of explanation and analysis. Upon analyzing that work, its intensity, the nature of conflict, the entire scheme that had arisen from functionalism broke down in my head, it could not be explained within the frame of reference learned in my teachers’ classrooms. As a conclusion to that volume I wrote my first expression of distance from that functionalist model; we had to take a much clearer position, committed to solutions, and that is why the book on violence ends with 27 or 30 recommendations to the government, the Colombian society, the church and the university, to the whole world, on how to solve the problem of violence. (Fals Borda 2012, pp. 33–34)

For the authors of this research, the real perpetrators of violence in Colombia would be the dominant elites, in their excessive desire to control the state (Pereira 2008). The subsequent transformation process of Fals Borda is reviewed “from outside” by Rogers himself, over whom he and his environment had a major influence, both in his research methods and in the conception of his theory. Rogers recognizes, in addition to Fals Borda, the influence of other Latin Americans like Luís Ramiro Beltrán and Juan Diaz-Bordenave (see Orué Pozzo, this book). During the year I was in Colombia, Fals Borda was still very committed to studies that collected quantitative empirical data, but he was beginning to have some doubts. I was also starting to have them [...] This was a period of questioning for me [...] and for Orlando Fals Borda. The students also participated with me in collecting data from studies that I did. So I began to see what I couldn’t measure with surveys and quantitative data analysis. I began to question modernization studies after having done at least one such study. (Rogers in Fuentes 2005, pp. 110–112)

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Having met Fals-Borda and working with him influenced my way of thinking more and more over the years […]; the year I stayed in Colombia had a great effect on me, particularly in the way I began to think about the diffusion model. (Rogers in Singhal and Obregón 2005, pp. 90–91)

However, it is in the text Subversion in Colombia (1967) that Fals Borda openly brings up the researcher’s commitment to his subjects of study, reviewing epistemological assumptions such as the pretense of objectivity and a sociology free of values. In his opinion, every analyst interested in current processes, those that involve finality and purpose, soon discovers that the notion of neutrality dissolves in the mind until it becomes an empty predicate. His active membership status in society inevitably leads him to take positions in the face of split realities in permanent dispute. Even more, in developing countries like Colombia, the sociologist cannot avoid assesments: the impoverished sectors expect from him a diagnosis of a society in transition and a choice of the optimal path to achieve their longings for equality and social justice. (Cataño 2008, p. 84)

This challenge of moving toward an appropriate methodological approach to understand Latin American contexts leads him to question the mechanical use of foreign theoretical procedures that in turn take on a colonizing role, a reflection he shared in 1970 in the text Local Science and Intellectual Colonialism,2 of which a third edition was published in 1987 with the subtitle New Rhumbs. Of course he received criticism from the most classical sociological traditions that considered his readings as a “frustrating experience” because of his “romanticism” of invoking the people as a source of scientific inspiration and for the “insufficient philosophical training of the author” (Uricoechea 1988, p. 133). At the beginning of the 1970s, Fals Borda was advancing a research proposal with the characteristics of PAR. Its principles involved decolonization of the method to bring it closer not only to the understanding but also to the transformation of realities; developing interdisciplinary approaches that enable a broader and more complex understanding of contexts; reframing the “neutral” and “non-evaluative” character of 2  The original concept “Ciencia Propia: Own Science” does not refer strictly and only to the people being the owners of science and the knowledge generated, but also to an appropriate science to understand local realities and contexts.

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positive science through a transformation of the researcher toward an intellectual committed to processes of change; and rethinking the relationship between researcher and researched in order to build a more horizontal and dialogic relationship between individuals and produce transformative knowledge. Of course, a methodological and epistemological commitment to these characteristics could not work within the academy. For its development, he promoted the creation of Institutions like FUNDARCO, Punta de Lanza, and La Rosca Foundation for Research and Social Action, through which he could attract domestic and foreign resources in order to ensure the realization of processes, and changed its participants, formerly composed by students and teachers, replacing them with peasants, unions, and left-wing parties, in a new company that combined the scientific character with the political and subversive (Cataño 2008). It is agreed among several authors that one of the most important moments for the recognition of the consolidation of PAR in a new academic field was a result of the World Symposium of Cartagena on Participatory Action Research, conducted in 1977 with the support of UNESCO and the Bank of the Republic. This symposium gathered experiences from Latin America and various parts of the world, and the PAR methodology was either debated or legitimated by a scientific community. The work presented there by Fals Borda later became the classic book published in 1978: For Praxis: How to Investigate Reality to Transform It.

Goodbye to the Academic Sociologist with Prophylactic Gloves Within this set of restatements, it is possible to recognize the way in which Fals Borda was transforming his concept of communication in the processes of both generation and social integration of knowledge. In any case, it is uncommon to find Fals Borda’s communicative perspective in texts on communication for development, communication for social change, or popular communication. Generally, his contributions are reviewed from his PAR, and his decolonizing debates about scientific dependence (Barranquero 2005), without specifying much about the communicational aspects that it entails.

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In the appendix to The Method and Fieldwork of Peasants of the Andes, Fals Borda (1961a) describes in detail his process of communication with the residents of Saucío village, to either: integrate into the community (living on the village, making a dictionary of local phrases and speaking on their own terms, making friends as a bridge, learning and performing local tasks, wearing typical clothing such as the ruana, singing and dancing during local holidays, or using “diplomacy, tact and kindness” to build cultural bridges); maintain some distance (not accepting food when there was a shortage); be inconspicuous (not taking notes in front of peasants until after meeting them, taking their pictures and giving them copies). Everything as a process of mutual adaptation. In addition, he allowed the first manuscripts to be read by some peasants to learn from their reactions and opinions, suggestions he considered essential to make “a fair and honest judgment about the community” and ensure that the study was accepted by them (pp. 309–316). In the study with Deutschmann (Deutschmann & Fals-Borda 1962), the purpose was to classify the channels for the communication of ideas used by Saucío peasants that were more prone for the early adoption of innovative ideas about social change, a commitment that was completely compatible with the aims of developmentalism, for which he was later criticized. Fals Borda then explained the challenge he assumed from the second half of the 1960s, based on the text The Formation of the Field of Communication Studies in Colombia, for which Jesús Martín Barbero and Germán Rey (1999) reported a great disagreement between the social sciences and communication, especially in the field of social problems and demands. This disagreement originated in the social sciences because while “the political and cultural importance of the processes and media are unknown,” in communication studies there is a “lack of the in-depth social and political awareness that its own discipline has. The former, the ‘scientists,’ underestimate what they find in this field; the latter, ‘the communicators,’ fail to understand the relationship between what they do and say and the country’s conflicts” (p. 61). In short, it is about a very dense and poorly communicative social science, on the one hand, and on the other hand some very communicative and less dense processes (Fals-Borda 2003 third paragraph). He then invites the scientists to overcome these closed paradigms with open alternative paradigms from postmodern and postdevelopmentalist origins, inviting a return to the paths obstructed by functionalists,

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mechanists, and determinists. Alternatives are found in theories of open systems and of complexity, in that of chaos and Batesonian holism, and in humanistic and ecological Marxism. To which he added from the southern hemisphere the PAR, which has the advantage—almost unique among the available methods—of clearly constructing a bridge toward social communication and mass media and journalistic techniques (Fals Borda 2003, view of the sociologist). Fals Borda acknowledged the emergent importance of the transformation of his scientific language and narrative  in his work. In fact, Pereira (2008)—returning to Stanislav Andreski and Jorge Eliécer Ruiz—argues that the early reissue of his book on subversion in 1967 was due, among other aspects, to the criticism that the first edition received for its dense writing, its “dark and pretentious terminology,” with a “terminological mesh with an often shocking esotericism,” before which Fals Borda reacted with a new version. This experience would mark him, as the future showed, as having great concern for using a simpler and more direct vocabulary (p. 392). Fals Borda also acknowledged that his life as a “journalist” was key to the transformation of his writing, his time at Brecha and Alternativa magazines helped to improve his form of communication. He considered Alternativa a “trial by fire,” in which he ceased to be “the academic sociologist with prophylactic gloves, as he had been trained in North America.” He suffered the “hanging” of his first articles, not because of censorship or manipulation, but because they were too long and dense (Fals Borda 2003, view of the journalist). The most important and visible thing that I felt in my new journalistic condition was the impact that my writing style suffered, in order to be able to communicate better and with clarity. I had to think not only with the printed word but also with the multimedia that we were beginning to try out. From there arose the stereophonic polymorphism that was evident in my latest writings. With Alternativa, the illustrated brochure was also born as a result of social and historical research; the vallenato protest was invented and popular theater and short stories were promoted as cultural recovery. All this to say that without the communication and media experience of Alternativa, Double History of the Coast would not have been born with its two channels, nor would have the action research that is practiced today in many parts of the world been strengthened. (Fals Borda 2003, view of the journalist)

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This process consolidates the technique of systematic return, typical of PAR, with its emphasis on oral culture and horizontality in the investigative relationship, adopting the intersubjective contact of the creative and communicative process, from and to the bases, a process in which the generated knowledge turns into power. One of his expressions is the style and dual technique of mythos–logos that was developed in the Double History of the Coast, “a method rather distant from the language of the traditional sociological academy, which belongs to the field of communication” (Fals Borda 2003, view of the journalist). The Double History, as indicated by its title, reveals the systematic return, presenting the findings in two different channels of communication: In channel A, for a more general audience, “the story, the description, the environment, and the anecdote are used.” Channel B, for a more specialized audience, simultaneously includes “the respective theoretical interpretation, concepts, sources and methodology of what is contained in channel A, plus summaries of the story” (Fals Borda 1981, p. xi). For the channel A narrative, in order to reconfigure a more literary style of narration, Fals Borda uses the imputation technique, which consists of the “parsimonious and convenient use of imagination” for historical reconstruction, “which may be ninety percent facts and ten percent imagination” (p. 56B). This allows him, even if there are some alterations to the characters or their contexts, to remain faithful to the facts. The imputation allowed Fals Borda “to flesh out with meat and muscles the skeleton they described to me [...] and to add, combine and compose the information to give it coherence and communicative effectiveness” (1981, p. 58B). This technique has been criticized by classical historians who consider that “Fals Borda essentially ignores historiography,” questioning his handling of sources, which “for the professional historian, it was already a contaminated material; it is not known which part comes from Fals Borda and which from his informant” (Bergquist 1989, pp. 214–221). Finally, it is worth highlighting what could be called channel C of the Double History of the Coast, understanding that the systematic return and imputation were not only conceived as a final product. For Fals Borda, the connection between sociology and communication “opened the door to procedures and arts linked to social communication, such as photography, literature, painting and music” to be taken as “elements of popular awareness and mobilization, for a deeper knowledge and sense of social reality through the spoken and written word.” Specifically, in a review of the “investigation and preparation process of illustrated brochures that were

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published for the education of the base of the National Association of Peasant Users (ANUC),” Joanne Rappaport (2018) confirmed that the technique of imputation was not only given in the writing of the final text but also in the field, “as a process of dialogue in which both peasants and external researchers offered their own interpretations of historical sources” (pp. 138–139). According to the findings of Rappaport, Fals Borda along with the Caribbean Foundation sought for an artist to help them to mobilize the peasants around the ANUC to recover their lands, and they found Chalarka, who was not a peasant or trained researcher but a neighborhood painter, and his work “occupied an intermediate position, as a translator between the knowledge that the peasants expressed in their meetings with the team and the interpretation of the materials carefully collected by Fals Borda and members of the Caribbean Foundation” (p.144). He was integrated into the team, and in the research process, jointly with the participants selected the characters and contents for cartoons, which ultimately had “a semi-fictitious narrator, based on a known leader in the region, but which combined stories of various narrators (another example of ‘imputation’)” (p. 143). In relation to the communication dynamics learned in the processes accompanyed by the PAR, and attending to the recurring return of hegemonic policies in the Latin American region, one may conclude, using Fals Borda’s own words: Left behind is the mechanistic stage of the “diffusion of innovations” brought to us by sociologists Everett Rogers and Paul Deutschmann in the 1960s. The stage of dangerous scientific self-deception of value neutrality also ended. The fact is that we now have a common technical, conceptual and epistemic frame of reference that is also ethical; it requires our reasoning, our feeling and our prudence, especially in cases of economic, bureaucratic and personal survival in times of repressive “security” statutes. (Fals Borda 2003, view of the journalist)

One more lesson that could be inherited from the route traveled by Orlando Fals Borda, which led him to his concept of subversion, to his proposal of a transforming and committed science via PAR, and to his new concept of communication as a central element to transform knowledge into popular power, is the need for disenchantment as a means of settling accounts with the sparkles of the modernizing project that repeatedly try to dazzle our eyes.

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Ocampo, J. (2009). El maestro Orlando Fals Borda sus ideas educativas y sociales para el cambio en la sociedad colombiana. Revista de Historia de la Educación Latinoamericana, (12), 13–41. Retrieved from https://revistas.uptc.edu.co/ index.php/historia_educacion_latinamerican/article/view/1513. Palacios, M. (2003). Entre la legitimidad y la violencia. Colombia 1875–1994. Bogotá: Norma. Retrieved from http://babel.banrepcultural.org/cdm/ref/ collection/p17054coll10/id/1070. Parra, E. (1983). La investigación-acción en la Costa Atlántica. Cali: FUNCOP. Parra, R. (1985). La sociología en Colombia: 1959–1969. Ciencia, Tecnología y Desarrollo, 9, 1–4. Retrieved from http://repositorio.colciencias.gov.co/ handle/11146/1237. Pereira, A. (2008). Fals Borda: la formación de un intelectual disórgano. Anuario Colombiano de Historia Social y de la Cultura, 35, 375–412. Retrieved from https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/achsc/article/view/18302. Púa, M. (2010). Introducción. En G. Castillo-Cárdenas e Isay Pérez-Benavides, La influencia religiosa en la conciencia social de Orlando Fals Borda. (pp. 5–7). Barranquilla: Corporación Universitaria Reformada. Retrieved from https:// w w w. u n i r e f o r m a d a . e d u . c o / w p -­c o n t e n t / u p l o a d s / 2 0 1 9 / 0 3 / iInfluenciasreligiosas-­prologo.pdf. Rappaport, J. (2018). Visualidad y escritura como acción: Investigación Acción Participativa en la Costa Caribe colombiana. Revista Colombiana de Sociología, 41(1), 133–156. https://doi.org/10.15446/rcs.v41n1.66272. Restrepo, G. (2016). Seguir los pasos de Orlando Fals Borda: religión, música, mundos de la vida y carnaval. Investigación y desarrollo, 24(2), 199–239. https://doi.org/10.14482/indes.24.2.8841. Rudas, N. (2019). Confrontación y “autodestrucción” de un proyecto de sociología en la Universidad Nacional de Colombia: la caída de los “padres fundadores.” Revista Colombiana de Sociología, 42(2), 67–90. Retrieved from https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/recs/article/view/76759. Santos, B. de S. (2018). The end of the cognitive empire: The coming of age of epistemologies of the south. Durham: DUP. Singhal, A., & Obregón, R. (2005). Comunicación, desarrollo y cambio social: Dialogo con Everett M. Rogers y su relación con América Latina. Diálogos de la comunicación, 71, 86–94. Uricoechea, F. (1988). Ciencia propia y colonialismo intelectual: los nuevos rumbos. Análisis Político, 0(4), 133–134. Retrieved from https://revistas.unal. edu.co/index.php/anpol/article/view/74601/0. Vizcaíno, M. (2008). De la realidad a la utopía: una incursión por la vida y obra de Orlando Fals Borda. Espacio Abierto, 17(4), 569–594. Retrieved from https:// produccioncientificaluz.org/index.php/espacio/article/view/1363. Wolf, E.  R. (1956). Review of Peasant Society in the Colombian Andes: A Sociological Study of Saucío by Orlando Fals Borda: The University of Florida Press, 1955. American Anthropologist, 58(5), 929–930. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1956.58.5.02a00200/pdf

CHAPTER 7

A Praise of Dignity in Educational Practice Daniel Prieto Castillo Translated by Gustavo Andújar

The material presented in this chapter was originally prepared to participate in a roundtable of the Latin American and Caribbean Communication Congress (COMLAC) held in Asunción, Paraguay, in October of 2016. The first part contains the full text presented in that congress. In the second part, I have expanded central concepts in an original contribution to this book. The writing, originally formatted for a meeting with communicators from the region, is inspired by my own career in the field of formal and nonformal education. It summarizes what I have characterized as a communicational pedagogy in numerous works published in different countries and in an educator practice that I have been developing since the early 1960s.

Part I Dear participants in this roundtable and in this COMLAC Congress in Paraguay:

D. Prieto Castillo (*) National University of Cuyo, Mendoza, Argentina e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. C. Suzina (ed.), The Evolution of Popular Communication in Latin America, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62557-3_7

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Firstly, I want to express my appreciation for the honor of being invited to work with you—from a distance in this case, but we follow you very closely and we have been able to collaborate time and again with the efforts made in our countries in favor of a different communication, carried out by organizations represented in this great group of human beings coming together here in Paraguay. Secondly, but also of paramount importance, to thank those who recalled the work of our dear Juan Díaz Bordenave, in order to grant him the “Communicator of Peace” Award. Why is this award valuable? Because Juan irradiated, from his deep spirituality, the serenity of peace, the stability of peace, the wisdom to build and to sustain peace, the happiness of peace, the hope for peace, the communication capacity to sow peace. Juan was one of the people I have loved most dearly in my life; this award is a way to bring to our memory someone who taught us lessons about life and about the capacity to love and to feel. Within the framework of this roundtable referred to the university, I decided to focus in an experience that I have been living for the last twenty-one years, since 1995, as the director of the Undergraduate Studies with Specialization in University Teaching, in Mendoza, in the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of the National University of Cuyo. The key element of this project we are carrying forward with a current group of eleven people, is centered on what we described back in the 1980s, with another dear friend, Francisco Gutiérrez Pérez, and it is connected with what we called pedagogic mediation. It has been already thirty-five years since its first employment in two Guatemalan universities and we continue working within that framework.1 What is the purpose of speaking about pedagogic mediation in the field of university teaching? Let us begin by remembering how we define that notion. In short: pedagogic mediation consists of the task of promoting and accompanying learning. To comply with it, it is our duty as educators to struggle to create learning environments. Our “Specialization in Teaching,” organized as a distance education system, is conceived as a learning environment designed with a communicational approach in all fronts; the study materials, the

1  Gutiérrez Pérez, Francisco and Prieto Castillo, Daniel. La mediación pedagógica. Apuntes para una educación a distancia alternativa. San José de Costa Rica, Ed. RNTC, 1991.

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learning practices, the present encounters, the technologies, the ways to evaluate, to dialog. Such an environment means a space for encounter, for collaboration, for a learning exchange in an institutional setting, which I want to make clear, does not always constitute a valid environment for promoting and accompanying learning. I’ll put it like this: university institutions can well be a space in contradiction with educational ideals, and even abusive to educators; the latter happens when they are denied alternatives to grow, to improve their qualification, to build knowledge, to be joyfully related with their students. The principle of all our postgraduate courses, along these twenty-one years working with more than 1850 postgraduates, is good treatment; and good treatment always goes hand-in-hand with good communication. The origin of such programs, and also of pedagogic mediation, is in popular education, from where we interwove the proposal that we then took to universities. There is no space, here, for presenting every detail of these twenty-one years of postgraduate studies. I leave at your disposal and with the friends who invited me, the book that we wrote on our twentieth anniversary, called A Praise of Pedagogy: Twenty Years of Postgraduate Specialization in Teaching.2 In those pages I tried to put together the communicational axes that have sustained the academic program, which I have called “Praises.” They are the praises of: proximity, difference, serenity, clarity, writing, the emergence of voices, intellectual work, educator’s time, the pedagogic communicational approach, dignity. I have decided, for the sake of this conversation, to underline the last one of them: the praise of dignity. Let us recall the precious charge this word brings to anything we relate with it. To be dignified means to stand in the position of looking face-to-face, to make your voice heard, to go around in life enjoying all your rights, to feel able to build a future, your own future and the future of your loved ones. If in our environment we, communicator-educators, have the immense responsibility to support and push forward the construction of our students’ selves, we have the permanent task of a beautiful practice: to collaborate to bring up subjects who stand firmly on their ground, who are 2  The complete text in Spanish (Elogio de la Pedagogía. Veinte años del posgrado de especialización en docencia) can be downloaded from my web page: prietocastillo.com

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respected by the others and by themselves, who are acknowledged in their individuality and their difference, who stand in the position of looking face-to-face, making their voice heard, moving around in life with all their rights, feeling able to build their own future and that of their loved ones. That is our task. We feel that such has always been the task of those of us who choose to be professional educators, but a question must be asked: what about us? What if we were humiliated many times as educators? Humiliation has a terrible power, because it can undermine confidence, destroy dignity, and it is very difficult to support the construction of dignity within such a context. Humiliation can come from many sources, such as the social status of education in politics; contempt for the function of education; contempt for the experience and practice of educators; contempt for our culture and our knowledge, lack of time in our daily work to think, to share, to grow; reduction and even disappearance of spaces for the exchange of learning experiences. To summarize: when a person spends years submitted to a series of humiliations, their feelings and conscience can be so harmed that humiliation can come to be accepted as normal, with the person brought down to the floor. From being told many times “you are not worthy,” “you don’t count,” “you don’t feel,” one tends to arrive at “I am not worthy,” “I don’t count,” “I am no one, or almost no one.” Dear friends, for us, pedagogy deals with the dignity of all those who constitute the foundation of the educational act: students and educators, who must be supported and motivated in their learning process. And since dignity is not assured but is rather in a permanent process of construction against the threats of humiliation, we have the permanent task of sustaining our pedagogy on a communicational basis, stubbornly determined to support the construction of dignity. It is in favor of that pedagogy that we communicate. If we have been able to continue with our project for more than twenty years, it has been because we have always tried to sustain a learning environment where we talk and relate to each other from dignity to dignity. In this, communication constitutes the fundamental axis. We seek to live a pedagogy of the encounter, a non-violent communication, a communication with the other, for the other, from the other, but permanently attentive of ourselves. I cannot give myself up to be destroyed so that others can turn into subjects; that is why we insist so much that it is up to us, as coordinators of the project, to develop ourselves

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permanently as communicators. This development implies richness of language, the joy of being together, the joy and fundamentally the will to communicate. We also want such tasks to be felt by those who come to study with us as colleague professors, so it can grow in their daily educational practice. We demand the same that we are trying to offer. That is why we suggest that texts are written with a communicational and pedagogic approach, that every time that a space is opened to the voice of the others, it should be to build a relationship, to dialog, to meet with others in the word and in the daily work. I am not painting anything ideal. At this point in my life I don’t seek compliments regarding what I may have been able to make. What I am describing is the road that we have traveled together with a group of dear colleagues for more than twenty years. This is what I wanted to share with you: how a long experience can be sustained on the will and the joy of communicating, searching at the same time that those who come to us may also develop their will to communicate and find in that will the capacity, the possibility to enrich their pedagogic work. Thank you for allowing me to bring you my word, my best wishes, my companionship and my regard, my affection.

Part II About the Praises This is where I concluded the communication that I sent to the colleagues who participated in the Congress held in Asunción, Paraguay. I had the opportunity to dialogue with them through technological platforms. It was an encounter between people united by ideals and common practices. I return now, to expand the central point of that presentation, the reference to what I define as praise, in my theoretical explorations and experiences of the pedagogy of communication. These praises were not the product of some intellectual abstraction, something that we could have worked out with a group of friends imagining ideals. Each and every one of them responds to what we have experienced and worked on for more than twenty years. They are all based on a communication in which voices, lives, and experiences emerge from those who participate, bound to the necessity of sustaining the educational task upon knowledge.

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The Praise of Proximity You learn from what is near to what is distant. And the nearest thing in the world is each and every one of us, is me. There are schools, educational proposals, ways to relate, where the way to go is presented the other way around, as though you could learn from what is far away to what is nearby. Proximities are not only physical, but also cultural. They correspond to ways to perceive, to act, to feel, to imagine, to remember, to create, and to relate. This cannot be ignored. Learnings are built from proximity. The Praise of Difference The first text of a human being is their context; it has always been like this. It is in the context that we can find the other ones. The concepts are not floating in the air, neither are the categories, nor the laws of a certain science, nor the disciplines. Those who come to us to learn, do so with a hiistory and a string of relationships which is impossible to leave aside. We do not receive in our classrooms always the same generations, the same faces, the same histories. When the difference is ignored, roads are wide open to indifference. In educational work, we are never, ever, in front of undifferentiated human beings, with everything that this word implies regarding the negation of the different and an attitude of indifference. The Praise of Serenity Thinking fast, racing to survive, hastily drinking glasses of numbness: all these do not leave space for serenity. Every day we experience boundless aggressions on our personal time, the time required for intimate relationships with others. We need to defend our periods of serenity, of queries about our existence, about what it means to have a loving encounter with ourselves, with words that can make us shudder deep inside. We insist on our praise of serenity in education: there is no hurry to educate. In our programs, we are putting at stake the intellectual and human construction of those who choose to look for alternatives to their immense responsibility to promote and to accompany learning.

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The Praise of Clarity No close relationships are possible without a commitment to clarity. Clarity never spoiled the presentation of a concept or an idea, however complex they were. Nor is there any bigger communicational nonsense than to speak or to write so that the others will not understand. This is valid for any educational endeavor, be it formal or non-formal, for elementary or university students. Clarity supposes an effort of adaptation of the subject at hand, a recognition of how much can be learned at a certain moment, a search for bridges between those who teach and those who learn. The Praise of Writing Educators are a special class of intellectuals often condemned to teach without having been formed through writing and without having a pedagogic legacy. This refers to works employed to promoting and to accompanying learning in all possible paths of knowledge. Prisoners of daily work, of the many hours dedicated to survival, we lack the time required for reflection and for what is the meaning of pedagogic writing. Emergence of the Voices In the field of education, we always aspire to a communication that allows for the participants in human relationships to emerge, in any social situation. This implies opening spaces for the emergence of their voices. We refer to spaces for learning exchanges, for interdisciplinarity, interaction, recreation, for the presentation of the products of intellectual creation. The emergence of those voices supposes an effort of personalization, of recognition of oneself and the others. The Praise of the Intellectual We demand in full strength the attribution of the status of intellectuals to educators, in the strict sense of the creation of a pedagogic oeuvre and a vocation to transform the practice. We affirm that the creation of an intellectual in the field of education attains beautiful foundations when it has been possible to produce a legacy, when it has been possible to add the words of others to their own words, taking into account their lifetime

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experiences and originality, and all the strength of someone who has developed enough confidence and self-esteem to express their voice in the concert of all the voices present in an educational process. The Praise of the Educator’s Time If we define ourselves as educators, then we exist for others to learn. Such a purpose requires people able to carry this task out, which requires time, often denied to us by society and bureaucratic educational structures. It is not only that time passes. But it is not time that passes; those who pass are us, we who are made of time. And in that senseless passing, in that constant wasting of the most valuable time of our existence of educators, we miss the possibility of building ourselves towards promoting and accompanying learning. The Praise of the Pedagogic Gaze We define the pedagogic gaze as the capacity to perceive others as learning and communicative beings, whatever their age or social situation. This gaze recognizes the entirety of culture as an infinite treasure of resources to promote and accompany learning. There is no possible pedagogic gaze if the educator does not also regard him or herself as a learning and communicative being. The pedagogic gaze takes a lifetime for the educator to develop. Even longer than that, because generations of educators committed to this task keep building the vast and always unfinished territory of pedagogy, understood and experienced under a communicational perspective. Praise of Dignity Pedagogy is concerned with the dignity of all those who are the foundation of the educational act: students and educators. And since dignity is not granted but is rather in a constant process of construction against the threats of humiliation, the task permanently at hand for us is to sustain a pedagogy stubbornly determined to support that creation. We always aspire to the construction of dignity through learning, so that our students and ourselves can be more. Education, understood this way, is a dialogue between one dignity and another.

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About Pedagogic Mediation Let us review what has been expressed in that communication during COMLAC: I said that I wanted to add that the origin of these studies and of the pedagogic mediation is in popular education; from it we knitted a proposal that we then took to the universities.

Let us remember in the first place one of the great educators from our territory: Simón Rodríguez. It has always been said of him that he was Bolívar‘s teacher, but that is barely a detail if you take into account his pedagogic work oriented toward the rescue of the impoverished sectors of society, in times when little, if anything, was thought of them, back at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Rodríguez formulated a pedagogy based on communication and education ideals (“all learning is a learning exchange,” “the good teacher teaches how to learn and helps to understand”), in a political sense (“we are in the world to help-one-another and not to destroy-one-another”), in a utopian sense (with regard to Chancellor Thomas More: “their utopia will be in fact America.”)3 A second reference to the background of communication and popular education was given to us by Luis Ramiro Beltrán. The radios of the mining workers from Bolivia in the 1950s decade constitute an eminent and exemplary experience. Twenty years before our admired thinker Paulo Freire declared that the word should be given back to the people, silicosis-afflicted miners died at thirty-five because they lost their lungs in the mine, where they earned forty dollars a month working twelve hours a day. They took the word by themselves by establishing small, rustic radio stations of minimal reach, but great importance, since commercial media didn’t take them into account and state-owned media scared and condemned them. Thus, they were able to create self-managed radios, financed with quotas they donated from their miserable wages. They were convinced that if they didn’t have at least their own public voice to communicate among them, let alone with the whole nation, they could never overcome their situation of neglect and exploitation.

3   Daniel Prieto Castillo. Utopia y comunicación en Simón Rodríguez. México, Ed. Premia, 1995.

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It was practice twenty years ahead of theory (see Uranga, this book). The expressions “alternative, popular communication” or “dialogic communication” did not exist back then. Those mining workers were illiterate former peasants, aymaras, who also didn’t have an idea about how to manage a radio. They began with improvised facilities but with great resolve and they established a strategy of “open microphone” in the sense that they were not only limited to a trade union struggle, but they became a rather integral expression of their communities. They took their microphones to markets, to soccer stadiums, to schools, and to the streets. Any inhabitant of the town could just come to their radio station—as if they felt it was theirs—to say whatever they wanted, and to discuss and to participate to such an extent that some of those radio stations became pivoting centers of the debate on the problems of the community at any given moment. It no longer happened only in their small studios, but rather in large public places, where the community gathered to air their problems. The radio turned then into the axis of access, dialogue, and participation.4

These words show us what it meant then and means still now in Latin American countries to have the cultural diversity served during decades by Bolivian, Guatemalan, or Dominican radio stations, through programs in Quechua, Creole, and all the richness of Mayan languages (see Mata, this book). Their task was, and still is, communicational with a strong educational emphasis. Simón Rodríguez gathered in his thought and practice the contributions of the European utopian socialism of the beginning of the nineteenth century with his deep experience of the reality of our countries. Such a synthesis allowed him to formulate one of the most original proposals in communication-based education ever produced in our region. Luis Ramiro Beltrán, one of the founders of Latin American communication, also combined his intellectual formation as researcher and educator with his passion to know and to support Latin American culture. In the case of the pedagogic mediation that we proposed at the beginning of the 1990s with Francisco Gutiérrez Pérez, we had a similar starting point. We both came from a strong communicational formation in the field of formal education and at the same time we had had continuous 4  Movimiento Los Sin Techo, Santa Fe, Argentina. El derecho de los pobres a la información y la educación, Ed. Los Sin Techo, 2007.

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practice in non-formal education, especially in projects of communication alternatives to mass media. This took us to outline a proposal that we characterized as follows: Between an area of knowledge and human practice, and those who are in a situation of learning, society offers mediations. We call pedagogic a mediation which is able to promote and to accompany learning.

This, from a characterization of pedagogy as: the intent to understand and to make sense of the educational act, at any age and under any circumstances in which it takes place, in order to collaborate, on the basis of that understanding, with the learning process considered as construction and appropriation of the world and of one’s self.

Our proposal of pedagogic mediation is part of a Latin American movement in the field of communication that looks for alternatives to overcome social contradictions, based on the strong cultural basis of our countries and the treasure of both popular and formal education. The density of pedagogic culture in Latin America is far from insignificant, both on account of the innovative proposals and what has been treasured by educators themselves in their daily work. We acknowledge that a pedagogic culture exists both in formal and non-formal systems. In our varied social reality it is not possible to overlook such large experience, such hard work put into the promotion and companionship of learning, often carried out under precarious conditions, within the framework of the withdrawal of the state from its fundamental functions. The praises, as a proposal of strong communicational features, constitute one part of that movement as well as of our call to pedagogic mediation. We have developed and employed them up to these days within the framework of a dialogue with those who live and promote education, and with reflections and searches in the latter’s encounter with communication within the general field of social communication in Latin America. The contributions of science and the broadening of epistemological perspectives are not left out of the task, but are always present with a clear, and inalienable orientation towards practice.

CHAPTER 8

Popular Radios: Constants and Tensions María Cristina Mata Translated by Gustavo Andújar I come from an old and very long silence of people who are rebelling from the bottom of the centuries, of people they call subordinate classes. […]. I come from a silence that is not resigned… that people will break now that they want to be free and love life; people who demand the things that have been denied to them. —Raimón (Poems and Songs)

M. C. Mata (*) National University of Córdoba, Córdoba, Argentina e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. C. Suzina (ed.), The Evolution of Popular Communication in Latin America, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62557-3_8

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With the epigraph verses of Raimón, the Catalan singer-composer, I declare that, regardless of technologies, methodologies, resources, and means, what we call popular communication in Latin America and the Caribbean has to do with that defiant silence, with that collective word that has for a long time designated—when, where, and in the way it can designate it—the reality of popular sectors, and by doing so making it identifiable and significant (Mata 2011). I now want to say that those verses let me talk about popular radio; above all, to talk about whatever mobilizes the popular sectors at a given moment—on their own, autonomous initiative, or with the cooperation and mediation of others—to speak openly, to speak to each other and to others, in a technological space that, not by nature, but due to some economic rationality, historical reasons and political conditions, was designed for them as a listening-only space. To say that, against generalizing approaches and refined models and definitions, to talk about popular radio implies to go into a territory of heterogeneous and changing material qualities coexisting since the origins of this medium of communication—the end of the 1940s—and existing still today, not necessarily consistent variations of that collective expression daring to break commercial and even legal rationalities, in order to enrich the social discourse with the emergence of the silenced, the submitted, the undervalued, the repressed.

Differences/Distances I begin by remembering the past. I re-read unpublished texts of long ago; notes that I made while accompanying many of those radio stations during my investigation processes and my formation. Scenes from the end of the 1980s, when the experiences of popular radios on the continent had been already on the making for almost forty years and a consolidated movement had brought them together in national entities, and before regional organizations such as ALER (Latin American Association of Radio Education) and Amarc-AL (World Association of Community Radios, Latin American section) even existed. In the northern mountains of Peru, in Cajamarca, the peasants who made history in popular movements for the patrols they organized as a protection against rustlers, manufacture small radio stations by dismantling discarded radio receivers and old transmitters. Their radio waves only

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reach ten kilometers. For a few hours a day Andean music, chicha,1 can be heard and Ecuadorian music, and notifications and messages are sent so that people in the area can know of each other, what happens to them; that is something that the country’s main radio network—the only one they can tune to—completely ignores. Those radios, listened to and appreciated by rural cajamarquinos, work in disregard of all official regulations. They are part of the informal Peru that pops up in the field of communications and shows itself in Lima through speakers set up in popular quarters and markets, where neighbors can listen to the voices of their leaders, be informed, summon each other, and even act out their daily dramas. In the periphery of São Paulo, in Brazil, an area where people lack almost everything, basically inhabited by “nordestino”2 migrants, Rádio do Povo brings together some forty popular radio stations. It is a column with four horns installed in the locality of the parish or the communal center of different sectors of São Miguel. Neighbors speak and are listened to on those peculiar radio stations encouraged by the Pastoral of Communication of the Catholic Church of São Paulo. Each radio covers a reduced space but all together, they succeed in covering the entire region. They are even mobile: six wheelbarrows with their corresponding speakers march along with the demonstrations and protests of the neighbors to empower their voices. Very far from São Paulo, in the Venezuelan Andes, there are no speakers, or farmers dismantling old receivers in order to broadcast. However, the voices of the peasants of the southern part of the State of Merida are heard through Radio Occidente, a radio station with a 10 kw power, property of the local archdiocese. Something similar happens in Peruvian Amazonía through La Voz de la Selva; in the south of the Dominican Republic, where Radio Enriquillo broadcasts; in the southernmost part of Chile, thanks to Estrella del Mar and La Voz de la Costa. The list could include more than thirty other Catholic radio stations, which in those countries and others as Ecuador, Bolivia, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, favor rural areas and work with popular sectors, encouraging them to express themselves through that medium (see Uranga, this book). In general, these are radio stations with a long history, with relatively good facilities and equipment, and financial support. They are legally instituted, 1  Also known as Peruvian cumbia; a mixture of Andean melodies with tropical rhythms, incorporating typical instruments of modern music, such as batteries and electric guitars. 2  Coming from the Northeast, the poorest part of the country (Translator’s note).

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although that condition doesn’t preserve them from being targets of more or less violent attacks, because of their standing regarding social and political issues. On the other hand, the legal situation of the radios of Bolivian miners, property of the unions which are part of the Union Federation of Mining Workers, is very different. Radio stations are vital for the political and union-related organization and mobilization of the sector. That is why they are repressed every time that the military violently attack the Bolivian people. Also a different legal standing was that of the guerrilla radios that operated secretly, as diffusion and propaganda organs, in El Salvador, accompanying the political-military groups that operated there until 1992. Community radio stations emerging in Argentina from 1983 as a part of multiple efforts to democratize the society after the brutal years of the civic–military dictatorship were also different. Small FM radio stations that open their doors to the community—neighborhood, small town—where they operate, do not accept to be branded as pirate or secret by the managers of broadcasting and government institutions, because they do not steal anything and they do not hide. They are rather exercising a right denied to them by the juridical system in place. They prefer to be considered as non-authorized radio stations, created and managed by ecclesiastic or educational institutions, local and juvenile groups, thus opening the road toward having a special regard for the particular and the local, as a way to oppose the concentration of media in the hands of a few and to make it possible for all to exercise their right to communication. Many of those scenarios have changed. In order to get an idea of the magnitude of those changes, it might suffice to point out that, due to different economic and political processes the country has gone through, only three Bolivian mine radio stations survive today, out of more than twenty that existed by the end of the 1980s. Of the Salvadoran guerrilla radios nothing remains but a historical, and to a certain extent heroic, mark. Something similar happens with those primitive and homemade technologies popular resourcefulness resorted to in order to satisfy communication needs. For some time, the market made available multiple resources—devices, programs—to vast sectors, facilitating the production, reception, and continuous exchange of messages. Meanwhile, there are new strengths and weaknesses. Several of those Argentinean incipient community radio stations were consolidated to the point that they played a key role in 2009, through FARCO—the national organization that brought them together—in the design, debate, and approval of the Law of

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Services of Audiovisual Communication. That law was a landmark in the struggle for the democratization of the national audiovisual spectrum, and a reference at the continental level. On the other hand, many of those powerful and dare I say avant-garde popular radios of old, created and managed by the Catholic Church, survive today as routine institutions that barely remember the spaces of production of a collective, alternative word that they were until the 1990s. I do not intend to analyze the ups and downs in the number of agents in popular Latin American broadcasting. The contrast between former scenes and the present time is aimed at avoiding a generalizing approach. To show that the emergence and development of every radio station deemed as popular (or alternative, or community3), regardless of whether they found or not their inspiration in preexisting experiences and models, accounts for the ways certain populations have to inhabit a given territory: the material conditions and symbolic dimensions under which one lives; the ways to be and to interact in a given space and time.

A Constant: The Matter of Power Within that changing history of popular Latin American radio stations, what allows the connection of differences and distances is their determination to look for other ways to get their voices heard, because there is a search for other ways to be. But to claim that popular radio stations represent the search and construction of differentiated words, new voices, or ways of speaking in order to live differently, is to assume that what they have expressed is always a will to upset the power, or rather, powers that shape the social order in different realms of life: economy, politics, legislation, culture. Powers that in the field of communication are applied at a macro level through legal systems that regulate the use of airwaves, the modes of mass media property, the exercise of professions, and, at a micro level, are exerted by means of the group of regulations that govern speech in daily life and in the most diverse private and public spaces. In that sense, I acknowledge three fields in which that anti-hegemonic will has been tried by popular radio stations with greater or smaller 3  Although they are not absolutely equivalent and have conceptual and ideological differentiating trajectories, in Latin America there is a tendency to unify those terms. I keep using the expression “popular radios” for reasons formerly debated and explained elsewhere (Mata, “Radio popular o comunitaria?” en Chasqui, N°47, nov.1993, CIESPAL, Quito).

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emphasis on different occasions: the field of knowledge, the field of expressivity; and the field of collective action. Dimensions which are intimately linked to each other, but that cover different aspects of social practice and the practice of radio stations. The Power to Know The first link in the chain that strongly ties popular Latin American radio stations to the question of knowledge and specifically the power to know, are those experiences of the 1950s and 1960s, inspired by diffusionist and developmentalist conceptions that postulated the use of the technology to facilitate the literacy and formal schooling of indigenous and peasant populations. The question of the legitimacy of that knowledge—associated with the access to some minimum knowledge to guarantee a more functional incorporation of vast sectors to productive markets—was, among other reasons, what made many of those radios to assume, from the mid-­1970s and during the 1980s, the objectives and strategies of popular education. Hence, what was later recognized as popular radio, cannot be separated from that vast continental movement which nurtured it and to which it would contribute a significant mass dimension. Starting from their contact with rural populations and impoverished, excluded natives, the members of those educational radios began to refute the concepts according to which “underdevelopment is in man’s mind” (Vaca Gutiérrez 2017), recognizing a more complex panorama instead. The penuries that afflicted those whom they intended to educate were not a consequence of their ignorance or of atavistic matters. They were a consequence of a process of submission exerted by national and international agents who had taken over their land and labor (see Orue Pozzo, this book). Also, those dominant sectors had knowledge that they instituted as true—scientifically valid and socially useful—while invalidating the popular ways of understanding reality, which they associated with backwardness, superstition, immediacy, and the impossibility of being universalized (see Custódio, this book). These were, however, the expression of millenarian cultures and the capacity for daily survival that peasants and workers developed. Acknowledging these different kinds of knowledge, popular educational radios established themselves as spaces for another knowledge, which took various forms. The recovery of the history of communities and peoples, the conversion of work and organization experiences into teachings through their diffusion and debate, the recovery of autochthonous,

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undervalued forms of expression, went hand-in-hand with the popularization of appropriate technical and scientific knowledge designed to support the development of local production and to assist with practical problems of daily life in situations where basic resources are lacking (see Contreras Baspineiro, this book). For that reason, although the popular radio stations seldom openly confronted the political systems and their official educational policies, they were recognized as spaces of learning, of production of knowledge that was close and collective, claimed as their own by diverse communities. It was because of that same acknowledgement that popular radio stations were affirmed as news media and as such they did openly confront the communication power, i.e., the hegemonic mass media, instituted as legitimate providers of knowledge about the present time, a category whose condition of artifact was manufactured by the power they hid. The characterization of popular radio stations as alternative was founded to a great extent on that field. Those radio stations challenged with their popular correspondents the liberal approach of the journalistic profession; they toppled the concept of market-regulated news; they increased the number of classic news sources by granting hierarchy to the information provided by popular agents; they innovated formats and mixed genres way before the hybridization that would decades later characterize mass communication. And they made that by reversing the devices of concealment of power; i.e., by questioning the notion of objectivity and assuming the deliberate character of the agendas put in place by the powers that be. For that reason, the confirmation of those radio stations as popular and alternative news media meant a challenge to the power expressed in hegemonic media, while allowing many to acknowledge the rights to information and free expression formally promulgated in some of the constitutional texts of our countries, but always denied in practice to the large majorities. The Power to Speak Agitators and subversives. Popular radio stations were called by these two names in almost all the countries of the continent, sometimes by dictatorial governments, but also by some democratically elected ones, in order to justify deterrents against them and their members. Certainly, the irruption in the public space of voices that had been silenced historically subverts the established order; it unsettles the security of those who only recognize their own voice as endowed with the required legitimacy to be

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listened to by all. It is not by coincidence that throughout the most dissimilar times and places, one of the aspects people value most in popular radio stations is that through them you can speak “as whoever you are”: indigenous, young person, as woman, boy, peasant; that is to say, as individuals who were devaluated or silenced by those who control the public debate. In historical terms, some radio stations were assumed as the voice of “the voiceless” in clear connection with the postulates of the theology of liberation (see Uranga, this book). That situation referred to alienation, to an impossibility to recognize the estrangement that the system of capitalistic exploitation produced regarding the product of the work and regarding the values, ideas, and traditions of those groups deprived of power—ethnic, agrarian, or urban labor communities. To be voiceless was equivalent to having lost self-consciousness; therefore, you should recover your voice in order to facilitate liberation from all oppression. In other experiences, the idea of “voiceless” majorities to which a voice should be given was discussed and revised: there were those who advocated that “the voice of the people must be allowed to be heard” or to “open the microphones” so that it could be listened to. Beyond that—not minor—difference, which generated excellent debates, listening to and allowing the popular radio stations to speak created a formerly unknown polyphony, since it revealed the voices censored by mass media and those who established the rules of the speech game in different environments: those who decide which subjects, languages, and modes of expression are suitable for home, school, social organizations, political parties, and churches. Such domination is enforced in multiple spaces, seeking the submission of the weakest, of those who are different, and of those who oppose the status quo because they regard it as unfair or unsatisfactory for their needs, interests, and desires. There were radio stations that played the role of door keepers to the popular word, zealously reproducing the control and surveillance devices that they systematically denounced in their programs. But there were comparatively more of those who provided space for the new voices. Thus, the inhabitants of the countryside and the neighborhoods knew that to say their voices had been silenced until then, meant to make it recognizable for their equals and to turn it into a bridge for interaction, and the construction of agreements and common projects. It also meant making that word audible for others, also different, to whom it was directed in order to request their attention, solidarity, and support for their own causes,

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considered to transcend the particular. And making it audible for those whom they were opposing and whose power they were demanding. The word was to be wielded before them as a symbol of resistance and struggle, as a territory of construction of antagonism and an unequivocal sign of the will to become an alternative power (see Flores-Marquez, this book). The Power to Be and to Act Collectively The power to know and to speak according to certain values, principles, and interests, represented for many the conquest of their dignity and the awareness that it is possible to think and to look for new ways to be with one another. In that sense, to be listened to was, for popular sectors, as important as to speak. To say was to be said. That was the collectivizing power of popular radio stations that operate as spaces of mediation and interrelation, of encounter and dialogue. They are key instruments for movements and ways to struggle to become visible. Since their origins until the present time, the articulation between popular radio stations and social communities has been crucial for their goals and quests. It was not always properly solved, but conflicts also show that radio communication, far from being a mechanical exercise, regimented according to formats, programming, and styles, is a construction of community sustained by messages produced and received, but also materialized in combined actions. When the people make a demand, the radio station amplifies their voice. When there is a call for collective action, the radio station reinforces the call. When the people require information in order to carry out a project, the radio station looks for qualified sources. It also works in the opposite sense: when the radio station wants to produce fictions to attract an audience, the people contribute their voices and creativity; when the radio station requires knowledge in order to inform, popular correspondents bring along data from specific communities (see Peruzzo, this book). To be and to do with others, in dialogue, is the communication background steering these radio stations. In that sense, popular radio stations have shown that it is possible to participate politically from the field of culture and they were able to warn against the weakness that isolation implies. They recognized the need to strengthen their voice in the face of threats to their work and of competition in the media market, although in many countries they didn’t succeed to get laws approved that fully authorized and protected them, neither did they find alternative strategies for

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sustainability and growth. But even in the middle of crises and uncertainties, they had the capacity to be organized and to build multiple interactions. Just as they promoted and supported collective action for the popular sectors, they assumed that it was necessary to do so in their own field. They are practically the only popular communication experiences that have built bonds and institutional designs stimulating their work: national, regional, and continental associations; programs of formation and joint production, and news satellite networks, all of them ways to operate that, with their practice, announce and prefigure solidaristic and cooperative ways to be in society.

The Constituent Tension The strongly educational character and the preferably rural location of popular radio stations originally allowed them to visualize their audience as people who were almost isolated from all sorts of mass- and mercantile entertainment, just as then students were thought to be only inside the space limited by school and family. But their prompt conversion into media committed to the needs and yearnings of popular sectors, and the consequent recognition of the genuineness of the ways to live and to communicate characteristic of those sectors, generated a tension that crosses the history of popular radio stations in different ways and with varying intensity and ways of resolution. A nodal point of that tension is the collision between the will of representation and genuine expression of popular sectors by radio stations and the lack of a full acceptance of the complexity of what is popular (see Gómez Obando, this book). An anecdote is worth more than a thousand words. Radio Pío XII is a radio station interwoven with the struggles of Bolivian miners. Created originally by a religious congregation in order to combat communism in the mines of Llallagua, it turned to daily work and when it reached twenty-five years on-air in 1984, it headed the network of mine radios transmitting the XX National Miner Congress from the Matilde mine. There it is designated “friend of the National Miner Proletariat” and honored with the silver “Guardatojo, for the disinterested services rendered […] to the hard-working class of the country” (López

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Vigil 1984, 301). At that time Pío had been broadcasting again after being shut down for two years, together with the other mine radios, after the military coup carried out in 1980 by García Meza. Then, as his then director tells, they “grew impatient.” They felt that they should report to and educate the people all day long; that they had to strengthen their organizations; to design spaces so that the unions, the members of the rural movement, the groups that worked to reactivate the political life cut short by the dictatorship, could express themselves. On one occasion, the cook of the radio station explained why she preferred to listen to other radios: –– “Pardon me, father, but Pío is boring. Words no more they say. At least play some music, such be wayñito. –– Music! That is very much like you. Music to forget the sorrows. –– Sometimes it is necessary to forget, father. How do you carry on with life, if not? –– If we play music at night, even faster will they go to buy beer. –– Play wayñito at least, for happiness. A little later on the army will come and there will be a surplus of laments. Holy Friday arrives not without the Carnival before. Time knows how to be there for everything.” (op. cit., pp. 292–293) The representation and expression of what is popular was limited then—and that happened many times in different radio stations and under different circumstances—to some highly politically charged, conscientious sectors, or to problems linked to the dominance situation and the struggles to oppose it. Outside the programs and activities of radio stations, or almost totally alien to them, there were popular ways to have a good time, to dream, to believe, strongly influenced since the 1960s at an urban level, and already in the 1980s at a rural level, by mass culture. A culture belittled by popular practices of communication in general, along the lines of the critical theoretical thought developed in Latin American academic spaces since the 1960s: the process of industrialization of culture and printed media, radio, and television, were the spearheads of economic imperialism; they led the people away from their problematic reality, offering them alienating fictions and exogenous models of life. Without going into the discussions raised by those conceptions, it should be remembered that in the early 1980s, thanks to different theoretical influences and to the work of intellectuals who joined their capacity for reflection with their political commitment and their insertion into

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popular realities, that mass culture—market-oriented and functional to the dominant power—began also to be thought of as a space where what is popular resided. Backtracking on substancialist thoughts, they began to pose questions regarding the way in which those constructions of purpose dialogued with the ways to feel, to think, and to narrate characteristic to popular sectors, who found in mass fictions and information, desirable food, places to be recognized and to interact. In sum, they began to formulate new questions around that mass culture that did not operate by imposition but rather by seduction, as a part of a process of hegemony construction characteristic of capitalistic modernity (Martín Barbero 1987). The debate was also intense on popular radio stations. The question of massiveness divided the waters and options were sharply differentiated. Either the radios—representatives of the popular sectors, mediators of their voice—were limited to be a sort of group media, i.e., to restrict their communication strategies to a certain collective and end up “preaching to the choir”—as it used to be said—or they wanted the voice of those sectors excluded from the public speech, but aware of their situation of submission, to be amplified to reach the people as a whole, the large majorities. In other terms, they either limited their technological potential in terms of reach, instantaneity, and impact, or they went out to find audiences, offering an alternative message. At the beginning of the 1990s, a preparatory document for the VIII Ordinary Assembly of ALER, outlined: “What is popular in radio is not only the sound of liberation, of demands and organization, but also the sounds of voices in the kitchen and the street, in the tavern and the temple: voices that express themselves from their culture and their daily life,” And they added: “At the same time, we acknowledge that it is up to us to continue to be ‘the other’ communication, the one that protests, claims and builds on the interests of the people. We know that this is not achieved with theoretical speeches, but being connected to the life of the audience, to their own communication spaces and to the ways the people have to understand and to express their life” (ALER 1991). At the present time, those communication spaces have been radically transformed and popular radio stations face new sociocultural designs that bring about crises and redefinitions. Media becoming dominant in society—the growing articulation between social practices, production technologies, and the gathering of information—places radio in a space of renovated habits and cultural uses. The traditional distinction between informative and recreational media explodes; daily routines, as well as

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consumption environments and modes are shattered; the notions of currentness, sources, and even newsworthiness, are modified; enunciators proliferate; we live under the illusion of a democratic dialoging hive of speakers supported in networks. On our continent media concentration exceeds the internationally allowed standards but the resort to figures such as prosumers seems enough to close the gap between those who have the power of the public word and those who do not. In that framework broadcasters wonder again for a purpose to their practice, aware that there are no possibilities to modify the unfair economic, social, and political order in which they operate and popular sectors develop their life, unless some words, some voices, emerge, with the ability to interrupt, to confront the dominant discourse (see Flores-Márques, this book). The collision between the will of representation and the genuine expression of what is popular on the part of radio stations, and the lack of full acceptance of its complexity, was also evidenced facing the transformations of the political landscape in Latin America. During the 1960s and until the mid-1970s, with different modalities and intensities, party, union, religious and cultural revolutionary or liberating forces—according to their self-denomination—promoted the emergence and development of movements in favor of popular demands and national and sector affirmation. Those were the practices that popular radio stations wanted to strengthen and to make visible; the ones they went along with and from which they were nurtured. Somehow, the popular subject, the addressee and object of the work of the radios, was an empirical subject, easily identifiable and ideologically recognizable. The military coups and the advance of conservative forces marked a period of strong repression and regression on the continent. During the 1970s, violent military coups dismantled the more combative organizations and popular movements; in the following decade the advance of neoliberal ideas turned the market into an arbiter of social relationships and promoted reformations of the state that brought along the neglect of basic services. That placed the popular sectors in a situation of survival, limiting their possibilities for material development and their possibilities to imagine future projects. Also, the transformations of the economic structure implied the loss of centrality of union organizations that used to be the backbone of the popular field—the Bolivian mines proletariat, the Argentinean industrial working class, for example—weakening them. That field was redefined at the same time with the advent of other agents and

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organizations, bearers of new demands and proposals: the unemployed, the self-employed, the women, the impoverished middle classes. In the face of that fragmentation and alteration of the popular field and its organizations, and the reservations about the ideological-political certainties that guided them in previous decades, popular radio stations experienced a strong crisis that was expressed in operational problems and a loss of horizons. An investigation about the validity and relevance of these radios carried out by ALER during 1999 revealed the extent of the crisis. The study (Geerts and Van Oeyen 2001) gives an account of the dents left on popular radio stations by the breakdown of national revolutionary projects and their political and ideological references; the loss of hope in collective projects and a notorious advance of individualistic behavior; the ideological setback of agents such as the Catholic Church on account of processes of media concentration. But it also acknowledges the emergence of numerous articulate movements around torn-away rights, new unsatisfied necessities, and even around the will to rethink the political-cultural order: the reinforcement of the problem of the human rights, the discussion of gender, identity, and ethnic perspectives; the re-elaboration of concepts such as democracy and citizenship. Since the 1990s, popular radio stations began, not without difficulties, to look for new insertions and organicities, new partnerships, and new strategies to approach those new agents committed to social transformation. They assumed in different ways the necessity to revise conceptions regarding subjectivities, the sensitive dimensions of human interactions and the articulation between public and private, which they acknowledged had been insufficiently considered in their practice. A practice that had been founded on a restrictive representation of popular sectors, delimiting their performance spaces and identity features to labor relationships and organizational procedures. Among the multiple conflicts afflicting popular life such practices had privileged those derived from the contradiction of capital-work over those of an affective, family, and generational nature. That amplification of the political purpose of their work is the other nodal point of the tension that popular radio stations are going through, and it represents—together with their acknowledgement of mass-oriented, media-driven culture as the environment for their development—their biggest contribution to popular communication, since it means to accept challenges that redefine the ways in which the construction of hegemony was thought and worked from them.

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One of those challenges has to do with the sense that acquires, for the construction of democratic power, the recognition of the diversity of oppressions and exclusions that are suffered in our societies and of the diversity of demands and strategies which they face. Although it is true that particularisms can obstruct the accumulation of power, ignoring the multiple ways and places from which the discriminatory order is challenged can continue reinforcing exclusions. In that sense, popular radio stations require to be attentive in order to detect the emergence of groups and movements that struggle to express themselves, and they need to give space to the plurality of expressions that demand another possible order. The acceptance of that challenge imposes another. Explicitly, popular radio stations play a new role: to be aggregation spaces. However minor or irrelevant a demand, a rebuttal to the existing power or a transformation proposal may seem, it should find its place in that framework of voices that radios are: a place to dialogue with other demands and proposals. If the logic of power operates to assure isolation in individuality and particularity, if in mass media isolated cases cannot make their causes understood, much less find correlations and preview collective strategies, popular radio stations begin to be thought of as bridges that make it possible to recognize relationships and to establish convergences and which, at the same time, allow contradictions and even irreducible antagonisms to be expressed. In that sense, popular radio stations dispute with hegemonic media what I usually call the map of citizenship. Against the proliferation of individuals and communities isolated from each other who complain on the screens and in the airwaves because of their sufferings; against the irruption—also partial—of proposals, what popular radio stations intend to make visible is a fabric made of threads of different thicknesses and colors, in combinations changing the ranks and hierarchies established in the priorities of rulers, in the agenda of the media, in the cultural offers of the market. It is a bet on that new map, on that new sound landscape, to make it easier to understand the regularities and connections that exist between different types of exclusion and the possibility to collectivize alternatives of inclusion and fairness. In the same sense, popular radio stations dispute the political and cultural agenda of hegemonic media, providing instead the “socially necessary” information (Schiller 1996), without which the gap between those who have the technical resources to gather data, analyze it, and then decide on its use and diffusion, and those who do not, grows day by day.

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For that reason, assuming their character as mediators and articulators, popular radio stations can, with the technology with which many of them count on and the experience developed in multiple interactions and networks, offer themselves as data archives, live memory of struggles, amplifiers of protests, demands and proposals at the regional, national, and even international levels. One last consideration. As a mass medium inserted into an inceasingly concentrated market and in a technological reality that multiplies sources, enunciators, and devices to access very diverse messages, these radio stations continue betting on producing alternative knowledge, words, and ways to act, in order to build equal and democratic societies, where all can exercise their right to communication. It also supposes a permanent tension, because they face limitations imposed by the context in which they operate: if they are not listened to by large majorities, they do not fulfill their objectives, but neither do they achieve their goals if they submit totally to the logic of that context. And what they discover day by day in practice is that, in order to reiterate what was outlined at the beginning of this chapter, there are no models or recipes that may guarantee an alternative popularity to a radio station. Each one of them builds on, in a dialogue with their audience, its strategies to be unique and to represent that space of identification and collective action as the function for which it exists. Some achieve it by working meticulously with local information that does not appear in the commonplace media. Others achieve it by addressing the cultural specificity of certain age or ethnic groups. Still others by confronting the opinions of the hegemonic media with thorough investigations and irrefutable sources. There are those who undertake online broadcasts, as a way to reach digital natives; but there are also those who bet on traditional methods, and are present in public squares and markets. Now, like never before, radio stations are diversified and go into particulars, in order to confront a growing homogenization. They must also give an account of the countless voices that should be listened to when building a society of equals. Because, in a nutshell, popular radio stations are made from the presence and speech of the subjects of those voices.

References ALER. (1991). La radio popular en América Latina hoy. Documento, Quito.

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Geerts, A., & Van Oeyen, V. (2001). La radio popular frente al nuevo siglo: estudio de vigencia e incidencia. Quito: ALER. López Vigil, J. I. (1984). Radio Pío XII. Una mina de coraje. Quito: ALER. Martín Barbero, J. (1987). De los medios a las mediaciones. México-Barcelona: Gustavo Gili. Mata, M. C. (2011). Comunicación Popular. Continuidades, transformaciones y desafíos. Oficios Terrestres, Año XVII, N° 26, Facultad de Periodismo y Comunicación Social, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, La Plata. Schiller, H. (1996). Information inequality. London: Routledge. Vaca Gutiérrez, H. (2017). Procesos interactivos mediáticos de Radio Sutatenza con los campesinos de Colombia. Cali: UA de Occidente.

CHAPTER 9

Popular Communication in Latin America: A Look at the Actors Who Build Bridges Nívea Canalli Bona Translated by Alexandra Barros

The challenge of defining the “popular communicator” in Latin America is tackled by different authors. Some of them, like myself, were armed only with curiosity, but had a history of witnessing and participating in social struggles, in a deeply unfair and unjust country regarding the distribution of resources, or dignity of means to live well. Brazil was never an example of a welfare state, and if we look carefully at its neighbors the landscape was not much different and, sadly, has not changed much. But it is exactly because of this context of deep inequality that some very specific types of actions, groups, and congregations arose, and, hand-­ in-­hand with them, specific ways of using communication were created. They produced a very local identity that mixes strategies, tactics (Certeau 2013), and a habitus (Bourdieu 2011) which combines creative ways of doing communication with scarce resources. What defines this reflection is N. Canalli Bona (*) Núcleo de Estudos de Comunicação Comunitária e Local (COMUNI), São Paulo, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. C. Suzina (ed.), The Evolution of Popular Communication in Latin America, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62557-3_9

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the goal to understand how these people, these popular actors, doers, are developing communication for social organizations and communities. I am going to discuss some of what surrounds and provokes these actions within the context of what we understand as popular communication in Latin America. Subsequently, the goal is to draw a tentative profile of this popular individual, as his/her actions define and change his/her habitus, both being transformed by the cause they fight for, by the social and economic place they are in, by the formal (or not) education, and by the groups they are part of. This communicator is a patchwork of different variables and our aim here is to identify how these variables influence this actor, the popular communicator.

The Context If we look into some historical aspects of the way Latin America was colonized (not to say raped, looted, and plundered), we can understand that a brutal form of occupation took place with the help of some sectors of the Catholic Church (Galeano 2010; Ribeiro 2006). As a result of the said colonization, an extremely unequal society was born and remains until today, which means that an elite concentrates a large part of the resources, whether in the form of property, access to education, or human rights (see Custódio and also Orue Pozzo, this book). On the other extreme of the social spectrum are the descendants of the native peoples, many of whom were decimated for their lands, and the descendants of enslaved people brought from África to Latin America to do the hard labor on sugarcane and coffee farms. In addition, there are the descendants of the white Ibero-Europeans sent to colonize the vast territory and, later, those who came because of economic difficulties/problems provoked by the two twentieth-century World Wars. This is the picture of a land rich in resources that are really poorly distributed. These groups (elites and exploited) display their tensions on multiple levels of the tangible world. One example is the dispute over land on which to plant, and to live off, that opposes on one side the big agroindustry (with its machines, pesticides, and large tracts of land to guarantee huge harvests for export), and on the other side groups like quilombolas,1 Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (Landless Workers Movement), and native tribes (with their traditional way of cultivating 1

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maroons.

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food). Others disputes involve the following groups: large state corporations (lots of them internationally funded) and neighborhoods in the cities with the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Teto (Roofless Workers Movement); tailings dams disasters and local communities (see Mariana in 2015 and Brumadinho  in 2019); power plants, and local communities such as Belo Monte (hydroelectric power plant), in Pará State, and Povos da Floresta (Peoples of the Forest2), among numerous others. These conflicts, historical and current, are the sparks that trigger the creation of what we call social movements, social organizations, or community associations. The truth is: Latin America was never released from international exploitation. Every time a country tries to elect someone who can represent the interests of these popular groups, the elites manage, often with the help of other powerful countries, to regain power, and not always democratically. This is why almost all countries in Latin America had decades of dictatorships, some more violent than others. Therefore, regarding the disputes in different spheres of society, the one concerning information was, and still is, one of the most important because it determines who has a voice, who has the right to tell their side of the story. And this specific dispute takes place in the intersection of the fields of education and communication. The opportunity to go to school and get a good education has always been scarcer for popular groups. Universities have always been reserved for the elite. To add to that, media outlets are controlled by a small number of the elite. In Brazil, for example, the main media networks (including TV broadcasting, newspapers, and radio stations) are in the hands of five families (Cavalcanti 1993, p. 41). A large number of radio stations are in hands of political representatives, which is forbidden by law. And if this was not enough, electronic outlets like TV and radio stations are public concessions in the federal constitution, but often used as private property, as Biz and Guareschi (2005, p.  29), explain: “the understanding of the concessionaires, and, consequently of the population, is that if ‘I have’ a radio or TV, I do whatever I want with them, I say what I want and allow who I want to speak there, because, in the end, this is mine.” This concentration of media outlets did not come about by chance. It is a well-written plan to control information that people consume, thereby, 2  Indigenous peoples, maroon communities, riverbank dwellers, forest collectors. (https:// peoplesoftheforest.org/).

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maintaining the status quo. To this effect, Biz and Guareschi (2005, p. 114) understand that there is a kind of censorship, a social/economic one, which prevents people in general from having access to media outlets and to speak about their life projects.

The Popular in Latin America It is clear that all this repression and decades of violence and exploitation would be fertile land on which to grow various forms of resistance, like social movements, popular associations, and communities, as we have said. Sometimes riots and protests are the result. In Latin America, this resistance is fed by a mix of eagerness to survive, a thirst for justice, and a mystique3 that is partly inspired by “religious culture” (mostly Catholic) but mostly transcends the boundaries of the “religious” spaces (see Contreras Baspineiro, this book). So, in this way, some social movements and organizations arose in CEBs (Comunidades Eclesiais de Base) and the Liberation Theology (which challenged the Vatican in some ways) was a new approach forged in Latin America, with a rich experience in Brazil. In other countries some sectors of the Catholic Church were also very present, fighting alongside these groups (see Uranga, this book). One of the most studied Latin American authors and activist who worked with popular activism through education and communication was Mario Kaplun. He devoted his life to reflecting, studying, and creating ways of bringing these two fields in a liberating way to the people who needed them most. The Argentinian intellectual was the creator/mentor of the Cassete-Foro, an activity that enabled campesinos4 to solve their problems in a democratic and participative way. In the 1970s, the technique used cassette tapes to record group discussions of campesinos about their daily problems. A group of editors from the community would select the main solutions and send them to other groups of campesinos in a horizontal exchange of ideas. The idea was applied in Uruguay and, subsequently, in other countries. Mario Kaplun and his wife lived in many 3  Dictionaries state that mystique is a framework of doctrines, ideas, beliefs, or the like, constructed around a person or object, endowing the person or object with enhanced value or profound meaning. In our use, mystique brings all these things, and a “way” of making things happen, that can bring about Christian beliefs like the search for justice, and food for all, and includes the use of songs, symbols, and rituals that normally invigorates activists about the cause. Sometimes, mystique can come with a type of ideology. 4  Small farmers who have the family working the land.

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Latin American countries mostly because dictatorships would chase them out of the country. He also worked with popular radio and his most famous project was linked to the Catholic faith. He created a series of radio shows called Padre Vicente: Diario de un Cura del Barrio (Rev. Vicente: a journal of a neighborhood priest). The show had five series with more than 200 episodes.5 Kaplun´s list of achievements regarding popular communication materials (radio shows, books, and group activities) is immense. He also experienced success with different methodologies of popular communication and education which, in parallel with the works of Paulo Freire, set the tone of popular communication and popular education in Latin America. “For him, the type of communication you do is a reflection of the society you live in or you want to build” (Bona et al. 2007). Inspired by training in this path of popular communication or by an instinctive (tactical) perception of survival, many popular organizations ended up using alternative communication to express their problems, to work on the awareness of society in relation to their demands, and to position themselves against the hegemonic communication. Plays, posters, music, marches, and pamphlets are rich examples of some communication strategies (Peruzzo 1998, p. 115). Later, the Internet would come to give hope of more space to all kinds of voices (see Flores-Márquez, this book). Popular communication is a recurring concept in Latin America Studies and can, sometimes, be understood as alternative, communitarian, or local communication based on the context in history and the protagonist groups (Peruzzo 2008; Festa 1986; Kaplun 2002). To discuss the popular communicator, we understand that “popular” comes from the so-called popular movements in Latin America—indigenous people, the underprivileged, campesinos, and all groups that are excluded from the dominant elite culture—who produce a specific narrative opposed to the dominant one (Suzina 2016).

Who Is the Popular Communicator? Since 2003, one of the main lines of research I have been following aims to discover who is the popular communicator. This actor is not a North American volunteer doing charitable work, nor the student in the riots in Turkey protesting against the government, nor is it the German housewife 5

 https://radioteca.net/audioseries/el-padre-vicente-diario-de-un-cura-de-barrio/.

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who acts together with the neighbors to bring about some changes in the local school. Although some of the actions could be similar, the popular communicator in Latin America carries out a mystique that intertwines different struggles that are, somehow, historically the same: the resistance against centuries of exploitation and absence of minimum dignity. This struggle pervades the racial, gender, and minorities struggles. That is why this communicator is a patchwork of indigenous, black, poor, women, non-binary people, and their ordeals. Since the media outlets are in the hands of the elite, underprivileged people seldom have space for their own narrative on the news or other kinds of shows on TV, radio, and in newspapers. Nor do they have money to produce mass media shows to tell their side of the story. However, somehow, some stories are covered by journalists from mass media outlets, portraying them with a fair approach. My initial question was: how can some people break through and make their appearance on the mass media agenda while others cannot? My findings, in that specific research project (Bona 2003) with an organization that shelters homeless teenagers, were that two professional journalists bridged the connection between the “technical” and mainstream agenda used in mass media productions and the more “informal” language used in popular organizations. The two of them had deep knowledge of both sides: they knew what angle the mass media outlets would “buy.” They also knew what would make the movement run away (or not), from the exposure that could stigmatize the teenagers even more than the news usually did. After that finding, my interest shifted to understanding how the popular communicator would decide the communication strategies and what would influence their choices. In essence, who is the popular communicator? What makes up this specific actor that is engaged in social movements, social organizations or community groups and associations? To answer this question, I applied an array of techniques and methods in order to observe the movement’s influence on the communicators´ work, their media trajectory (which media outlets they utilize on a daily basis), the formal education they possibly had, and to understand if they are activists or members of the group’s cause. There is a specific characteristic in this field that contrasts the professional training in communication with the beliefs and values this communicator holds. Technical training provided by universities generally prepares this actor for activities related to the market. So, that the future journalist learns how to identify newsworthy facts, how to write the article

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with a structured lead and the upside-down pyramid, and how to interview official sources and witnesses. Those studying advertising learn how to create an advertisement, how to use the benefits of a product to sell more, how to make beautiful radio spots or TV inserts. Also, under the communication umbrella (division made in the pedagogic curriculum of the universities), we can find the public relations student learning how to prepare appealing events to promote companies or ideas, and learning how to develop relationships with stakeholders to prevent or diminish problems with companies/products images. The higher education factor is also important in the Latin American context since other kinds of technical media training barely exist. There is, as well, seldom any “on-the-job training” which is similarly offered to professionals in Europe or North America without a degree. In Latin America, having a higher education diploma is still something that distinguishes some individuals from others. Let us remember that elites have priority access to education, and normally this education would be taught and applied to emphasize the market agenda and maintain the status quo. In recent periods, efforts made by left-wing governments contributed to making access to higher education easier for popular groups, and some actors had the chance to get their degrees in communication. In addition, social movements and organizations started to understand the advantages of a good communication strategy to state their demands and convince the audience. In this scenario, professionals trained in journalism, advertising, and public relations have seen a market increasingly thirsty for communication professionals who know how to meet the needs of creating information and relationship flows with their stakeholders.

The Cause and the Activist Although having higher education gives one a higher “rank” over the popular communicator, it is not the technical knowledge that defines this communicator. In fact, it is definitely the other way around. The interviews conducted with communicators and activists from different groups (Bona 2008, 2014) stated that what renders the popular communicator is the belief this person has in the cause. It is the motivation to contribute to causes involving children, land, black people, gender rights, indigenous rights, animal rights, human rights, the struggles in the neighborhood or yet, to fight against injustice, which makes this professional, whether a graduate or not, perform this role.

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Another side to it is a conflict created when the professional journalist, trained to report news in a balanced way, works with communication for a specific cause. Giannotti and Santiago (1997) reflect on this question when they think about how trade union communication should be done. For them, the journalist who decides to dedicate himself/herself to trade union communication should give up the mythical impartiality and think about broader issues, being his/her own editor (see Mata, this book). The popular communicator in Latin America can be professionally trained, nonetheless retaining their ideological beliefs which could lead them to work with different causes. Similarly, we observed some individuals without technical qualifications developing creative and strong communication processes. Their knowledge comes from the movements and community. It is almost an intuitive way of doing communication that is assimilated in their daily work. These practices sometimes would be wrongly portrayed by the mass media that do not understand (and sometimes do not want to understand) this whole “alternative” world. That explains why, for a long time, popular communicators did not spend time trying to have their voices heard in the mass media outlets. From experience, they knew they would be stereotyped, so they preferred to dedicate themselves to other kinds of “radical media” (Downing 2001). There was a case of a “graduate” who was performing as a popular communicator in a non-profit organization who said he was taught how to access the mainstream media as a public relation professional, how to write a beautiful press-release to stimulate the mainstream outlets to follow his stories and give some space to their civil organization demands. But he preferred to not waste his time trying to attract the “eyes” of mainstream media since, in his opinion, they always “change” the approach or they do not give the exact attention he would expect to the subject. He preferred to focus his work on communicating with stakeholders and other specific audiences using other kinds of techniques he learned in the non-profit organization (Bona 2014). This relation between what is achieved from technical education, from life trajectory, or from the influence of activism can be explained through three concepts: habitus by Bourdieu; and tactics and strategies by Certeau.

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Field and Habitus We understand that popular communicators have their practices constantly traversed by both the practical knowledge of their vocational training and the political, technical, and social fields that aggregate the practices of the communities in which they are embedded. For Barros (“field and habitus in Pierre Bourdieu‘s sociology integrate a whole ontological piece. There is not one without the other. They are inseparable.” Thus, the habitus of a social actor is structured by social positions in any field. But this field is structured by these social positions in continuous movement. Thus, both habitus and field are mutually structured and structuring (Barros et  al. 2003, p. 12). In “The Influence of Journalism” (1997), Bourdieu asserts that the mechanisms of journalism exert a constant influence on journalists who are part of it, mainly on the forces that are interrelated in the process of reporting. This reflection is useful here to understand how the field also influences the habitus of popular communicators and how this dialectic relation occurs, from this habitus built in this field with the communication. After all, the communicator who studied journalism will not be in a newsroom, so this scenario (field) of news production does not participate in the building of their habitus. The public relations professional will not be in a private or state organization. Advertising professionals will not be in the “field” of products and services markets and/or consumption. The action scene of these communicators will be the social group or community and the entire context of social disputes. It is another field; one in which they did not (or rarely) have formal training at university. The field would be the community or social movement, which would include their demands, their historical context and path, so this communicator would be influenced by their media trajectory which, as a field, would also contribute to the configuration of their habitus and action. At first glance, what is understood is that the concept of habitus proposed by Bourdieu refers to the incorporation of schemes that guide the practices from the perspective of reproducing social structures and which have some stability. But in the sense of a dynamic habitus it is possible to think of a continuous “edition,” reconstruction, reconfiguration that can arise from the communicator’s experiences and actions. When, and if, these communicators have the possibility of questioning this habitus, they

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disrupt and reconfigure it, and there may be innovation in the way of seeing and doing popular communication.

The Communicator’s “Works” by Certeau Michel de Certeau did not believe in a dogmatic order inflicted by the authorities, and turned his attention to the nonconformists’ behavior, even those who were silenced, those who changed the imposed truth or resisted in a practical way on a daily basis (2013, p. 18). For him, people at the consumption level end up reinventing the uses of some common strategies every day, and this is almost invisible. The analysis of the ordinary “work” included all sorts of activities, from aid association for immigrants, girls trying to learn to manage their own health, educators in the prison system or slums, minorities defending a tradition, and a regional language against a centralizing and unifying state, among others. For him, everyday life is invented in a thousand ways, and his aim was to understand the operative combinations that build a specific user’s culture, commonly referred to as consumers, and who are often considered to be the dominated ones, which, to him, does not mean docile or passive. Somehow, it is possible to see the popular communicator from Latin America in this model. The author offers two ways of understanding these common “doings,” by ordinary individuals: based on strategies and on tactics. For him, strategy is what is formalized, is calculated through the relationship of forces, and can be isolated in a subject of will and power. The gesture here is Cartesian, planned, distinguishing the field and the attitude: “The political, economic, and scientific rationality was built according to this strategic model” (2013, p.  45). Whereas the tactic is the improvisation. It is within the domain of the “other,” there is an absence of self, it takes advantage of the moment, and depends on timing to play with the events to transform them into a fruitful occasion. What is gained is not preserved, it uses the lapses in the situation to make its move; it is astute. In short, for the author, the tactic is the art of the weak. For him, shopping, cooking, speaking, moving are some of the examples of the gestures of the weak in an order established by the strong ones. It is a doing within the breaches of a system (Certeau 2013, p. 98). The studies (interviews and observations) that I carried out over the years reflected that what is seen as almost intuitive communication tactics, performed by popular communicators, can become reflected and

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reconfigured in habitus (when the field, the organization, helps to shape them), often turning into carefully planned strategies and fulfilled within the communication tasks. One example comes from a journalist who was the popular communicator for a group who occupied some empty buildings in an action of resistance against evictions in that city. He wanted to persuade a TV channel to cover the cause, so they would come and do some stories on those homeless families and their reasons for being there. For the day of the visit/interview he asked one of the families to mop the floor while the reporters were there. The intention, a tactic, was to make them feel guilty for stepping on the recently cleaned floor and to take a more merciful approach when telling their story. He did not learn that at university. But instead, as the “weapon of the weak,” he used what he had on hand to communicate and achieve his goal.

Locating the Field and the Popular Communicator’s Habitus It is accepted here that journalists, advertisers, and public relations professionals have a certain knowledge, both technical and humanistic, provided by the university that also ends up setting standards of social settings where these professionals must act. Very few universities offer, as a professional prospect, the option for this communicator to work in social movements, communities, or social organizations. In a simplistic way, it was expected that journalists will work in media outlets, public relations professionals in institutional communication, and advertisers in the development of arguments relative to consumption. What has been witnessed in popular communicators is a reconfiguration of these perspectives. Prior research (Bona 2008, 2014; Moreira 2012; Valdez Sarabia 2019) revealed popular communicators from all programs and some who did not have any of these degrees being part of an ongoing reframing of this habitus arising from university education. One example is a communicator who graduated in advertising working in a trade union as a communication manager who often performs other activities not closely related to the area. Thus, for example, the advertiser’s habitus, which was to promote products, is reframed, and reconfigures itself according to the organization’s demands and his activism also relates to voluntary “doings” in social movements. In sum, the habitus changes, it “rehabits.”

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The same happens with a journalist who decides to establish a communication company and devotes herself to learning how to develop websites to help the partner “doing” communication for social organizations for a fair price or for free. This journalist also develops different skills and becomes a “Jack of all trades.” Or the public relations professional working for homeless people, writing articles and helping to produce videos. So, he/she is not defending the interests of a company as would be expected from his/her qualification. Other observations revealed others leaving the habitus of journalism to become edu-communicators, a mix between a communicator and a teacher, who teaches how to communicate. The reconfiguration of the habitus happens with the practice of democratizing communication techniques, forms, and processes with various communities and when training is used beyond its purposes to create and recreate other communication formats.

Forged in the Field Despite witnessing some popular communicators with a university degree lately, the majority of popular communicators are forged in the field. These actors rely on the knowledge of other popular communicators who would teach them the stepping-stones of how to do communication in popular groups and communities. This communicator learns every day, practicing, doing, and almost intuitively deciding what to do. Clearly, here we are observing communicators that are in the field of the weak, according to Certeau, because they represent in their “doings” those who are the weakest in society. In this way, placing communicators in this “field,” we see within the “doings”, processes that are strategic, which are planned and measured, and others that are built on the tactical level. They demonstrate strategic communication when they develop processes based on the results they can offer (measuring outcomes and reassessing the “doings” according to the results). On the other hand, we can understand that those who see themselves as activists have a more tactical way of doing communication. They build their knowledge daily and seek the gaps in the system. One testimony that represents this individual comes from a popular communicator with a degree talking about a popular communicator (activist) from MST (Movimento dos Sem Terra) who did not go to university:

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he used to get on our nerves, often asking to come with us to the events and he used to ask for tips and such. Now, we are no longer the ones who report the actions of the MST. He is the one, the best person to do this, because he comes from there. He will portray the image from his standpoint. […] He used to keep a website updated every two hours about what was going on at the event. In other words, he can’t go to mass media TV, but with his camera, with his editing, with free software, he would go there, record, bring the tape, edit and post it on the internet. On time. Not with the agility and quality that TV has; however, he was reporting what was happening. (Anderson Leandro—interview on December 18, 2007) (Bona 2008)

This can pretty much be used as an example of any popular communicator in Latin America. From an array of tactics, according to Certeau, this actor uses the available resources and informal knowledge to build a communication process, create documents, reports, and videos. Based on this example, many organizations built their own way of training popular communicators. That is why, as Kaplun said, education and communication go hand-in-hand. While most of the popular communicators learn the technical content by practicing in their daily work, popular communication training courses have been a constant since the dictatorships in Latin America. And these courses, events, and other kinds of meetings to share experiences are happening now with the help of the Internet. This is why some of these actors say they are “not sure” what they would call their role. They say they feel like both educators and communicators at the same time. So, the practice can be technical, learned at the university or in the community, but there are no boundaries between the education field and the communication field. What is learned in theory or experienced is shared with the peers in a training course or in daily activities. I consider myself a popular communicator. But I understand that I do this as an educator. In my opinion these two things are really related. When you are a communicator who is going to do a workshop, to perform this work, you are also an educator. But I consider myself a popular communicator, because sometimes I also do a job that is not education, that is really popular communication, dissemination, covering things that have to do with the struggle, with the organizations. (Interview in Moreira 2012, p. 62)

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Kaplun’s legacy is explained here. For him, the type of communication or education we perform is consistent with the society we live in. In his analysis we live in a society where the “banking” model of education by Paulo Freire is still the main one, and it is reflected in the mainstream media, which, in his words, is only information, not communication. In this teaching format, there is one-way communication, from the teacher to the student and from the TV/radio/newspaper to the receiver. There is no interaction between sender and receiver in these concepts. But what we see in the habitus of the popular communicator whether being a tactic or a strategy is an attempt to change the communication process in an eagerness to change the society. I think that, often, most of the time, I do things that are not journalism. These days I went to a place and was asked if I was a Social Worker. But I think that the strategic vision of communication, within what we do, regardless of in fact doing communication, in this case, contributes a lot. I understand that having this critical approach that communication gives you is also very cool. […] Yes, in communication, like it or not, you know, you learn to see things also in a more critical way. (Interview in Bona 2008, p. 236)

A critical and participative process of communication is, generally, the common ground between popular communicators in Latin America and this modus operandi is often observed among communicators coming from university and/or raised in the community. Clearly, with the training phase of audiovisual producers and integral popular communicators—I am the one who does this part—we give tools to a school, in a theoretical way and with the opportunity to practice with the camera. This is my way of contributing to the democratization of the media and make it possible for people to create their own media to inform themselves. (Interview in Valdez Sarabia 2019, p. 132)

In these words, this is the way the popular communicator sees himself/ herself. That is why the concept developed by Kaplun is still so contemporary and it needs to be revisited often. Communication and education are the keywords of popular communication, so emancipation and development for change are real. It is evident that the popular communicator aims to establish a habitus which is influenced by the community (field) and is reconfigured to be critical, participative, and democratic, setting the groundwork for a society based on a different logic, as Kaplun (2002) stated.

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The Communicator as a Bridge and Metamorphosis In Latin America, popular communication was born to resist and face the concentration of the media and to be the voice of the unheard. This very type of communication has specific characteristics based on the context, resources available, group identities, and the knowledge of the actor, the popular communicator. This actor is, consistently, seen as a bridge. A bridge that links social movements and their demands with the mass media. He/she links communities and popular media outlets. He/she links communication strategies and social organizations’ needs. He/she links the technical knowledge from universities and the mystique that is born in the community. The popular communicator is the result of a group of variables that construct their profile: personality and talents, skills, beliefs, knowledge, movement and community influences, technical training, and media consumption. And, it is this professional who, little by little, has been developing communication in organizations, contributing to stimulating a broader view of the role of the communicator in society, guiding the press with new perspectives, building networks with the university to promote a broader curriculum, and educating grass-roots groups on communication strategies aiming at empowerment. At the same time, this popular communicator has his/her practices intertwined with the fields they occupy (newsroom, universities, community, movement) forming then, their habitus, a dynamic edition and re-­ edition of what the field asks of this communicator and what this communicator has to offer. Included in this constant transformation are the strategies and tactics conceived and applied when this popular communicator sees the need for specific ways of doing communication, sowing the seeds for a different model of society arising from a critical way of doing communication.

References Barros, F., Clovis, M., & Luís, M.  S. (2003). O habitus na comunicação. São Paulo: Paulus. Biz, O., & Guareschi, P. (2005). Mídia e democracia. Evangraf: Porto Alegre/RS. Bona, N. C. (2003). Estratégias de comunicação das organizações da sociedade civil. In Monografia de pós-graduação. Curitiba: PUC-PR. Bona, N. C. (2008). A comunicação e o papel do comunicador nas ONGs sociais. 2008. 270 f. Master’s tesis.  - Universidade Metodista de São Paulo, São Bernardo do Campo-SP.

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Bona, N. C. (2014). Práticas Comunicacionais Digitais de Comunicadores Inseridos em Movimentos Sociais de Curitiba e Sevilha na perspectiva da Cidadania Comunicativa. Doctoral dissertation. Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos, São Leopoldo-RS, 389 p. Bona, N. C., Contecote, M., & Costa, L. (2007). Kaplun e a comunicação popular. In III Conferência Brasileira de Mídia Cidadã, São Bernardo do Campo— SP. GT—Enfoques teóricos e políticas públicas de comunicação. Bourdieu, P. (1997). A influência do Jornalismo. In Sobre a televisão. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar. Bourdieu, P. (2011). O poder simbólico. Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil. Cavalcanti Filho, José Paulo (Org.). (1993). Informação e Poder: ampla liberdade de informar x responsabilidade no exercício dessa liberdade. São Paulo/ SP: Record. Certeau, M. de. (2013). A invenção do cotidiano. 1. Artes de fazer. 20ª Ed. Petrópolis-RJ. Vozes. Downing, J.  D. H. (2001). Mídia Radical. Rebeldia nas Comunicações e Movimentos Sociais. Tradução de Silvana Vieira. São Paulo: Editora Senac. Festa, R. (1986). Movimentos sociais, comunicação popular e alternativa. In R. Silva Festa, Carlos Eduardo Lins da (Orgs.), Comunicação popular e alternativa no Brasil (pp. 9–30). São Paulo: Paulinas. Galeano, E. (2010). As veias abertas da América Latina. Tradução de Sérgio Faraco. Porto Alegre: L&PM editora. Giannotti, V., & Santiago, C. (1997). Comunicação Sindical. A arte de falar para milhões. Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes. Kaplun, M. (2002) Una pedagogía de la comunicación (el comunicador popular). La Habana: Editorial Caminos. Moreira, A. (2012). O perfil e a atuação dos/as comunicadores/as em projetos de educomunicação dos movimentos populares (A. Moreira, Ed.). Curitiba: UFPR. Peruzzo, C. M. K. (1998). Comunicação nos movimentos populares: a participação na construção da cidadania (2nd ed.). Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes. Peruzzo, C.  M. K. (2008). Conceitos de comunicação popular, alternativa e comunitária revisitados. Reelaborações no setor. Palabra Calve, 11(2). Ribeiro, D. (2006). O povo Brasileiro: a formação e o sentido do Brasil. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. Suzina, A. (2016). Digital resources in popular media practices in Brazil: strategies to reduce asymmetries in the public debate. In Observatorio (OBS*) Journal (Special Issue, Media, Internet and Social Movements in the context of asymmetries). Lisboa. Vol. 10 nr. especially pp. 11–34. Valdez Sarabia, M. F. M. (2019). La comunicación popular como acción política: una mirada a las orientaciones, significaciones y estructura organizativa de sus actores colectivos en Venezuela. Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, FLACSO Ecuador Departamento de Estudios Internacionales y Comunicación, Quito.

PART III

Decolonial Perspectives

CHAPTER 10

The Decolonial Nature of Comunicação Popular Leonardo Custódio

Introduction The anti-hegemonic urgency that the term “decolonization” entails seems evident. Centuries of European territorial expansion and domination through colonization have stamped today’s capitalist world with the blood of indigenous and enslaved people as well as the exploitation of natural resources around the globe. While most formal colonial structures have succumbed to struggles for independence, their legacies remain evident today in the primacy of whiteness in socio-political and economic relations, in the normativity of Western governance in politics, in the naturalized exploitation of underprivileged bodies for profit, in the destruction of nature by compulsive extractivism, and other aspects of contemporaneity rooted in colonialism. Therefore, the prefix de- added to the verb “colonize” and the noun “colonization” suggests a process of stripping, as

L. Custódio (*) Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. C. Suzina (ed.), The Evolution of Popular Communication in Latin America, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62557-3_10

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much as possible, whatever effects of colonialism from all dimensions of life. For these reasons, the perception that the term “decolonization” has become a comfortable buzzword in and out of academia is very unsettling. Scholars and activists who belong to social groups that have historically suffered from the atrocities and legacies of colonialism have denounced the danger of depoliticizing the term. From an indigenous standpoint in North America, Eve Tuck, an indigenous scholar, and K.  Wayne Yang argue against the process of reducing decolonization into a metaphor. They denounce how well-meaning settler scholars who call for decolonizing schools, methods, and curricula, for example, have in fact appropriated and depoliticized decolonial discourse in ways to alleviate their guilt and complicity to power relations established in colonialism (Tuck and Yang 2012). Similarly motivated, Dr. Nayantara Sheoran Appleton, an Indian immigrant in New Zealand’s academia, proposes a different vocabulary list for practical actions (including terms like “diversification of curriculum,” “devaluing of hierarchies,” and “decentralization of knowledge production”) for scholars to avoid emptying “decolonization” of its political meaning (Appleton 2019). Other voices from South America (e.g. Rivera Cusicanqui 2012) and Africa (e.g. Hlabangane 2018) have also contested the colonial legacies in decolonial discourses and practices in predominantly white and Westernized academia (Grossfoguel et al. 2016; Bhambra et al. 2018; see also Vega, this book). This chapter is a contribution to similar debates that reinforce the socio-political character and relevance of decolonization as a term that denotes anti-hegemonic and transformative knowledge and action. My objective is to demonstrate the decolonial nature of practices of comunicação popular (in Portuguese, or comunicación popular, in Spanish). In short, comunicação popular entails community-building and contentious processes of communication created by underprivileged, marginalized, and structurally oppressed social groups. First, I position myself socio-­ politically and reflect upon what (de)colonization means from my standpoint in academia and society. Then, I analyze practices of comunicação popular as decolonial actions for social change. I illustrate my arguments with examples of favela media activist actions to prevent the spread of Covid-19  in favelas of Rio de Janeiro. The examples I present feature media activist collectives with which I familiarized through research and solidarity with favela residents engaged in media uses for social justice, human rights, and changes in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (see Custódio 2017).

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What Does “Decolonial” Mean? The unsettling feeling caused by the perception of depoliticization of decolonization as an essentially anti-hegemonic term arises from the situatedness of my learning and knowledge production (cf. Intemann 2019). I am a Black scholar from the South in academia at the north of the North. The observation, in Finland (where I live) and elsewhere in Europe, of conferences and symposiums that call for decolonization has made fundamental questions become recurrent on my mind: what does decolonization mean? How does the meaning of the imperative “decolonize” vary according to those who call for it? Political and epistemological questions like these, grounded on one’s self and positionality, tend to be derogatorily reduced and dismissed as a matter of “identity politics” (cf. Alcoff et al. 2006). However, I am referring to my Black-Brazilianess not only as an identity, but as a historical, cultural, and political evidence of the impact of colonialism and its legacies on people’s bodies, minds, social relations, and actions as political agents (cf. Bonilla-Silva and Zuberi 2008). In other words, quoting the late Abdias do Nascimento, one of Brazil’s leading Black scholars: I cannot and it does not interest me to transcend myself as social scientists declare to supposedly do in relation to their investigations. In relation to me, I consider myself to be part of the researched subject. It is only from my own experience and situation in the ethnic-cultural group to which I belong, interacting in the global context of the Brazilian society, that I can catch a glimpse of the reality that conditions and defines my being. Situation that involves me like a historical belt from which I cannot consciously escape without practicing lies, betrayals, or the distortion of my personality. (Nascimento 1978, p. 41, italics in the original)1

As a late twentieth-century descendant of the enslaved in Africa by the Portuguese, I was not colonized. I am colonial. I have no experience of ancestry and life that is not colonial. Most people like me have no idea 1  “Não posso e não me interessa transcender a mim mesmo, como habitualmente os cientistas sociais declaram supostamente fazer em relação às suas investigações. Quanto a mim, considero-me parte da matéria investigada. Somente da minha própria experiência e situação no grupo étnico-cultural a que pertenço, interagindo no contexto global da sociedade brasileira, é que posso surpreender a realidade que condiciona o meu ser e o define. Situação que me envolve qual um cinturão histórico de onde não posso escapar conscientemente sem praticar a mentira, a traição, ou a distorção da minha personalidade.”

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where their ethnic, linguistic, and cultural roots in Africa are. Most of us cannot even trace back our genealogical tree beyond our grandparents. Most of us grew up with colonial values infused into us daily through white supremacist narratives of sub-humanity shaping our character and our relationship to the public space (Nascimento 1978). Take religion, for example. As a consequence of the imposition and assimilation of Christianity over the centuries, those in Brazil who remained faithful to African religions continue, to this day, to be perceived as evil (cf. Engler and Schmidt 2016). In addition, many of us still have to wear white masks (Fanon 2017) to survive and thrive in a capitalist world where whiteness is the standard for everything positive while Blackness—and the features of other Othered social groups—remains as a trace of the dangerous threats to be surveilled and violently controlled (Mbembe 2019), the culture to be commodified (Sansone 2003), and the history of resistance (Santana 2019; Mitchell 2018) and struggle for humanity (Fanon 1967) to be ignored or mistreated as actions of a past of oppression that is wrongfully believed to no longer exist (Alves 2018). It is from within this framework of shared histories that my questions about the meaning of decolonization arise. It is also in this framework that the thinking toward an answer takes shape by, as a first step, reflecting about what the adjective “colonial” means. For that reflection, I believe it is important to highlight the difference between “colonialism” and “coloniality.” Colonialism is a term that designates a historical process. Indian scholar Ania Loomba (2015) reflects on how dictionary entries about the term do not often include the complexity of conquest and domination of other people’s land and goods. While Loomba acknowledges that similar patterns of colonial expansion have happened since ancient times, she also emphasizes the importance of identifying the difference that characterizes the colonial expansion of European nations. “European colonialisms involved a variety of techniques and patterns of domination, penetrating deep into some societies and involving a comparatively superficial contact with others, all of them produced the economic imbalance that was necessary for the growth of European capitalism and industry” (Loomba 2015, p.  22). Loomba also makes an important distinction (23–24) between administrative colonialism—as it happened in India to her native ancestors—and settler colonialism—as it happened in Brazil to my enslaved ancestors.

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In contrast, coloniality is a conceptual construct that sheds light on the material and symbolic consequences of colonialism in social life (Mignolo and Escobar 2010). The Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano coined the notion of “coloniality” in the early 1990s in an intellectual effort to re-­ think modernity from a Latin American perspective. In the essay “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality” (Quijano 2007), Quijano reflects on the history of European colonialism to argue that while the administrative domination in the southern hemisphere has ended, the colonial structure of power built on social discriminations, Eurocentric knowledge production and legitimation, and the universal character of European culture has remained to the present time. In other words, as Walter Mignolo defines it, coloniality is the nastier side of European modernity (Mignolo 2011). Following Quijano, the Puerto Rican scholar Nelson Maldonado-Torres (2007) developed a definition for coloniality that is very important for its clarity. [Coloniality] refers to long-standing patterns of power that emerged as a result of colonialism, but that define culture, labor, intersubjective relations, and knowledge production well beyond the strict limits of colonial administrations. Thus, coloniality survives colonialism. It is maintained alive in books, in the criteria for academic performance, in cultural patterns, in common sense, in the self-image of peoples, in aspiration of self, and so many other aspects of our modern experience. In a way, as modern subjects we breathe coloniality all the time and everyday. (Maldonado-Torres 2007, p. 243)

The differentiation between colonialism and coloniality contributes to grasping another set of differences related to the meanings of the prefixes anti-, post-, neo-, and de- when connected to the adjective “colonial.” Each of these prefixes indicate specific bodies of political and/or epistemological discourses. For suggesting opposition to colonialism, “anticolonial” often refers to historical-political movements and the critical thinking engaged against colonial rule across the colonized South (Elam 2017). “Postcolonial” designates both the historical legacy following the end of European colonial administration (Ivison 2017) and a diverse and conflicting field of scholarship across the humanities and social sciences dedicated to interrogating the colonial past, its aftermath, and remaining relevance in culture, politics, economy, and society (Gandhi 2019). Referring to a historical phenomenon, “neocolonial” suggests a mutation

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and the persistence of colonial characteristics in  local and global power relations defined by cultural, financial, and economic domination, control, and subjection in today’s capitalist and neoliberal world (Ponzanesi 2018). Finally, “decolonial” designates both the historical movements to rip countries apart from colonial rule and the intellectual action to dismantle coloniality during and after colonialism (Mignolo and Escobar 2010). That is, actions deemed as decolonial target four interrelated dimensions of the colonial matrix of power as defined by Walter Mignolo: the historical and systematic management and control of subjectivities (e.g. through Christianity), authority (e.g. through colonial administration), economy (e.g. land exploitation), and knowledge (e.g. European epistemology. See also Blauner and Wellman 1998). Racism (the control of non-white people) and patriarchy (the control of women) underlie the production of knowledge in this matrix (Mignolo 2011). Therefore, the notion of a colonial matrix of power provides us with a suitable blueprint with which to analyze symbolic and material levels of resistance against coloniality around the world. Brazil, where I was born, is still a deeply colonial society if we think in terms of coloniality. This is evident in how Christianity and capitalism dominate Brazilian subjectivity, how political authority is still controlled by white settler colonizers, how the logics of exploitation of natural resources still define our economy, how Westernized knowledge still enjoys institutional legitimacy, and how the intersection and hierarchies of race and gender, combined with class, still seem to determine sociability and power relations (Jodhka et al. 2018; Souza 2009). The theoretical understanding of coloniality combined with my lived experience as a Black Brazilian man makes me believe that the contesting character denoted in the term “decolonial” at both material/historical and symbolic levels resembles the contesting nature of comunicação popular at the levels of politics and epistemology.

Comunicação Popular as Decolonial Action The meaning of the adjective “popular” in the term comunicação popular is intrinsically connected with the way coloniality developed in Latin America. In English, “popular” primarily refers to the characteristics of someone or something who enjoys popularity among a large number of people. Also in English, “popular” also refers to people in general, especially in contrast to those in positions of political, economic, and cultural

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power. These meanings also exist in Portuguese and Spanish, but in Latin America the term “popular” also denotes characteristics and actions of the populations who are impoverished, underprivileged, discriminated against,and predominantly racialized as indigenous and black. That is, “popular” refers to qualities and actions of the povo (Portuguese)/pueblo (Spanish), the noun that often designates people disregarded as sub-­ citizens by the better-off, predominantly white classes that have built their wealth across generations by maintaining the colonial logic of exploitation of low-paid labor and the inheritances of financial, political, and cultural power (for studies on sub-citizenship and inequalities in Brazil, see Souza 2003; Holston 2008; see also Peruzzo 1998, pp. 116–118; for the diversity of appropriations and understandings around the term popular; see also Gomez Obando, this book). In such contexts of inequalities, the perception of “popular” as a positive or negative varies according to: (a) one’s position within social hierarchies; and (b) how threatening or beneficial to the maintenance of the unequal social order someone or something is. The more one benefits from coloniality (e.g. by having low-paid services, accessing high-quality public services and jobs with certain exclusivity, enjoying safety and protection of state-provided security without dealing with their violence, etc.), the more likely one is to despise popular expressions and actions. In contrast, the more one suffers from coloniality (e.g. being dependent on low-quality education and healthcare, being forced to accept low wages for everyday survival, being surveilled and repressed by the state’s military apparatuses, etc.), the more likely one is to identify with, learn from, celebrate, and act according to popular expressions and actions. In other words, for many beneficiaries of coloniality, popular expressions and actions represent backwardness, lack of manners, symbols of stupidity and ignorance, and danger to their inherited welfare. For many who suffer from coloniality, the “popular” represents creative forms of celebration and resistance of the diverse knowledge, culture, and worldviews among historically oppressed, but very diverse populations in their wisdom and creativity. Unsurprisingly, “popular” phenomena are at times treated as inferior, criminal and/or opportunistically appropriated by representatives of the white supremacist values that dominate Latin American societies. In Brazil, the history of samba is very telling of how popular expressions and actions are treated. Samba appeared in the early twentieth century not only as a music genre, but as a means for low-income black workers to record their

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oral histories, to historicize their everyday life, to celebrate their culture, and to mobilize and contest the persisting patterns of exploitation by the upper classes and the violent repression of the state. Samba, in cultural and political terms, is decolonial. Perhaps for these reasons the white political and economic elites and elitist middle classes deemed it not only as low-­ culture (or non-culture), but also as a crime. However, for being an expression of popular wisdom, culture, and politics shared by so many people, samba gained popularity among black low-income populations and beyond. Gradually the elites saw this popularity as an opportunity. So, they appropriated it. Politicians used samba for their populist propaganda, media owners used samba to increase their audiences, the business sector used samba to increase the appeal of their products and to increase their consumption. Today, despite samba’s commercial success and its importance for the people who most identify with its messages, many still see and treat samba and its variations as less worthy cultural expressions than those of American and European origins. The logic of elites despising, discriminating and—depending on popularity—appropriating popular expressions seems to be recurrent in other forms of music as well as culinary traditions, dialects, arts, and literature. As a social phenomenon, comunicação popular is similarly a kind of decolonial action in societies where coloniality remains a strong source of inequalities. In short, comunicação popular happens when people at the bottom of the social hierarchies in urban and rural settings collectively raise their voices and, with whatever means available, communicate politics that challenge the dominant colonial ideas and mobilize social change on their own terms (cf. Peruzzo 2009; Suzina 2019a, b). In Latin America, we could argue that the historically plural practices of comunicação popular are both antagonic to communication by mainstream media outlets (that have historically reinforced and reproduced coloniality) and dialectic as they contribute to cultural transformations and media democratization often through grassroots participatory processes (cf. Peruzzo 1998, p.  119). Rising from the context of struggles by people who suffer the most from inequalities, comunicação popular works as spaces for democratic expression and sharing of critical thinking instrumental for those involved to act as protagonists in the struggles against the consequences of coloniality (cf. Peruzzo 1998, pp. 124–129; 2017).

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Decolonial Comunicação Popular Against Coronavirus in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro The way residents of favelas in Rio de Janeiro have engaged with media activism to help prevent the spread of Covid-19 in the places where they live are good illustrative examples of decolonial comunicação popular. Let me start by clarifying, as I have done in more detail elsewhere (Custódio 2017), what I understand favelas to mean. Most people often associate favelas with two things: poverty and violence. It is undeniable that favelas suffer from high crime rates and low-quality public services (e.g. education, health care, waste management, water supply, and leisure facilities). These two characteristics are perhaps some of the most perverse materializations of coloniality in the everyday life of low-income working-class Brazilians. However, favelas have existed since the end of the nineteenth century because of the historical disregard of the country for the predominantly black and mixed-race poor who gradually and uncoordinatedly occupied uninhabited urban spaces (e.g. forests on hills, abandoned buildings, and swampy areas) so that they could settle in the surroundings of work opportunities. As favelas grew in size and number throughout the twentieth century, so did the community mobilizations by residents acting collectively for housing, security, respect, and rights. The twenty-­first century media activism in favelas is one of the contemporary faces of the history of popular struggles against the consequences of coloniality in everyday life. What I refer to as “favela media activism” can be considered a form of comunicação popular (Giannotti 2016). By favela media activism I mean the individual and collective actions of favela residents in, through and about the media. These contesting actions derive from and/or lead to the enactment of citizenship among favela residents. By engaging in media activism inside, outside and across favelas, favela residents raise critical awareness among peers, generate public debates, and mobilize actions against or in reaction to material and symbolic consequences of social inequality in their everyday lives (Custódio 2017). How does this idea of favela media activism characterize as decolonial action in practice? The (re)actions of favela-based media activist collectives during the Covid-19 pandemic illustrate how this form of comunicação popular is decolonial. Let me describe—purposefully in a superficial way—how some media activist collectives whose actions I have studied since 2013 have been active to prevent the spread of the coronavirus in favelas. Coletivo Papo

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Reto (Straight Talk Collective) was created in 2013 with the proposal of communicating in clear and direct terms with residents and outsiders about the everyday life struggles in the favela of Complexo do Alemão and other favelas of Rio de Janeiro. This communication includes intensive interactions on different social media platforms (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, blogs), phone applications (e.g. WhatsApp), and face-to-face conversations in meetings, events, and demonstrations. Coletivo Papo Reto combines journalistic reporting with political mobilization strategies. A second initiative is called Maré Vive and was created in 2014 as an anonymous network of residents in the favela of Complexo da Maré. Its name means “Maré Lives” in reference to the vibrant local culture and social diversity. Maré Vive uses social networks (e.g. Facebook, Twitter) and mobile phone applications (e.g. WhatsApp) to communicate and mediate communication among favela residents and to non-favela residents. The members of Maré Vive are very careful not to reveal their identities. Then, the group’s public page on Facebook has become one of the most dynamic spaces for denouncing police violence, governmental neglect, and for celebrating local culture and traditions. During the Covid-19 pandemic, both collectives have joined forces with other individuals and organizations from inside and outside favelas to act against the spread of the virus in their impoverished and highly populated neighborhoods. At Complexo do Alemão, members of media activist collectives have created a crisis task force. At Complexo da Maré, media activists have created the Mobilization Front of Maré. The timeline of decolonial actions was similar in both favelas. First, media activist groups in both favelas used their social media channels to call out the state’s neglect of impoverished areas when cases of infection started spreading in Brazil in March 2020. At the first stage, they also emphasized that some of the measures for prevention (e.g. self-isolation, home office) were not viable among low-income people who live in small and precarious houses shared with many relatives. The hashtag #covid19nasfavelas (Covid 19 in favelas), created and shared by favela media activists, contributed for the public debates in and beyond favelas about inequalities during the pandemic. This kind of contesting actions is decolonial because it denounces the ways in which the lives of favela residents—mostly direct descendants of enslaved blacks and exploited and impoverished mixed-race migrants from Brazil’s Northeast—remain treated as less important than those of people on the other side of urban segregation and social divide.

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After that, both groups started informational campaigns to inform residents about preventive measures and how to get help if needed. For these campaigns, the activists realized that they would need to engage with other forms of communication than digital devices and platforms to reach as many people in favelas as possible. So, strategically, the activists used “media” typical of what we could refer to as “favela mediascape.” Banners hung on light poles in the entrances and corners of favelas to announce cultural events (e.g. music shows, church activities) were used to spread the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO). In addition, the collectives recorded the recommendations and, through crowd-funding campaigns, paid the traditional cars with loudspeakers to circulate all over the favelas so that even more people would know what to do in their circumstances to prevent the spread of coronavirus. The decolonial character of these informational campaigns lies in the formation of for-us-by-us civic counterpublics (cf. Custódio 2017) that contest the misinformation circulated by supporters of extreme-right, pro-business president Jair Bolsonaro who, like the president, claim that the mass infection of the population is inevitable and that the recommendations for self-­ isolation will cause irreparable harm to the country’s economy. This way, favela activists are countering the elitist and neoliberal ideology that has washed over Brazilian politics since the elections of 2018—one of the most evident legacies of colonialism in today’s Brazil—with the promotion of peer-to-peer practices of solidarity through practices of comunicação popular. Even though these counterpublics have a smaller reach and lower budget than commercial media outlets, their power lies in their capacity to contest dominant narratives and mobilize actions at the local level in which they act. One last example of decolonial practice in the comunicação popular by favela media activists in the context of the coronavirus pandemic is the protagonism and leadership of favelados (favela residents) in the mobilization of support from outside favelas. By using social media, peer-to-peer mobile applications, and even designated websites, activists from favelas have coordinated crowd-funding campaigns to finance their communicational actions, articulated the donations of food and supplies for hygiene, mobilized support to their actions from public figures and civil society organizations, and secured support from journalists in mainstream media outlets.

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Final Considerations If, in Maldonado-Torres’ terms, coloniality refers to “long-standing patterns of power” originated from colonialism, favela residents have historically been in the exploited, oppressed, and subaltern end of power relationships with people and institutions outside favelas. The leadership of favela residents in these processes of media activism as forms of comunicação popular during the pandemic are an example of a resignification of what “place in society” favelados occupy. Their organizational skills not only for solidarity, but also for self-organized action to overcome governmental neglect have always been known within favelas. Now, they have been able to demonstrate to the whole society their capacity to lead, mobilize, and promote change in ways that are educational to many in positions of power in governments, public institutions, parties, and civil society organizations. In that sense, in comunicação popular, decolonization is not a comfortable buzzword, but a horizon toward which those who have suffered the most from the consequences of coloniality act (see Contreras Baspineiro, this book). To be sure, comunicação popular is fundamentally a symbolic type of action. By collectively raising voices, the people designated by the term popular express their grievances, contest hegemonic narratives that discriminate them, call for justice and demand respect to their rights as citizens and above all as human beings. However, as the cases in favelas demonstrate, these symbolic actions have very important material consequences. In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, actions by practitioners of comunicação popular have materialized in donations, hygiene supplies, and food. More importantly, they have contributed to the dismantlement of the general perception of favelados as poor people in constant need of help and danger and who need violent surveillance and control. The Brazilian patterns of coloniality have historically deemed predominantly black and mixed-race favela residents as second-class citizens. It is against this history of discrimination and neglect not just in Brazil, but wherever else whole populations are discriminated and neglected, that comunicação popular proves its decolonial power.

References Alcoff, L., Hames-García, M. R., Mohanty, S. P., & Moya, P. M. L. E. (2006). Identity politics reconsidered. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US. Alves, J. A. (2018). The anti-black city: Police terror and black urban life in Brazil. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Appleton, N. S. (2019, February 4). Do not ‘Decolonize’… If you are not decolonizing: Progressive language and planning beyond a hollow academic rebranding. Critical Ethnic Studies. Retrieved from http://www. criticalethnicstudiesjournal.org/blog. Bhambra, G. K., Gebrial, D., & Nișancıoğlu, K. (Eds.). (2018). Decolonizing the university. London: Pluto Press. Blauner, R., & Wellman, D. (1998 [1973]). Toward the decolonization of social research. In J. A. Ladner (Ed.) The death of white sociology: Essays on race and culture (pp. 310–330). Baltimore: Black Classic Press. Bonilla-Silva, E., & Zuberi, T. (2008). White logic, white methods: Racism and methodology. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Custódio, L. (2017). Favela media activism: Counterpublics for human rights in Brazil. Lanham: Lexington Books. Elam, J. D. (2017). Anticolonialism. Global south studies: A collective publication with the global south. Retrieved March 19, 2020, from https://globalsouthstudies.as.virginia.edu/key-­concepts/anticolonialism. Engler, S., & Schmidt, B. E. (2016). Handbook of contemporary religions in Brazil. Boston: Brill. Fanon, F. (1967). The wretched of the earth. London: Penguin Books. Fanon, F. (2017). Black skin, white masks. London: Pluto Press. Gandhi, L. (2019). Postcolonial theory: A critical introduction (2nd ed.). New York: Columbia University Press. Giannotti, C. S. (2016). Experiências em comunicação popular no Rio de Janeiro ontem e hoje: uma história de resistência nas favelas cariocas. Rio de Janeiro: Núcleo Piratininga de Comunicação. Grossfoguel, R., Hernández, R., & Velásquez, E. R. (Eds.). (2016). Decolonizing the westernized university: Interventions in philosophy of education from within and without. Lanham: Lexington Books. Hlabangane, N. (2018). Can a methodology subvert the logics of its principal? Decolonial meditations. Perspectives on Science, 26(6), 658–693. Holston, J. (2008). Insurgent citizenship: Disjunctions of democracy and modernity in Brazil. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Intemann, K. (2019). Feminist standpoint theory. In P. Atkinson, S. Delamont, A.  Cernat, J.  W. Sakshaug, & R.  A. Williams (Eds.), SAGE research methods foundations. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781526421036747550. Ivison, D. (2017). Postcolonialism. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved March 19, 2020, from https://www.britannica.com/topic/postcolonialism. Jodhka, S., Rehbein, B., & Souza, J. (2018). Inequality in capitalist societies. London: Routledge. Loomba, A. (2015). Colonialism/postcolonialism. London: Routledge. Maldonado-Torres, N. (2007). On the coloniality of being. Cultural Studies, 21(2-3), 240–270.

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Mbembe, A. (2019). Necropolitics. Durham: Duke University Press. Mignolo, W. (2011). The darker side of Western modernity: Global futures, decolonial options. Durham: Duke University Press. Mignolo, W., & Escobar, A. (2010). Globalization and the decolonial option. London: Routledge. Mitchell, G. L. (2018). The politics of blackness: Racial identity and political behavior in contemporary Brazil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nascimento, A. (1978). O genocídio do negro brasileiro: Processo de um racismo mascarado. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Peruzzo, C. M. K. (1998). Comunicação nos movimentos populares: A participação na construção da cidadania. Petrópolis: Editora Vozes. Peruzzo, C.  M. K. (2009). Conceitos de comunicação popular, alternativa e comunitária e as reelaborações do setor. ECO-Pós, 12(2), 46–61. Peruzzo, C. M. K. (2017). Ideias de Paulo Freire aplicadas à comunicação popular e comunitária. Revista Famecos, 24(1). https://doi.org/10.15448/1980­3729.2017.1.24207. Ponzanesi, S. (2018). Neocolonialism. In R.  Braidotti & M.  Hlavajova (Eds.), Posthuman glossary (pp. 279–281). Bloomsbury Press. Quijano, A. (2007). Coloniality and modernity/rationality. Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), 168–178. Rivera Cusicanqui, S. (2012). Ch’ixinakax utxiwa: A reflection on the practices and discourses of decolonization. The South Atlantic Quarterly, 111(1), 95–109. Sansone, L. (2003). Blackness without ethnicity: Constructing race in Brazil. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Santana, B. (Ed.). (2019). Vozes insurgentes de mulheres negras. Belo Horizonte: Mazza Edições. Souza, J. (2003). A construção social da subcidadania: para uma sociologia política da modernidade periférica. Belo Horizonte: Editora da UFMG. Souza, J. (2009). Ralé brasileira: Quem é e como vive. Belo Horizonte: Editora UFMG. Suzina, A. (2019a). Dissonância crítica e solidária: a contribuição das mídias populares ao processo de mudança social. Chasqui. Revista Latinoamericana de Comunicación, 0(140), 147–162. Suzina, A. (2019b). Ruptura digital e processos de participação em mídias populares no Brasil. Intercom—RBCC, 42(3), 61–76. Tuck, E., & Yang, K. W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), 1–40.

CHAPTER 11

Digital Media and Emancipation in Latin American Communication Thinking Dorismilda Flores-Márquez

Even the smallest person can change the course of history. —Lady Galadriel, The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien There is no change without dream, and there is no dream without hope. —Paulo Freire

The emergence of digital media has revived the old debates about media and their possibilities for dominance or emancipation. The Zapatista uprising in 1994 was one of the most emblematic cases of the link between social movements and the Internet, as their website was a key element to gain international visibility and solidarity. In recent decades, the presence of digital media in activism has grown considerably and has contributed to broadening the access to public expression, to the point that some of the mobilizations known as the “Arab Spring” were also named the Facebook revolution or the Twitter revolution. Beyond technological deterministic

D. Flores-Márquez (*) Universidad De La Salle Bajío, León, México e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. C. Suzina (ed.), The Evolution of Popular Communication in Latin America, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62557-3_11

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perspectives, there is a recognition of the emancipatory dimension of digital media. However, during all this time some scholars and activists have warned that not all is freedom and hope in the digital world, as the dark side of technology has also grown, by creating resources for surveillance, repression, and misinformation. The triumphs of Donald Trump in the United States and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil have drawn the attention to the information spread by digital media and the algorithmic logics as well, by emphasizing the domination trends. This chapter explores digital media and emancipation in Latin American communication thinking. The first part presents an outline of popular communication traditions and highlights their emancipatory orientation. The second part approaches the irruption of digital media, with their possibilities and challenges. Finally, the chapter ends with a reflection about the need for nuances.

Emancipation in Latin American Communication Thinking: A Story about Innovation, Resistance, and Hope Latin American communication thinking has grown during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as a double way of showing a resistant face to domination: in practical terms, oppressed communities resisted oppression with creativity; in theoretical terms, Latin American scholars resisted the Anglo and Eurocentric theoretical production by exploring, analyzing, and explaining their own context, by reformulating or discussing concepts,1 and particularly by articulating the practical projects with theoretical production. However, these developments have been concentrated within the continent, suffering a certain invisibility beyond the borders (Enghel and Becerra 2018; Ganther and Ortega 2019). Gabriel Kaplún (2013) has identified four main traditions in the Latin American communication field: functionalist, critical, culturalist, and 1  The concept of development is an example. Beltrán (2005) tried to go beyond the idea of development as economic growth and redefined it as a process of deep and accelerated socio-political change that transforms the economy, ecology, and culture of a country, with the aim of promoting the moral and material advance of the majority of the of population in conditions of dignity, justice, and freedom. These discussions have been widespread in different lines, for example, to the field of communication for development, as Latin American scholars questioned the notion of development: what development, by whom, and for whom.

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alternativist. As will be seen in the following paragraphs, these traditions are not separated from each other, but they are closely intertwined and crossed. First: the functionalist perspective, which did not originate its own development on the continent, but appropriated theoretical proposals in order to study the effects and functions of the media. Second: the critical emancipatory perspective—based on the Frankfurt school and semiotic studies—was focused on power, and the economic and discursive structures of media. In this line, the contributions of Armand Mattelart, Héctor Schmucler, among other authors, were key to the development of this tradition. Both perspectives focused on media and their direct persuasive effects over audiences. By contrast, the culturalist and alternativist perspectives proposed a shift, in order to recognize the role of audiences and the presence of the popular in mass communication and culture. Although the link with British cultural studies is important, the key contributions on the Latin American culturalist perspectives were Jesús Martín-Barbero with De los medios a las mediaciones—published in English as Communication, Culture and Hegemony: From the Media to Mediations—and Néstor García Canclini with Culturas híbridas—Hybrid Cultures. Meanwhile, the alternativist perspective set a practical interest as a starting point: beyond the research, some activists, practitioners, and scholars were trying to generate alternatives to face mainstream communication in popular education NGOs, small local radio stations, and community cultural centers. This perspective is linked with the Freirean popular education tradition that is oriented to the emancipation of the oppressed. According to him, emancipation is a possibility achievable in practical terms through popular education and communication: “Problem-posing education, as a humanist and liberating praxis, posits as fundamental that the people subjected to domination must fight for their emancipation […]. Problem-posing education does not and cannot serve the interests of the oppressor” (Freire 2005, p.  86). Emancipation, thus, is a struggle against oppression. In Latin America, oppression has had different faces: first, centuries ago, the European colonization tried to erase the diversity in terms of culture, ethnicities, languages, religions, and more (Freire 2005; Freire and Macedo 2005; Therborn 2011). Our current generations are a product of that encounter, but we recognize that the encounter was violent and painful.

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Second, during the twentieth century, some Latin American countries developed a political history of civil and military dictatorships and authoritarian regimes, that implied a constant attack on human rights, such as military and police repression, genocides, forced disappearances, torture, threats, and more. In addition, there were several US interventions—some of them military interventions—in Latin American political affairs (Garretón 2003; Garretón and Garretón 2010). Third, during the recent decades extractive industries have proliferated in Latin American countries. Most projects come from multinational companies and operate with the approval of national governments, while affecting indigenous communities by neglecting the basic actions to avoid risks, resulting in environmental and sanitary degradation, or even occupying sacred territories, without sharing benefits with the people. In this way, extractivism replicate the history of colonization (Raftopoulus 2017). Fourth, the persistent inequalities form a continuum since the times of colonization until our days. Latin America has been historically characterized by high levels of inequality, and their causes and consequences are complex, as income, educational level, gender, age, ethnicity, and other factors, are intertwined (CEPAL 2019; Therborn 2011). All this history of oppression has had its correlate in the realm of communication practices and media. On one hand, certain communities and/ or sectors have historically been silenced by different actors. On the other hand, the communities found ways of expressing themselves through different tactics.2 In this way, Latin America experienced the rise of popular communication in practice, previous to any theory  (see Uranga, this book). Several projects began in the 1940s, trying to give a voice to the voiceless, making education more accessible, promoting the participation of citizens, through projects as the Radioescuelas in Colombia, the radios mineras in Bolivia, and more (Beltrán 2005) (see also Orue Pozzo and Prieto Castillo, this book). These popular communication projects continued rising through the 1970s and 1980s and beyond, under different notions such as popular communication, alternative communication, community communication, edu-communication, horizontal communication, participatory communication, communication for development, and communication for social 2  According to Scott (1990), subordinate groups produce hidden transcripts that are publicly visible, but have a double meaning that is not public. These hidden transcripts express dissent and are present in songs, rituals, jokes, and more.

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change (Alfaro-Moreno 2000; Beltrán 2005; Kaplún 2007, 2013, 2019; Navarro Nicoletti and Rodríguez Marino 2018). Each notion has its own particularities and emphasis, but all coincide in their key elements, as we may see in the following paragraphs. The socio-historical context in Latin America has been characterized by contrasts between wealth—in cultural diversity and natural resources— and inequalities—poverty, racism, discrimination, illiteracy, health problems, gender violence, human rights violations. This translated into a fertile ground for the emergence of projects that pursuit social change. As I mentioned previously, some of these projects started with the aim of solving a practical problem in specific groups or communities—such as learning something or communicating with the others about common issues—through interventions. In this way, there was a link between alternative communication and popular education processes, social movements, as well as the development of liberation theology (Alfaro-Moreno 1999, 2000; Kaplún 2013; see also Uranga, this book). Another characteristic is the participation of popular or oppressed sectors that had been traditionally marginalized. There is a link with indigenous communication and, in this way, an intercultural dimension as these projects propose the recognition of diversity in the world (Gumucio-­ Dagron 2014). The development of alternative or popular media enabled the voiceless to have a voice and construct their own spaces for public expression. These also facilitated the participation of actors in horizontal models based on dialogue that challenge the vertical models of the mass media. The terms “alternative communication” and “alternative media” emphasize these reactive positions’ attitude to mainstream media. This is linked with the exercise of creativity and ingenuity in their interventions and communication practices, instead of large budgets and magical formulas to reach large audiences. In addition, these projects coincide with the orientation toward social transformation from the grass roots, which in several cases involved the promotion of political engagement and critical thinking attitudes against domination and repression. Of course, these projects have not been exempted from complications, contradictions, and critics. The main complications have been the continuity, the resources and, in some cases, the repression. Thus, the popular communication tradition represents innovation, resistance, and hope for Latin American societies. The innovation was present in the ways of understanding and practicing community, culture, media, communication, and freedom of expression. The experiences allow

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the observation of the creativity of participants to intervene and transform their reality. Furthermore, the core of these experiences is hope, as the projects seek to foster the imagination and creation of a better world. In this way, Rosa María Alfaro-Moreno (2000) argues that popular communication is an ethical proposal against hopelessness, in which communication is the way to construct a society of justice and solidarity. In sum, in Latin America, alternative and popular communication experiences have been—or, at least, have tried to be—clearly emancipatory. These started from an ethical inspiration of responsibility with the community and operated through a participatory dialogue oriented toward their liberation (Alfaro-Moreno 2000). This emancipatory nature of popular communication involves media, practices, and actors. Popular/community/alternative media may imply forms of ownership different to the media corporations, forms of management and operation that are not focused only on economic profit, contents that propose new issues respect to those of mainstream media, and non-dominant communication models as well (Kaplún 2019). This challenges the mainstream media logics and opens the door to the possibility of expression. In this way, the media are not enough on their own, but their practices have the potential for making a difference, as one of the main contributions of popular communication has been the shift from vertical to horizontal models, based on dialogue and participation processes (Gumucio-Dagron 2014; Servaes 1996). Long before the rise of digital media, these models broke the logic of mainstream one-to-many communication, thus making possible many-to-many communication models. Finally, practices are not abstractions and do not exist on their own; practices are performed by actors. In this way actors have pursued social change with their needs and limitations, but also with their creativity and hard work (see Bona, this book). These actors include people with professional training in communication, but also people without it, as we all have the right to communicate (Martín-Barbero 2002). Moreover, these emancipatory processes are focused not on individuals, but on communities (Alfaro-Moreno 2000). As I said previously, this represents a double way maintaining a resistance face to domination: on one hand, the practical resistance that has been developed to solve specific problems in communities; on the other hand, the theoretical resistance, where some Latin American scholars have proposed alternative ways of understanding the communication practices,

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media, and actors, by recognizing the relevance of Anglo and Eurocentric theoretical production, as well as its inadequacy to explain in depth the complex realities on this side of the world.

The Irruption of Digital Media: Possibilities, Challenges, and Struggles Every time a medium emerges, a set of debates about its possibilities for dominance or emancipation comes with it. Such was the case with cinema, the press, and television. In this way, the irruption of digital media has revived old debates about media. While some scholars and practitioners were optimistic about the new resources, another sector warned of the dark side of technology that could open the door to new risks. Indeed, the Internet—as the core of digital media—has had its own paradoxes, as its origin is dual. On the one hand, its precursor in the late 1960s was ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), which originally received funding from the US Department of Defense to create a network of computers that could communicate remotely. On the other hand, we owe the creation of the World Wide Web to Tim Berners-­ Lee and his team at CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, based in Switzerland) in 1990. This innovation sought to make the network accessible for everyone and become the most common way of access to the Internet (Allmer 2015; Berners-Lee 1990; Briggs and Burke 2002; Castells 2001). This implies a permanent tension between control and freedom that has continued to grow. The side of control is visible in legislative proposals such as SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) in the United States and Sinde Law in Spain, also in surveillance programs such as PRISM—a project of the US National Security Agency—and many others. The side of emancipation is assumed mostly by activists through cyber-insurgency projects such as WikiLeaks and Anonymous, independent media such as IndyMedia and Mídia NINJA, knowledge management initiatives such as Wikipedia and, more recently, data activism initiatives (Assange et  al. 2012; Coleman 2013; Kidd 2003, 2019; Lievrouw 2011; Milan and Treré 2019; Olson 2013; Scharlau Vieira 2013; Vila Seoane and Hornidge 2020). For the Latin American popular communication tradition, the emergence of digital media has represented new spaces, opportunities, and possibilities of expression, organization, and participation in the digital public

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sphere. Of course, this does not mean we should be complacent and simply obviate that these countries have had very different trends in digital inclusion,3 as the expansion of the Internet within the continent and the access to technology among the population is closely linked with other factors, such as educative and socio-economic levels, which must be considered in these very unequal countries. This just means that we recognize the relevance of digital media projects’ experiences, with their contributions and challenges. Alternative media—as mentioned in the last section—challenge the logic of mainstream media in terms of ownership, management, contents, and communication models (Kaplún 2019). Leah Lievrouw (2011) focuses on the digital realm and defines alternative/activist new media as those that “employ or modify the communication artifacts, practices, and social arrangements of new information and communication technologies to challenge or alter dominant, expected, of accepted ways of doing society, culture, and politics” (p. 19). This author highlights that alternative media do not stay in the level of reflection or critique about mainstream media and their logics, but they intervene to change those logics and create new ones. In her proposal, Lievrouw (2011) distinguishes five basic genres of contemporary alternative and activist new media projects, that appropriate the resources in relation to specific purposes: culture jamming, alternative computing, participatory journalism, mediated mobilization, and commons knowledge. Culture jamming refers to the appropriation and “repurpose” that subvert elements from popular culture. Alternative computing includes the development of technological resources that face the threats of surveillance or censorship. Participatory journalism uses digital media to practice alternative ways of producing news, opposite to the logics of mainstream media. Mediated mobilization creates and maintain networks that contribute to the organization and spreading of collective action. Finally, commons knowledge seeks for new and free ways of producing and sharing knowledge. As Lievrouw (2011) recognizes, some of these genres have their roots in art and alternative media projects existing before the Internet, such as the activist art of Dada and the Situationist International. In the case of the 3  There are important differences among Latin American countries in terms of the incorporation and expansion of the Internet. Even in the present, data show high levels of digital inclusion in countries like Chile and Argentina, as well as very low levels in countries such as Nicaragua and Haiti (ITU 2019).

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Latin American popular communication tradition, this has been explored during the twentieth century with options such as the theater of the oppressed, fanzines, community radio, and much more. In this way, for popular communicators the horizontal, participatory, and dialogic models do not come only from the possibilities of digital media. But the reticular and interactive logic of the Internet aligned well with their projects, and broadened the possibilities linked with reach, speed, and simultaneity. Some alternative communication projects are oriented to public expression, while others involve the transformation of digital technologies. The most evident face of alternative communication projects in digital media is the access to public expression, that challenges the non-­democratic logics of mainstream media by enabling users to gain visibility and to take part in the global public sphere (Flores-Márquez 2019). These projects are usually driven by activists—with or without professional training in communication and digital media—by designing websites, as well as using mainstream platforms and applications, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, among others. The appropriation consists in their exercise of freedom of expression, by presenting their worldviews. The Zapatista movement, as previously mentioned, has been one of the most emblematic cases of articulation between mobilization at the grass roots and the spreading of information through the Web. Although this movement began in 1983, it became known on January 1, 1994,4 when the Zapatistas took up arms in Chiapas, in southern Mexico, the same day that the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into force in Mexico, the United States, and Canada. This struggle against neoliberalism made evident the inequalities caused by it that have particularly affected indigenous communities. Paradoxically, the Zapatistas did not have access to the Internet and other basic services. Thus, the creation and maintenance of their website required a strong collaboration among volunteers in Mexico and abroad (Schulz 2014). This spreading of information through the web contributed to making visible the Zapatista movement all around the world, breaking the unfavorable Mexican mainstream media coverage, and gaining international solidarity as well (Castells 2001; Islas and Gutiérrez 2000; Russell 2001; Sagástegui 2004). There are different perspectives about this case; some of them romanticize the use of the Internet, by 4  January 1, 1994 was also the day that the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into force, which included Canada, the United States, and Mexico.

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focusing just on that part instead of the deep political and cultural movement; while others try to explain the relevance of digital media as one factor, but not the only one. In the recent decades, some movements have launched their own alternative digital media, in order to communicate with their peers and larger audiences as well. Such is the case of mobilizations in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, among other countries in Latin America and the rest of the world. These movements have emphasized a critical position face to the mainstream media and their non-democratic practices. They have also experienced lack of coverage and even criminalization through media framing (Cardoso and Di Fátima 2013; Castells 2012; Gómez and Treré 2014; Mansilla Hernández 2014; Rovira 2013). In contrast, they have found in digital media the ideal spaces for raising their voices without intermediaries and participating in the public sphere. One relevant case in these years is Mídia NINJA, that had emerged in 2011, but gained international visibility in the 2013 demonstrations in Brazil. People were protesting in the streets and squares against excessive public spending in the preparation for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, that basic services were not a priority in governmental projects, so that inequalities and discontents were increasing. In that context, Mídia NINJA provided an innovative real-time coverage, spreading through socio-digital media. NINJA is the acronym of Narrativas Independentes, Jornalismo e Ação—in English Independent Narratives Journalism and Action. The project enhanced collaboration in independent journalism, challenged the newsworthiness criteria and the authorship logics of mainstream media, exercised the right to freedom of expression, and provided an alternative source of news (Martinez and Persichetti 2015; Scharlau Vieira 2013; Schneider and Da Silva 2019; Vila Seoane and Hornidge 2020). These kinds of experiences in Latin America and all around the world match with what Lievrouw (2011) calls culture jamming, participatory journalism, mediated mobilization, and commons knowledge, and challenges the management, contents, and communication models of mainstream media (Kaplún 2019). These projects contribute to sustain the idea of digital media as spaces where freedom of expression is possible in face to the mainstream media coverage, where users are able to communicate with their peers and knit networks of identification and solidarity in local and global contexts. Its relevance lies in the possibility of gaining visibility, taking part in the global public sphere, making evident the diversity of world views, but the risk is to romanticize the digital media logics, and

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ignore their contradictions. The same digital platforms that enable users to share information and raise their voices, at the same time “enable the collection, analysis, and sale of personal data by commercial web platforms” (Allmer 2015, p. 3), leading us back to the duality of the Internet. Various authors focus their gaze on capitalism, as this tension in the way of understanding information has to do with its benefits. Based on a critical and dialectical perspective, it is possible to comprehend these contradictions occurring between emancipatory potentials of new and digital media that imply a logic of the commons and processes of commodification and enclosure that tend to jeopardize the commons and incorporate them into the logic of capital. (Allmer 2015, p. 5)

Indeed, critical approaches to the study of the Internet in everyday life raise some key questions: “Is Internet use empowering or oppressing people? Is Internet use leading to more equality and opportunity for people? Does it alienate and exploit people?” (Bakardjieva 2011, p.  63). Thus, issues such as data management, surveillance, repression, censorship, fake news, and misinformation have attracted the attention of scholars, practitioners, and activists, who have identified in digital media the perpetuation of neoliberalism, capitalism, and colonialism logics (Couldry and Mejías 2019; Fuchs 2017; Kidd 2019; Milan and Treré 2019; Ricaurte 2019; Treré 2019). The discussion on data colonialism highlights these concerns. Broadly speaking, colonialism refers to the invasion and exploitation of one country by another country. It included violent invasion, exploitation of natural resources and the labor force, and repression or even annihilation of native peoples. In recent years, the notion of colonialism also began to be employed to think about data in the digital age (see Custódio, in this book). According to Couldry and Mejías (2019), “data colonialism combines the predatory extractive practices of historical colonialism with the abstract quantification methods of computing” (p. 337). This operates in various ways. In material terms, the production of ICT devices is linked with the extraction of minerals, while in information terms, the operation of digital platforms implies the data extractivism too. These processes are naturalized in the everyday use of digital media but involve a non-­transparent and non-necessarily-ethic management of data, privacy, freedom of expression and digital rights (Allmer 2015; Couldry and Mejías 2019; Fuchs 2009; Kidd 2019; Ricaurte 2019).

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In that regard, another area of interest is emerging around algorithms and algorithmic cultures. Although algorithms have been present in the whole history of digital media, the discussions about them and their implications in contemporary societies and cultures have been recently growing. According to Ted Striphas (2015), “human beings have been delegating the work of culture—the sorting, classifying and hierarchizing of people, places, objects and ideas—to data-intensive computational processes” (p. 396). Thus, our contemporary culture is crossed by algorithms that we do not see when we interact with Google, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, and other platforms, but it is leading to algorithmic cultures. This is where other kinds of alternative projects linked with technologies come in. These initiatives are oriented toward a more radical transformation, that Lievrouw (2011) call alternative computing. In this way, Valencia-Rincón (2014) include in a typology of social movements on the Internet: privacy advocacy, anti-brands, digital divide, free software, copyleft & digital commons, hackers and hacktivists, and virus creators as well. The point here is hacking and subverting the dominance logics of technologies, in order to face up the inequalities. The case of Rhizomatica in Oaxaca, Mexico, is very relevant. This consists in a community mobile telephony network in indigenous territories, where major telecommunications corporations do not provide their services, and the Mexican government does not provide a solution to the needs of communication.5 The community and activists used available devices, free software, and computers to create a network that enabled people to communicate in a low-cost way (Magallanes-Blanco and Rodríguez-Medina 2017). There are other digital media activist initiatives that encourage processes of creative appropriation of technologies in terms of freedom, human rights, participation, and emancipation. Such is the case of Luchadoras6—a Mexican feminist collective that works on the appropriation of ICT, Internet as a space free of violence, and womens’ rights—and Sursiendo7—an Mexican activist collective that works on free software, natural common goods, technopolitics, hacking, and hackfeminisms.

5  One of the consequences of the neoliberal reforms in Mexico was the privatization of telephone services, from the 1990s. 6  Available at https://luchadoras.mx/. 7  Available at https://www.sursiendo.com/.

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As Treré (2016, 2019) highlights, algorithms are the key for propaganda and repression, but also for knowledge and resistance, as activists have developed strategic appropriations of digital media algorithmic logics. This affects the realm of the political in various ways, as digital media is a privileged space of interaction and public expression, and of the formation of certain kinds of imagined communities, in the interaction between users and algorithms (Treré 2019). In sum, the emergence of digital media represented a shift in the logic, from the vertical one-way logic of mass media to a complex reticular logic. These characteristics aligned well with those of the Latin American popular communication tradition. The latter emphasize the participation, dialogue, and engagement and these elements are not produced by digital media on their own, but this kind of technological basis enable the action of previously engaged actors. Anyway, digital media broaden the possibilities for alternative media projects, which involve a wide range from activist communication practices through mainstream platforms to disruptive technological development. Beyond the possibilities, digital media also represent a set of challenges. Since the beginning of the Internet history, the tensions have been present, between control and freedom, commodification and commonization, colonialism and resistance, domination and emancipation. These make evident the poles and are usually seem as dichotomic where just one of the options is possible. However, I emphasize the idea of the tension, as it is a struggle of forces, where each one pulls to its own side but both share the space. The challenges are not situated just on one side of the tension, but in the contradictions and paradoxes. In this way, we may focus on the struggles among forces.

Conclusion: Is There Emancipation in Digital Media? The invitation to write this chapter came with the question “is there emancipation in technology?” What a question! In the pursuit of an answer the chapter presented a brief overview of Latin American communication thinking, focused on the popular communication tradition and emphasized the emancipatory orientation. Within this framework, the emergence of digital media is approached in this text in terms of possibilities, challenges, and struggles. Emancipation, as a pursuit of liberation, implies the notion of domination. As I said previously, in Latin American communication thinking, the

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contributions of Paulo Freire were fundamental to the understanding of emancipation as a possibility that is achievable through popular education and communication projects. Emancipation, thus, is not something given, but a struggle, a process. In the 1970s, popular communicators did not imagine the digitalization of everything and the discussions on algorithms. However, contemporary alternative media projects coincide with the ethical options of Latin American popular communication tradition, as these understand media not just as a tool but as a field where they try to construct a better world, by sustaining hope and resistance, as well as promoting community participation in the pursuit of liberation (Alfaro-Moreno 2000; Milan and Treré 2019). Is there emancipation in digital media? Of course there is, but there is also domination. Both are enabled by the same digital platforms, resources, and practices. The tensions between logics have characterized Internet history and, of course, the most recent history of humanity. These tensions are translated into an opportunity to think beyond the poles and focus on the nuances. Technology and, particularly, digital media are not emancipators on their own—emancipation requires a certain degree of agency of actors. This does not mean we should obviate that disparities in digital inclusion and digital literacy affect the possibilities of actors to make changes. Our challenging times, in which the polarization of societies is growing and those who hold political power do not seem to have the purpose of generating fair conditions for everyone, are the appropriate moment to remember that communication and communicators have a political role, not just a technical one. Our commitment as communication scholars and practitioners in the digital age involves the contribution to the critical digital literacy that enables people to resist. As the epigraphs to this chapter suggest, this is our opportunity to change the course of history. This is not an optimistic position, but a hopeful one.

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CHAPTER 12

Communication and Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir: In the Care of Our Common Home Adalid Contreras Baspineiro Translated by Susan Weissert

The purpose of this article is to develop the concept of communication and Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir, the contemporary expression of popular communication, for the construction a society of plenty and harmony. This is a vision of integral ecology for the care of the common home: our communities, our states, nature and the cosmos in which we grow. We understand Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir as a communicational cosmovision, whose dialogical and participative character fosters inclusive public policies for the common good. The principles of communication for Vivir Translator’s Note: Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir has several translations into English, for example: To live well/good living. However, none of them capture the depth of life in fullness and justice, life from the histories, values, cultures, and relationship with all of nature that have marked their histories and development. A. Contreras Baspineiro (*) Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, La Paz, Bolivia Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Quito, Ecuador e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. C. Suzina (ed.), The Evolution of Popular Communication in Latin America, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62557-3_12

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Bien/Buen Vivir are: (i) to know how to listen; (ii) to know how to share; (iii) to know how to live in harmony; and (iv) to know how to dream of a future that announces the good news of life in its fullness. To build this society daily and in the future, the logical methodology follows these steps: (i) feel/think; (ii) decide/act; (iii) return to the past/co-exist; (iv) celebrate/hope.

In Order to Read Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir Origins, Appropriations, Re-creations Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir, a concept under construction, begins with four aspects that co-exist and mutually nurture or resist each other. The first current, in which the paradigm originates, is found in the community practices of the indigenous peoples of our continent, as well as other peoples from the metaphorical South of this planet. The second complementary current is found in the adoption, thematic reconstructions, and incorporation of the demands of anti-systemic movements; the third is rooted in the political applications of States, particularly in Bolivia and Ecuador; and the fourth resides in the active declaration and construction of a just society, embodied in the churches of the peoples. Therefore, we are not looking at a finished concept, but rather a “definition in dispute” (Solón 2016, p. 11) and under construction, with both experiential and conceptual agreements and disagreements. Agreements generally arise from common conceptual roots, based on the search for justice on a sustainable planet. However, disagreements generally arise from the reality of the State’s intervention, where the promise of a new civilizing era conflicts with overcoming the frameworks of a capitalist system. And academia does not accept a worldview that negates traditional positivism which dominates Western thought. Citizens demand immediate answers for a paradigm still to be created and some forms of communication focusing on Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir continue to rely on publicity and circulation as opposed to a focus on reflection and relationships. The Foundational Moment: The Legacy of the Abya Yala People On our continent, indigenous people are living societies which recreate their rich community experiences of a life of solidarity. Since time immemorial, they have based their existence on good coexistence or good life in fullness and harmony or sublime life. Their ways of life are forged in their

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histories of resistance to colonization, to modernity, and to development, resulting in alternative proposals not only for indigenous people but for humanity. They offer the perspective of forging a planet of harmony among societies, nature, and the cosmos. These are expressions of the worldviews of peoples who do not submit to domination or colonization, and whose communities are spread the length of the continent. The Aymara nation proposes Qamaña (life, to live or dwell in, or a warm and protected place) as an expression of community coexistence where everyone shelters and cares for each other. It is a way of coexistence that is integral and interdependent among people, animals, and plants in the world of the Pachamama (Mother Earth), of the Achachilas (guardian gods) and Umalmama (water and earth), in the framework of institutionality represented in the ayllu or community. The Aymara Quamaña is evident on three levels of Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir: (1) Vivir Bien at an individual or family level, finding spiritual and material fulfillment by assuring their food security as the source of life; (2) Suma Qamaña, that is, collective or all-inclusive Vivir Bien, where no one is better than others or at the cost of others; (3) Khuska Qamaña, the highest level, where everything is in its place of harmony, with bonds of equality and where we all need each other in order to attain coexistence and life in its fullness. The Quichua/Quechua nation propose Sumak Kawsay and Allin Kawsay. Sumak and Allin Kawsay together mean a virtuous or a splendid life: a good life of fullness, without excesses. This is a life without want, with dignity, a space of well-being here, now, and in the future. This is a life of health and balance, without pressures or anxieties, among human beings and all of nature. For the Guaraní people, Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir is the Tekoporá. Tekoporá consists of values such as generosity and reciprocity (jopoi), not only with open hands, but also with the spoken word and open ears in the tekobá or space of life and coexistence. More specifically, Tekó Kaví refers to life that is shared, or to a way of being with other humans and non-humans, society, and nature. For the Mayan people, Tiichajil is a wholistic way of understanding a state of integral well-being, of people in society, with nature and the spiritual world. It is a civilization in which one’s existence is explained in the existence of others. This is expressed in the Wach’alal, where there is no I

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without us. Collaboration is one of the fundamental pillars of community life and solidarity. The Mapuche people have internalized Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir in their forms of community life. Küme Mongen is a way of life and relationships based on the principle of interior and exterior equilibrium, within individual persons and in their social relationships and with all of creation. It expresses the culture of life in harmony with all beings, with all other men and women, with God, with spiritual forces and nature. In Chiapas, the Lekil Kuxlejal is expressed through the practices of collective and community life, in their work, in the commitment and reciprocity which seeks balance and harmony among human beings, with Mother Earth and with Nature. In addition, the peoples of the Amazon have rich expressions of life in fullness, deeply rooted in their relationship with nature. The Shuar people recognize nature as the mother or common home, the Shiir Waras, or knowing how to live harmoniously with all living beings. These societies and others of Abya Yala are energized by collaborative practices, respectful of their peers, of nature, and of the cosmos (Contreras 2016b, p. 3–4). This is the common home for the “good life in full measure” (Macas 2010, p. 14), or the good life in harmonious coexistence, now, in the present and in the future. This is a life which does not stop at human happiness, but has a commitment to harmonious coexistence among the worlds of animals, vegetation, the gods and the earth; worlds with which we human beings coexist. We refer to the worldview of the original peoples as cosmos-coexistence, a relationship (or communication) among four other interdependent views of the world: the cosmocentric (the center is the cosmos), biocentric (the center is life), ethnocentric (the center is the human being), and ecocentric (the center is nature). The Contributions of the Anti-systemic Movements For the anti-systemic movements made up of innumerable groups, networks, and citizen collectives, Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir is more than a worldview; it is civilization’s alternative to capitalism. The movements of defenders of human rights, nature, and consumers; movements of women, youth, artists, artisans; defenders of the rights to communication and many other groups find in Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir a space in which to bring

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their demands together and orient them toward the building of a different model of society. Notice that if it is true that the philosophic foundation is common to all, the demands of the anti-systemic movements broaden the field of intervention, as well as the themes, the demands, the practices and the horizons of Suma Qamaña/Sumak Kausay. Thus, it is not by chance that the wording of Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir is not a literal or sufficient translation of the good life in its fullness, or of communal co-existence. Rather, it complements these descriptions, so that we may understand them as “epistemologies of the South.” Boaventura de Sousa Santos understands them as expressions of subversion and rupture with Western eurocentric thinking, in contrast to the emancipatory alternatives of social groups discriminated against by capitalism, colonialism, and their “different positions of inequality” (2011, p. 16). The Contributions of the New Constitutionalism The Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir, institutionalized in the new political constitutions of the pluri-national state of Bolivia and the Republic of Ecuador, has the markings of the emergence of indigenous people in contemporary history. Distinct from other historical stages in which the Magna Cartas were adaptations of demands and rights within the margins of the feudal or capitalist system, Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir leads states towards societal transformations with a new constitutionalism based on the validity of collective rights which include individuals and recognize the rights of nature. In the political constitution of the pluri-national state of Bolivia, Chap. 8 says: “1) The State assumes and promotes as ethical-moral principles of a pluralistic society: ama qhilla, ama llulla, ama suwa (do not be lazy, do not lie, do not steal), suma qamaña (live well), ñandereko (life of harmony), tekokavi (life of fullness), ivimaraei (earth without evil) and qhapajñan (noble road or life).” These are based on values of the common good, responsibility, social justice, and the distribution and redistribution of products and social goods as well as many others. The constitution of the state of Ecuador incorporates the “Rule of Good Living” or Sumak Kausay and Allin Kausay, stating that “Good Living requires that persons, communities, peoples and nations may effectively enjoy their rights and exercise responsibilities in the framework of interculturality, of respect of their diversity, and of a harmonious co-­ existence with Nature” (CPE, art. 275).

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In like manner, the National Development Plan of Bolivia proposes for living well: “the balanced co-existence and equitable complementarity of the State Economy, the Community Economy […] the Mixed Economy and the Private Economy.” This is accomplished by means of four programs for a Bolivia that intends to be honorable, sovereign, productive, and democratic. For its part, the National Plan for Good Living in Ecuador considers three strategic axes: the first refers to the transformation of the democratic system, “a change in the relations of power for the construction of popular power.” The second gathers elements of equity, promotion of the rights of citizens, identity, and the rights of nature. And the third axis refers to the economic relationships centered on “economic-­ productive transformation starting with the change of the productive matrix.” As can be seen, these proposals are difficult to bring about, because the political state functions under a two-hundred year inheritance laden with practices of denying equality, justice, sustainability of the environment, and citizen participation. This is the structural reason that the state policies are subject to strong tensions originating between the idea of Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir and its actual application to programs. The Contributions of Theology In reality this is not a question of an explicit and formally intentional involvement of the churches in Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir, but rather a nexus between the message of the Gospel and the construction of a good life in fullness and harmony. From different initiatives and the lived experiences, some churches have been truly developing proposals for a life of dignity and hope in community and in equality. In recognizing this, we point out only some aspects of the different contributions from theology which are important to take into account as aspects for the care of our common home (see Uranga, this book). The first element we highlight is from the Book of Genesis, where it affirms that “God saw all that he had made and it was good” (Gen. 1.21). The meaning given to the work of the creation of the world, of the cosmos, of the earth, and of man is the same meaning that we find in the Suma Qamaña, the Ñanderekó y Tekoporá, the Sumak Kausay, the Küme Mongen, or the Tiichajil. These all express the magnificence of the splendid existence of beautiful life, from a creation made up of a single unit where all beings live in harmony with nature.

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This expression is enhanced by the plea to “work and care for” the garden of the world (Gen., 15), or Mother Earth to whom we belong. Who among us should work and care for the garden of the world? We ourselves, human beings, all of us. On the other hand, the history of the Church, which adapts to different cultures found in diverse social realities, has elements common to all. On this basis, the announcement, the proclamation and the formation of the Good News has a foundation in the trinitarian communion or community coexistence. This is expressed in relationships of love, eschatological hope, of salvation that seeks happiness and the fullness of life in the same way as Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir. This is not only for the utopia of a new society, but in daily life, in the origins of cultures and in social praxis. The Gospel is an intercultural and historical construction, with an undeniable option for the poorest, coinciding with the proposals of Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir that promote equilibrium among person, societies, nature, and the cosmos. The encyclical of Pope Francis, Laudato Si, is in its entirety a contemporary expression of the building of an existence of plenty and harmony. We particularly point out the conceptualization of the “Integral Ecology” (numbers 138–142), which assumes the common home as a reality which is economic, environmental, social, and cultural. Following Laudato Si, the care for our common home requires an urgent dialogue about how we are managing the planet and finding comprehensive agreements which return dignity to the excluded, and which at the same time care for nature.

Communication for Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir Horizons of Communication of Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir Aruskipasipxañanakasakipunirakispawa amara (we always need to be in communication with each other) has two meanings: one is inclusive and dialogic (we communicate one to another) in situations of verbal exchanges. The other involves connection (the obligation to communicate) in social practice; to improve understanding, to compromise, and undertake decision-making in an act of humanizing the word by “speaking with the heart”, honestly, constructively, with love and with the goal of harmony and socio-cultural strengthening. (Contreras, 2016c, p. 6) Sharing this understanding of communication, communication for Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir is relational. It is based on dialogue and its aim is

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the development of commitments and actions for a style of life based on a good life of fullness and harmony, in communal co-existence. We could also affirm, reclaiming and following the idea of integral ecology, that communication for Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir is built on a shared spirituality in order to combat poverty, to care for nature, and to return dignity to those who are excluded (Laudato Si, Cap. 4). Communication for Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir, as the Word, permanently returns to the past, to Creation, to identity, in order to reclaim them as the sources of inspiration in order to move toward the future. In this journey, the word is a pilgrim on the road to the Great Jubilee, or to Jacha Uru (the great day), constructing meanings of society, of culture, of politics, and of spirituality for a life of fullness and harmony, to become reality in the present day and for future societies. Since its origins, Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir has been a worldview in permanent construction, or a process in constant movement toward the evolution of the Splendid Existence. This is also the space where communication is carried out from the discursive constructions, interactions, and exchanges among societies who follow the route of Qhapaq Ñan, or the road of wisdom and righteousness, and the space which integrates different peoples and cultures. (Contreras 2015, p. 131) Communication is the word which carries the historic transformation of multiple peoples and societies who construct and proclaim discourse, giving meaning to the movement of community and the transitions of community life from its tetralectic rationality. Communication is the word that flows in social practices, in cultural interactions, in interpersonal dialogues, in exchanges and reciprocities of peoples who interact in the building of a society of life in fullness and harmony, here and in the future. Communication for Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir articulates its epistemology in a conceptual and methodological framework that has three sources of inspiration: the systemization of the experiences of community life; the struggles for rights; and the Latin American theories of communication that precede it (theology of liberation, popular communication, cultural mediations). These positions question paradigms of dissemination and cause a decentralization in the point of view of the political and academic fields.

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Know How to Communicate Communication for Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir is based in the jaqi aru (word of the people), which David Choquehuanca explains by four principles: (1) know how to listen; (2) know how to share; (3) know how to live in harmony; (4) know how to dream (2012, p.  1). And Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, reclaiming the jaqin parlaña or speaking like the people “from below” defines Buen Vivir as: (1) to listen in order to be able to speak; (2) to know about that of which you speak; (3) to support words with actions. To these characterizations we add, to know how to dream, “speak hopefully,” or energetically construct life. (Contreras 2014, p. 111)  now How to Speak: Knowing How to Listen K In reality, it is equivalent to listen to each other with all of the senses or look with the heart, or as the japysaka guaraní expresses: “know how to see with your ears.” To know how to listen consists in translating the sounds into identities, understandings, and feelings about the world—recognizing the lives and the stories of those who express their words with speech, image, gestures, with their signs, their symbols, and their signifiers. In Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir, to know how to listen is more complex than human interaction. As Choquehuanca says, we should “listen to each other, listen to Mother Earth, to all beings, to the river, to our birds and above all to the humblest beings” (2012, p.  1). To know how to listen includes: (i) listening to each other participatively, beginning from those others who are communicating; (ii) listening to Mother Earth, to nature as the generator of speech; (iii)  listening above all to the most humble, by which communication for Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir is committed to a world of rights and of justice. To listen to each other assumes that one recognizes individuals in their true or imaginary contexts, always as grounded realities where they decide—for themselves—their social and cultural constructions, in addition to changes in themselves, their societies, and their reality (Alfaro 2006, p. 98). As Jesús Martín Barbero suggests, it’s about constructing meanings of life, starting with the social and cultural—and we add—political, spiritual, and cosmic interventions. In order to listen to Mother Earth, to all beings, to the river, to our birds, it is important to shift our points of view, preconceptions, practices, and ways of seeing things: the voices around us, of the environment, the sounds of nature, the trembling of the earth, and radical meanings

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accumulated in popular wisdom and activist practices. It is fitting that we see those beings who are excluded from society, from history, and from communication media. We should encourage alternative means by which they can express their voices, which, in situations of crisis such as climate change, are expressed in eruptions, mudslides, droughts and floods, bringing suit against the causes and effects provoked by the voracity of capitalism. On one hand, in everyday situations we hear about the balance among persons/society/nature/the cosmos, expressed in the sounds of nature and the voices of the environment. These come to us in testimonies, phrases, poetry, songs, legends, images, and through analysis. They are stored in the beauty and goodness of nature gathered in the philosophy of peoples whose existence is ruled by the principle of life (Kowii 2005, p. 3). In addition, they are expressed through the understanding that is attributed to the Pachamama/Mother Earth: the characteristics of a living being, capable of listening, of reacting, of being loved, and thus, of being a subject with rights, with which we establish an indivisible, interdependent, complementary and spiritual relationship. To know how to listen above all to the most humble persons requires revitalizing and contemporizing popular communication, the space where the word of the people is expressed. This would be an expressive project of proposals to build a new society based on solidarity and justice. Communication for Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir is, without a doubt, the contemporary expression of popular communication. Know About That of Which One Speaks Think with Feeling Feeling-thoughts require us to construct our discourse with meaning and discussion, recovering content as a fundamental component of the message together with form, and ethics together with aesthetics. In times of an oversaturation of information, of the speeding up of messages and life, we need spaces for meditation and construction based on the word, in such a way that feelings and knowledge stimulate practices which develop Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir, in fullness and harmony. Know How to Dream To know how to dream refers to “how to defend our identity, how to complement each other in a balanced way, so that the most abandoned person has the possibility of sharing in education, health, coexistence in nature

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and in the community” (Choquehuanca 2012, p. 1). It means to design a future that begins now, or better said, in the historical accumulation of communal reciprocity. Indeed, to know how to dream is to think in utopias, but with paths that are collectively constructed in order that they might be traveled in individual and social harmony, with nature and the cosmos. As we have now stated several times, the processes of communication accompany the word on the road of Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir, in addition to imagining a place of arrival on a map that is under permanent construction. The word expresses conquests, warns of difficulties, and feeds dreams and hopes in an exercise in which one should dream with one’s feet on the ground so that the most abandoned person lives with dignity and experience coexistence. Approaches to these transitions of the common good of humanity include: (i) redefining our relationship with nature, from exploiting it to respecting it as the source of life; (ii) refocusing the foundation of life, privileging usage value over exchange value; (iii) reorganizing collective life through the generalization of democracy in social and institutional relations; and (iv) establishing interculturality (Houtart 2013, pp. 39–68), so that universal common goods, such as water, biodiversity, air, or raw materials will be global rights to which we all can have access, in the same way as other common goods or rights such as education, food, health, housing, and communication should be enjoyed. Support Words with Actions Know How to Share To know how to share “is to stop competing in order to complement each other; it is to know how to give in order to receive, to know that we are all siblings” (Choquehuanca 2012, p. 1). To promote this principle implies including an educational perspective in the communicative process, permitting the systematization of experiences, as well as the production of new knowledge for the critical response to social demands and public policies. Let us remember with Paulo Freire that education “is not the transference or transmission of wisdom or culture, it is not the extension of technical knowledge” (1969, p.  59); it is the sharing, recognition, exchange, and (re)creation of experiences and knowledge. In this way we can build societies of solidarity in a world that must be critically changed; we must foster a positive practice of life in community, where living beings, animate and inanimate, protect each other.

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The recognition of solidarity, trust, equilibrium, complementarity, and reciprocity as values and principles of community life requires a discourse with meaning. This includes arguments that permit communication for Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir to be developed as a communicative action in the way that Habermas proposes critical reflection, reasoned language, and interactions in functions of agreements and understandings. It is for this reason that the jaqin parlaña assumes that one should speak of what they know and of that for which they hope. It gives a transcendental function of communication to silence or amuki which is the time for human beings to connect with their interior subjective world, as well as with the social, natural, and cosmic exterior in a framework of mutual respect. From this space of connection emerge the concepts, actions, and discursive constructions that have meaning. Thus, we move beyond the idea of accumulated knowledge about things to the ability to also know with feeling the how, the means of communicating, in order to generate more communication. One will understand, then, the inconvenience of publicity and information as the only paths for communication. In developing narratives of the love for life we turn to testimonial genres, life histories, stories and chronicles expressed in vernacular, everyday and descriptive language. It is important to point out that which is subjective and to recover the notion of a we. This we has cultural and social identity, even though the stories may be specific, weaving real or virtual, lived and recounted memories. But, in addition, it is necessary to expose that which is a colonialist, patriarchal, and capitalist vision. For this, Silvia Rivera proposes a “sociology of the image,” arguing that, in colonialism, words did not describe, but rather concealed ways of “not saying.” In contrast, she retrieves images “that illuminate this social backdrop and offer us perspectives of a critical understanding of reality” (2010, pp. 19–20). These are found in the stories contained in weavings, in astrology, in paintings; revealing a world hidden by official cultures. Know How to Live in Harmony and Complementarity Definitely, communication is a relational process carried out through social practices. The word is not only expressed with messages, but also with actions. And in communication for Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir, one has to affirm words with actions, demonstrating the correspondence between that which one says and that which one does.

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It is for this reason that communication for Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir is a space for observation and control of the practices of transparency. In short, under the influence of the cosmovision of Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir, thoughts and practices should be re-created, where reciprocity is recognized as a way of life, community as a form of organization, coexistence with nature and the cosmos as identity, equality among men and women as a daily reality, equity as dignity, and a fulfilled life as destiny. For a life in harmony and complementarity, States should promote inclusive policies. Citizens should practice ways of community coexistence in different settings, and communication should offer spaces for diverse persons to exchange histories, narratives, and projects. In this way they reaffirm each other within societies of solidarity, in practices of unity that are inclusive of diversity and based on plurality. The Methodology of Community Coexistence: The Tetralectic Logic We reaffirm that “the methodology of Communication for Vivir Bien/ Buen Vivir, is basically participative, due to its characteristics which are inclusive of societies and cultures. Through its contribution to the harmonization of societies with nature and the cosmos, it is fundamentally educative, and because of its political orientation it is irreversibly popular (of the people)” (Contreras 2016a, p. 118). Just as all methodologies maintain their theoretical focus or political position by specific methods, communication for Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir is basically participative, organized with methodologies that are fundamentally horizontal, dialogical, and participative. Thus, we recognize that communication is a discipline of horizons, that connects and intersects at the same time that it is transversed by other disciplines. Thus, complementarities are generated that do not separate practice from theory, nor manual work from the intellectual word, nor to be from should be, nor feelings and reason, nor beliefs and certainties. As Alejandro Barranquero and Chiara Saez-Baez point out, while for modern science only that which is measurable and quantifiable is an object of knowledge, for Vivir Bien/ Buen Vivir and its multidimensional principles, the logic of give-and-take, cooperation, and the generating of networks are fundamental to the creation of knowledge and community (2015, p. 60). For this reason, the characterization of horizontal and alternative communication in three spaces—access, dialogue, and participation—(Beltrán 1981, pp.  19–20) should be challenged to include yet one more step:

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coexistence. Communication is not limited to the construction of messages, but rather, it takes on social, political, cultural, and spiritual action. Tretralectic logic structures the building of knowledge, of practices, of that which is imaginary and of the word. These moments maintain a tight correspondence with the principles of know how to listen—know how to share—know how to coexist—know how to dream. Feel/Think The process of building knowledge begins with peoples’ thoughtful reflections, creating unceasing relationships among themselves and with the reality to which they belong, either concretely or virtually. The first approach to this reality is located in the indivisible unity between feelings and thoughts (feeling/thoughts) which expresses our understanding and re-creations of historical reality in specific places. These lead us to process acts and ideas that arise from our fears and hopes, from what we know and what we feel, from our real and imagined realities, from our identities. If thus we belong and reproduce ourselves socially and culturally, in order to communicate with each other we must put into practice the principle of to know how to listen. Our feeling/thoughts are composed of fears and joys, as well as intuitions and reasoning, and they must be processed at the same time and in the same relational level with the so-called “reception pole,” or the source of discursive interpretation and identification. In the same way, the so called “emission pole” processes knowledge from its particular points of reference, a result of its knowledge and life experience. Decide/Act The first moment permits us to examine, predict, or take the pulse of our feeling/thoughts, which explain reality beyond its appearances from its structural causes, and in its context. As a result, it now has the capacity to critically create, deepen, project, and broaden the experiences of Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir. This must take place in its own context as well as contributing to its construction in other distinct spaces—local, regional, national, planetary, civic, and State. This new state of locus concretizes, in practice, the principle of know how to share. In terms of communication, the moment of decide/act is produced in recognition, defined by Eliseo Verón as a space or moment of reception in which the individual and collective persons being questioned become the owners of the discourse. At the same time, they produce the messages from a place of their own representations and feelings.

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This gives birth to the decision to work on breaking with structural (dis)orders and to develop applications of ways of life in community coexistence. The process is holistic and cyclical, because each completion leads to a new situation in which communication must continue in order bring about that which is imagined, and beliefs combine with the knowledge of new reflections and experiences. Thus, people and societies can commit to work in solidary and with complementarities in the construction and legitimation of Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir. Return/Coexist The third moment refers on one hand to the idea of a permanent return to identity in order to face the future, recovering historical memory. One advances dynamically, situations are transformed, realities are recreated, new stories are founded, but the accumulated impressions remain, and it is necessary to return to them in order to continue building. In the Andino-Amazonic world, when one looks at life, the qhip nayra/Aymara or qhip ñawi/Quichua/Quechua is practiced, which consists of looking back (return) to go forward (give hope, encourage) or the “vision which integrates the memory of the past into the future” (Choque 2007, p. 174). This going back combines with collaborative coexistence, safeguarding all of society with equitable policies, social justice, cultural acknowledgements, gender equality, in harmony with nature. In other words, it means to generalize the practices of Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir, transforming reality with mystique and commitment. This space consists of authenticating words with acts, in daily relations as in broad cultural expressions and in public policies. The path to reach this level begins with our personal values, carrying them toward complementarity with other persons, nurturing each other. Thus, we know that “each society rewrites the signs, they adapt them, they reconstruct them, they reinterpret them, they relocate them, they find new meaning in them” (Mattelart 2006, p.  103). And we also know that each society writes its stories with its fist, its writings, its language, its visual representations, and from its lived experience and imagination. Celebrate/Hope Communication for Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir must be the setting of collective joy for civilizing transformations and the enthusiastic announcement of a new society reaching beyond capitalism, colonialism, or patriarchy. To celebrate is comparable to the jubilee that commemorates the

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announcement of the Good News and the achievements of communal coexistence, relationships of solidarity and collaboration, gender equality, and the preservation of our environment. It is the enjoyment of life, recognizing our peers for the shared activities and the goals attained. It is the offering we make to Mother Earth because she protects us. It is seeking silence to be in dialogue with the gods. It is the joy in following—and making—the path which leads us toward the society of Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir. It is the happiness of being builders —and travelers —on this path, expressing the word which expands the meanings of a life in fullness and harmony. (Contreras 2016a, pp. 120–121)

This hope, which substitutes the fear of change for the enthusiasm of being part of the transformations, now makes sense. Turning to the pedagogical value of the question of and for the future, we must be creative in order to take on future analyses and find adequate paths for sharing collaborative experiences and moving toward good coexistence. Thus, one finds paths that explain the present, beginning with the necessary questioning of self, of accumulated memory, of identity, of that which is rooted in the past, but allows knowledge of the future. In the original cultures, thinking from a place of historical memory or longtime memory is equivalent to returning to be or continuing to be. This promotes a mechanism of remaking, permitting “the reconstruction of knowledge and learnings” (Mamani 2007, p. 303) or to know how to dream the future.

The Care of the Communal Home It is not possible to understand the Latin American/Caribbean theory of communication without considering its developments in the political arena, given that its representative paradigms are born and developed through the resistance of its citizens, in the battles for meaning shown in how they express themselves (see Flores-Márquez, this book). This is seen as well in their search for participative democracies, the desire for projects on a continental level, integrated by the people themselves, and in a new libertarian gnosis and in the struggle for the hegemony of society’s projects, helping to develop them. The Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir that initiates and is built in the political arena of the citizenry takes a leap to the political level of state, passing from the traditional anti-hegemony resistance to a possibility of being the

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hegemonic change project of the time. And communication for Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir could become a contemporary paradigm of the communication theory of Latin America and the Caribbean, knowing that it is not possible to insert this world vision in already existing schools unless they accommodate to the current reality. For this to happen, what is needed is an exercise in the shake-up of certainties and the decolonizing of cartesian linearities. This challenge implies working, at least, in the following levels: 1. Multi-discursive strategies will need to be designed and imple mented in order to undo the prior colonization of word and life, thus legitimizing the ideas, experiences, and horizons of community coexistence with all communication resources and through all possible media: traditional, group, mass, digital, print, radio, television, electronics, satellites. All of these, without exception, are included in a transition toward multimedia projects where each medium, from its own particularity, contributes to the shared objectives. Since it means constructing a new order of civilization, it is of utmost importance to create a style that has the ethics and characteristics of Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir, returning to the path covered by popular communication. 2. The integration of institutionality is a condition which requires applying the principles of harmony and community in the area of communication structures, as institutional achievements gain meaning by belonging to networks and collectives that establish the local word in global spaces. The institutions of communication should strengthen themselves with the principles of Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir, developing their missions with the worldview of life in harmony and encouraging encounters among civil society, the state, academia, and unions. 3. Pluri-national policies of communication are necessary, which, corresponding with the new constitutionalism of the states, generate decentralized, intercultural, and pluralistic processes of construction of the word for life. Paraphrasing Jesús Martín-Barbero, what are needed are “policies that make active in the public sphere that which is of the people” (2010, p. 192). This goes hand-in-hand with cultural politics, with protagonists, esthetics, and processes that reenvision the traditional meaning of art, patrimony, and the cultural industries which navigate in seas of the cultured culture of museum studies.

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4. The Right to Communication is a fundamental component of the communication for Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir, if one wishes to contribute to a new world with aspirations, norms, and concrete methods for having property, infrastructure, and the discursive construction that make possible the democratization of the word. Communication should be understood and exercised as a right, so that from its own place it takes initiatives that dignify the word and should be understood as more than simply the distribution of resources and the flow of information. It needs to promote a more equitable working order which is pertinent to the cultural industries, and to exchange the monopolist and oligopolist structures of the communication media for systems of ownership that are more equitable, with the participation of society, the state, and academia. For many ways of understanding this, the common home is identified with our natural surroundings in the same ways that understanding Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir is limited to seeing it as an ecological alternative. To share these understandings would imply being in agreement with views that we know break apart the makeup of Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir as well as the characterization of the common home. That is how the peoples of the continent understand it in the Acuerdo de los Pueblos, undersigned in Cochabamba, Bolivia, in 2010, expressing that “humanity stands before a great divide: continue on the path of capitalism, of patriarchy, of progress and death, or take on the path of harmony with nature and respect for life.” In this text we maintain that Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir is the cosmovision of cosmo-interconnection, which articulates, intercommunicates, and allows for the interdependent encounter of these other four worldviews that, together, are its components: the biocentric, for which the center is life; the ethnocentric, which following the postulates of human development puts the human in the center of decisions; the ecocentric, which promotes the sustainable development of the planet; and the cosmocentric, which incorporates the world of the gods, spirituality, and qualitative values such as solidarity and happiness of the individual within the whole. The common home is all of this together, functioning as a unit in which the parts correspond with each other as an integral ecology. Thus, Pope Francis proposes this as the need for economic, environmental, and social responses as an indivisible whole in solidarity for the common good.

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References Alfaro, R. M. (2006). Otra Brújula. Innovaciones en Comunicación y Desarrollo. Lima: Calandria. Barranquero-Carretero, A., & Sáez-Baeza, C. (2015, March). Comunicación y Buen Vivir. La Crítica Descolonial y Ecológica a la Comunicación Para el Desarrollo y el Cambio Social. Bogotá, Revista Palabra Clave (vol. 18, no. 1). Universidad de la Sabana. Beltrán, L.  R. (1981). Adiós a Aristóteles: La Comunicación Horizontal. In Comunicación y Desarrollo (no. 6). Sao Paulo: Cortez. Choque, M. E. (2007). Principios para la construcción de una democracia intercultural. en Intelectuales Indígenas Piensan América Latina (vol. 2). Quito: Abya Yala. Choquehuanca, D. (2012). Suma Qamaña: Vivir Bien, No Mejor, Koinonía. Agenda Latinoamericana. Contreras Baspineiro, A. (2014). Sentipensamientos. De la Comunicación-­ Desarrollo a la Comunicación para el vivir bien. Quito: UASB/Editorial Tierra. Contreras Baspineiro, A. (2015). El límite es el infinito. Relaciones entre integración y comunicación. Quito: CIESPAL/UASB. Contreras Baspineiro, A. (2016a). La palabra que Camina. La Comunicación Popular para el Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir. Quito: ALER/CI-ESPAL/FES. Contreras Baspineiro, A. (2016b). Seremos millones. La Comunicación Para el Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir, Revista Diálogos N° 92, FE-LAFACS. Contreras Baspineiro, A. (2016c). Aruskipasipxañanakasakipunirakispawa. Quito: América Latina en Movimiento, ALAI. De Sousa Santos, B. (2011). Introducción: Las Epistemologías del Sur. Coimbra: Centro para Estudios Sociales, Universidade de Coimbra. Freire, P. (1969). ¿Extensión o Comunicación? Santiago: ISIRA. Houtart, F. (2013). El bien Común de la Humanidad. Quito: IAEN. Kowii, A. (2005). Cultura Kichwa, Interculturalidad y Gobernabilidad. en Gobernabilidad, Democracia y DerechosHhumanos. Quito: Aportes Andinos N° 13, PADH/UASB. Macas, L. (2010). Sumak Kausay: la vida en plenitud. en América Latina en Movimiento (N° 452). Quito: Agencia Latinoamericana de Información—ALAI. Mamani, C. (2007). Memoria y reconstitución. en Intelectuales indígenas piensan América Latina. Quito: Abya Yala. Martín-Barbero, J. (2010). Industrias culturales: modernidad e Identidad. en Políticas culturales en la región andina. Lima: Revista Integración N° 5, SGCAN. Mattelart, A. (2006). Densidad cultural y mundialización. Barcelona: Paidós. Rivera-Cusicanqui, S. (2010). Ch’ixinakax utxiwa: Una Reflexión Sobre Prácticas y Discursos Descolonizadores. Buenos Aires: Tinta Limón. Solón, P. (2016). ¿Es posible el Vivir Bien?, Reflexiones a Quema Ropa sobre Alternativas Sistémicas. La Paz: Fundación Solón.

Index1

A Acuerdo de los Pueblos, 226 Agricultura Familiar e Agroecologia, 60 ALER (Latin American Association of Radio Education), 85, 142, 152, 154 Alliance for Progress, 30, 40 Alternative media, 8, 10, 14, 195, 196, 198, 203, 204 Amarc-AL, see World Association of Community Radios, Latin American section Anti-systemic Movements, 212–213 ANUC, see National Association of Peasant Users Arc model, 43 Argentina, 30, 53, 144, 200 ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), 197

Articulação Semiarida Brasileira—ASA, see Brazilian Semiarid Articulation Aymaras, 138, 211 B Beltrán, Luis Ramiro, 13, 31, 41, 43, 45, 119, 137, 138 Berners-Lee, Tim, 197 Blackness, 180 Boal, Augusto, see Theatre of the oppressed Bogotá, see Colombia Bolívar, 137 Bolivia, 47, 137, 143, 194, 210, 213, 214, 226 Bolivian mining radios, see Radios Mineras Bolivian revolution, 35, 38 Borborema Union Pole, 52, 60 Bourdieu, Pierre, 159, 167

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. C. Suzina (ed.), The Evolution of Popular Communication in Latin America, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62557-3

229

230 

INDEX

Brazil, 15, 20, 30, 38, 47, 52, 53, 56, 57, 60, 61, 61n11, 62n13, 63, 94, 143, 159, 161, 178–180, 182, 183, 186–188, 200 Brazilian Semiarid Articulation, 60 Buenos Aires, see Argentina C Cajamarca, see Peru Caribbean Foundation, 125 Casa de las Americas, 39 Cassete-Foro, 21, 162 Catholic, see Catholic Church Catholic Church, 75, 76, 85–87, 143, 145, 154 Catholic hierarchy, see Catholic Church Catholic Latin American Association for Radio and Television, see International Catholic Association for Radio and Television (UNDA) CEBs, see Grassroots ecclesial communities Centro de Mídias Populares, 2 Certeau, Michel de, 168 Chiapas, see Mexico Chile, 143, 200 Ciespal, 13, 18 Citizen media, 8 Coletivo Papo Reto, 185–186 Colombia, 76, 85, 93, 102, 111, 114, 116, 118, 119, 194, 200 Colonialism, 177–182, 187, 188 Coloniality, 180–185, 188 COMLAC, see Latin American and Caribbean Communication Congress Communication and development, 53–56

Communication for citizenship, 51, 53, 54, 56 Communication for development, 17, 18, 52–57, 69 See also Communication and development Communication for social change, 16–19, 21, 51, 57 Communication rights, 19 Community Action Boards, 112 Concentration of media, 9, 161, 173 Concentration of media ownership, see Concentration of media Cooperative of Agropecuary União da Vitória, 61 Copavi, see Cooperative of Agropecuary União da Vitória Copavi settlement, 52 Coronavirus pandemic, 187 Cuba, 39 Cuban revolution, 30, 38–41 Cybercultur@, 21 D Decolonization, 177 Democratization of communication, 73, 75 Department of Social Communication of the Latin American Bishops’ Council (acronym in Spanish: CELAM), 81 Deutschmann, Paul, 125 Developmentalism, 75 Díaz Bordenave, Juan, 13, 31, 41, 42, 45, 46, 119, 130 Diffusion model, 55 Diffusion of innovation, see Diffusion model Dominican Republic, 85, 143

 INDEX 

E ECLAC, see Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, 30, 32–34, 33n2, 38, 40 Ecuador, 47, 143, 210, 213, 214 El Salvador, 93, 144 Epistemologies of the South, 12, 13, 110, 213 Escuelas Radiofónicas de Bolivia (ERBOL), 85 Estrella del Mar, 143 F Fals Borda, Orlando, 6, 11, 12, 31, 41, 45, 46, 109–125 FARCO, 144 Favela media activism, see Media activism Favela mediascape, 187 Favelas, 178, 185–188 Field and habitus, 167–168 See also Bourdieu, Pierre Finland, 179 Flinn, William, 118 Folklore, 93 Freire, Paulo, 3, 12, 17, 42, 43, 58, 66, 82, 137, 163, 172, 204 Freirean popular education tradition, see Freire, Paulo Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed, see Freire, Paulo FUNDARCO, 121 G García Canclini, Néstor, 14, 98, 193 Global South, 29–47 Gonzalez, Jorge, 21 Grassroots ecclesial communities, 75, 82, 83, 88, 162

231

Guaraní people, 211 Guarani’s War, 37 Guatemala, 38, 143 Guatemalan, 130 Guerrilla radios, 144 Gutierrez, Francisco, 43 Gutiérrez Pérez, Francisco, 130, 138 H Habitus, 159, 160, 166, 167, 169–170, 172, 173 Havana, see Cuba Havens, Eugene, 118 Honduras, 143 hooks, bell, 3 I Imputation technique, see Participatory Action Research International Catholic Association for Radio and Television (UNDA), 82 International Catholic Organization for Cinema and Audiovisuals (OCIC), 82 International Information Order (IIO), 56 Investigación Acción Participativa, see Participation Action Research J JAC, see Community Action Boards K Kaplún, Gabriel, 192 Kaplun, Mario, 21, 43, 162, 163, 172

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INDEX

L Landless Workers Movement (MST), 60, 61 La Paz, see Bolivia La Rosca Foundation for Research and Social Action, 116, 121 Latin American and Caribbean Communication Congress, 129, 137 Latin American Catholic Press Association (acronym in Spanish: UCLAP), 82 Laudato Si, 215, 216 La Voz de la Costa, 143 La Voz de la Selva, 143 Law of Services of Audiovisual Communication, 144–145 Lerner, Daniel, 55 Liberation philosophy, 91, 97 Liberation psychology, 98 Liberation theology, 74, 75, 80, 82, 83, 86, 88, 91, 98, 113, 148, 162, 195 Lipman, Aaron, 118 Llallagua, see Bolivia Luchadoras, 202 M MacBride Report, 9, 14, 56 Mapuche people, 212 Maré Vive, 186 Martin-Barbero, Jesús, 14, 36, 98, 193 Mattelart, Armand, 193 Mattelart, Michelle, 13 Mayan people, 211 Media activism, 185, 188 Media activist, see Media activism Mendoza, see Argentina Merida, see Venezuela Metaphorical South, see Global South Mexico, 30, 38, 93, 143, 199, 200, 202

Mídia NINJA, 197, 200 Mine radios, see Radios mineras Monroe Doctrine, 32 Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, see Landless Workers Movement (MST) Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Teto, 161 N Narrativas Independentes, Jornalismo e Ação, see Mídia Ninja National Association of Peasant Users, 125 National Institute of Agrarian Reform of Cuba, 39 National Liberation Army, 112 National University of Colombia, 113, 115–117 National University of Cuyo, 130 New International News Order (NOII), 75 New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO or NWIO), 14, 56, 75, 86 New York, see United States NOMIC, see New World Information and Communication Order Non-Aligned Movement, 56 North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 199 Nuñez Hurtado, Carlos, 43 P PAR, see Participation Action Research Paraguay, 37, 37n3, 38, 41, 47, 129, 130, 133 Participation Action Research, 6, 45, 91, 109–125 See also Fals Borda, Orlando Participatory development, 64–69

 INDEX 

Participatory media, 8 Pasquali, Antonio, 13 Pastoral of Communication, 143 Pearse, Andrew, 118 Pedagogic mediation, 130, 131, 137–139 Pedagogy of communication, 133 Peru, 80, 142 Philosophy of the liberation, see Liberation philosophy Pope Francis, 215, 226 Popular communicator, 159, 160, 163–166, 168–173 Popular education, 91, 98, 131, 137, 146 Popular educational radios, 146 Popular movement, 97, 100 Popular radios, 142, 143, 145–150, 145n3, 154–156 Popular Women’s Organization (OFP), 102 Preferential option for the poor, see Theology of liberation Prieto Castillo, Daniel, 43 Problematization Pedagogy, 43 Puerto Rico, 32n1, 38 Punta de Lanza, 121 Q Quichua/Quechua nation, 211 Quijano, Aníbal, 181 R Radical media, 8 Rádio do Povo, 143 Radio Enriquillo, 143 Radioescuelas, 194 Radio Occidente, 143 Radio Pío XII, 150 Radio Santa María, 85

233

Radio Schools of Colombia, 44 Radios mineras, 44, 194 Radios of Bolivian miners, see Radios mineras Radios of the mining workers, see Radios mineras Radio Sutatenza, 76, 85 Raimón, the Catalan singer-­ composer, 142 Reform of Córdoba, 35 Reyes Matta, Fernando, 13 Rhizomatica, 202 Right to communicate, see Right to communication Right to communication, 16, 19, 56, 226 Rio de Janeiro, see Brazil Rodríguez, Simón, 137, 137n3, 138 Rogers, Everett, 17, 55, 118, 125 S Samba, 183 Sao Paulo, see Brazil Saucío, see Colombia Schmucler, Héctor, 193 Schramm, Wilbur, 55 Second Episcopal Conference of Latin America, see II General Conference of Latin American Bishops (Medellín) Second European War, see Second World War II General Conference of Latin American Bishops (Medellín), 40, 79 Second Vatican Council, 40, 41, 41n5, 83 Second World War, 30–32, 35, 55 Shiir Waras, 212 Shuar people, 212 Smith, T. Lynn, 118

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INDEX

Social movements’ media, 8 STICA, 42 Sursiendo, 202 T Tactics and strategies, 166 See also Certeau, Michel de Technical Service Inter-American Agricultural Cooperation, 41 Technique of systematic return, see Participatory Action Research Theatre of the oppressed, 91, 98 See also Boal, Augusto Theology, 214–215 Theology of culture, see Theology of liberation Theology of liberation, see Liberation Theology Theology of the people, see Theology of liberation Theory of Dependence, 35 Theory of Dependency, 30 Theory of Diffusion of Innovations, see Rogers, Everett III General Conference, see III General Conference of Latin American Bishops (Puebla 1979) III General Conference of Latin American Bishops (Puebla 1979), 81 Torres and Torres Restrepo, Camilo, 97, 111, 113 Tupac Katari insurgence, 37 U UNESCO, 14, 121 Union Federation of Mining Workers, 144 United Nations, 55, 56 United States, 30–32, 38, 42, 45

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 19 University of Florida, 117 University of Minnesota, 117 Uruguay, 162 V Vatican II, see Vatican II Council (1962-1965) Vatican II Council (1962-1965), see Second Vatican Council Venezuela, 47 Vidich, Arthur, 118 W Whiteness, 177, 180 White supremacist narratives, see Whiteness White supremacist values, see Whiteness Willems, Emilio, 118 World Association of Community Radios, Latin American section, 142 World Christian Association for Communication (WACC), 20 World Health Organization (WHO), 187 World Symposium of Cartagena on Participatory Action Research, 121 World War II, see Second World War World Wars, 160 See also Second World War Z Zapatista movement, see Zapatista uprising Zapatista uprising, 191