Third Hemispheric Conference of the Struggle Against the FTAA
Communication Challenges from the Perspective of the Excluded
28/01/2004
- Opinión
Journalists; communicators; students; and radio, TV, and video
producers from Mexico, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Chile, Venezuela,
Nicaragua, Canada, Peru, the United States, and Cuba, who
participated in the workshop entitled "Media and Communication" in
the Third Hemispheric Conference of the Struggle Against the FTAA in
Havana, dedicated themselves to strengthening and making more
dynamic the flows of information of the Continental Campaign against
the FTAA with the purpose of raising consciousness of the topic in
broad sectors of society in this part of the world.
The workshop, coordinated by Sally Burch, executive secretary of the
Latin American Information Agency (ALAI); José Ramón Vidal,
coordinator of the Popular Communications Program of the Dr. Martín
Luther King, Jr. Memorial Center; and José Dos Santos, vice-
president of the Cuban Journalists´ Union started off the debate in
turn about important topics such the visualization of communication
themes as an element which weaves through the rest of the main parts
of the Continental Campaign and the proposal of actions that feed
this key strategy.
According to Sally Burch, "one of the great challenges of
communications for this new stage of the struggle against the FTAA
is for the information channels not only to permanently join with
the discussion agenda of the Continental Campaign but to work to be
more and more creative, wide-reaching, dynamic, and dependable in
matching the issues to the characteristics of the identity of the
people to whom there are aimed, at the national and the hemispheric
level."
For the communicators of the region, the issue has another key
point: the achievement of alliances and communication strategies
which stimulate the individual and collective creativity among those
who work directly with the alternative media and the entire cultural
sector of our nations: editorialists, analysts, academics, students
of communications and sociology, writers, artists, and intellectuals
looking not only to add their efforts but to share concrete
experiences and actions, making more powerful and visible the talent
and the indigenous cultural expressions of our region against the
FTAA
Another of the most important demands of the workshop was the
perfection of the most efficient means of communicative productions
which more and more have been coming together in networks and other
spaces of the social movements on the continental stage, through
messages, publicity campaigns, websites, community radio, and
promotion and educational actions in every country
Another moment of important reflection for the workshop attendees
was to achieve a greater presence of the topic of communication, the
press, and communicative and cultural productions in the discussions
on the FTAA and the free trade agreements, from the positions and
just demands which today are the protagonists of the social
movements. Interesting action proposals received an excellent
welcome on the part of the participants; for example, those of Luis
Berrizbertia of TV-Vive, from Venezuela, who offered spaces of that
new television channel to exhibit audiovisual materials from any
country of the continent and to share the experiences of the
Venezuelan producers with the rest of their colleagues in the
region.
Juan Cárdenas, of Chiapas Community Radio, explained, for his part,
the project of the Free Radio Area of the Americas (FRAA), still
under construction, which several producers are already working on
and which consists of an internet radio network which would
communicate community radio from all over the hemisphere to carry
the humblest messages against the FTAA using creative and
provocative language and forms of presentation
One of the dangers of the FTAA and the free trade treaties is
precisely the attempt to impose a clause by which all that which is
not explicitly excluded is included. That is to say, if there is no
existing legislation about cultural issues and the media, it
immediately is included in the bilateral accords and the FTAA as the
negotiation packet, in such a way that it has negative repercussions
on all of the countries that won´t be able to establish policies to
protect the sovereignty of their culture and their means of
information and communication faced with international investment,
which also includes the radioelectic spectrum.
For the communicators of the Americas the challenge is so immense
that the actions and strategies require the rebirth of forms,
methods, and communication alternatives to fight that which seeks to
swallow up our identities, our history, and our collective memory
https://www.alainet.org/es/node/109319
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