América Latina

An agenda for communication in building integration

Aram Aharonian, Osvaldo León

02/11/2013

Opinión

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Some forty Latin American communicators, responding to the call of the Agencia Latinoamericana de Información (ALAI) and the Asociación Latinoamericana de Educación Radiofónica (ALER), will be meeting in Quito, from November 4 to 6, under the banner of "Democratizar la palabra en la integración de los pueblos" (Democratizing communication for people’s integration), with a view to advancing the formulation of a common agenda.

In recent years, organizations and social movements - the mobilized groundswell in Latin America -, have been engaged in the elaboration of proposals and inputs with respect to the issues of democratizing communication and regional integration, as new democratizing norms have come into being in various countries of the region, alongside new people’s media, as well as strengthened state and public media.

Communication and information are strategic issues for political, cultural and ideological struggles and confrontation; yet, although this is a fundamental matter for the regional integration processes that are currently underway, none of the official integration bodies have managed to prioritize these themes in their respective agendas.

Hence the consolidation of an agenda for communication as a key aspect of regional integration is an urgent matter for both the social movements and the nation states so involved, as well as for regional organizations. It is necessary to recognize and position communication as a human right in the context of these diverse agendas. Because of this it is necessary to build the social and political impetus that will allow for the consolidation of these agendas.

In this context a new emphasis is needed on the role of culture, understood as a factor of interconnection among peoples, and on the fact that communication – one of the basic human rights – should have an inclusive character, incorporating dimensions of gender, ethnic diversity and different age groups, in order to enhance the participation of women, youth, indigenous peoples and to connect with various social struggles.

For this there is agreement on the need to break the present information stranglehold and to enhance debate so as to take the issue of integration beyond good intentions: to clarify what kind of communications are strategic and what strategies involve communication.

Many analysts believe that a fundamental task is the development of strategic thinking on integration, in order to consolidate present achievements and to outline ways to move forward, as the Brazilian ex-president Lula da Silva has pointed out, at a moment when further integration is necessary to play a role in a world that is becoming more multi-polar. This means going beyond short term visions in order to address structural problems.

Our history has been written from outside, stimulating fragmentation, division and conflict among nations and peoples. As we come to see ourselves through our own eyes, we assume that our processes of integration should not simply be copies, but re-invented and based on more egalitarian and relationships and solidarity, overcoming established tensions and prejudices among countries, facing up to existing limitations concerning institutional operation and overcoming the impact of neo-liberalism in areas of culture, education and social communication.

In Latin America we are in the process of inventing a new kind of democracy, beyond the formal declamations, which attempts to make effective the participation of society and its organized expressions in integrationist processes. What would allow us to go beyond the limitations of initiatives restricted to governments is precisely the willingness of peoples to take integration forward.

Here there are two fundamental aspects: firstly, the democratization of culture, education, information and social communication, as necessary elements in the establishment of participatory democracies; and secondly, to assume that in Latin America we are moving towards a different era, going from over 500 years of resistance, to a more positive stage, one of creation, where steps must be taken in the realm of praxis, along with setting up new theories that are based on our own reality, our idiosyncrasies, and our future.

For the most part, our social movements are calling for counter-hegemonic integration, based on people’s sovereignty, in order to stand up to the projects of global capital; but it is basic that this should involve a participation with real autonomy, as co-workers in the collective elaboration of strategic definitions and policies.

In this context, this call on the part of ALAI and ALER looks to establish common elements to support collective action, having as a point of departure the shared perceptions of the participants, and establishing commitments with integration and the democratization of communication.

In the official processes of integration, the issue of communication has until now been limited in practice – and this not by chance – to questions of infrastructure. This is important but hardly sufficient, at a time when the need for effective social participation demands an ample and permanent socialization of information as a necessary condition.

From within those sectors that are promoting the democratization of communication, we have developed initiatives and proposals that tend towards the integration of peoples as well as defending the official initiatives of regional integration. However, these endeavors often appear minuscule in the face of the heavy offensive of attacks on these processes by the big media conglomerates.

While forty years ago, armed forces were necessary to impose a model of political, economic, social and cultural dependence, today it is sufficient to dominate the world of communication and information. Today it is urgent to consider the cultural, educational and communicational disputes in the face of the legacy of neoliberalism, whose pensée unique has undertaken to disseminate a way of life, of consumption, with pretensions of universality, based on the paradigm of individualism.

In a number of events, proposals have been formulated that in general remain at the level of good intentions; but there have also been concrete initiatives, which still remain dispersed. Because of this, a self critical debate is sorely needed.

No doubt we have done many things with much good will, but we have not always followed the right paths: often, in the face of the urgent need for response and resistance, we have forgotten our own agenda as well as the need to be proactive with our information and formative action, remaining trapped in a position of merely reacting to the problems facing us.

All too often we simply copy hegemonic models that in practice are nothing more than expressions of cultural colonialism. The elaboration of a narrative about our history, our present situation and our future cannot be left in the hands of those who have consistently sought to make us invisible, to deny us, to hide us, to destroy our self-respect, fomenting division, conflict and the fragmentation of our peoples.

What is this meeting about?

Assuming that there already exists a well-trodden path and an accumulation of proposals and initiatives, this forum should provide a new platform for the challenges of democratization of communications, restate the emphasis on the appropriation of new communicational opportunities, and identify, from the context of the different spaces and media represented, how to reinforce work towards the integration of peoples.

This therefore involves moving in search of technological sovereignty that will allow us to break with the dependency and the management of regional communication and information, via the promotion of Free Software and programmes with open standards, as well as the creation and up-dating of public policies and norms leading to the democratization of access and social appropriation of the internet as a new space for the formation of currents of opinion and of critical thought.

Returning to the true integration of our peoples, with respect to infrastructure, it is necessary to promote the consolidation of the South American Fiber Optic Ring, one of the proposals under discussion in the framework of Unasur.

It is necessary to evolve our own information agenda and new language and creative forms of communication -- from a critical perspective and with a formative sense -- that are not subject to the agenda imposed by the big media corporations. We need to define common themes for action in determined situations that can contribute to the unity of our social movements, such as demilitarization, rights of Mother Earth, integration, democratization of communication, sovereignty, decolonization, human rights and international solidarity.

This also gives us a chance to analyze the sustainability of our popular media, promoting cooperatives and a social economy based on solidarity, and for this it is necessary to look at new ways of financing these initiatives.

No doubt capacity building in communication skills is a strategic element for the majority of social movements, but we need to unify and to focus these formative efforts in all the relevant entities, in both political and technical dimensions, for leaders, communications teams and bodies and among the grassroots, so as to ensure a basis of popular communicators. Indeed, there is a proposal for the creation of a Latin American institute for the training of popular communicators.

In addition there is a need for the creation of media watch groups that would allow for the establishment of some dimension of social control at all levels, in which social movements, citizens and the academy would have an active role.

As a coda to all this, there remains the task of putting together elements of a common agenda which would break the isolation and dispersion that afflicts us and that would allow for the accumulation of elements to act as a counterweight to the media consensus, the message unique, of the big establishment media.

No doubt the Latin American agenda should begin with the elaboration of a narrative of present experience; the reconstruction of an economic and social discourse, a re-thinking of democracy beyond the liberal narrative and the integration of the region and its insertion in the world, as the Brazilian Marco Aurelio García has indicated; so this meeting is a good opportunity to advance that agenda.

(Translated for Alai by Jordan Bishop)

- Aram Aharonian is a Venezuelan-Uruguayan journalist and teacher, Director of the review Question, founder of Telesur, and director of the Observatorio Latinamericano en Communication y Democracia (ULAC)

- Osvaldo León is an Ecuadorian communicologist and a journalist with ALAI.

https://www.alainet.org/es/node/80589