Media In The Americas

An oft quoted statement by Eduardo Galeano nicely sums up the central theme of this NACLA Report and deserves to be quoted at length: "Never have so many been held incommunicado by so few. More and more have the right to hear and see, but fewer and fewer have the privilege of informing, giving their opinion and creating. The dictatorship of the single word and the single image, much more devastating than that of the single party, is imposing a life whose exemplary citizen is a docile consumer and passive spectator." Indeed, Latin America's commercial media remain in the hands of a minute clique of dominant corporations. But along with the increasing consolidation of ownership in this sector—or perhaps because of this consolidation-there are emerging alternative media in several countries. In this NACLA Report we look at these recent changes that, in some ways for better and in others for worse, are transforming the media landscape throughout the Americas.

January/February
2004
Volume: 
37
Number: 
4

Taking Note

Garry Leech
The attacks against U.S. soldiers in Iraq by anti-occupation guerrillas have resulted in the U.S. military applying its infamous National Security Doctrine so familiar to many Latin Americans. A primary component of this doctrine is the use of paramilitary forces to gather intelligence and carry out strikes against suspected insurgents.

Intro

NACLA
An oft quoted statement by Eduardo Galeano nicely sums up the central theme of this NACLA Report and deserves to be quoted at length: “Never have so many been held incommunicado by so few. More and more have the right to hear and see, but fewer and fewer have the privilege of informing, giving their opinion and creating.

Open Forum

Kristin Sampson
Until the early close of the recent Ministerial in Miami, the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) had been negotiated as a “single-undertaking.” This meant that the final agreement was to be an all-or-nothing package creating binding disciplines in nine areas: market access; agriculture; services; investment; government procurement; intellectual property; competition policy; subsidies, antidumping, and countervailing duties; and dispute settlement.
Linda Farthing and Ben Kohl
Mark Ungar’s otherwise interesting article on policing in Caracas and La Paz is unfortunately marred by some inaccuracies and omissions. He incorrectly refers to El Alto as “an unincorporated urban area surrounding the city of La Paz.”

Updates

Fred Rosen & Irene Ortiz
This story begins with the abandonment and destruction of one of Mexico’s fine old hotels, the Casino de la Selva (“the casino in the forest”) once on the outskirts of the city of Cuernavaca and then, as the city grew, incorporated into its center.

Report

Teo Ballvé
The global Indymedia collective is at the forefront of a new media paradigm that is challenging existing media models and practices. We're not a freakin' wire service! We're not about being the first to get the news out," said one participant.
Gregory Wilpert
Until the late 1990s, Venezuela’s leaders routinely persecuted the country’s community media. Homes and offices that housed community radio stations were regularly raided and their operators often feared for their lives. Running a community radio or television station was a truly clandestine activity.
Scott Dalton
Ruth Morris and I were on an assignment for the Los Angeles Times when the trouble started. On January 21, 2003, while traveling between the towns of Saravena and Tame in Arauca department, we came across a guerrilla checkpoint.
Carlos Lauría
Forty years of civil war have taken a heavy toll on Colombia’s press corps. In the last decade alone, at least 30 journalists have lost their lives while attempting to carry out their work.
Marcelo Ballvé
If anyone ever sets out to write a history of Latino media in the United States, he or she could devote a whole chapter to the year 2003, and the chapter could be called “Corporations Plunge into Latino Media.” This, of course, would be a generalization, but essentially, a true one.
Sallie Hughes & Juliet Gil
By the mid 1990s, it was apparent that something astounding was happening in Mexico, home of the world’s longest-running single party regime. Within a year of comfortably beating the divided opposition in the 1994 presidential elections, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) had lost gubernatorial elections in the important state of Jalisco, as well as the mayoral post in that state’s capital city, Guadalajara.
John Sinclair
Although Latin American media are distinctively “Latin” in their contents, exemplified by the characteristic telenovela, they are very North “American” in their structure.
Marie Trigona
Argentina’s alternative media have commonly limited their role in the social movements to informing the public about corporate media’s misinformation and providing proof of state repression. Developing a role beyond responding to the monopolization of corporate media and integrating into social processes has been a constant challenge for most of Argentina’s alternative media.

Tracking the Economy

NACLA
Number of pages in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA): 900 Final tally for the vote that narrowly passed NAFTA in the U.S. House of Representatives: 234-200

Interview

Jason P. Howe
The following interview was conducted by photojournalist Jason P. Howe in July 2003 in southern Colombia. The interviewee, who we have named Lorena, requested that her exact location and true identity not be revealed.

In Brief

Weekly News Update
On December 11, Bolivian police and military troops arrested eight campesino coca growers, cocaleros, in a massive operation involving dozens of searches in the Chapare region of the Cochabamba department. Four of those arrested are local activists from the Movement to Socialism (MAS) and two are local cocalero union leaders.

¡YA! Youth Activism

Bill Weinberg
Red Juvenil, or Youth Network, was founded in 1990 in the poor barrios of Medellín, Colombia, “to promote youth participation in political life,” says the Red’s Milena Meneses, a political science student at the National University who also teaches inmates in Medellín’s prisons about their human rights.