Mexico’s Community Radio Stations Fight for Survival and Recognition

[Judi Lynn]

Mexico’s Community Radio Stations Fight for Survival and Recognition
By Daniela Pastrana

MEXICO CITY, May 6 2013 (IPS) - Radio Totopo was founded in February 2006 in the Pescadores neighbourhood, the oldest and poorest part of the city of Juchitán in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. But the authorities closed it down in late March, even though Congress is debating a constitutional reform that would recognise community radio stations.

Residents of Pescadores say the radio station belongs to all the people. Totopo, like most community radio stations in Mexico, has no official licence, and 90 percent of its programming is transmitted in Diidxazá, the language of the Zapotec indigenous people. In recent years, Radio Totopo has supported campesinos (peasants) and fisherfolk of the local Zapotec people, who call themselves Binnizá, in resisting a wind park that the Spanish company Gas Natural Fenosa is planning to install on communal lands on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

The indigenous Assembly of Peoples of the Isthmus in Defence of Land and Territory denounced that deception was used in the presentation of the project to the campesinos, some of whom, unable to speak Spanish and not provided with a translation, signed contracts to rent out their plots at a complete disadvantage, violating the right of native peoples to information and prior consultation.

For six months, Radio Totopo translated contracts into the Zapotec language, broadcast them and ran campaigns on the project – until Mar. 26, when state police dismantled the radio station, removed power and audio cables and took away the transmitter and a computer as part of an eviction action in the disputed area.

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/05/mexicos-community-radio-stations-fight-for-survival-and-recognition/

[ocpagu]

1. This is a very important issue.

Community radio and television stations are some of the most effective ways of fighting mainstream press misinformation and breaking the ideological monopoly of big media groups. The creation of a network of communitary stations in Venezuela was certainly one of the big reasons behind the hate campaign against Chávez in Venezuela.