History of Alternative Communication in Chile: Phases and Endeavors - Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History (Reino Unido, 2017) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Alternative Popular Communication: The Response to the Chilean Dictatorship
Canadian Journal of Communication, 1988
This article deals with the development of an alternative popular system of communication in Chile as a direct response to the military regime which overthrew the constitutional government of President Salvador Allende September 11,1973. The rigid control imposed upon the means of communication and cultural expression in eneral, generated a peculiar response on the part of the popular sectors of the country.
Networking: José Carlos Mariátegui's Socialist Communication Strategy
Discourse, 2016
A few months after his return from Europe in 1923, José Carlos Mariátegui taught a course at the Universidad Popular Manuel González Prada in Lima focused on the global crisis in the aftermath of World War I. 1 His audience consisted of workers-at times up to a thousand-who would gather in the halls of the Palacio de la Exposición to listen to Mariátegui and other young Peruvian intellectuals such as Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre. 2 Mariátegui spoke on topics such as the Russian Revolution, the Social Democratic Party of Germany, and proletarian agitation in Europe as well as the philosophical and literary culture of the interwar years. 3 In his discussions, he expressed a characteristic view of the period: all the ideologies and philosophies that had accompanied the rise of the European bourgeoisie-rationalism, historicism, positivism, and so on-had lost their legitimacy. Thus, capitalist civilization as a whole had entered into a political, economic, and cultural crisis that was setting the historical conditions for socialist revolution worldwide. Mariátegui's message about the imminence of an all-encompassing revolutionary period was coupled with fascinating sociological observations and a trove of erudite information about the period. During one of his lectures, he unexpectedly interrupted his political reflections to recall a boxing match:
Using official data from the Chilean system of science and leading local journals, this article provides a historical overview of the main contemporary trends in Chilean communication research since the 2000s. The field in Chile seems to be expanding, with stable funding, stronger institutionalization, and an increase in better trained researchers. However, this development shows many paradoxes: Despite the valuable insights recent studies in communication have provided to better understand the Chilean communication landscape, they are, rather, applied research, testing global or international theoretical frames to local problems in communication. I argue that the institutional, political, and economic constraints have strongly shaped the possibilities of expanding contemporary communication research in Chile, particularly regarding its theoretical contributions. Therefore, current Chilean communication research seems a work-in-progress project, far from its substantial contributions to the international field in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Media and the Neoliberal Transition in Chile
Latin American Perspectives, 2003
Reflecting on the possibility that Chile's ruling Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia might have lost the close 2000 presidential runoff election between its candidate Socialist Ricardo Lagos and his right-wing rival Joaquín Lavín, the video producer Hermann Mondaca voiced a frustration common among journalists and other media producers who had risked their lives to create the impressive array of independent media that so tenaciously fought the Pinochet dictatorship (interview, Santiago, August 9, 2000): If we had lost the government, what would we have been left with? We would have had much less than we had in 1989. In '89, we had organized social movements, mobilized with demands and strategies, and in '99, we didn't.. .. More than that, we had a systematic voice on the radio, in the press, in the mass media and micromedia, and also in the audiovisual area, and in '99 we no longer had those media. Coldly putting it like that, one has to ask, "What was it we worked so hard to achieve?" The decline of both media diversity and social mobilization during the Chilean transition are interrelated manifestations of the limitations of neoliberal democracy. Although the Chilean media no longer face the overt repression that killed or disappeared 40 journalists and communication workers, sent another 300 into exile, and left approximately 1,000 more unable to find work (Uribe, 1998: 31), the dramatic decline of media diversity since 1990 highlights the Concertación's failure to treat the media as a crucial democratic site whose openness to all sectors of civil society should be actively supported by public policy. Instead, the Concertación's embrace of the neoliberal conception of media democratization has facilitated national and transnational corporate control of the principal means of public expres-39 Rosalind Bresnahan lived in Chile from 1969 to 1972 and conducted research there during the summers of 1998, 2000, and 2002, interviewing approximately 100 people involved in media production, distribution, and policy making during the dictatorship and the transition to democracy. She most recently taught in the Department of Communication Studies at California State University San Bernardino, and her research was funded by two faculty professional development grants and a Latin American studies travel grant.
Culture, neo-liberalism and citizen communication: the case of Radio Tierra in Chile
Global Media and Communication, 2006
This article analyses the Chilean independent and not-for profit station Radio Tierra In the general context of the work of two key Chilean sociologists, José Joaquín Brunner and Manuel Antonio Garretón, in particular the latter's theory of an epochal transformation in the relationship between culture and neo-liberalism in Chile over the preceding 30 years. More specifically, it suggests that Radio Tierra makes evident the emergence of a new form of social communication which, in contrast to the traditional liberal model of communication of, and for, information, is more attuned to the new functions of culture in the expansion and implementation of citizenship under conditions of (neo-liberal) globalization. After a discussion of the contemporary media scene and the role of public journalism and alternative communication in Latin America, the article then focuses on the communicational, political and cultural work of Radio Tierra. In 1990, along with the transition to democracy, Radio Tierra (RT) was born in Santiago as an independent station. Using its trajectory, I will try to concretely show some important connections between globalization, neo-liberalism and culture in contemporary Chile. K E Y W O R D S alternative media ■ Chile ■ culture ■ neo-liberalism ■ public journalism ■ Radio Tierra Neo-liberalism and culture in Chile Manuel Antonio Garretón develops an interesting macro-sociological framework to describe the political and cultural situation of Latin America in the era of globalization. He distinguishes first a transition from one type of society to another (from an industrial society organized around labour and production to a post-industrial society structured by the axis of consumption and communication) and, secondly, three big
Social semiosis and authoritarian legitimacy: Television in Pinochet's Chile
Studies in Latin American Popular Culture (Volume 10), 1991
What are the mechanisms by which a regime of force seeks to achieve the social cooperation and stability necessary to remain in power? To what extent can an authoritarian regime legitimate its presence and its projects? What are the weaknesses of the authoritarian legitimacy? Under what circumstances is it called into question, creating the potential for social transformation? The present study explores the question of authoritarian legitimacy in reference to a particular historical moment: the period just prior to the October 1988 presidential plebiscite in Chile. The discussion incorporates concepts from several distinct analytical paradigms to describe General Augusto Pinochet's defeat as the result of a transformation in social semiosis. Considered in this way, the nationwide television propaganda battle that took place in Chile prior to the October vote reveals a profound change in the relationship between the conditions of the production and circulation of meanings, on the one hand, and the ideological structures latent in the meanings produced, on the other. This relationship--the semiosis of a given society at a determined historical juncture--is at the heart of any process of political change, but it is most visible in moments of dramatic transformation or crisis. The Chilean case demonstrates the complexity of ideological processes in authoritarian situations: while the Pinochet regime effectively impeded the development of contending ideological projects by excluding alternative discourses from the channels of national communication, sixteen years of complete military control over the mass media did not succeed in transforming significantly the Chilean political landscape. Quite the contrary: the opposition's nationally televised "discursive coup" and its ensuing electoral victory over the aging general were largely a function of destape [uncorking]. The "No" vote won because its discourse successfully tapped the social effervescence of a people suddenly confronted with a political space in which to express the anger, fear, and sadness, as well as hope for a change, that had been silenced by years of military rule.
Routledge eBooks, 2021
One key marker of mass social movements transitioning to participatory democratic governance is popular media access. This essay argues that democratic media access by public constituencies becomes a site for constructing social revolution and simultaneously a manifest empirical measure of the extent of democratic participation in the production, distribution, and use of communication with new cultural possibilities. The participatory production practices (with citizens producing and hosting their own programs) and the democratic content (of oral histories, local issues, critiques of government and business, and everyday vernacular) reflect the hegemony of emerging 'Bolivarian' twenty-first century socialism expressed as popular participation in media production. Bolstered by constitutional changes and public funding, popular social movements of civil society, indigenous, women, and working class organizations have gained revolutionary ground by securing in practice the right of media production. Findings indicate that public and community media (that move beyond alternative sites of local expression and concerns) provide a startling revolutionary contrast to the commercial media operations in every nation. Popular media constructions suggest a new radically democratic cultural hegemony based on human solidarity with collective, participatory decision-making and cooperation offering real possibilities and experiences for increased equality and social justice. Social movements and political power in Latin America In the midst of continent-wide turmoil and conflict at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the sudden increase in the number of governments espousing varieties of socialism and social democracy and enacting programmes to benefit labour, the urban poor and indigenous groups (with an occasional veneer of anti-US intervention rhetoric) became widely known as the 'pink tide'. Pink tide ('Onda Rosa' in Spanish) seems to concisely, albeit insufficiently, characterise the appearance of a generally left political trajectory in Latin American. This was 'pink' rather than 'red' , as Larry Rohter of the New York Times first opined, pink indicating a lighter tone-not the 'red' of communism, not socialism, but a softer shade of progressive politics. While 'pink tide' cogently labels the leftward trend, more is needed ARTICLE HISTORY