Alternative Popular Communication: The Response to the Chilean Dictatorship (original) (raw)
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With the surge of social struggles tied to the implementation of capitalist modernization at the end of the 19th century, diverse forms of technology-based mass communication in Chile arose to represent the emergence of social sectors that didn't participate in the dominant culture and sought to disseminate an alternative. Working-class and feminist newspapers, neighborhood theaters, and Cordel literature broke away from the traditional elitist and pedagogical nature that had defined the media until that time. Since then, with cycles that have ebbed and flowed, numerous communicative experiences were related to mass culture in controversial ways: they opposed it, converged with it, et cetera. Even though it is possible to trace the continuity between the cases described, this continuity is not clear upon first glance, due to its underground and nascent character. In general terms, these experiences were not established as an autonomous space for technical or aesthetic experiments; when there was a strategy, it tended to be political in nature, whereas communicative material remained conditional. Finally, the study of these cases implies a paradox: the 20th century began with a vast number of alternative communication projects that became institutionalized over the years, but they re-emerged more autonomously during Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship and the era that followed. This process of institutionalization alludes to an inversely proportional relationship between the process of incorporating the masses into positions of power (in the period between 1925 and 1973) and the development of alternative communication: these experiences are plentiful in the less institutionalized contexts of the enlightened working-class culture (that is, preceding the founding of the Communist Party in 1922 and after the anti-working-class culture that has accompanied the neoliberalism imposed since the dictatorship).
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.
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.
Radical Americas, 2021
The election of Salvador Allende and the Unidad Popular (Popular Unity) in 1970 unleashed a radical and original revolutionary process, discernible not only in the depth of its redistributive measures and the expectations it generated, but also in the ferocity with which those who identified with the counter-revolutionary ideal responded to that project. The counter-revolution, initially confined to the conservative and reactionary sectors, in a matter of months became an immense mass mobilisation that would end up paving the way for the military coup. This article analyses that counter-revolutionary process, exploring its historic roots, the main actors involved and the innovations in political practices it developed at the time. The ‘counter-revolutionary bloc’ was formed by a diverse array of political and social actors – some of whom did not have previous experience in political mobilisations – who based their actions on the adoption and socialisation of a long-standing anti-Com...
A Contracorriente Revista De Historia Social Y Literatura En America Latina, 2006
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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