Community Radio in Colombia

Journal of Radio Studies/Volume 10, No. 1, 2003

Community Radio in Colombia: Civil Conflict,Popular Media and the Construction

of a Public Sphere

Mario Alfonso Murillo

This essay explores the phenomenon of community radio in Colombia inlight of the ongoing internal conflict Combining a review of the writtenmaterials about Colombia's social-political conflict and the history of its radioindustry, both in English and Spanish, with first-hand research on the groundin Colombia, I try to demonstrate how community radio is part of a broadermovement to democratize society in the face of extreme violence, politicalrepression, and economic dislocation. By using one youth-led radio station insouthern Colombia as a case study, I argue that notwithstanding the manyproblems and drawbacks they face, community radio is playing a role increating a public sphere.

INTRODUCTION

On the night of the semifinal game between Honduras and Colombia in the"Copa America 2001," the largest international soccer tournament in the West-ern Hemisphere, residents of the municipality of San Jose in the southerndepartment of Guaviare were treated to a large screen projection of the game'slive televised broadcast. Dozens of people gathered around watching the gameas it was projected onto the white wall of the church center across the streetfrom the local community radio station, Juventud Stereo. It was a treat for thepeople of the community, concocted at the last minute by the management ofthe radio station as a way to bring the people together in a public space tocelebrate an event that had captivated the entire country for the previous threeweeks. Colombia's national soccer team was about to qualify for the champi-onship round of this major international sporting event, and everybody wanted

Mario A. Murillo, (MA, New York University, 2003), is an assistant professor in the de-partment of AudioA/ideo/Film at the School of Communication at Hofstra University,Hempstead, New York. He is a veteran radio journalist and documentary producer whohas worked for more than 17 years in commercial, public, and community radio. He iscurrently finishing a book about the civil conflict in Colombia and its impact on socialmovements to be published in the fall of 2003.

Murillo/COMMUNITY RADIO IN COLOMBIA 121

to share in the moment. But the open-air telecast was more than just a night outto watch soccer with some friends. The unifying nature of the spontaneousevent and the enthusiasm with which it was greeted by the public were evi-dence of how the young directors of the radio station had integrated themselvesinto a much broader process of local participation on the part of the municipal-ity's youth, for years marginalized by politicians and local power brokers in theregion.

The station "Juventud Stereo" was founded in 1995 after a presidentialdecree legalized the establishment of low-power community radio stations. Thestation is the brainchild of activists from the organization Movimiento Juventudpor el Guaviare, (MJG), or Movement for Guaviare Youth, a grassroots, non-governmental social organization that began its work in San Jose and acrossthe department in 1992 with a focus on youth mobilization and empowerment.Juventud Stereo is one of about 200 local community stations currently oper-ating in the country, competing with the more powerful, commercial stationsthat have benefitted from the political arrangements that for years have shapedthe broadcasting industry since the 1940s (Fox, 1997). The small communitystations are taking advantage of the limited spaces that are available to Colom-bia's popular social movements to open a dialogue with the public about theIssues that most impact their communities.

FOCUS AND APPROACH

In this essay, we will examine Juventud Stereo and Colombian communitybroadcasters in general within the context of Colombia's internal civil conflict,its fragile democratic institutions, and the general lack of an existing publicsphere, both historically and in the present juncture. Colombia's 1991 Consti-tution provided many democratic guarantees for the population, from the rec-ognition of the cultural and land rights of Afro-Colombian and Indigenouscommunities (Murillo, 1996; Wade, 1993), to acknowledgment that access to themeans of mass communication was a fundamental right of all its citizens, equalto the right "to life, work, liberty and education" (RECORRA, 1999, p. 20; DeGreiff & Ramos, 2000). The fundamental idea was simple: To reconstruct Co-lombian society after decades of civil war, to fortify democratic institutions thatfor years had been corrupted by partisan political interests, and to create ademocracy based on tolerance, public deliberation, and open debate, the sys-tem of mass media needed to be democratized, allowing for different voices andperspectives to be heard.

Rather than present a broad survey of the more than 200 community radiostations currently operating in Colombia, I will focus on how community radioemerged within the context of civil war, especially during the past decade. Thisstudy is based on a review of the historical literature about Colombia's conflictand its media industries, both in English and Spanish.'' Then, based on first-

122 Journal of Radio Stud/es/Vol. 10, No. 1, 2003

hand research involving interviews and qualitative observations carried outover two years during site visits to Colombia, I will incorporate a brief casestudy of the above-mentioned youth-led radio station, Juventud Stereo, locatedin the northernmost reaches of Colombia's Amazon region.^

COLOMBIA'S CONTEMPORARY CONFLICT & THE PUBLIC SPHERE

The existence of a genuine public sphere in Colombia is something that isclearly open to interpretation and debate. Here it is useful to apply JurgenHabermas' model of the public sphere, despite the fact that Habermas' analysisis really directed at Western-style democracies like the United States and Eu-rope, where a viable middle-class—that is, bourgeoisie—emerged after a com-plex, historical process with distinct sociocultural characteristics that have notnecessarily existed in Latin America. Indeed, I would apply a broader concep-tion of the public sphere along the lines of what Nancy Fraser (1992) posits inher thoughtful essay "Rethinking the Public Sphere," where she argues theneed to expand Habermas's limited "bourgeois" model to satisfy the needs ofcontemporary liberal democracies. Within this broader frame of the Habermas-ian concept of the public sphere, we can place the case of Colombia because foryears the struggle for true participation in the shaping of public policy has beenthe basis of the conflict in the country, participation in decisions about eco-nomic development, the systems of education and health, control of the landand its resources, and, connected to all of these, access to mass communica-tions media.

This is tied to the deep-rooted contradictions that shape contemporaryColombian history. As Fraser points out, the ideals of the traditional, bourgeoispublic sphere as described by Habermas can be easily interpreted as anotherway of legitimizing a certain kind of class domination, all in the name ofdemocracy:

The important point is that this new mode of political domination, likethe older one, secures the ability of one stratum of society to rule the rest.The official public sphere then, was, and indeed is, the prime institutional sitefor the construction of the consent that defines the new, hegemonic mode ofdomination. (Fraser, 1992, p. 117)

This is clearly the case in Colombia. Although on the one hand, Colombianofficials often boast about the "longest standing democracy in Latin America,"throughout its recent history, the spoils of that democracy have gone to a verysmall, privileged sector of society, what journalist and writer Apolinar DiazCallejo described as "hereditary power without monarchy" (Pearce, 1990, p.185). In Colombia, the Constitution and its laws are often ignored and rarelyenforced, either because of a lack of bureaucratic capacity on the part of the


state to do so, or because of an absence of the political will on the part of theruling elite to execute those laws that are designed to protect the public (Kline,1995).

The statistic that most dramatically illustrates this situation is that of all thepolitical crimes committed in Colombia every year, including assassinations,forced disappearances, extra-judicial executions, and torture, 97% end up incomplete impunity ("Human rights," 1993). On average, between 2,100 and3,000 people are killed each year for political reasons in Colombia ("Humanrights," 1998). This occurs despite the fact that Colombia holds national, re-gional, and local elections regularly where political parties openly compete forvotes using the communications media as their primary vehicle for democraticdiscourse, what to some degree can be seen as a type of "official publicsphere," to borrow Fraser's term.

Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano coined the phrase "democra-tatorship"to describe a system that incorporates democratic formalities with repressivetendencies of a dictatorship (Giraldo, 1996), which is consistent with JurgenHabermas' explanation that "the democratic arrangement of parliamentaryelections continues to count on the liberal fictions of a public sphere in civilsociety" (Habermas, 2000).

For the most part, political life in Colombia has been dominated by twoparties. Conservative and Liberal, with the army remaining subordinate to theelite political establishment (Pearce, 1996). This complex dual-party arrange-ment, with its historic roots in the National Front that emerged in the wake ofthe brief military rule of the 1950s and the intense interparty warfare known as"La Violencia" ("the violence"), has provided the Colombian elite with a con-venient argument that it uses domestically and on an international level toconvince people that democracy does exist in Colombia.

Notwithstanding the existence of at least the superficial trappings of ademocratic political culture, what exists in Colombia are two parallel spheresthat negate the existence of a genuine public sphere. One is the bureaucratic/administrative sphere, where traditional political parties, run predominantly byelites, compete for the spoils that "serve as an incentive for cycles of general-ized corruption," all the while neglecting the needs of the majority of the people.Second is the country's social conflict, whose origins lie in the collective at-tempts at resistance to the first sphere, and that over the years has been turnedover to the armed forces and its auxiliaries for management, with dramaticlevels of repression (Giraldo, 1996).

Indeed, the failure of Colombia's "democratic" institutions to respond tothe public's legitimate, constitutionally protected demands regarding the rightto life, employment, political participation, economic opportunity, and justice,and the tendency of the state to respond to these demands through the use offorce, has led some sectors of Colombian society to take up arms to achievetheir political and social objectives (Giraldo, 1996; Molano, 2000). Thus they

124 Journal of Radio Sfud/es/Vol. 10, No. 1, 2003

destroy the possibility of cultivating the basic ingredient of the public sphere,what Habermas, in citing Hegel, described as the subjection of domination toreason: "What is to be authoritative nowadays derives its authority, not at allfrom force, only to a small extent from habit and custom, really from insight andargument" (Habermas, 2000).

CONTRADICTIONS IN COLOMBIAN DEMOCRACY

In Colombia, the evidence points to the existence of a political culture whereinsight and argument have found very little comfort in an atmosphere ofinstitutionalized intolerance and pervasive violence. A considerable amount ofliterature exists about the contemporary manifestations of this fundamentalcontradiction in Colombia's political system and the resulting civil conflict(Pearce, 1990; Kline, 1995; Bergquist, Penaranda, & Sanchez, 1992). It is acomplex picture that can be summed up with three general observations, thefirst of which has already been made. First, Colombia on paper is a liberaldemocracy, but in reality is far from satisfying the basic prerequisites for amodern democracy.

Second, although economically Colombia is a rich country that, until itsmost recent economic recession, has avoided the major crises other countriesof the region faced in the 1980s and 1990s (Kline, 1995), the majority of Colom-bians are poor, with 55-60% of the population currently living at or below thepoverty line (Alvarez Toro, 2000). Many observers argue that these economicdisparities have fueled social unrest (Leech, 2002; Molano, 2000).

Third, since independence, Colombian leaders have embraced and pro-moted the false notion of Colombia as a unified republic with a populationsharing the same sociocultural values of the ruling, primarily European elite.Colombian nationhood is superficial at best, and its history since independenceis a reflection of a continent-wide failure of the nation-state to establish princi-ples of social protections that blanket the collective public, regardless of class,regional, or perhaps most significantly, racial origin (Silva, 2000). The myth of a"racial democracy" in Colombia is pervasive. The fact that the country is andalways has been divided strongly along ethnic, racial, and regional lines, withthose wielding power consistently of European descent based in the capital andother major central urban centers, and the most marginalized sectors beingeither Indigenous, of African descent, or a combination of the races, is repeat-edly ignored by the same institutions established to defend the country's dem-ocratic traditions (Wade, 1993). This division can be seen in the fact that of thealmost 2 million Colombians who have been internally displaced as a result ofthe civil war during the past 10 years, almost 60% are of African descent.

Behind this backdrop we find the Colombian mass communication system.Colombia's media institutions have been described as an "imperfect duopoly"where two major groups control the majority of the information industries


(Waisbord, 2002). They continue to perpetuate the above-mentioned mythsabout Colombian society, either by embracing the institutional definitions usedby the establishment to describe the fringes of society, or by limiting the spaceswhereby these voices may be heard (Giraldo, 1996; Lopez de la Roche, 2001).This should come as no surprise if one considers the ownership patterns of thepress, radio, and television in Colombia, which reads like a who's who of thedominant family names in politics and business, including a number of formerpresidents (Pearce, 1990). Naturally, a systematic monitoring and analysis oftheColombian media would be needed to illustrate how these structures impactcontent, and in turn culture, studies that have been conducted inside Colombiaover the years (Lopez de la Roche, 2001). Nevertheless, it would not be a stretchto argue that the highly concentrated nature of Colombia's mass media systemis a significant mechanism used by the poiiticai and economic elite to maintainits grip on power. As Waisbord (2002) pointed out, "it would be mistaken to waxromantic about the democratic possibilities of media organizations in a systemchiefly designed to serve elites, not citizens."

In all the areas outlined above, it is clear that the public sphere in Colombiais indeed a fiction, using one ofthe most basic criteria provided by Habermas:"The public sphere of civil society stood or fell with the principle of universalaccess. A public sphere from which specific groups would be eo ipso excludedwas less than merely incomplete; it was not a public sphere at all" (Habermas,2000). As Fraser would have it, this hegemonic "official public sphere" wouldnecessitate the creation and strengthening of "subaltern counterpublics" thatwould challenge the hegemony of the primary one (Fraser, 1992).

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AS ALTERNATIVE PUBLIC SPHERES

The question in the Colombian context is, can we safely argue that Fraser'ssubaltern or counter public spheres exist, challenging the status quo and pro-viding spaces for marginalized voices to deliberate and participate on an equalplane without the pressures of the dominant political culture? And does com-munity radio represent one of those subaltern spheres?

It is in response to the contradictions of Colombian democracy thatpopular movements of many variations have emerged in Colombia over theyears, attempting to create a true public sphere (Archila & Pardo, 2001;Pearce, 1990). In most cases during the past 60 years it has been carried outin the form of legal resistance, whether manifested in peasant and indige-nous organizing over land reform, trade unions mobilizing over workers'rights, or political independents engaged in populist strategies to broadenthe political spaces monopolized by elites (Archila & Pardo, 2001; Bergquist,et al., 1992; Pearce, 1990). Yet their efforts have been met by direct andindirect repression. This has led others to resort to armed solutions, as

126 Journal of Radio Studies/Wol 10, No. 1, 2003

exemplified by the many guerilla groups that have formed during the past 40years, the most visible being the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia(FARC), currently considered the oldest and largest leftist insurgency in all ofthe Americas (Bergquist, et al., 1992; Pearce, 1990). Oddly enough, the publicsphere in Colombia exists primarily on the battlefield.

The complex history of Colombia's contemporary internal conflict, theorigins of the armed insurgency, and the state's response to this insurgencyhave been explored by countless sociologists, economists, journalists, andmilitary and political historians, both within and outside Colombia, and is notthe subject of this essay (see Bergquist, et al., 1992; Kline, 1995; Pearce, 1990).It is a process exacerbated by the introduction and expansion ofthe illicit drugtrade during the past 30 years, whose pervasive reach has penetrated everysegment of Colombian society. The level of social disintegration that existed inColombia in the 1980s, the corruption, the never-ending war, the violenceagainst political and social movements, reached a boiling point toward the endof the decade. For almost 20 years previously, successive Colombian presidentshad sought to implement political reforms aimed at modernizing the state,democratizing its institutions, and decentralizing power, all proving unsuccess-ful (Chernick, 1998). These attempts eventually led to the formation of a Na-tional Constituent Assembly established to rewrite the country's outdated con-stitution in 1990.

It must be noted that the intensification of the domestic sociopoliticalcrisis coincided with historic, global developments such as the end ofthe Cold War and the expansion of the neo-liberal economic programthroughout the Western hemisphere. It was widely recognized within Colom-bia that the state needed to be modernized to fit into the new global orderthat was emerging, a modernization process that recognized the impor-tance of dialogue in creating a social, political, and cultural community, thatis the nation-state (Silva, 2000). The new constitution, drafted by a broadcross section of Colombian society that included Indigenous leaders,former guerillas, businessmen, and traditional politicians, was an attemptto correct the many contradictions described earlier, and was widely seenas resulting from years of organized resistance —armed and "legal"—to avery authoritarian, undemocratic system that based its legitimacy on theveneer of a constitutional democracy. Many of the participants, for years leftoff the table, represented organizations and movements that can be de-scribed as "subaltern counterpublics." For the first time in Colombia's his-tory, a genuine public sphere was emerging. The articles in the new Consti-tution relating to mass communications are an indication that the membersofthe constituent assembly recognized the role of media in creating demo-cratic spaces. The community radio stations were a direct result of thisthinking.


RADIO BROADCASTING: A MECHANISM FOR NATIONALCONSCIOUSNESS

Colombian broadcasting was impacted by the cycles of political unrest andviolence that has characterized its history. Although Colombia's 1886 Constitu-tion contained a number of articles relating to the citizens' right to free speech,free expression, and a free press, article 42 opened the possibility for statecensorship: "The press shall be free during times of peace; but responsible tothe rule of law when it goes against the honor of the people, the social order, orpublic tranquility" (de Greiff & Ramos, 2000, p. 4).

In 1929, "Radiodifusora Nacional," or the National Radio Broadcastingsystem, was founded, the first state-run radio network. Changes in the taxsystem in the early 1930s made commercial operations of radio stations prof-itable, "creating public-private hybrids" in the burgeoning radio industry (Fox,1997, p. 89). As a result, commercial stations grew in the 1930s. RadiodifusoraNacional actually began operating in 1940 as an arm ofthe Ministry of Educa-tion with the fundamental purpose of promoting the national culture to a massaudience, thereby strengthening the Colombian nation. It was part of a broadercampaign that involved "the education system, other media, the fine arts,literature, and music as vehicles to construct a Colombian national identity"(Silva, 2000).

In the 1940s, state-run radio got the population to "tune into one historicmoment, a homogenous moment" shared by all as part ofthe so-called "na-tional unity" (Silva, 2000). It was a period of major conflict and repressionagainst popular sectors. After the assassination of the populist Liberal PartyPresidential candidate Jorge Eliecer Gaitan in 1948, "numerous radio stationsthroughout the country, including state-owned stations, were taken over byGaitan's sympathizers who attempted to channel popular outrage and resent-ment against the Conservative government into a revolutionary movement"(Fox, 1997, p. 90). They were eventually repressed and the government imposeda state of siege, leading to the first stages of the period referred to as "LaViolencia."

Under the government of President Laureano Gomez in 1949, the radiostations were prohibited from incorporating any kind of commentary in theirnews broadcasts (de Greiff & Ramos, 2000, p. 5). As Silva (2000) explained,these and other developments at the time serve as concrete reminders of thedangers of "state intervention into areas of culture . . . which almost alwaysmeans a confiscation ofthe critical role ofthe intellectual who has become partof a governmental cultural project" (p. 7). After a brief period of military rulefrom 1953 to 1957, the two major political parties. Liberal and Conservative,signed a pact that called for the rotation of poiiticai power from 1958 to 1974.Known as the National Front, this arrangement made it almost impossible foralternative, third party, and other social movements to participate in politics.


"The Colombian broadcasting industries matured within the context of politicalaccommodation between" these two major parties (Fox, 1997, 91).

Except for a few brief periods during the next 35 years where the "peacetime" guarantees for press freedoms were respected, it can be said that theinternal civil conflict and overall situation of public order in Colombia providedthe state with the legal justification to repress the right to truly independent, freeexpression and access to unfiltered information. The government repeatedlyhas declared "states of exception" or "states of siege" throughout the country,allowing for the suspension of all rights guaranteed to citizens. Both print andelectronic media were constantly subject to severe restrictions and even clo-sure, depending on the whim of the government in power. Added to thisimpediment were the rampant attacks carried out against journalists, activists,and intellectuals by adversaries operating outside of official state structures, bethey members of right-wing paramilitary armies allied with the Armed Forces,̂left-wing guerilla groups, or narco-traffickers (Committee to . . . , 2001).

COMMUNITY RADIO AND THE CLOSED COMMERCIAL SYSTEM

Colombia was one of the pioneers of public service radio in Latin America(RECORRA, 1999). Its roots can be traced back to the "Radio-phonic schools"{escuelas radiofonicas) organized by the Catholic Priest, Father Jose JoaquinSalcedo, in 1947 in the municipality of Sutatenza, in the department of Boyaca.The primary mission of these educational stations was to increase literacy inrural communities, as well as provide vital information for agricultural workersin the region (RECORRA, 1999). The creation of escuelas radiofonicas coincidedwith "La Violencia," characterized by intense battles between Liberals andConservatives throughout Colombia, resulting in the deaths of almost 200,000people between 1948 and 1958. Salcedo's appeal for support to internationalorganizations such as UNESCO eventually led to the establishment of AccionCultural Popular, (ACPO), or People's Cultural Action, a movement that grew inprestige to the point that when Pope Paul VI visited Colombia in 1968, heblessed ACPO's radio station in Bogota, the capital (RECORRA, 1999). The"Radiophonic Schools " spread throughout the Americas in the 60s and 70s,and continue operating in Guatemala, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Ecuador, andBolivia (Geerts & van Oeyen, 2001).

As in other parts of Latin America, these radio stations were operated bypeople and organizations committed to the "democratization of informationand communication through the use of people's radio" (RECORRA, 1999, p. 17).They look to "transcend the medium to represent projects that are connected tothe struggles... of diverse groups and movements" (Geerts & van Oeyen,2001, pp. 30-31). Community radio is defined differently, depending on whereyou are in Latin America. Argentina, for example, has roughly 1800 stations with"precarious provisionary permits," although only about 100 are considered


"community;" in Bolivia, a country with a strong tradition of Indigenous andpeasant community radio movements, there is no legal framework for thesestations; Mexico has about 100 "illegal" stations across the country, many ofwhich describe themselves as community (Geerts & van Oeyen, 2001). Even theterms used to describe the stations vary throughout the hemisphere, frompopular, or "people's," aiternativa, or "alternative," educativa or "educative,"participativa, or "participatory," and even ciudadana, or "citizens" (Geerts &van Oeyen, 2001, pp. 29-41).

By the 1970s and 80s, "community" radio in Colombia was being spear-headed by popular local leaders, activists, and communication and social re-searchers, primarily through clandestine means because of the lack of protec-tions provided to them by the state. The impulse for their efforts came from theongoing experiences of the educational radio of Father Salcedo, as well as themany interesting community radio experiments that were developing in coun-tries like Mexico, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru (Geerts & van Oeyen, 2001, pp.47-61). Their goal was to establish media institutions that would present alter-native political and social proposals to the public, and allow for the voices ofthose people traditionally excluded from the mainstream media access to themeans of communications. In various municipalities throughout the country,"conscious of the importance of communications in satisfying the individualand collective needs of human beings," these activists began operating unli-cenced, clandestine, indeed "pirate" radio stations, both on AM and FM(RECORRA, 1999, p. 20).

The most organized stations were broadcasting in some of the key munic-ipalities of Colombia, including Sutatenza in the central Andean department ofBoyaca, in Amaga in the north-central province of Antioquia, in Bucaramanga,perhaps the most important city in the northeastern province of Santander, andin the capital Bogota. As the popularity of the pirate radios grew, so did thestate's concern over their presence. Over time, the pirate broadcasters wereseen as a threat, both by local officials, as well as by the owners ofthe nationalcommercial networks whose signals have rarely faced any real competition foraudiences.

The influence the major broadcasters wield over state policies relating tocommunications cannot be overstated. The commercial media system, drivenprimarily by market principles, is clearly going to see the existence of otherbroadcasters in their signal areas as direct competition and a potential threat totheir revenue streams. Although radio is considered to be a state monopoly inColombia, most broadcasting licenses have been granted to private companieswith deep connections to the political power structure. For example, CadenaRadial Colombiana, Caracol, and Radio Cadena Nacional, RCN, the two largestradio networks in Colombia, are run by families associated with the Conserva-tive Party (Pearce, 1990). Another major actor in Colombia's radio market is theCatholic Church, with a total of 180 commercial licenses around the country

130 Journal of Radio Studies/\/ol. 10, No. 1, 2003

(Geerts & van Oeyen, 2001). Ironically, when the community radio licenses werefinally granted in 1997, about 220 were awarded to local dioceses and parishes,boosting the total number to almost 400 stations connected to the Church(Geerts, & van Oeyen, 2001). This connection is significant if one considersradio's role in shaping public opinion. Radio has always been considered themost popular of all the mass communication media in Colombia, and as early asthe 1950s, under the control of private enterprise, was already considered thestrongest vehicle for the "formation of identities and construction of collectivememory" (Silva, 2000, p. 4).

Therefore, the 1980s saw a period of intense persecution against Colom-bia's pirate broadcasters, who by this point had already began using the term"community radio" to identify themselves. Throughout the latter part of thedecade and into the early 1990s, dozens of radio stations were closed, trans-mission and production equipment was decommissioned, broadcasters werejailed, and even some popular leaders involved in community radio wereassassinated (RECORRA, 1999).

The attacks carried out by the state against the pirate broadcasters led to acollective response by radio activists and social organizations, manifested mostclearly in a series of public forums and conferences that generated concreteproposals about how to create "spaces for democratic communication"(RECORRA, 1999, p. 21). A number of regional and national organizationsemerged that began to mobilize jointly with local nongovernmental organiza-tions around the issue of establishing a legal framework for community radio.It culminated with the changes in the Colombian Constitution in 1991 elevatingas a fundamental right the right to information. Article 20 of the 1991 Constitu-tion reads:

Every person is guaranteed the right to freely express his/her views andopinions, to receive and impart truthful and impartial information, and tofound mass communication media. These are concrete freedoms, and theyhave social responsibility. The right of certification under conditions ofequality is guaranteed. There will be no censorship. (Article 20, Constitutionof the Republic of Colombia)

It was a dramatic change for Colombia's mass media system and foradvocates of free speech and democratic communication.

THE NEW CONSTITUTION AND THE LEGALIZATION OF COMMUNITYRADIO

Colombian law now recognizes three different types of radio licenses, accordingto the type of programming they provide and the audiences they reach: (1)commercial radio, defined as that which is directed to "satisfy the particular


habits and tastes of the listeners with a service that is for-profit, but that doesnot exclude the educational, recreational, cultural and informational role thatother broadcasters must adhere to"; (2) public interest radio, which through theMinistry of Communications, will direct programming that "elevates the edu-cational and cultural level of the inhabitants of the Colombian territory," boththrough local and regional transmissions that include university licensees; and(3) community radio, which is "programming designed in a specific form tosatisfy the needs of an organized community" (De Greiff & Ramos, 2000, p. 50).

The measures governing community radio in Colombia have been de-scribed as among the most advanced and democratic of the hemisphere (Geerts& van Oeyen, 2001, p. 86). Initially, the idea was to establish legal, communityradio stations in all 1,180 municipalities ofthe country. They are low-poweredstations, allowed to operate transmitters with a maximum power output of 250watts. It is important to point out that these community radio stations aredifferent from the public interest radios still in development through the Min-istry of Communications, the so-called "ethnic" radio stations. Ethnic radiostations are public interest licensees being set up in collaboration with many ofthe Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities throughout the countrywhose populations have been marginalized politically and economically forgenerations, and that have been completely underserved by traditional radio. InColombia, there are 84 distinct Indigenous communities spread across all theprincipal regions nationwide. Sixty-five native languages are still spoken, andare now recognized by the government (Muriilo, 1996). Directors of theseIndigenous stations will train local residents to produce radio in both Spanishand their own language, thus providing the communities with their own tool tocommunicate to audiences in different regions where they happen to live. Thereis also a very large black population spread across the country, primarily alongthe Pacific coast, making up roughly 30% of the total population. Many of thesecommunities are located in the remotest regions, and have maintained tradi-tional communal organizations and structures. They too will soon receive ac-cess to these public interest stations geared specifically to the Afro-Colombianpopulation. The establishment of the ethnic radio stations is based on twomajor Constitutional provisions, the first being, as has already been pointed out,the right to access and produce information, the other being the recognition ofColombia as a multi-ethnic, pluri-cultural society. Just as both Afro-Colombianand Indigenous organizations mobilized for years defending their land and theircultural and political rights, they also demanded access to the means of com-munication, and that access needed to be facilitated by the state. How success-ful these stations will be in terms of training members of the communities,developing independent funding structures, and building audiences is still un-clear, and may make for an interesting study in the future.

Community radio, therefore, is a specific designation that shares some ofthe goals and principles of public interest radio, but whose underlying purpose.

132 Journal of Radio Studies/Vol 10, No. 1, 2003

at least on paper, is different. The fundamental difference is in the vision ofcommunity radio broadcasters and the kinds of organizations that were ex-pected to receive licenses, namely nongovernmental organizations and institu-tions that have a mission geared toward social participation. The criteria thatmake up community radio are perhaps best described in an internal documentthat circulated for years within the organization RECORRA, whose Spanishacronym stands for the Colombian Network of Community Radio:

The exercise of democracy in the communications media can bemeasured by the level of participation of the community, by the quality of thepublic service they provide, by the ends they're trying to achieve and the waythey achieve those ends." (RECORRA, 2001)

Essentially, the primary goal of community radio is to serve as a tool ofdemocratic participation in society so as to allow citizens a voice in decisionsrelating to the environment, health, politics, the economy, social development,and cultural expression. Essentially, their mission is a social change mandate.This is precisely what puts them in a precarious position at times, and makesthem the easy target of threats and intimidation from all sides (Committeeto . . ., 2001, p. 179; Geerts & van Oeyen, 2001, pp. 86-87).

Initially, many of the pirate stations that had already established a trackrecord within their communities were not recognized by the state after the newlaws were passed. Nevertheless, by 1997, the license allocation began, with 570municipalities throughout the country authorized to receive community radiolicenses. Numerous problems remained, not the least of which being fundingfor the stations, something threatening their existence to this day. The lack offunding results in substandard production and broadcast equipment, minusculemanagerial staff, and a very limited capacity to maintain training programs fornew members ofthe community who wish to participate in the local stations.^

Perhaps more significant has been the actual licensing process. Communityradio activists and organizations such as RECORRA (1999) have been verycritical of the foot-dragging that the government has been practicing in handlingall the license requests promised in 1997, and more specifically who has beengetting those licenses. Ofthe 570 licenses authorized through 2001, 35% havegone to the Catholic Church, 60% to interests that have no connection to socialor community projects and organizations, and only 5% to social or politicalmovements, in a sense placing the stations in a state of "political silence"(Geerts & van Oeyen, 2001, p. 86). The licensing process remains frozen, andunder the new government of President Alvaro Uribe Velez, is not expected toresume anytime soon. One observer called it a "schizophrenic process" whereon paper, "we have all the rights in the world guaranteed to us," but in practicalterms, there is no real effort on the part of government regulators or lawmakersto "address the needs of the citizenship when it comes to communications"


(RECORRA, 1999, p. 36).̂ It appears that there has been an attempt to silence the"subaltern counterpublics" that would be represented in community radio.

Nevertheless, by 1997 community radio was finally official in Colombia, andthe mechanism was now in place for communication activists to begin partici-pating in a process of media creation, taking advantage of the democraticspaces that at least on paper were guaranteed to them. One of the stationsawarded a license in 1997 was Juventud Stereo, in the municipality of San Josedel Guaviare, in southern Colombia.

JUVENTUD STEREO: "COMMUNICATION FOR LIFE IN A TIME OFWAR"

The Movimiento Juventud por el Guaviare (MJG), or Movement for GuaviareYouth, entered the bidding for their community radio license through theColombian Ministry of Communications, and in 1997 they were granted thelicense, with initial support from Guaviare's governorship and the Inter-Amer-ican Development Bank's special development project known as PLANTE (Se-millas, 2001). Since 1998, the station has been broadcasting for 18 hours daily,beginning at five o'clock in the morning. Juventud Stereo has four main objec-tives that are integrally linked to the mission of the organization MJG:

1. To develop "pedagogic-educational modalities through the use of radio"dedicated toward presenting different cultural dimensions, experiences, andways of life to stimulate "new social attitudes that would facilitate social andenvironmental change";

2. Inspire community organizations to participate in the medium of radio so asto exchange experiences that have the potential to create ethical and culturalvalues of social coexistence, tolerance and democracy;

3. To generate a process of participatory communication using radio as thesocializing force of encounter and reflection to achieve levels of collaborationbetween institutions and the community; and

4. To open spaces for youth so they can adequately use their free time todevelop, through training, their "human capital," so as to prevent such ills asdrug addiction (MJG, Proposal, 1999).

The justification for the radio station Juventud Stereo is a reflection of theorigins of the Youth Movement itself, which is the product of the sociopoliticalreality of the region. The department of Guaviare is located in a vast territory insouthern Colombia that encompasses several departments of the Amazon re-gion, traditionally neglected by the state in terms of infrastructure creation,access to telecommunications, health care, education, and economic develop-ment. The department and the entire southeastern part of the country is thesymbol of what in Colombia is described as rampant "colonization," "where


individualism and the culture of extraction" brought thousands of people fromother parts of the country to the region with the hopes of grabbing a piece ofland and getting rich quick (MJG, 1998). At first it was the lucrative rubber tradethat attracted outsiders, but during the past 15 years, it has been coca cultiva-tion that has sparked the mass migration to the region. In essence, Guaviare hasbecome "an escape valve" used by successive governments as a band-aid toaddress some of the gravest national problems that have faced Colombia, allleading to internal dislocation and forced colonization: inequitable land distri-bution, interparty violence of the 1950s, and mass levels of unemployment inthe cities, among other things (Bermudez, 2001).

Because of the lack of economic possibilities for the majority of the peoplein the region, illicit coca cultivation is seen as the primary generator of wealthfor the "colonists," leading to a total disintegration of the social fabric. In aninternal document provided to me by the directors of MJG, this social disinte-gration was characterized by the "negation of anything existing in the 'publicrealm' or 'common interest,' and the promotion of particular, private interests"promulgating "power relations that are backed up by the use of arms."

Today, Guaviare is described as a "Red Zone," which is the government'sdesignation that the region is ripe with military conflict. In the municipality ofSan Jose, the capital, the primary state presence comes in the form of securitypersonnel, including a major antinarcotics police base, a United States-built andmanaged radar installation (ostensibly to track drug flights in the area), the localpolice force, and a military battalion.

In the central town, there is also a strong presence of right-wing paramili-tary groups, which Colombian and international human rights organizationshave documented maintain close links to the Armed Forces (Correa, 1996;Human rights . . . , 1998). These paramilitary groups have been accused of as-sassinating local activists and community people they claim are tied to theleft-wing insurgents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC),who also have a strong presence in the area, controlling vast areas of thesurrounding countryside in the rest of the municipality, and indeed the entiredepartment. In essence, the approximately 20,000 inhabitants of San Jose delGuaviare live in a constant state of undeclared war characterized by the mar-ginalization of civil society, the abandonment by the state with exception of theever-present security forces, the expansion of armed actors functioning outsidethe rule of law, and a deteriorating environmental situation that has beendevastated by years of illegal coca cultivation and aerial eradication effortsbacked by the United States (Bermudez, 2001). As one can imagine, in thisclimate, the poiiticai culture has very limited possibilities for development. It iswithin this climate that San Jose's young activists launched the Movement forGuaviare Youth, recognizing the dangers young people faced in the municipal-ity; for the most part, their life choices ranged from joining the paramilitaries, to


joining the guerillas, to participating in the process of coca cultivation, with allthe risks that each entails.^

The organization does not simply look at itself as a youth advocacy group.Instead, leaders of the movement made it clear in some of their organizationalliterature that they wanted to "lift the level of participation of all citizens througha process of dialogue and action," to change the political culture that forcedpeople to remain complacent and silent as a result of years of stagnation andwar. They organized civic forums, participated in cultural events, and connectedwith other organizations in the municipality working around the environment,human rights, peasant activism, and Indigenous rights. In essence, the Movi-miento Juventud por el Guaviare was one of several "subaltern counterpublics"in the region who mobilized to challenge the status quo.

As a social organization, they did not get directly involved in politics.However, through a process of youth leadership training and political aware-ness, a number of its members embarked on campaigns for local elected office,winning seats on the municipal council, departmental assembly, and mostrecently, the National Congress.

Perhaps the most significant part of their efforts has been their immersionin what is described in Colombia as social communication: that is, the use ofmass media to educate, inform, and even entertain. From the start, for theGuaviare Youth Movement, a fundamental component of their overall missionwas to develop mechanisms to articulate their vision of democracy and partic-ipation by a broader public. At first they utilized a small newsletter, SemiUas, or"seeds," as their principal vehicle. And then came the license for the communityradio station.

Since 1998, Juventud Stereo has been programming daily from 5:00 a.m. to11:00 p.m. With a paid staff of one station manager, volunteer programmersbetween the ages of 13 and 25 participate in training workshops that providethem with basic announcing skills, fundamentals on how to operate a veryrudimentary broadcast console and microphones, production techniques, andideas relating to format development. They also focus on issues relating tonews and journalism, raising questions about what is news, how it is shaped,how can it be manipulated to advance certain interests, and why the stationshould see itself as a different kind of news provider. A key aspect of the traininginvolves regular discussions about the mission of the station, its role in thecommunity, and the need to "broaden and strengthen the political culture ofthemunicipality."

Once the young programmers are cleared, they begin working within thestation in a number of different capacities. Some assist in administrative duties,others get involved in producing the short spots that are paid for by localadvertisers, while most of them eagerly move their way onto the air to producea broad range of radio programs, including a morning popular music showcalled "Wake-Up Guaviare," a 3-hour news and talk show called "Informative

136 Journal of Radio Studies/\/o\. 10, No. 1, 2003

Magazine," and a mix of different music shows throughout the afternoonfeaturing 4 hours of romantic love songs, contemporary pop, Latin dance musicsuch as salsa and merengues, and a hodge-podge of local favorites such as"vallenato" and "llanera" music from Colombia. The majority of the program-ming is music, and as a result, the station has developed a loyal audiencethroughout the municipality.^ The predominance of music on the station issomething the station founders are hoping to change, with the goal of one dayhaving at least 50% talk and information programming designed to betterinform the public. Herein lies one of the major challenges facing the station,relating both to its funding capacity and independence, as well as to its publicservice principles.

COMPETITION FROM OTHER RADIO STATIONS

There are five other stations that broadcast to San Jose in addition to JuventudStereo: a local, independent commercial station called "Marandua Stereo —100.7 FM," which features music and some news; the National Police RadioStation that comes from the capital, Bogota, and broadcasts nonstop commer-cial-free music; the local affiliate of Caracol Radio, one of the big nationalnetworks; "The Voice of Guaviare —1160 AM," which is the affiliate ofthe othermajor network, RCN; and "Colombia Mi'a," the radio station of the Army thatbroadcasts on 1260 AM. Considering the size ofthe municipality, the competi-tion for audience and advertisers is great. The recent economic crisis in Colom-bia has hit all the stations hard, but the one with the least amount of wiggleroom is Juventud Stereo. This situation has led the station to constantly reflecton two fundamental questions relating to their public interest goals and theirpractical economic survival: How will the station guarantee its independenceand financing? And how will it compete with the other stations without losingsight of their original proposal that describes the station as "an alternative ofcommunication for life"?

The founders of Juventud Stereo recognize the contradictions, and arestriving to reconcile the two visions of producing relevant public affairs andcommunity programming with the need to attract large audiences throughpopular music formats. They have approached this issue by inviting well-established community organizations to produce shows that will attract theirrespective constituencies. They have also tried to improve the overall sound ofthe station and elevate the level of production and dialogue that comes over theair so as not to alienate potential listeners, a common problem for communityradio throughout the world (Geerts & van Oeyen, 2001; Girard, 1992). To acertain extent, the station programmers are handicapped in terms of what theycan and cannot discuss on the air, given the tense climate that exists in theregion and the dangers highly opinionated, outspoken voices face once themicrophones are turned off.^


Notwithstanding all these difficulties, the radio station has inserted itselfinto the civic life of the community, organizing public forums where local andnational candidates have met face to face with the people to discuss issuesranging from the state of the Colombian economy to the impact of aerialfumigations on the local environment. They've sponsored local cultural festivalsfeaturing the music and art of regional artists, as well as a number of youthconferences. They even established leadership schools for youth, with little orno support from the municipal or departmental governments. And they con-tinue to recruit young people into the station to get involved and become a partofthe mass communication process, which could be described as a process ofmedia literacy. As one of the founders of the station pointed out, the mere factthat they are being trained and learning the skills of an electronic medium likeradio is a significant contribution to the creation of a public sphere because itforces them to think about media in a different way,''" a notion consistent withwhat other media scholars and activists have argued in the past about theimportance of community media (King & Mele, 1999).

CONCLUSION

In my judgment, the station has evolved into a viable community media insti-tution in an area rife with military conflict, economic chaos, and social disinte-gration. Community radio was an essential component of the organizationalpush of the Guaviare Youth Movement when they began broadcasting onJuventud Stereo in 1998. By 2002, the station's programming schedule began toreflect that original mission, taking on more public affairs issues, formerlyconsidered taboo, that reflect the organization's agenda to promote youth andcommunity participation and engender a democratic discourse. The mayor ofSan Jose del Guaviare is now provided a weekly program where the listenerscall in and challenge the policies of his administration; local politicians, includ-ing those elected on the platform supported by the Movement for GuaviareYouth, now appear regularly for open debate and dialogue on the air; evenissues of public order and security are slowly finding their way onto the air,something unheard of just a couple of years ago when I first visited the area."In short, the programmers and administrators of the station feel more confidentin their role as a legitimate player within the community that could confront theintransigence ofthe rigid political system, as well as the armed actors involvedin the ongoing conflict.

Despite the many problems and limitations outlined above, the station, likemany of its sibling stations that make up community radio throughout Colom-bia, is a fundamental component of a larger movement within civil society tocreate a new kind of public sphere aimed at broadening democratic participa-tion in a country with a history of corruption, intolerance, and exclusion. On alocal level, at least, community radio is a forum for "subaltern counterpublics"


in Colombia. Unfortunately not all the community radio stations in Colombiaare operating in accordance with the same mandate, which in itself is a reflec-tion ofthe continued resistance on the part ofthe dominant parties, that is, the"official public sphere," to open up space for democratic communication. Nev-ertheless, although it may be too early to argue that these few, low-poweredstations will play a role in bringing the country closer to a peaceful solution togenerations of internal conflict, clearly they provide a certain degree of opti-mism for the future.

Notes^ Unless otherwise noted, all translations from Spanish are my own.^ The primary research for this paper is based on several visits to Colombia, including

two visits to San Jose del Guaviare in August 2000 and July-August 2001, as well asextensive correspondence with people involved in the community radio movementin Colombia throughout 2002.

^ For a detailed description of the close links between the Colombian Armed Forcesand right wing paramilitary groups known as the United Self-Defense Forces orAUC, see Human Rights Watch (1996). Colombia"s Killer Networks: The Military-Paramilitary Partnership and the United States. New York: Human Rights Watch.

"The term community radio in this reference has more of a cultural connotation, not alegal one. It refers to the different ""style of radio that is produced"" by this sector,characterized by ""the social message of its content, closely tied to the commoncitizen, reflecting the local society,"" as already experienced in Africa and in NorthAmerica. While UNESCO had already given the term recognition years earlier, inColombia it was ignored and delegitimized by the state (RECORRA, 1999, p. 20). Fora detailed definition of "community radio," see Geerts & van Oeyen (2001), pp.36-38.

^ These complaints were expressed by many community radio activists that I spoke toduring an all-day seminar that brought together over 40 radio station representa-tives from the departments of Cundinamarca and Boyacaa, held in the city of Chiia,Cundinamarca, August 2001. It was also a common sentiment expressed by mem-bers of Juventud Stereo in Guaviare.

^This quote is taken from the transcript of a speech by Dr. Maria Teresa Herraan, di-rector of the Masters Program in Communications of the Javeriana University, in aforum entitled "The New Community Radio Laws and Denriocratization of the Mediain Colombia" (RECORRA, 1999, p. 36).

^ From various interviews conducted with young members of the organization, many ofwhom are currently working in or have worked with the radio station, San Jose delGuaviare, August 2000-July 2001.

^ Although I did not conduct an empirical survey about audience listening trends in thearea in my two visits to San Jose, it was apparent that the station was turned on inmany local establishments, in taxis, and in homes throughout the town at differenthours of the day, an indication that people were tuned into Juventud Stereo. I alsoattended several community meetings in different parts ofthe municipality thatwere announced on the radio station where large numbers of people gathered,ranging in age from early teens to senior citizens. Whether they attended theseevents because they heard it on the radio or through word of mouth, it was clearthat the station had mobilizing capacity.

^ In a survey I conducted with the youth programmers at the station, almost every per-son indicated that there were many issues that they did not feel comfortable dis-cussing on the air because of fear of retribution, and also pointed out that at times


people in the community didn"t come into the station to be interviewed because ofthe general levels of distrust that exist in the area.

^° From an interview with Juventud Stereo co-founder and former director PedroArenas, San Jose del Guaviare, July 2001.

" From an interview with Pedro Arenas, now a member of the House of Representa-tives in the Colombian Congress, September 26, 2002, during his visit to New York.

ReferencesAlvarez Toro, E. (2000, August 3). Crece la pobreza en A. Latina. El Tiempo.Archila, M., & Pardo, M. (Eds.). (2001). Movimientos sociales, Estado y democracia en

Colombia. Centro de Estudios Sociales, Universidad Nacional de Colombia.Bergquist, C, Pefiaranda, R., & Sanchez, G. (1992). Violence in Colombia: The Contem-

porary Crisis in Historical Perspective. Wilmington, DE: SR Books.Bermudez, S. (2001). Primer foro social mundial. Speech presented to the First World

Social Forum, January 25-30, Porto Alegre, Brazil.Chernick, M.W. (1998, March/April). Party politics, reformism and political violence in

Colombia, NACLA Report on the Americas, 37(5), 28-33.Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). (2002). Attacks on the Press in 2001—A World-

wide Survey. New York: CPJ.Correa, M.B. (1996, August). Existe una verdadera dictadura military. Utopias, 4(37),

23-35.De Greiff, M., & Ramos, C.S. (2000). Regimen juridico de radio y television en Colom-

bia. Bogota: Legis Editores, S.A.Fox, E. (1997). Latin American broadcasting: From Tango to Telenovela. Bedfordshire,

UK: University of Luton Press.Fraser, N. (1992). Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually

existing Democracy. In Craig Calhoun (Ed.), Habermas and the public sphere (pp.110-129). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Geerts, A. & van Oeyen, V. (2001). La Radio Popular frente al Nuevo siglo: estudio devigencia e incidencia. Quito, Ecuador: ALER, Associacion Latinoamericana de Educa-cion Radiofonica.

Giraldo, J. (1996). Colombia: The genocidal democracy. Monroe, MA: Common Cour-age Press.

Girard, B. (Ed.). (1992). A Passion for Radio: Radio Waves and Community, An AMARCProject. Montreal: Black Rose Books.

Habermas, J. (2000). The structural transformation ofthe public sphere: An Inquiry intoa category of bourgeois society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Human Rights Watch (1993). State of War: Political Violence and Counterinsurgency inColombia. New York.

Human Rights Watch. (1996). Colombia's Killer Networks: The Military-ParamilitaryPartnership and the United States. New York.

Human Rights Watch. (1998). War without quarter: Colombia and international humani-tarian law. New York.

King, D.L., & Mele, C. (1999). Making public access television: Community participation,media literacy and the public sphere. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media,43, 603-623.

Kline, H.F. (1995). Colombia: Democracy under assault. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Leech, G. (2002). Killing peace: Colombia's conflict and the failure of U.S. intervention.

New York: Information Network of the Americas.Lopez de la Roche, F. (2001). Medios de comunicacion y movimientos sociales: Incom-

prensiones y desencuentros." In M. Archila & M. Pardo (Eds.), Movimientos socia-les, Estado y democracia en Colombia. Bogota: Centro de Estudios Sociales, Univer-sidad Nacional de Colombia (pp. 475-494).


Molano, A. (2000). The evolution ofthe FARC: A guerilla group's long history. NACLAReport on the Americas, Vol. XXXIV, No. 2, September/October.

Movimiento Juventud por El Guaviare (MJG). (2001, July/August). Semillas, "Jovenesal aire," Edicion No. 6.

Muriilo, Mario A. (1996, March/April). Confronting the dilemmas of political participa-tion. NACLA Report on the Americas, 29(5), 21-23.

Pearce, J. Colombia: inside the labyrinth. (1990). London: Latin America Bureau.RECORRA. (2001, June). Memorias: IV Encuentro Nacional de Radios Comunitarias,"

Ministro de Cultura, Bogota, 1999.Silva, R. (2000). Ondas nacionales: La Politica cultural de la republica liberal y la Ra-

diodifusora Nacional de Colombia." Analisis Politico, Instituto de Estudios 41, Politi-cos y Relaciones Internacionales, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, No. Sep/Dic.

Wade, P. (1993). Blackness and race mixture: The dynamics of racial identity in Colom-bia. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Waisbord, S. (2002). Grandes gigantes: Media concentration in Latin America.www.opendemocracy.net, 27 February, 2002, retrieved June 11, 2002.

Community Radio in Colombia

Documents

phenomenon of community

local community radio

murillocommunity radio

power community radio

management ofthe radio

veteran radio journalist

journal of radio studiesvolume

colombia inlight