Community Radio and Free Expression in Late Twentieth-Century El Salvador

Abstract

What began as a tool for civilian self-defense in the combat zones during El Salvador's civil war evolved into a means of self-expression that helped define the type of democracy that would govern the country in peacetime. Community radio became the focus of a struggle for participatory democracy in the last decade of the twentieth century, pitting the market logic of communication that had been the dominant model against a diametrically opposed concept of the purpose of communication. Harking back to the lessons that Archbishop Arnulfo Romero taught through YSAX, the radio station that defied the military dictatorship in the late 1970s, and drawing on traditions that refugees developed in exile, community radio stations mobilized local and international support; tested constitutional law in the courts; and, finally, resorted to subterfuge to provide an outlet for alternative communication. By linking together in the Asociacion de Radios y Programas Participativas de El Salvador (ARPAS, Radio and Participative Programs Association of El Salvador), they defended their listeners’ rights as community rights. Their struggle illuminates the limitations of trying to understand a communication system with a logic that is alien to the media producers and their audience.

Notes

Oscar Beltran, personal interview, Ciudad Victoria, El Salvador, August 12, 2011.

Fred S. Seibert, Theodore Peterson, and Wilbur Schramm, Four Theories of the Press: The Authoritarian, Libertarian, Social Responsibility, and Soviet Communist Concepts of What the Press Should Be and Do (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1956), 33.

Guillermo O’Donnell has characterized delegative democracy as a system in which the president embodies the nation and defines the national interest; the president governs as he sees fit, with no reference to campaign promises; the president's support comes from a movement, not a political party; checks and balances from the legislature and judiciary are nuisances; and accountability impedes progress toward the president's goals. Guillermo O’Donnell, “On the State, Democratization and Some Conceptual Problems,” Kellogg Institute Working Paper, no. 192 (1993): 7.

Diana E. Agosta, “Constructing Civil Society, Supporting Local Development: A Case Study of Community Radio in Postwar El Salvador,” Democratic Communiqué 21, no. 1 (2007): 5–6, 21–22.

La Asociación Mujba‘Ab’ L Yol (Encuentro de Expresiones), “La Asociación Mujba‘Ab’ L Yol (Encuentro de Expresiones). Denuncia Que,” San Mateo, Quetzaltenango, October 13, 2012; Viviana Uriona, “Sachamanta” (Germany/Argentina 2012); Richard Fausset, “In Mexico, Yo Soy 132 Ponders Next Step,” Los Angeles Times, August 12, 2012, A1.

Originally formed in 1972 as an organization of eighteen Roman Catholic Church educational radio stations, ALER soon expanded its role, becoming a promoter of participatory radio across the region. The organization currently has eighty-two members in sixteen countries. Some members are individual radio stations and some are networks comprising several stations, such as ARPAS. “Asociación Latinoaméricana de Educación Radiofónica,” http://aler.org/index.php/aler-institucional.

John Dewey, Freedom and Culture (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1939), 18, 26–44.

Abraham F. Lowenthal, Exporting Democracy: The United States and Latin America (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 243.

Margaret A. Blanchard, Exporting the First Amendment: The Press-Government Crusade of 1945–1952 (New York: Longman, 1986).

Alex J. Bellamy, “Humanitarian Responsibilities and Interventionist Claims in International Society,” Review of International Studies 29, no. 3 (2003): 35.

Hanno Hardt, “Comparative Media Research: The World According to America,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 5, no. 2 (June 1988): 129.

Luis Ramiro Beltran, “A Farewell to Aristotle: ‘Horizontal’ Communication,” in Communication for Social Change Anthology: Historical and Contemporary Reading, ed. Alfonso Gumucio Dagron and Thomas Tufte (South Orange, NJ: Communication for Social Change Consortium, 2006), 160, 162–163.

Hardt, “Comparative Media Research,” 134.

Javier Fernandez Sebastian, “The Crisis of the Hispanic World: Tolerance and the Limits of Freedom of Expression in a Catholic Society,” in Freedom of Speech: The History of an Idea, ed. Elizabeth Powers (Lewisburg, PA, and Lanham, MD: Bucknell University Press and Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), 104–105.

For more on community radio in Africa and Asia, see Vinod Pavarala and Kanchan K. Malik, Other Voices: The Struggle for Community Radio in India (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2007); Herman Wasserman, Popular Media, Democracy and Development in Africa (New York: Routledge, 2011).

Bruce Girard, ed., A Passion for Radio: Radio Waves and Community (Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1992), 1, 6; Alfonso Gumucio Dagron, Making Waves: Stories of Participatory Communication for Social Change (New York: Rockeller Foundation, 2001), 6.

Jorge J. E. Gracia, “Hispanic Philosophy: Its Beginning and Golden Age,” Review of Metaphysics 46, no. 3 (1993): 475.

Universidad Centroamericano Departamento de Filosofia, “Doctorado en Filosofia Iberoamericano,” Universidad Centroamericano, Jose Simeon Cañas, http://www.uca.edu.sv/filosofia/index.php?art=30.

Juanita Darling, “Media and Religion in Colonial Spanish America,” Journal of Media & Religion 12, no. 3 (2013): 108.

Fernandez Sebastian, “Crisis of the Hispanic World,” 115.

Fernandez Sebastian, “Crisis of the Hispanic World,” 115–116, 121; Juanita Darling, “Liberty Not Licentiousness: The Concept of Abuse of Press Freedom in Early Spanish America” (paper presented at the annual conference of the International Communication Association, Boston, MA, May 26–30, 2011).

Lawrence Coudart, “En Torno al Correo de Lectores en El Sol (1823–1832),” in Transición y Cultura Política. De la Colonia al México Independiente, ed. Cristina Gómez Álvarez and Miguel Soto (Mexico City: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Dirección General de Asuntos del Personal Académico, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2004), 92–96.

Leonardo Ferreira, Centuries of Silence: The Story of Latin American Journalism (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006). Lasswell's model contrasts the oligarchic model with the participatory model in which “mass media provide attention opportunities that generate and re-edit common maps of man's past, present and future and strengthen a universal and differentiated sense of identity and common interest.” See Harold Lasswell, “The Future of World Communication: Quality and Style of Life,” EWCI Lecture in International Communications, Honolulu: E-W Comm. Inst., E-W Center, September 1972, 16–17.

Beltran, “Farewell to Aristotle,” 168.

See Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970); Walter D. Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012); Leonardo Boff, When Theology Listens to the Poor (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988); Gustavo Gutiérrez, Marc H. Ellis, and Otto Maduro, The Future of Liberation Theology: Essays in Honor of Gustavo Gutiérrez (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989).

Media and education have been closely linked in Iberoamerican thought, as indicated previously by the second purpose of the press in Fernandez Sebastian's study. In the compendium of laws governing Spain's American colonies, the printing laws section directly followed the section on education laws, “Las Leyes de las Indias,” Libro I, Titulos XXI and XXII. Notable studies of the colonial and early republican press have emphasized the educational role. See, for example, Susana Maria Delgado Carranco, Libertad de Imprenta, Politica y Educacion: Su Plantamiento y Discusion en el Diario de Mexico, 1810–1817 (Mexico City: Instituto Mora, 2006).

Beltran, “Farewell to Aristotle,” 165.

Gumucio Dagron, “Making Waves,” 26. The other eight factors are: dialogue and democratic participation in planning; a long-term process; collective decision-making; messages conceived, designed, evaluated, and disseminated by local communities; adapted to each community; based on community-determined needs; owned by the community; based on consciousness-raising rather than persuasion. Girard defines participatory communication as “commitment to community participation at all levels.” Girard, A Passion for Radio, 2.

Elie Abel, Many Voices, One World: Communication and Society, Today and Tomorrow, the Macbride Report, abridged ed. (Paris: Unesco, 1984); Wilbur Schramm, Mass Media and National Development: The Role of Information in the Developing Countries (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1964); Seibert et al., Four Theories of the Press.

Beltran, “Farewell to Aristotle,” 170.

Enrique D. Dussel, Twenty Theses on Politics, Latin America in Translation/en Traducción/Em Traduão (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 15–16.

John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (New York: H. Holt, 1927).

Howard J. Wiarda and Harvey F. Kline, Latin American Politics and Development, 7th ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2011), 12–14.

Juanita Darling, Latin America, Media, and Revolution: Communication in Modern Mesoamerica (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 15, 110–113.

Juanita Darling, “Inviting Comment: Public Creation of Content in Early Spanish American Newspapers,” in Participation and Media Production: Critical Reflections on Content Creation, ed. Nico Carpentier and Benjamin De Cleen (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008).

Rodolfo R. Campos, El Salvador Entre el Terror y la Esperanza: Los Sucesos de 1979 y Su Impacto en el Drama Salvadoreño de los Años Siguientes, Vol. 1, Colección Debate (San Salvador: UCA Editores, 1982), 6; Gumucio Dagron, Making Waves, 120.

Victor Pickard, “Neoliberal Visions and Revisions in Global Communications Policy from NWICO to WSIS,” Journal of Communication Inquiry 31, no. 2 (2007): 118, 136.

Dan Schiller, Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999).

The two June 2002 interviews derived from a “road not taken” (with apologies to Frost): feasibility work that was dropped from a previous study but continued to pull me when I began a new project. I included listeners in the study recognizing that how a message is heard is an integral part of the communications process, as noted by David Kenneth Berlo, The Process of Communication: An Introduction to Theory and Practice (New York: Holt, 1960), 17, 52. Participants were selected by a snowball sampling method, which biased the listener sample toward more active listeners who called into the stations. Efforts to contact listeners independently presented authentication issues about whether they actually listened to community radio. Because of the nature of community radio, the lines between listeners and producers were sometimes blurred: besides calling in to the stations, listeners often volunteered, sometimes assisting with production. The semistructured, oral history interviews were designed to elicit participants’ views on the role of media in society, through directly asking that question as well as related questions, such as what media they liked and did not like, what they liked and did not like about them, what could be improved, and how they saw their relationship to media. Interviews were conducted at the convenience of participants, often at the local radio station, sometimes at community centers, and once in a taxi. They ranged in length from fifteen minutes to three hours, averaging about an hour.

Eric J. Hobsbawm, On History (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997), 206.

For a discussion of the historical development of a market logic for media, see Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989).

Campos, Terror y Esperanza, 1, 6.

The preferential option for the poor, meaning that the poor and powerless should receive compassion and solidarity in words and deeds, to the point of being the church's top priority, was one of the key concepts of liberation theology, the Latin American interpretation of the Vatican II reforms. It was first mentioned in the closing document by the Latin American Catholic Bishops, “Justice,” at the Episcopal Conference in Medellin, Colombia, September 6, 1968. In addition to Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, see, for example, Daniel G. Groody and Gustavo Gutiérrez, eds., The Preferential Option for the Poor: Beyond Theology (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013).

Darling, Latin America, Media, and Revolution, 111–113. For accounts of one station, Radio Venceremos, during the early years of the war, see Carlos Henríquez Consalvi, La Terquedad del Izote: La Historia de Radio Venceremos, 3rd ed. (San Salvador, El Salvador: Ediciones Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen, 2003); José Ignacio López Vigil and Radio Venceremos (El Salvador), Las Mil y Una Historias de Radio Venceremos (San Salvador, El Salvador: UCA Editores, 1991).

William A. Hachten and James Francis Scotton, The World News Prism: Challenges of Digital Communication, 8th ed. (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 38–39.

Donatella Morales, personal interview, Zaragoza, El Salvador, August 12, 2011.

Susie, personal interview, Santa Tecla, El Salvador, August 18, 2011.

Mario Maida, personal interview, San Salvador, El Salvador, August 17, 2011.

Oscar Beltran. This also was pointed out as an issue in a case study of Radio Izcanal. Gumucio Dagron, Making Waves, 117.

El Salvador's civil war ended in a draw that left a right-wing political party in power throughout the twentieth century, avoiding the progression from revolutionary media to government-controlled development media that Hachten has predicted. This reinforces Hardt's argument for analysis based on social and cultural background. Hachten and Scotton, The World News Prism, 40.

Oscar Beltran.

Juan Lucas Aguilar, personal interview, Ciudad Segundo Montes, June 15, 2002.

Alcides Herrera, personal interview, August 18, 2011.

Alcides Herrera, personal interview, Nueva Granada, El Salvador, August 18, 2011; Sonia Bernal, “Nuevo Gualcho, 14 Años Después,” Diario de Hoy, March 5, 2004, http://www.elsalvador.com/DIARIOS/Oriente/2004/03/05/gente.asp.

Carlos, personal interview, Santa Marta, El Salvador, August 17, 2011; Aida, personal interview, Santa Marta, El Salvador, August 17, 2011; Videlina, personal interview, Santa Marta, El Salvador, August 17, 2011; Juan Lucas Aguilar; Leonel Herrera, personal interview, San Salvador, El Salvador, August 18, 2011.

Juan Lucas Aguilar; Alcides Herrera.

Larry Rohter, “Fearless Rebels of the Airwaves Surrender to Pop,” New York Times, May 26, 1995, A4; Gumucio Dagron, Making Waves, 119; Emperatriz Arreaza-Camero, “Comunicacion, Derechos Humanos y Democracia: El Rol de Radio Venceremos en el Proceso de Democratizacion en El Salvador (1981–1994)” (paper presented at the Latin American Studies Association, Washington, DC, September 28, 1995).

Oscar Beltran.

The regulators’ view is an extension of the illogic that Girard has pointed out as protection of intellectual property rights that stifles expression. Seán Ó Siochrú and Bruce Girard, “Communicating in the Information Society” (Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for International Development, 2003), 3.

Alcides Herrera.

Oscar Beltran. In contrast, Radio Segundo Montes has remained in its community of origin and added a repeater transmitter in the larger nearby town of San Francisco Gotero. Maria Elena Romero, personal interview, Ciudad Segundo Montes, June 15, 2002.

Carlos, Aida, Videlina.

Oscar Beltran. To complicate matters, he recalled, “Exactly that day, a young man was starting his first day as an announcer … He was the one who answered the door when the police came.”

Solidarity Action Network to [email protected], “El Salvador—Police Close 10 Local Radios,” December 13, 1995, http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/47/219.html.

Acuerdos de Chapultepec, January 16, 1992, El Salvador-F.M.L.N., Chapter II, Part 4, Sec. 7, Paragraph D.

Oscar Beltran.

Oscar Beltran. Juan Lucas Aguilar confirmed that equipment returned to Radio Segundo Montes was damaged.

Solidarity Action Network to [email protected], “El Salvador—Police Close 10 Local Radios,” December 13, 1995, http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/47/219.html.

Oscar Beltran.

Oscar Beltran.

In this way, the radios also began to fulfill the organizing role that Lenin foresaw for media in “What Is to Be Done?” Vladimir I. Lenin, “What Is to Be Done?” (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1902).

“Constitution of El Salvador” (1983). Title II, Chapter I, Art. 6.

Ley de Telecomunicaciones, Title I, Art. 2, 4; Title VI, Ch. 4 (November 21, 1997).

Leonel Herrera, Mario Maida.

Elin Jordan, interview with author, Coatepeque, August 15, 2011.

Donatella Morales, Susie.

Gabriela Melara, “Proponen Erradicar Explotación y Exploración Minera en El Salvador,” La Prensa Grafica, August 7, 2012.

Vincent Brossell, ed., Investigative Report on Journalism and Environment: High Risk Subjects Deforestation and Pollution (Paris: Reporters Without Borders, 2010), 3; German Rivas, “Comité Ambiental Pide Reabrir Casos Homicidio,” La Prensa Grafica, November 26, 2012.

Leonel Herrera.

Giovani, interview with author, Sonsonate, August 15, 2011.

Juan Lucas Aguilar.