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January 24, 2004
Alternative Media Debates
By Marie Trigona
"Through the recording and elaboration of audiovisual materials
we are battling directly against the imagery of fascism. The camera
is a tool, another arm, like a stick, molotov, miguelito or covering
our faces," Grupo Alavío (direct action and video collective in
Argentina). Argentina's alternative media has a long history with
strong references to revolutionary cinema during the 1960's and
early 70's, clandestine media during Argentina's military
dictatorship (1976-83) and community media experiences during the
deepening of neoliberalism in the 80's and 90's. There have been a
number of alternative media experiences that emerged in the past
years. Some of these older experiences and other more recent were
responsible for the documentation and communication of what happened
during Argentina's popular rebellion December 19 and 20, 2001. Waves
of alternative media that grew in the past decades manifested during
moments when there was an influx of street protest or phenomenal
happenings making it even more inevitable to document what goes on
in the streets. However, often when moments change, these groups
making alternative media become lost. With the absence of
"spectacular" happenings (massive protests, police repression,
phenomenon in organizing) many alternative media collectives are
faced with a lack of direction in the question of coverage and
construction of projects.
This leads to a fundamental debate over the role of alternative
media and how this should this role change. Media activists are
constantly challenged to only present the surface or symbolic rather
than breaking with fragmentation and presenting an analysis that
allows audiences to process what they are seeing and break with
exclusion. Analyzing media experiences aid in developing minimal
criteria for activists to think about when building alternative
media as a tool for struggle against exploitation-ownership,
production, financing, content, participation, expropriation of
technologies, horizontal and vertical integration in the content
production, and integration into social movements and processes.
The adaptation and appropriation of technologies-originally
targeted to improve capitalist production has been one of the most
important tools for activists to develop new communication practices
in the past decades. In the 80's in Argentina, as in the rest of
Latin America, a wave of FM radio transmissions surged with various
motivations: reclaiming freedom of expression after years censorship
during the military dictatorship, outlets institutional leftist
political parties discourses, developing community projects, and
organs of expression for subcultures. All of these experiences had
one commonality, they transmitted without any legal standing as
"clandestine pirate radio stations." The constraints of legal norms,
lack of access to funding, blocking the possibility of greater
frequency reach, and pressures to end legal persecution obligated
many of the stations to shut-down, submit to co-optation by the
bourgeois system, change their content and accept precarious legal
standing.
During the 90's Argentina's mass media was one of the most
affected sectors in terms of concentration. Never in Argentina's
history have so few companies controlled such a quantity of media
outlets, maintaining oligarchic market control in communication.
Today, two economic groups own the majority of national media
outlets: Clarín Group and Admira Group (from the Spanish
telecommunications company, Telefónica). The transition to democracy
also meant changes in strategies for ideological control. While the
dictatorship used terror (disappearing 30,000 men and women) to
control "subversive ideologies", the new "democracy with conditions"
increased media concentration to isolate dissent through market
control and legal constraints.
During the epoch of intense privatization of television, radio,
and telephone companies there was a boom in low-potential television
stations (pirate TV). With the accessibility to home video
equipment, a base knowledge of audio visual production, relatively
simple technology and low costs multiplied the experiences in pirate
television.
Utopia was a 24-hour television station broadcasting from
1992-1997 in Buenos Aires. The station's vision directly combated
against the hegemony of neoliberalism during the epoch of
ex-president Carlos Menem. Utopia never had any legal standing and
repressive forces constantly persecuted this station and
participants. Equipment was confiscated numerous times, but the
station had been building transmitters allowing them to recuperate
broadcasts. Often times while in the streets participants were
arrested and police broke cameras. Within the collective they
debated over legality vs. legitimacy, the need for self-defense, how
to break with television's fragmentation of information, how to
surpass the limits of audiences' participation and generate new
forms of financing. Today, Utopia is a popular myth among activists,
many talk of Utopia as an example of community media during the
90's. Of the dozens of low-reaching television experiences that
existed in Argentina that survived legal persecution converted into
organs of local political powers.
December 19 and 20, 2001 produced an explosion independent media
and some alternative media experiences. Many individuals began to
work in groups like Independent news agencies like Independent Media
Center-Argentina and AnRed and counter-information collective
Argentina Arde participated in the endless series of actions after
December 2001, using their cameras to denounce mass media's
misinformation and provide proof against state repression.
Two years later activists in Argentina are in a difficult time in
terms of organizing. The bulk of social movements-the unemployed
workers movement, popular assemblies and recuperated factory
movement-are in crisis. This crisis marked by drops in participation
and inability to identify political objectives. Consequently, many
alternative media collectives are facing the same problem The
immediate role of media activists to provide security during street
actions is not as ever-present as president Néstor Kirchner softens
state repression (using the court system rather than police batons).
It would be interesting to revisit debates about the necessity for
movements to create their own media. While there is an obvious
challenge to overcome fragmentation among movements, there is an
opportunity to regroup, construct new media projects and rethink
about alternative media's integration into social movements, direct
action, and audience participation.
TV-piquetera is one experience that has attempted to go beyond
limitations that alternative media has self-imposed. TV-piquetera
transmits live pirate TV signals during road blockades and from
poverty-stricken neighborhoods on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.
Grupo Alavío and Popular Unity Movement-December 20 (MUP-20), a
piquetero organization based in several neighborhoods in the Buenos
Aires province began working with Enrique Carigao and Ricardo
Leguizamon to launch media projects. From this collaboration, a new
and powerful organic alternative media experience was realized,
TV-piquetera.
The first major broadcast was on September 25, 2003 during a road
blockade at the Argentine transnational beer brewery, Quilmes that
protestors transmitted a live pirate television signal, orienting
the antennas toward the blocks where the factory's workers reside.
During the transmission protestors articulated their reasons for the
blockade, expressed solidarity with the Quilmes' workers and
described what it's like to be a piquetero.
TV-piquetera has since broadcasted in several neighborhoods,
rotating transmissions and programming. During the transmissions in
MUP-20's community center, a shack in the neighborhoods in Solano in
the southern Greater Buenos Aires district of Quilmes, piqueteros
from MUP-20 participated in every aspect of the community television
experience-planning the programming, arming the studio, putting up
the antenna, watching the programming in the screening room in the
movement's kitchen and arming the especially prepared news pieces.
The programming has included pre-edited news pieces about the
Quilmes blockade which began by appropriating a Quilmes beer
television commercial-the most expensive Argentine advertisement
produced in years-to parody corporate representations of elite
culture with footage of piqueteros blocking the beer factory. For
the transmission, Grupo Alavío filmed and edited a piece about water
pollution by factories in La Florida, Solano, the same neighborhood
where TV-piquetero transmits. Other pieces included-struggle for the
freedom of political prisoners, Bolivia after the insurrection,
resistance in Iraq, and Christmas blockade in front of supermarkets.
MUP-20's publication explained the motives for the transmission,
"It demonstrates that we do not need to depend on bosses and owners
to make ourselves visible and communicate with our neighbors. To
tell our story without own media is to think with a logic different
than that which the system imposes on us." Like other pirate TV
experiences that have existed TV-piquetera ruptures with dominant
discourse and expropriates technologies originally aimed for
ideological control. TV-piquetera is an attempt to use a media such
as television and transform it into a tool for political organizing
and liberation. Participants not only learn how to use technologies
and audiovisual language but also form analysis of political and
social conflicts (integrating local, national and international
issues). TV-piquetera also facilitated multi-directional media,
facilitating a dialogue with media and community activists and
neighbors. While many in alternative media and social movements have
shed away from self-critiques, TV-piquetera encouraged
introspection. TV-piquetera transmitted live during MUP-20's end of
the year festival, December 27. While the festival was winding down,
police arrived to provoke a violent confrontation. Participants
kicked the police out using sticks and rocks to prevent police from
entering-the need for self-defense is ever present as with the road
blockade.
TV-piquetera's objective is to transmit in different
neighborhoods with the intention of ultimately building a network of
community television stations that can function autonomously under a
large umbrella of collaboration and mutual support. As media
activists the debate of whether the reach of the camera is enough is
an inevitable discussion. Making technologies accessible to
exploited sectors by democratizing audiovisual production and
language has been a priority of Grupo Alavío and TV-piquetera. Media
can open a space to construct identity and thinking that reflects
the interests and necessities of the working class and exploited
sectors. What TV-piquetera is teaching Grupo Alavío is that it is
sometimes necessary to put down the camera and adopt other roles
along side those struggling. Activism can not be pushed into the
singular role of filming with a camera or transmitting a TV signal,
it is part of a demand for the right to organize: political
formation of activists struggling, the right to self-defense and the
creation of our own media.
If anyone is interested in collaborating or knowing more about
the TV-piquetera experience please contact mtrigona@riseup.net
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