[Media-watch] ZNet: Alternative Media Debates / Jan 27

[Kev Kiernan]

ZNet Commentary
Alternative Media Debates January 27, 2004
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 at riseup.net

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