Thirteenth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

The experiences community-based popular organizations in Venezuela and Bolivia provide startling examples of effective media strategies and tactics by social movements arising from and contributing to robust participatory democracy. This paper outlines several unconventional norms and practices characteristic of social movements in contemporary Venezuela and Bolivia, based on observations of community media operations, interviews with media workers and Ministry of Communication officials, analyses of media reform, and insights of other research. Evidence suggests that locally-based political organization, actions, education, and independent media (e.g., micro broadcasting, newsletters, graffiti, street radio and video, and participatory street theater) directly contributed to mass mobilizations in both Venezuela and Bolivia—overturning the coup against Hugo Chavez and leading to a radical opening for public and community media in Venezuela; and blocking privatization of water and gas in Cochabamba and El Alto, Bolivia, leading to constitutional provisions for public media. Media laws in both countries include articulations of communication as a human and civil right. The preexistence of social movements exemplified by community media such as CatiaTVe and Radio Primero Negro in Venezuela and indigenous and miners’ radio in Bolivia contributed to the realization of these laws, providing national resources for access to technology and participatory infrastructure for training in media skills and techniques. In both cases, well-organized and politically confident social movements secured more open, democratic media practices than even those espoused by EU civil society’s calls for the right to information.