Digital media are emerging to give voice to native groups in Latin America
You may have heard the saying that a language is a dialect with an army. Which is another way of saying that military and financial power impose themselves through language.
So it follows that people in Latin America whose mother tongue is not Spanish or Portuguese often find their voices unheard, their stories untold. By one estimate, some 40 million people in the region speak one of the hundreds of indigenous languages.
(DW Akademie interviewed several journalists from the region who explained the importance of reporting in the language of their communities.)
Media organizations that want to publish or broadcast news in indigenous languages face at least four big obstacles:
- financial–community members can’t afford a subscription, and advertisers aren’t interested in their small audiences
- access–internet is unavailable or unaffordable in their often remote geographic regions (latest statistics on access)
- suppression–indigenous groups are often viewed as hostile opposition to government and multinationals
- illiteracy–Studies by Unesco and its economic development unit estimate functional illiteracy rates to be well into double figures.
I have to admit that when I first went to Latin America 15 years ago, I was surprised to learn that the countries where I was working (Bolivia and Mexico) were home to dozens of indigenous languages. In Bolivia and Peru, Aymara and Quechua are spoken widely. In Mexico, Nahuatl (Aztec) and Maya (also spoken in Central America) have millions of speakers.
A network of 230 journalists
One of the largest networks of indigenous media is Agenda Propia. Founded in 2010 by Edilma Prada of Colombia, who is also its director, it produces and re-publishes content from throughout Latin America on topics such as territorial and social conflict, human rights, and the environment.
The media in its network are activist: they seek social change. They are also cultural: they aim to preserve their languages, their poetry, and their unique view of the world.
In 2019, Agenda Propia launched the Story Weaving Network (Red Tejiendo Historias), headed by Paola Jinneth, which links some 230 journalists and media covering the region’s native peoples.
Supporters
The LatAm Journalism Review of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas has published many articles on indigenous media, particularly in community radio.
Many of the initiatives of the Earth Journalism Network of InterNews, an international nonprofit media development organization, include the initiatives of indigenous media in Latin America. Internews has done several projects aimed at getting accurate information about covid-19 to indigenous communities (examples here and here.)
Global Voices, an international community of writers, translators, academics, and human rights activists, also is active in Latin American indigenous media: a campaign to encourage new media, how communities are fighting covid-19, how online radio promotes native languages in Brazil, and a legal victory for native radio in Mexico,
SembraMedia, a nonprofit focused on helping independent digital media in Latin America achieve sustainability, is exploring ways to raise the visibility of indigenous media, according to co-founder and executive director Janine Warner. Several of the organization’s country ambassadors speak indigenous languages. (Disclosure: I am treasurer and a member of the executive committee.)
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For indigenous media, language is power