Action 252, Juni 2003
 | |
WACC Women's Programme Plans Third Global Media Monitoring Project. Camilo Zamora shows how "Uncensored" has become another loss for Central American journalism. “Contesting the Spectrum Allocation Giveaway”. Ian Darke gives a review of the work of the “Letra Viva Publishing Network”. “Media Workshops in Central America” looks at practical courses in communication skills imparted at Universities to NGO managers by Sean Hawkey. “Maya-Chortí Communicate for Land” reviews the success of a WACC-supported project in Honduras where communication is used to advocacate for land rights. The film “1932, Scars of Memory” is a ground-breaking collection of memories from the brutally crushed rebellion of 1932 in El Salvador, including interviews with the last few people who remember the events.
Héctor Vides, director of the ‘Association of Participatory Radios and Programmes of El Salvador’, ARPAS, talks to Sean Hawkey about the critical role of community radios in the formation of democratic culture.
From 7th – 10th May, against the stunning backdrop of Hout Bay in Cape Town, fourteen men and women from around the world came together to discuss the launch of a project which has been described as ‘one of the most extraordinary collective enterprises yet organised within the global women’s movement’ – the Global Media Monitoring Project, or GMMP as it has come to be known.
Camilo Zamora
“Today the company, the majority shareholders of the station, took the decision to close the editorial programme “uncensored” because people resorting to power to try to influence editorial policy of our news are never lacking”.
Mauricio Funes
The electromagnetic spectrum is not visible to the human eye and yet we inhabit a world that is surfeit with spectrum. The spectrum is everywhere. Electromagnetic (light) waves move through the atmosphere at different frequencies and are measured in Hertz (Hz). The oscillation of radio waves can be compared to the intensity of a sharp sea wave and the languid ruffle of a slow wave. Lower and higher frequencies exhibit different qualities and are therefore harnessed for different purposes. The general rules are as follows: Shorter wave-length, higher frequency, longer wavelength, lower frequency.
Ian Darke
Despite the crises and instability throughout the continent, book publishing in Latin America is surprisingly vigorous – over 100,000 new titles are published in Spanish each year, a good percentage in Latin America. Book publishing isn’t just important in terms of sales, but also cultural impact.
Sean Hawkey
Practical courses in communication skills were taken by students of diploma courses on NGO management in Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua.
Sean Hawkey
Five years ago a handful of villages of the Maya-Chorti people in Honduras set off on an incipient struggle to reclaim land taken from them. The Chorti people had no land, very little food and infant mortality rate of 50%, they lived in the worst poverty in the Western Hemisphere.
"1932, Cicatriz de la Memoria", (1932, Scars of Memory) by Carlos Henriquez Consalvi, Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen (the Museum of the Word and Image in El Salvador).
In 1932 there was a mainly indigenous uprising in El Salvador that was brutally put down, with more than 10,000 indigenous people massacred. Information on the events of the time have been suppressed. There are a few remaining survivors and until now they haven't dared speak out, they are very old at this stage and there was a great danger that the history would die with them if their witness to t he events of 1932 weren’t recorded.