Jose Ignacio Lopez Vigil and the Radio Venceremos crew (nice hair!)

More from the ACME summit. It was fun to reconnect with Jonathan and Susan from Reclaim the Media, folks I met several years ago in New Mexico at the first ACME conference. They are radio and indy media activists who told me of a really awesome concept, radio barnraising, a community project for creating popular radio. Essentially activists and volunteers gather to build a local radio station and to train producers in remote communities of typically under-served populations, such Mexican migrant workers.

Among those in attendance was Jose Ignacio Lopez Vigil, a Central American radialista who I’ve admired from a distance. He is co-author of one of the best books I’ve read about guerrilla warfare and media, Rebel Radio, a history of the FMLN’s Radio Venceremos that broadcast in the midst of El Salvador’s bloodiest fighting during the Civil War of the 1980s. It’s a gripping tale, and makes punk zine publishing seem like kindergarden. What follows is a snip from his thoughts concerning a production pedagogy. It has good lessons for any media activist out there trying to develop a credible approach to popular media.

Saludo Radialistas! a message from Jose Ignacio Lopez Vigil | Reclaim the Media:

Friends, I will take this opportunity to share three ideas, three challenges that I find fundamental in these diffcult times that we are living today. As alternative community radio people (radialistas), as women and men passionate about the radio, I think we have to achieve three combinations, three fusions, the first being the fusion of content and form. Making a stupid, superficial program, void of ideas, is easy. It’s also easy to make a program that is profound and full of ideas, but cumbersome. The first is entertaining and done in an enjoyable, cheerful fashion, but it doesn’t say anything. The second may have great content, but it is boring, and lacks wit. And if it doesn’t have charm, it’s lost, because if it is informative and educational but boring, nobody will listen to it. Even if it has great content, nobody will listen to it. Therefore we have to fuse form and content. Sometimes we say that since we are community based one does not have to worry so much about the quality, but the contrary is the case: only the best for the people. An educational program has to be cheerful, attractive, and seductive, precisely because of what it is it needs to be of excellent quality.