Agenda building

The integration processes that are underway have been virtually limited to governments and entrepreneurs.  But it would seem that new courses are being opened through the changes taking place on the regional political map. This new scenario is in a certain sense novel, due to the presence of presidents who proclaim autonomy (some more-so than others) regarding the agenda drawn up from Washington, and to the support they receive from social movements, which are precisely reconstructing their organizational web – attacked by the dictatorships and neo-liberal policies – to escape invisibility and to project themselves politically.

In effect, the Summit of Cochabamba begins a new chapter, owing to the attention that the host President has given to the participation of social movements, with the perspective that integration should be based on solidarity, cooperation, and respect for sovereignty and self determination of the peoples.

In this setting, it is a challenge for social movements to insist that this process of integration allows for dialogue and, consequently, enables the channels and spaces of encounter and brotherhood between peoples. In other words, so that culture and communication are seriously contemplated as dimensions for the advancement in mutual and brotherly understanding, which is essential for breaking away from a history of subordination and dependency.

Accordingly, it is paramount to recognize and esteem the contributions of societies and their organized expressions, in bringing together peers and tightening solidarity links among them. This is what is really enabling the great re-encounter of our peoples and, thus, the contributions of synergy of social and civic networks with communication networks.

Given the importance that communication has attained in the contemporary world, it is a democratic and civic necessity that this process situates as one of its fundamental constituents the Right to Communicate. It should also engage the commitment of the parties to adopt public policies based on democratic mechanisms of social control, which enable interconnection between the local, regional and national dimensions of integration, in order to resist schemes of deregulation driven by the processes of transnationalization and monopolistic concentration. This way, clear game rules can be established according to the collective interests that, among other things, demand support for endogenous production, distribution and exchange, as well as protection of the wealth of cultural diversity that characterizes the region.

In this matter, it also becomes indispensable to formulate a specific strategy of cooperation within the realm of information, communication, culture and knowledge. Agreements should be contemplated to connect regional networks of public and citizen information and communication, that are equitable with respect to the media.

It is worth emphasizing that in this perspective, there are signs of progress, such as the creation of the New Television of the South, better known as Telesur. The main objective of Telesur, according to its general director, Aram Aharonian, "is the development and implementation of a televised hemispheric communication strategy of world-wide reach that drives and consolidates the processes of change and regional integration, as tool in the battle of ideas against the hegemonic process of globalization" (2).  The over-hasty offensive unleashed against this initiative, before it even got on the air, is a clear sign that on this front there will not be any truce.

But there also exists an important integration process set in motion by social and citizen expressions. Confronting the empire of free trade, they postulate that "another communication is possible". In this endeavor we find networks and coordinating bodies of alternative news agencies and media, of community and regional radio and TV, of blogs and websites, of social video and cinema, of media observatories, etc. It is a strategic sector for change and integration – since it encourages participatory processes that promote a sense of citizenship and the appropriation of communication as a right – that, nevertheless, is not considered in the official plans.

Another outstanding area is the action being undertaken journalists' unions that espouse the cause of integration, as part of their efforts to rescue the public service character of communication.

Similarly, the involvement of social movements and organizations in this field is growing all the time. Their agenda of struggles incorporates the democratization of communication, recognizing its increasing strategic importance, as a fundamental condition for "creating fair rules of the game" in this domain, in order to be able to engage in the dispute around meaning and projects of society.

Another fundamental component to move forwards in this perspective is the link to investigators and the academic world. In the process in favour of the democratization of communication, which had as its reference point the proposal of the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO), very significant contributions came from Latin America, with input from a wide range of institutions. One of the present challenges is, indeed, to rearticulate that ample institutional infrastructure. This is indicated by Bolivian Luís Ramiro Beltrán, who was an outstanding player in the debates of NWICO as the proponent of National Communication Policies, who proposes as an initial task the completion of "an inventory-diagnosis of the characteristics of the domination and dependency in the realm of communication in the era of the Information Society," and the updating of public policies from the expressed conceptual proposals (3).

Paraphrasing the proclamation "without democratizing communication, there will be no democracy", we can now say that an integration process that is not sustained in the democratization of communication could be anything, except for integration.

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