Alternative radio Brain waves to help the disabled	Latin America’s endangered frequencies Rafael Roncagliolo, peruvian sociologist, journalist and university teacher. Former president of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC).
An announcer in the studio of a Dar es-Salaam (Tanzania) Catholic radio station. Most of Latin America’s community radio stations are waiting to be assigned a fixed frequency or official permission to broadcast Alternative radio Community, free, pirate, local, indigenous, educational, insurrectional–these are just some of the labels used to describe “alternative” radio stations. A recently-published book* has identified about 20 types all over the world, operating alongside “established” stations. Most of them belong to either the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) or the International Association of Broadcasting (AIR). AMARC, founded in August 1983 during the UN-sponsored World Communications Year, defends, co-ordinates and promotes radio stations around the world that are community-owned or broadcast socially-oriented programmes. With headquarters in Montreal, it has more than 2,000 members on five continents. AIR, which started in Mexico in 1946 as the Inter-American Association of Broadcasting, is based in Montevideo (Uruguay) and switched to its present name in 1985. It defends broadcasting which conforms to international technical and legal standards and is a longstanding critic of community radio stations on the grounds that some of them cause interference problems through not having an official frequency. But AIR also defends free expression of ideas and encourages co-operation between radio stations and organizations, both national and international and publicly and privately-owned. * Las Otras Radios, by Alfredo Bouissa, Eduardo Curuchet and Oscar Orcajo (Editorial Nordan-Comunidad, Uruguay, 1998). • AMARC: www.amarc.org Phone: (514) 9820351 • AIR: www.distrinet.com.uy/ air–iab/ Phone: (59) 824088121 A live broadcast from Bolivia’s Radio Esperanza. Brain waves to help the disabled Totally-paralysed people may soon be able to write on computer screens by using electrical signals from their brain. Two research teams, one in the United States, the other in Germany, have come up with a device which, with the help of two small electrodes attached to the top of the skull, “reads” the waves given off by the brain. Three people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a degenerative motor neurone disease, used the method to write a short sentence over half an hour. “These patients couldn’t communicate at all,” says Edward Taub of the University of Alabama in an article in the January 1999 issue of New Scientist magazine. He and Niels Birbaumer, of the University of Tübingen, record electrical signals coming from the cortex of the brain. The patients, by developing their ability to give positive or negative signals, control the upward or downward movement of a cursor which chooses from among 32 letters and punctuation marks on the screen. The two teams are writing a computer programme which could speed things up by anticipating words from the first few letters, depending on the context of the sentence and the frequency with which words are used in the language. Several other researchers around the world are trying to harness the potential of brain signals to relieve the ordeal of paralysed people. Last year an Australian team managed to get patients to operate a switch from signals registered on a brain scan. A team in Atlanta, in the U.S., implanted electrodes in the brains of two people, enabling them to write messages on a computer screen. But a dangerous brain operation is needed. The team is hoping one day to come up with a device that can use brain signals to stimulate muscles and restore partial use of some limbs.	A champion of community radio stations warns of threats to their existence in Latin America Alongside state-run radio and large-scale private broadcasting networks there is another world of community radio stations, owned, run and editorially controlled by the public they serve. These “alternative” radio stations may not have a range beyond the slum, village or island from which they broadcast. Many of them are shoestring operations staffed by local volunteers. Unlike commercial radio, which makes money from advertising, community radio stations are not profit-oriented–though sometimes they accept a little advertising in order to survive. They are there to serve the local population. Because of their contribution to a culture of peace and the growth of democracy, they are making headway on every continent. With the development of democratic movements and the emergence of new private and public pressure groups, community radio has taken root all over the world, though on different scales and with differing effects. This is largely due to new and better technical equipment, cheaper FM transmitters and the gradual disappearance of public broadcasting monopolies. When recognized by the government and protected by law–as in the United States, Australia and Canada, for example–they coexist uncontentiously with commercial stations. A number of European countries have followed the example of France, where the law was changed in 1982 to legalize “pirate” or “free” radio stations. In Africa and Asia, the growth of local radio has been spectacular. The most striking case is South Africa where, according to the Media Institute of South Africa (MISA), community broadcasting has great potential. On these continents community radio is helping to roll back illiteracy, promote education and provide information about health, the environment, farming, democracy and hot issues like landmines. But in one part of the world, Latin America, it is under attack. Fewer voices Community radio stations involved in educational broadcasting or speaking out for trade unions, universities or indigenous peoples have been operating in Latin America for more than half a century. “They’ve been used to announce all kinds of things, from prices down at the local market to someone’s horse that has gone astray,” says José Ignacio López Vigil, the Latin American and Caribbean representative of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC). “They’ve also taught thousands of people to read and thousands more how to figure out where their employers have cheated them of their wages. They’ve helped to make sure that children were vaccinated and they’ve encouraged ordinary people to speak up.” There are probably more than 2,000 community radio stations broadcasting in Latin America; 400 of them are affiliated to AMARC, twice as many as three years ago. But while their number keeps on growing, the stations are having problems obtaining legal recognition. Until recently, Latin America’s local radio stations coexisted with commercial stations without too much trouble. But the concentration of the media over the past few years has tended to push non-profit radio and smaller stations in general out of the picture. This has inevitably led to fewer voices being heard on the air. Most of Latin America’s community radio stations are waiting to be assigned a fixed frequency or else official permission to broadcast. However they are not defined by their legal status but by their goals. Whether registered as public or private companies (linked to universities, regions or towns), their defining feature is that they are non-profit organizations without any political axe to grind. Strong programmes, weak transmitters The fact that they are linked to the local community does not necessarily mean they are small or ill equipped. In fact existing stations are trying to upgrade their technical resources, and new ones, such as Radio Trinidad FM in Paraguay, try to start up with the best possible facilities. Many stations have weak transmitters but make up for it by having computers in the newsroom. Some even broadcast via the Internet. Nor does their community spirit mean that they put out boring programmes with poor-quality sound. The kind of interminable discussions and across-the-block denunciations that characterized community radio in its early days has given way to more open-minded and witty programmes which cover all aspects of life. In Europe a distinction has always been made between profit-oriented commercial radio and public-service broadcasting designed to play a socio-cultural role. In Latin America, however, this distinction has been blurred because state-owned radio and television stations have been largely used as political tools and have had little or no social or cultural value. In El Salvador, a recent telecommunications law gave clear advantage to profitable private firms and established regulations which favour big capital, to the extent that even the country’s second biggest television station, which is private, was in danger of closing down. In Uruguay, radio operating licences have to be approved by the defence ministry, and broadcasters without a licence risk a prison sentence. In Chile, the power of a transmitter is limited to one watt. In Brazil and Argentina, new legislation is looming which would concentrate radio ownership even further and thus narrow the public’s choice. In Peru, one of the few countries in Latin America where community radio stations can operate without too many legal problems, a new law passed in March 1998 banned non-profit stations from accepting even the very small amount of advertising which could ensure their survival. Since they receive no state subsidy or support, they are doomed to close, and this means that several sources of criticism of the present government will fall silent. Closing doors Their staff have appealed in vain to the national ombudsman (Defensor del Pueblo), and press freedom officials of the Organization of American States have approached the government without success. If the law is applied, dozens of stations may have to shut down. One of them is Radio Cutivalú, which has about 400,000 listeners in the north of the country and is the region’s main medium-wave station. The station, which is named after a pre-Inca Indian leader, won a United Nations prize last year for its “successful efforts to fight poverty”. It is also the only station attached to Propuesta Regional, a “development forum” whose participants include professional, university and religious associations independent of the government. It played a key role in helping the population survive the rains and flooding brought by the El Niño weather phenomenon. Listeners say their favourite programmes are the station’s competitions to encourage writing inspired by local tales and legends, which have attracted more than 1,300 amateur writers from towns all over northern Peru. Equally popular are regional song festivals sponsored by Panasonic and other firms, which give dozens of self-taught authors and composers a hearing they would never have enjoyed on commercial stations. Cutivalú is not the only Peruvian radio station whose future hangs in the balance. The same goes for Radio Marañón, which broadcasts from Jaén, in the Amazon region. At the other end of the country, in Puno, near the Bolivian border, Radio Onda Azul is in danger of losing its network of rural correspondents because it can no longer afford to pay them. All these laws violate constitutional rights and go against current international guarantees of freedom of expression. Community radio stations, which are by definition poor, have taken all kinds of legal steps to defend themselves. In Argentina and Paraguay, they have managed to survive because they have won their case. In Ecuador, they successfully challenged a law before the country’s constitutional court. Ombudsmen in El Salvador and Peru have made strong statements defending the stations’ rights. Fair shares on the air What is at stake in Latin America is very clear. Will the airwaves, which are part of overall human heritage, be monopolized by commercial firms, or will be they also be available, as they are everywhere else in the world, to communities, educational groups and non-profit organizations, in other words to the full spectrum of civil society exercising its right to free expression? What lies ahead for community radio stations? They defend the right to free speech, help to create the diversity of opinion which is an essential feature of democracy, and encourage local development, a culture of peace, the protection of the environment and other civic causes which cannot be measured in terms of financial gain. The history of the right to speak on the air began at the beginning of the century. Its defenders around the world have had to wage many struggles and make many sacrifices. Today it is more important than ever to ensure there is room for everyone on the airwaves.