Photo: Guerrilla Communicational
Guerrillas Communicational: People's Mediation
By: Ali First Class Nuestroamericano
cnaliprimera@gmail.com
I
The battle of the world, that eternal tension between oppressors and oppressed, exploiters and exploited, rulers and ruled, is terrain fertile more fruitful, in the struggle of ideas: the cultural. Since the formation of the modern state as an instrument of hegemony, regional and local differences were absorbed by a new system of organization. Martin-Barbero establishes institutional pillars of the two axes: Horizontal Integration, in which "the state that is beginning gradually shows its incompatibility with a company ; polisegmentaria (...) The charters and regional particularities, which express the cultural differences become obstacles to national unity behind the state power "(1998). Rising hegemony in the bourgeois nation-state, used the suppression of the local tradition to build a new identity based on political centralization and cultural unification. Moreover, the Vertical Integration where "each subject is detached from the group solidarity and relegated to the central authority. Detachment that by breaking the attachment to the group 'freed' to each individual making free labor, that is, available for the labor market "(Ibid. Emphasis added) . The idea of \u200b\u200bproduction as that accompanies the genesis of State Modern is fundamental for understanding the dynamics of contemporary societies struggle.
The capitalist system of production based its continued growth in the exploitation and alienation of man. A small group takes over the means of production, generates and accumulates wealth from wage labor of the majority. dominated class sell their labor power in a "voluntary" so that the state is endowed with an apparent freedom that marks the inclusion or not the system, assuming that you can not access with the material suffering from bad luck or lack of expertise, but has been free . "To die of hunger or be exploited is the section in fine print that captures the freedom of the bourgeois state. This economic process has its sedimentation in a cultural and political framework that legitimizes the operating system itself. Frankfurt theorists, Adorno and Horkheimer, refer to "Unit System." Capitalism has tried to make us see that one thing is work and quite another to leisure, no But according to the theory of the "Unit System" these two devices work articulated by the entertainment, information and other gadgets to meet the alleged "free time", no more than a mechanism for the numbness of society and her subversive capacity.
One of the major victories of the bourgeois ruling class lies in getting dominated assume the cultural codes of the elite as their own. The conception of a world system based on relations of inequality as natural and inevitable fate of the oppressed class is the script that impart traditional power institutions: school, church and especially today, the mass media. cultural knowledge and practices are constitutive of power. The political character of culture lies in its close relationship with the mechanisms of domination. The struggle of the speeches, the power of knowledge that establishes and authorizes, in short, "the will to truth as prodigious machinery used to exclude" scale works of legitimacy in a particular order which subjects naturalized in the acceptance of social and subjective reality (Foucault, 1996). this understanding, it is clear that the notion of hegemony is based on the sharing of codes that generate it. In this sense the breakdown of the capitalist hegemonic order, by the oppressed classes, necessarily involves a cultural response. It is a dialectical exercise: is unthinkable that a political revolution is not conceived from culture, nor the possibility of a cultural transformation that is alien to politics.
II
The concept of resistance is inherent in oppressed groups. Hegemonic domination factors are replicas from the very heart of exclusive dynamics. The "other", the oppressed and exploited, often continuously rebel against the situation of abuse that overwhelms. But this rebellion takes place in conditions of profound difference in the ability of action: The fight is never the same. That is why the oppressed subjects seek alternative forms of struggle to counter the totalitarian power of the dominant hegemonic bloc. In terms of communication, mass media have taken the flag cultural domination. His close relationship with the political and economic strengthens the notion of the "Unit System." And in this confrontation that comes the need to find mechanisms that, from the asymmetry of power, breaking with the situation of passivity to which the subject has been thrown, to protagonist becomes emancipation from building its own discourse and, if necessary, counter-offensive.
The term "guerrilla communication" was first coined by the Italian scholar Umberto Eco, referring to the only possible way to escape the all-around and alienating nature of the media. Given the supremacy of the media, Eco proposes action to transform the actors receptors that control the possibilities of interpretation of media messages: "The universe of Technological Communication would then be crossed by communication guerrillas , which reintroduced a critical dimension to passive reception "(1987. Underline added.) The term refers to the guerrilla resistance training alternatives to absolutist and despotic power, which in this case is none other than the mass media that transmit messages tinged with political, economic and ideological across the recipient population.
Guerrillas communication, such as counter-hegemonic device, breaks codes and the values \u200b\u200bof communication that has sold capitalism. Monologic change values, tax and one-way is based on this communication model and proposes the term capitalist libertarian and diverse voices and messages of a group that, until now, had only seen in the window of a communication self-representation that was selling the Detaining elite media production and communication. The quintessential example is the soap opera genre fed disseminated and promoted by the media, a genre that is based on a well-defined set of roles from classes, represented by the melodrama and repetition. Special mention information strategies that traditional news wielded to impose their notion of truth, a truth that tinted handling due to the inherent interest of the ruling class.
The communication guerrilla fighter from day to day people these speeches that the media hegemony has been inoculated in daily life. The prominence of the lower classes, not stylized actors represented by the small screen, is manifested making direct and active control over reality. The expressions of dissatisfaction, complaints, creative initiatives or paint slogans, participation and creation of radio and television stations, production of scripts and programs that express a collective self and polyphonic are some actions that advances the counter communication. Guerrillas, yes, asymmetrical, strong and mobilized. No communication is conceived as a center of power radiating truths, but as multiple foci of latent discourse and change agents from taking the local and the device itself as transformer.
power relations that the transmission of signs and codes in the media has become naturalized as unique, are now relativized and passed. The use of media as an end in itself to be and say "truth" revealed by those in power, the hackneyed concept "the medium is the message," he turns to his real and necessary change: the environment as a means , through processing, problem solving, growth and collective strength. The dispute over the senses is whipped then from conflicting identities of dominated groups that seek to be from the true, unmediated outside the everyday fabric of the social community. The transformers can save media as reality as truth to build and improve, and no longer as an artificial representation, consumption and trade without the right to change or return.
III
In Venezuela, the notion of guerrilla communication is a concept that has been used in practice for more than twenty years. The mediation has failed to generate the population, an understanding of the codes generated by the media of the oligarchy, is the principle on which to base the first phase of this battle. This situation, we value it even more from inequality and helplessness to which he was subjected the people watching television, leading exponent of this attack unifying of capitalism. In the case of the family, the system that sends parents constant work to carry home support, gives children the "nanny cathode. Venezuelan children spend more time watching television in classrooms or receiving family education. This "Unit System" works to exploiting and alienating perfectly with Swiss precision.
The need to understand the dynamics of assimilation of the messages and produce alternatives in the country sparked a great school practice that violated the dominant will, and opened a path of freedom in society organized. The guerrilla communication was established in Venezuela for a long time will organization and of stoic endurance of the people against the onslaught apparatus cultural violence posed by the hegemony of the day.
Far from promoting violence, Communicational Guerrilla pilot, recently created by the Capital District Government of Venezuela, is implementing a plan training in the areas of video and television, radio and production of audio, visual communication, web, multimedia and popular journalism, targeted groups of young people who voluntarily choose to participate. The politicization of youth is feared by those in power communication, is looming as argumentative and rebellious quality that have been in charge of removing and simple as possible through programming. Communicational Guerrillas used as "weapons": pencils, paints, cameras and recorders, based on urban experiences that are taking place in different cities of Venezuela. The government proposes to articulate these experiences with your organization and needs to stay.
Since the beginning of the Bolivarian government, the private media, after they were denied thin amount of power used by the state to offices for former presidents, had set themselves orchestrating a political campaign to discredit the government and open combat. Supplemented and the political parties and stertorous Right, to generate a set of attacks based on repeated manipulation and widespread press, radio and television, using the media monopolies (and production in general of "representation reality ") of a few families. In 2002, the U.S. government's continued support of the day, made a media coup failed. What happened in April 2002 is a passage in indelible history of fourth generation warfare in Latin America. The call to civil conflict, the subsequent de-contextualization of images and sounds related to accuse the government sectors and the deliberate concealment of popular resistance situations were some of the tactics cited by the media. At the end of the channel state by coup leaders, only radio and television stations and community newspapers were able to convey the reality of what was happening in the country. Of course, outside the "truth" of the national private media was reverberating. Do not forget that function as appendages of a transnational ideological machinery market.
How to deal with this device annihilator of sense? How to defend the multiplicity of voices within the machine of capital? The struggles of resistance must be communicative, symbolic, cultural. The people organized, mobilized and aware of the changes are a weapon in itself. Actors and users of media, not figures or consumers. The guerrilla communications agency engaged in the oppressed is said, from his place of life, from his subjectivity liberated from social consciousness.
Eco, Umberto. (1987): illusion strategy , Buenos Aires, Lumen / Flower.
Foucault, Michael. (1996): The order of discourse , Madrid, Piquette.
Martín-Barbero, Jesus. (1998): From the media to mediations. Communication, culture and hegemony , Mexico, G. Gili.
