RADIO ACTIVE

As usual, the media coverage of Sunday’s regional elections in Venezuela swung between trumpeting Chavez’s ‘stinging defeat’ or crowing about ‘the deepening’ of the revolution. Depending on, as usual, if you see Mr Chavez as a Stalinist demagogue keen to subject the world to oppressive communism, or a 21st Century Socialist saviour bearing gifts of peace, happiness, income redistribution and amusing Bush-insults.

For ordinary Venezuelans however, as usual, they were caught somewhere between a borderline paranoid psychotic right and a potty, blinkered, ten-years-of-power-out-of-touch-with-reality left. This polarisation is just as evident in Venezuelan media as it is abroad. While the privately owned commercial media openly encourages presidential assassinations, the comically subservient state media has recently reproduced wire-tapped conversations of opposition leaders bragging about the swoosh watches they were planning to buy (evil dastardly capitalist swine).

Meanwhile, many of those stuck in the middle of this partisan posturing have decided to tell their own stories with their own media. For many of Venezuela’s - mostly poor - urbanites, Sunday’s election results were delivered by co-operatively produced coverage from a number of independent community radio stations. Under the banner ‘ni privados ni estatales’ (not private, not state) these radio stations, alongside various community TV Channels and websites, date back to 1999 and the new constitution voted in by referendum. Following their role in the mass mobilisation in 2002 that brought Chavez back to power after a coup the number and popularity of these outlets exploded.

As these media operate as a communication outlet for the barrio people and are run by community and popular organisers they don’t tend to attract many fans from amongst the right wingers in opposition to Chavez. That doesn’t, however, mean that they are starry-eyed cheerleaders for El Comandante. In fact, coming from the people directly affected, they often offer the most constructive and practical criticism. It now appears they could have a key role to play in reigning in the excesses and blindspots of the government and perhaps more importantly, moving the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ outside of the constraints of the cult of personality surrounding Chavez.

The election results were genuinely consolidating for Chavez with 17 out of 22 contests won and a 10.4% advantage in the total vote. But there is also no doubt that the opposition made huge and important inroads amongst one of Chavez’s natural constituencies, the urban poor, even taking the capital, Caracas. It doesn’t take much to work out why: most Venezuelans list rocketing crime rates and crumbling urban infrastructure along with sky high inflation as their top concerns.

If the ‘Revolution’ is to continue, with or without Latin America’s favourite socialist clown, the government has to start accepting criticism and listening. And aside from the election results, there’s no better place to get the message than from the community media coming straight from the barrios.

* www.medioscomunitarios.org/pag/index.php