Indigenous media in Argentina. Beyond media pluralism, towards media diversity, through ‘communication with identity’

The Argentinian Law 26.522 on Audiovisual Communication Services, approved in 2009 and currently undergoing a reform, is pioneering in Latin America for recognizing indigenous media, thus responding to many claims of the indigenous organizations that participated in the legislative process. Indigenous communities can obtain broadcasting authorizations as non-state public providers and, among other rights, can access to the Fund for Competitive Development (FOMECA) of which they are beneficiaries along with community broadcasters, which are conversely included among the non-profit private providers. We consider that, overall, the law’s application has been weak and the legal classification of media is questionable. Therefore, we aimed at diagnosing the main difficulties of indigenous communities in accessing to the radio spectrum and sustaining their activities, based on a characterization of their media practices. We hypothesized that indigenous media are caught between a de jure public ownership and a de facto community belonging. This hypothesis lies in a comparative analysis of the Argentinian law and similar Latin American reforms (that do consider indigenous media as community media) as well as in a dialogue between international studies both on community and indigenous media (a dialogue that highlights that both kinds of media articulate communication and struggle betting on political intervention and social change). We carried out semi-structured interviews with key informants of those communities that, at the time of starting the research (April 2016), were authorized to broadcast. We explored: broadcasters’ genesis and objectives; agenda and programming; external relationships; internal organization and sustainability strategies; respondents’ definition of “community communication”, “indigenous communication” and “communication with identity”; and, finally, their opinions about the Law and its media classification. We reached 34 communities belonging to different indigenous nationalities and spread in all Argentinian regions, until reaching data saturation. Results demonstrated that indigenous media aim at (self)represent who indigenous peoples are, by “indigenizing” media in order to decolonize the mainstream discourses. Nevertheless, they collude with community media around why and how they stay in the media arena. And it refers to the legal system enabling their presence. In this regard, although the Law fostered the emergence of many indigenous media as well as the awareness about indigenous peoples’ rights to communication, its application did not allow to consolidate the broadcasters’ activities or to consider indigenous lifestyles and daily realities. Indigenous communities face many economic, organizational and bureaucratic difficulties, just like community broadcasters. Therefore, a more effective and “anatomic” regulation is needed.