It would seem that we are at war. The owners of the world’s riches have declared, according to the Zapatistas, the Fourth World War. Everything around us is an indication. Those who control this battered planet buy and sell land and people, commodifying everything: free trade. The rest of us, condemned to material scarcity, resist the attack and respond to enemy fire with whatever we can.
And where does this war leave journalism?
The commercial media—that which responds its sponsors and owners—tell us every day “what’s really happening.” They talk to us about truth: “impartial, direct and up to the minute.” Some might even say that thanks to instantaneous broadcasting, anyone in their small corner of the world could be “well informed” about hunger, corruption, terrorism, democracy or any other topic.
However, we must not forget that truth, as journalists and critics frequently remind us, is always the first casualty of war. Politicians, business owners, and their journalists pimp the truth, benefiting whenever possible from its services. In this war, truth is another man-down, one more fallen at the hands of historical plundering.
In October 2003, during the insurrection that toppled a President, Bolivia stood testament to the alienation and partiality with which the Bolivian commercial media treated the popular mobilizations at the time. The people’s collective actions were warped by the media’s representations: demonstrators became “provocateurs,” brutal military attacks on unarmed citizens became “confrontations.” The same distortions could be noted of the Venezuelan media during the coup against Hugo Chávez, and of the U.S. media and transnational news agencies during the coup against Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti—examples abound.
Information is power, and power is action, which, in turn, is guided by consciousness; power is the bridge between these three great things. The act of informing is therefore not the repetition of rubbish but the responsibility to analyze, to offer historic perspective, to critique.
So in this war that holds truth captive, making us feel as if we are without control: What do we do? What should we believe? How do we inform?
“Let me tell you what I saw in Paterson and then you will say which side of this struggle is ‘anarchistic’ and ‘contrary to American ideals’,” begins John Reed’s epic War in Patterson. Reed, the great early 20th century US-born journalist (also a Communist who dared to take sides), went on to describe “what he saw.” He wrote what today might be considered “telling the truth.” But his report accomplished something at once more sophisticated and simple: he gave his readers the possibility to construct the truth, to learn the truth from the story, from history.
Journalism might thus be considered the act of giving people the pieces of a story so that they can choose where they stand, so that they can choose which side is theirs in this undeclared war. In these days, journalism requires transparently taking sides in rejection of the false neutrality presented by the other media—those who for a small payout will write or say anything, as if they don’t see, don’t hear or don’t feel.
In this country, poor and marginalized, we journalists have heard one repeated demand. During mobilizations, blockades or community debates, the people of Bolivia have screamed at reporters (sometimes with a rock in hand): “inform well.” We believe this a just demand and one that deserves the attention the media and its sponsors have historically denied it because they were busy imposing their version of the story, victorious and arrogant.
But in this undeclared war, the poorest of Bolivians—the vast majority of whom are indigenous—began this century reaping victories of their own. Between 2000 and 2005, a cycle of battles (or small “wars”) expelled transnationals, overthrew bad governments and changed the course of the history those from above had been trying to write. In the wake of this political defeat, the elite used the commercial media as its vanguard to perpetuate propaganda and report falsities with growing fervor.
One of these commercial media’s tricks is the lie of “forgetting.” As in forgetting its submissiveness to its owners, and its attempt to make us believe that only the present exists. It attempts to criminalize and trivialize “the democracy of the streets”—forged out of blood and fire during the beginning of the 21st century—that lays the groundwork for where we are today.
The media and its owners have actually converted themselves into the defenders of “their” truth and of “their” democracy. They play with our collective memory to hide and erase their deceit, their corruption and their partiality. They clutch to the present, pretending as if it existed in isolation from the past, and try to sell us versions of events made to seem new, but that are in fact the same old versions repeated over and over again.
The people now fight to be able to tell their slice of history. Aware of their enormous collective potential, the formerly oppressed have begun a new battle in which they offer “their word” in order to leave behind a trace of their presence for those that follow.
Here, in this corner of the world, we believe that taking their side is to allow their voices to be heard, to be able to report their actions “from within.” It is our journalistic responsibility in these times to document this chain of events—events that originated long ago and that will form the basis for the future. We must keep our own tally on the world’s so-called “progress,” which to us seems to be nothing more than an accumulation of destruction and looting.
We want to receive these voices of the present and preserve the breath for those that follow.
With this informed political choice, we affirm that Bolivia (like various places on our continent) is living a process of change and that the majority of the people’s achievements came without adopting the rigid forms of state power. However, we also recognize that the limitations of Bolivia’s social dynamic inhibited the creation of concrete alternatives to liberal state institutions (institutions used to repress its people for years). Rather, it was necessary to take over those same institutions and govern from within.
The current political setting is thus more confusing than ever. The line between civil society and government are not always clearly defined. New political relationships have emerged, but new social relations have not: those that govern maintain dense relationships with those that are governed because they all came from the same side in this war.
This tends to complicate things in terms of information. While the state’s deployment of social forces has weakened the right wing, the “state of things” remains the same—not just because of a lack of resources, but also because of a lack of will. And as the war’s propagators rearm themselves and move newly on the offensive, the breach between state and society remains intact, impeding the gathering of force necessary to confront the common enemy.
So in these disorienting times, we make another informed political decision. In Bolivia, collective strength has passed neither to the government nor to the right wing. With the vast majority—“the simple and working people,” as Water War leader Oscar Olivera says—still lacking critical and watchdog news coverage, both the right wing and the government (at times in cahoots with one another) have continued the political expropriation of these people. Those of us in the struggle may pay a high price.
We therefore offer Ukhampacha Bolivia: meaning “this is Bolivia” (or any other part of the world)—a journalism committed, transparent and, above all, irreverent. We don’t want to do it alone and undoubtedly we’ll need your help and your solidarity. If we all put in what little we can, we won’t be alone in this resistance that should soon turn offensive… Here—amid this undeclared war—the dream and the word, the voice and the image, the fire burns bright.
April 2007
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