Rediscovering   the   Latin   American   Roots   of   Participatory   Communication   for   Social   Change    

The  history  of  communication  theory  for  social  change  has  tended  to  adopt  a  Westernizing  and  colonial  perspective  when  describing  its  origin,  evolution  and  main  paradigm  shifts,  as  a  US  and  European  contribution  complemented  with  peripheral  ideas  from other world regions – Latin America and,  to a much  lesser  extent, Asia and Africa. All of the ideas from the periphery were underestimated, if  not  considered  ideological  or  political  disputes  and,  consequently,  non‐scientific.  Despite  this  lack of  recognition,  the Latin American  legacy  to  communication  for  development and social change constitutes one of the main theoretical frameworks  for  building  a  more  complex,  participatory  and  democratic  communication  paradigm. Some of  the  first proposals of Latin American communication scholars  in  the  1970s  and  1980s  shared  similar  ethical/political  aims.  These  involved  a  grassroots  and  critical  basis  and,  above  all,  a  constant  a  constant  attention  to  praxis  as  the  core  of  a  new  way  of  thinking,  researching  and  planning  communication.     Keywords: communication,  communication  for development,  communication  for  social  change,  community  communication,  development,  participatory  communication    Rediscovering the Origins of Communication for Social Change   Communication  and  development  constitute  two  inseparable  spheres  of  human  activity. That  is, whenever we communicate we  introduce some type of change –  progressive  or  regressive  –  within  social  structure  and,  at  the  same  time,  any  programme or project oriented towards individual or social development implies a  conception – more persuasive or dialogical – of the communication process. Such is  the  importance  of  this  prolific  crossroads  that  the  preoccupation  about  jointly  interpreting both dimensions emerges in the very origins of the science and theory  of  communication. Thus,  if we examine  the pioneering  texts of US administrative  communication research, we will find an almost permanent interest in the study of  Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 8(1)  155 modern mass media  potentialities  –essentially  film‐making,  press  and  radio  –  to  modify  human  behaviours  and  to  introduce  transformations  in  the  social  framework (Lasswell, 1948; Lerner, 1958; Rogers, 1962).     Nonetheless,  the  history  of  communication  has  tended  to  adopt  a  colonial  and  Westernizing  view  of  the  discipline  (Curran  and  Park,  2000)  when  narrating  its  origins  and main  historical  periods,  viewing  it  as  an  essentially  North  American  contribution,  with  peripheral  or  subsidiary  collaborations  from  other  regions,  considered  of  lesser  value,  if  not  mere  ideological  or  political  disputes,  and,  therefore, non‐scientific.1 This partial perspective derives from the very process of  the  epistemological  construction  of  communication  sciences  –  and  of  social  sciences in a wide sense (Wallerstein, 1996) – estimated, as a general rule, to be a  US  invention  (administrative  theory)  and,  to  a  lesser  extent,  European  (critical  theory).2     Nevertheless,  if  we  look  at  the  thesis  of  Bolivian  specialist  Luis  Ramiro  Beltrán  (1993),  we  find  corroboration  for  the  view  that  this  veteran  subdiscipline  was  born in two very close but culturally dissimilar geographical contexts at the same  time,  although  with  different  premises  and  objectives:  Latin  America  and  the  USA.33  The  following  article  aims  at  tracing  a  new  genealogy  (Foucault,  2004)  of  the  subdiscipline,  in a direction opposed  to  that adopted by a good number of meta‐ 1 This is evident in classic or contemporary studies such as those by Hedebro  (1982), Hornik (1988), Mefalopoulos (2008), Reeves (1993), Rogers (1989),  Sparks (2007), Stevenson (1988; 1994) or even Servaes (1999). However, there  are interesting exceptions on this matter: Gumucio‐Dagron and Tufte (2006),  Huesca (1994), Manyozo (2007), Melkote (1991) or Sosale (2007).  2 This  is easy to prove  if we review university academic programmes around the  world, or the main bibliographical volumes which systematize or provoke debate  around this matter, as a general rule limited to a small number of canonic authors  and  texts,  for  the most  part  of  occidental,  Anglo‐Saxon  or  ‘Eurocentric’  origin  –  Lasswell,  Schramm, Berlo, Adorno, Williams,  etc.  –  and with a glaring absence of  scholars from other latitudes.   3 Other regions of the world such as Africa and Asia also participated in its origin,  but in a more limited way (Barranquero, 2008; Fernández Viso, 2010; Manyozo,  2007; Melkote, 1991). Barranquero, Rediscovering...    156 theoretical and historical analyses of the field.4 That is, we will start the journey in  the practice – not in the theory – in Latin America and not in the USA, and we will  move  from  the  description  of  the  first  citizen  projects  (small  and  scarcely  institutionalized),  and  not  from  the  great  development  agents:  cooperation  agencies, companies, private foundations, universities, etc.    In  fact,  Latin  America  is  a  pioneering  continent  in  alternative  and  participatory  communication experiences, which were often contrary to cultural expressions of  the elite exercising power. All this advocated a research committed to the struggle  against  cultural  dependence  and  to  the  search  for  alternative  models  to  the  dominant  persuasive‐informational  one  of mass  communication  research,  in  the  hopes of a more inclusive and democratic communication. On the other hand, Latin  America  is where the central difference between  information (strategic exchange  of  ideas  and meanings with persuasive purposes  at  the  service  of  a  transmitter)  and communication (horizontal dialogue between interlocutors, which contributes  to  reinforce  consciousness  and  social  transformation  in  the  long  run)  was  first  posed (Freire, 1969; Pasquali, 1963).    Thus,  according  to  some  authors,  one  of  the  most  radical  epistemological  revolutions in the history of communication sciences would have taken place then,  leaving  as  its  legacy  an  other  paradigm,  radically  different  from  the  American  positivist‐functionalist  model  and  substantially  dissimilar  to  European  critical  theory – in this last case, due to the fact that European research has usually been  less  tied  to  praxis  than  Latin  American  research  (Atwood,  1986;  Dervin  and  Huesca, 1994; 1997; Fox, 1996; Hardt, 2005; McAnany, 1986; Schlesinger, 1989).  In this line, Luis Ramiro Beltrán (2000) reminds us that:     Latin  American    scholars  were  in  fact  the  first  to  examine  the  classical    communication concept derived from Aristotelian unilinear thinking, which    had   prevailed without essential changes until the end of the 1960s. They    were the   ones  who,  going  beyond  the  apparent  simplicity  of  the  4 A significant sector of the dominant literature in the field tends to describe the  origin of communication for development as a matter linked to the first  development projects from North American – USAID – or international cooperation  agencies – FAO, UNDP/PNUD, UNICEF, UNESCO – as well as private foundations –  Rockefeller, Ford, Kellogg. Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 8(1)  157   paradigm, discovered its   non‐democratic  implications.  And,    consequently, they were also among the first   to  propose  new    perspectives in communication, and new models to redefine it,  aiming  at  a    genuine democracy.5    Centred in the field of alternative communication, Jesús Martín‐Barbero (1981: 14)  expresses himself in the same way:     Although  said  in  different  ways  and  with  very  diverse  scopes,  from  the  utopias  up  to  the  limited  possibilities  of  immediate  intervention,  a  fundamental  purpose  seems  to  define  the  alternative  in  terms  of  communication  in  Latin  America:  transform  the  process,  the  dominant  and  normal form of social communication, so that dominated classes and groups  would  become  the  ones  to  speak  up.  And  in  this  sense  alternative  communication is not recent news since, from the pioneering experiences by  Paulo  Freire,  later  projected  to  multitude  of  groups  in  all  countries  of  the  continent, communication has been linked more to the liberation of speaking,  activity  and  popular  creativity  rather  than  to  the  power  and  type  of  resources.    Though a genealogical journey, the main objective of my reflection is to contribute  to  the  visualizing  and  synthesizing  of  a  primary  legacy  in  the  struggle  to  link  communication to the liberation of speaking, activity and popular creativity, which  still has a  leading presence and influence on the global democratizing debates on  communication  (CRIS  Campaign;  World  Communication  Congress  on  Communication  for  Development,  Rome,  2006;  OURMedia;  Communication  for  Social Change Consortium; The Communication Initiative; etc.)   

modern mass media potentialities -essentially film-making, press and radio -to modify human behaviours and to introduce transformations in the social framework (Lasswell,1948;Lerner,1958;Rogers,1962).
Nonetheless, the history of communication has tended to adopt a colonial and Westernizing view of the discipline (Curran and Park, 2000) when narrating its origins and main historical periods, viewing it as an essentially North American contribution, with peripheral or subsidiary collaborations from other regions, considered of lesser value, if not mere ideological or political disputes, and, therefore,non-scientific. 1 Thispartialperspectivederivesfromtheveryprocessof the epistemological construction of communication sciences -and of social sciencesinawidesense (Wallerstein,1996)-estimated,asageneralrule,tobea US invention (administrative theory) and, to a lesser extent, European (critical theory). 2 Nevertheless, if we look at the thesis of Bolivian specialist Luis Ramiro Beltrán (1993), we find corroboration for the view that this veteran subdiscipline was bornintwoveryclosebutculturallydissimilargeographicalcontextsatthesame time, although with different premises and objectives: Latin America and the USA. 33 The following article aims at tracing a new genealogy (Foucault, 2004) of the subdiscipline, in a direction opposed to that adopted by a good number of meta-1 ThisisevidentinclassicorcontemporarystudiessuchasthosebyHedebro (1982), Hornik(1988), Mefalopoulos(2008), Reeves(1993), Rogers(1989), Sparks(2007), Stevenson(1988;)orevenServaes(1999.However,there areinterestingexceptionsonthismatter: Gumucio-DagronandTufte(2006), Huesca(1994), Manyozo(2007), Melkote(1991)orSosale(2007. 2 Thisiseasytoproveifwereviewuniversityacademicprogrammesaroundthe world,orthemainbibliographicalvolumeswhichsystematizeorprovokedebate aroundthismatter,asageneralrulelimitedtoasmallnumberofcanonicauthors and texts, for the most part of occidental, Anglo-Saxon or 'Eurocentric' origin - Lasswell, Schramm, Berlo, Adorno, Williams, etc. -and with a glaring absence of scholarsfromotherlatitudes. 3 OtherregionsoftheworldsuchasAfricaandAsiaalsoparticipatedinitsorigin, butinamorelimitedway (Barranquero,2008;FernándezViso,2010;Manyozo, 2007;Melkote,1991). theoreticalandhistoricalanalysesofthefield. 4 Thatis,wewillstartthejourneyin thepractice-notinthetheory-inLatinAmericaandnotintheUSA,andwewill move from the description of the first citizen projects (small and scarcely institutionalized), and not from the great development agents: cooperation agencies,companies,privatefoundations,universities,etc. In fact, Latin America is a pioneering continent in alternative and participatory communicationexperiences,whichwereoftencontrarytoculturalexpressionsof theeliteexercisingpower.Allthisadvocatedaresearchcommittedtothestruggle against cultural dependence and to the search for alternative models to the dominant persuasive-informational one of mass communication research, in the hopesofamoreinclusiveanddemocraticcommunication.Ontheotherhand,Latin America is where thecentraldifferencebetweeninformation(strategic exchange of ideas and meanings with persuasive purposes at the service of a transmitter) andcommunication(horizontaldialoguebetweeninterlocutors,whichcontributes to reinforce consciousness and social transformation in the long run) was first posed (Freire,1969;Pasquali,1963).
Thus, according to some authors, one of the most radical epistemological revolutionsinthehistoryofcommunicationscienceswouldhavetakenplacethen, leaving as its legacy an other paradigm, radically different from the American positivist-functionalist model and substantially dissimilar to European critical theory-inthislastcase,duetothefactthatEuropeanresearchhasusuallybeen less tied to praxis than Latin American research (Atwood, 1986;Dervin and Huesca, 1994;1997;Fox, 1996;Hardt,2005;McAnany, 1986;Schlesinger, 1989 Praxis, in the history of thinking, has been interpreted in two ways: in its more extended and popular meaning, as 'something which brings along utility or produces immediate material benefit' (RAE, 2001); or in its Marxist vision, from twodifferentbutcomplementarysenses:asman'srevolutionaryactivityinorder to transform the material conditions of existence, or as dialectical unity between theory and practice, which helps to break with the idealistic dualism between thinkingandaction. 7 Whether we consider it one way or the other, the first institutional development communication programmes emerged by the end of the 1940s, ten years before the outset of the pioneering modernizing theories (Lerner, 1958;Rogers, 1962 representations over centuries (Beltrán et al., 2008;Cadavid, 2007;Peppino, 1999). However, at a worldwide level, we can consider that Latin America is the pioneering continent in so-called participative communication; that is, grassroots projectsorientedtoarticulatemeansforthevisualizingandtherepresentationof communities traditionally submerged in the culture of silence (Freire, 1970). Its precedents date from 1947, although they were unconnected experiences which pursued divergent objectives: miners' radio stations in Bolivia and the national radioschoolprojectSutatenza-ACPOinColombia.
Miners' radio stations promoted a communication directed to the working and rural class of the Bolivian Highlands. This was specially tied to the support of political-union consciousness and to the search for autonomy and structural transformations against the economic and cultural exploitation of the mining oligarchies. ACPO was instead a national and popular literacy and education projectthroughthecombineduseofradioandpresentialteaching,withtheaimof emancipating -although also evangelizing -the rural and urban population of Colombia (Beltrán, 1993;Gumucio-Dagron, 2001;Peppino, 1999 (Mattelart,2009,84).

TheLatinAmericanMatrixofParticipatoryCommunication
Ifwedefinetheparticipatorycommunicationparadigmaccordingtoitsabilityto involve civil society in its own process of transformation through dialogue and participation,wecanstatethatLatinAmericaisthemostrelevantworldregionin its conception and later configuration. 10  On the other hand, in no other part of the world can we find such virulent opposition to the first theoretical models of communication, development and, therefore, communication for development. This region can be considered the foundingfatherofthetheoriesofdependence (CardosoandFaletto,1967;Prebisch, 1949) and precursor of original advances in the field of political economy of communication and in the cultural imperialism thesis (Mattelart, 1970;Pasquali, 1963 TheroleofLatinAmericainthecreationofanewparadigmcannotbeunderstood without fully analysing the reflections produced by its prominent scholars and, above all, the Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire (1969; ofUSscholarsSchiller(1969)orSmythe(1981),authorssuchasPasquali(1963) orMattelart(19701972;1973)wereevidentprecursorsofthistheoretical approacharoundtheworld,withsomedifferenceswithregardstothepolitical economythataroseinNorthAmerica.
The paradigm shift (Kuhn, 2000) in the USA, and, by extension, in the whole academic community, cannot be appreciated without also examining the work of thetwofirstLatinAmericanPhDholdersinthatcountry:LuisRamiroBeltránand Juan Díaz Bordenave. These scholars managed to be heard in the hermetic US academythankstotheirprofoundfamiliaritywiththiscommunity,theircommand oftheEnglishlanguageand,aboveall,theirenormousabilitytointroducecriticism with such rigour and moderation that no suspicion was raised -in terms of radicalism-amongtheadvocatesoftheoldparadigm (Beltrán,1974a;1976;Díaz Bordenave, 1976). 12 In fact, the founding fathers of diffusionism and the modernizing paradigm recognized, with the passing of time, that the influence of Beltrán and Bordenave had been determinant in the rejection of the vertical, ahistorical and ethnocentric character of the first frameworks (Berlo, 1980;Rogers, 1976;Singhal and Obregón, 2005). Today it is even easier to detect this influence in authors, like Wilbur Schramm or Daniel Lerner, who never acknowledged it (see Schramm, 1979: 9 in Lent, 1987Lerner, 1973, in Beltrán, 1979. The best-known episode is the publication of the famous text 'Communication and development: the passing of the dominant paradigm' by Everett M. Rogers (1976), which many regard as signalling the collapse of the modernizationperspectiveandthebeginningofamoreparticipatoryandcomplex paradigm.
what Daniel Mato (2003)  (2)Againstuniversalism,thissciencebecomesmodest,localorglocaland'full of uncertainties ' (Alfaro, 1993); that is to say, it does not intend to offer methods applicable to everyone -social marketing, edutainment, etc. -but conceives planning in terms of the concrete problems of communities, regarding their historical singularities and different cosmovisions and cultures.
(3) Against the instrumental approach -the vision of communication of developmental assistance, always at the service of something (health, environment, development, etc.) -communication for development turns into an interdisciplinary science, which values the potential of communicationtomanagewhatisspecifictootherdisciplines,aswellasits activeroleintheconformationofnewexperiencesandimaginaries.