Making Waves: Radio Sutatenza
Stories of Participatory Communication for Social Change
RADIO SUTATENZA
1947 Colombia
BASIC FACTS
TITLE: Radio Sutatenza Escuelas Radiofónicas
COUNTRY: Colombia
FOCUS: Literacy, informal education
PLACE: Bogota, Medellin
BENEFICIARIES: About 8 million illiterate adults
PARTNERS: UNESCO
FUNDING: General Electric Corporation, Misereor, USAID, World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank
MEDIA: Radio, print
From the square of Sutatenza you look over an immense landscape of green slopes, broken here and there by other white villages, each with its church steeple. The landscape rolls on and on over ridge after ridge, each higher than the last, until the skyline is blocked by a towering mountain range, majestic and brooding.
Even today, the road to Sutatenza is unpaved and full of potholes, so in August 1947, it must have been horrendous, as a rattling, gaily painted bus ground upwards towards the village. Salcedo was among its passengers. Seated with the peasants dressed in their ponchos, and with their baskets of farm produce, chickens and the like, he seemed to come from another world. He was very tall, with a pale complexion inherited from his Anglo-Saxon ancestors. Penetrating dark eyes were set among his bony features, and he always wore the intense expression of a man with a mission, which he was going to fulfil at all costs.
Salcedo arrived in Sutatenza with his 16-millimetre film projector;and about a month later, a primitive amateur radio transmitter built by his brother also arrived. Sutatenza was a community of about 8,000 people, many of whom lived on isolated farms scattered up and down the slopes of the valley, often a long and arduous walk from the village. Salcedo had been sent to Sutatenza as assistant to the village priest, who was a very traditional cleric. His prime activities were to make sure his church's coffers were kept replenished and to scold his congregation during interminable Sunday sermons, which he sprinkled with Latin and Greek phrases to show his erudition before his ignorant flock.
Salcedo soon fell out with his superior. One Sunday not long after his arrival, the senior priest invited Salcedo to preach a sermon. Salcedo accepted, but once in the pulpit, he told the congregation that he did not intend to give them a sermon; instead he wanted to open dialogue with them about improving life in the community. the more daring among the congregation began to speak up about the problems. Salcedo proposed that they all get together to build a theatre; he would provide a film projector and the films. The response was literally overwhelming.
Excerpt from The One That Died by Colin Fraser and Sonia Restrepo.
An amateur radio operator, José Joaquin Salcedo Guarin realised radio was the most effective way to bring educational instruction to the far-flung rural adults of Colombia. His dream was realised when Radio Sutatenza began educational broadcasts using a 90-watt transmitter. He conducted transmission tests for about a month until October when he got a temporary broadcasting license and the prefix HK7HM from the Ministry of Communications of Colombia.
On October 16, 1947, the first cultural programme was broadcast: music performed by farmers of Sutatenza. Thus Radio Sutatenza was born. Immediately it got a lot of attention from all sectors of society. The President of Colombia himself formally inaugurated the station in early 1948, and Pope Paul VI visited it in August 1968 and blessed its new premises in Bogotá.
"The invisible professor", Father José Salcedo initially broadcast to his parish with his home-made transmitter. The government provided a legal license to operate in 1949, and very soon Radio Sutatenza was broadcasting educational and cultural programmes over a radius of1,000 kilometres.
At first there were but a few battery-operated receivers but the audience quickly grew,and so did Radio Sutatenza In 1948 the General Electric Corporation donated a 250-watt transmitter and 100radio receivers. The U.S. company continued supporting the experience for many years.A new 1,000-watt transmitter and 150 more radio receivers were donated along with antennas and other accessories.
Radio Sutatenza eventually moved to Bogotá, added more transmitters to meet regional needs and became the most powerful radio station in Colombia, covering other major cities such as Cali, Barranquilla, Magangue, and Medellin. Salcedo headed one of the world's largest programmes of adult education by radio. At its peak, the organisation had one thousand paid staff. Funds came from Germany and from Catholic Church groups in Europe. Eventually financial institutions such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank became involved.
The station had become part of Acción Cultural Popular (ACPO), which was created to expand the activities of distant education to provide the eight million rural adults of Colombia with the means to assume the responsibility for their own development. Radio Sutatenzaaimed at reaching the people with a programme of instruction based upon the five basic notions: health, alphabet, numbers, work and spirituality. Programme topics included hygiene and basic health care, reading and writing, simple arithmetic, increasing productivity, and the recognition of personal dignity.
The station activities were supported and reinforced with a printed journal called El Campesino as well as rural libraries, schools and training programmes for farmers. Other publications included Cartilla Basica (Basic Knowledge of Alphabet and Numbers); Nuestro Bienestar(Our Health); Hablemos Bien (Let 's Speak Correctly); Cuentas Claras(Clear Mathematics); and Suelo Productivo (Productive Land).
Radio Sutatenza operated two different programming formats simultaneously. The "A" programme, a general purpose format mixing entertainment and sports coverage with educational instruction; and the "B" programme concentrating on instruction with frequent repeat broadcasts of lessons for the convenience of the students.
Around 1990, Radio Sutatenza ran into financial and administrative problems.The station was closed down and most of the facilities were sold to the commercial Caracol Network of Colombia.
The Tenza Valley is a fertile, subtropical area in the department of Boyaca.
- In fact "valley" is not really the right name. the Tenza Valley is topographical chaos. It is a tortured jumble of hills and ridges, serpentine valleys and side valleys, only unified by being a single watershed that flows eastwards. High on the slope above one of the valleys of that watershed sector perches the white chip of village called Sutatenza.
Excerpt from Fraser and Restrepo.
About 80 percent of the peasants in Sutatenza were illiterate in 1947. Alcoholism-related violence and even death was frequent. The community was in total isolation from the outside world: no radio, no cinema and no distractions at all, except for getting drunk every Sunday.
It was on August 23, 1947, that the young priest, Salcedo, arrived at the parish of San Bartolomé, in Sutatenza. He found a community deeply affected by boredom, and thus alcoholism. He immediately proposed that the people build a theatre and offered his 16-millimetre projector and films. At the time the vast majority of peasants were illiterate, so he also offered them literacy and educational activities. Hesoon organised a chess club, musical events and sports competitions football and basketball.
He started showing his films in the open air at the town's square, while the plans for the new cultural centre were prepared. In only a few weeks a theatre was built with the contributions and active participation from the community; 1,400 live chickens were donated andContinued...click here to
return to the Table of Contents. then sold in Bogotá to buy construction materials. Salcedo next began to air radio programmes through a home-made 90-watt transmitter. Radio Sutatenza was born.
When Salcedo put up his amateur transmitter and broadcast his first programme on the newly created Radio Sutatenza no one could have imagined that many people in Chile, Brazil, Peru and other countries throughout the world would have followed his example in the next twenty years.
Although in reality Radio Sutatenza didn't last many years as a community-based and grass roots communication experience, the fact that it was the first of its kind has enormous merit. Its multimedia approach has been so successful, that it has widely inspired other developing nations in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The station has been a pioneer in the use of radio for educational purposes, especially in the education of the rural adult, the campesino. From its modest beginnings Radio Sutatenza grew into a major force in the battle against illiteracy in Colombia.
Salcedo succeeded in demonstrating that education for critical literacy is a means to empower peasants and other ordinary people to be full and equal participants in development and the maintenance of just, equitable and democratic societies.
By the end of its life, Radio Sutatenza had broadcast more than 1.5 million hours of radio programmes. Along with this effort, by that time ACPO had printed 76 million copies of El Campesino distributed more than 1 million books, and had trained 25,000 peasant leaders and development workers.
Radio Sutatenza pioneered the ideals of what was then called integral fundamental education, a concept that emphasises the need to help people to understand their own responsibility for improvement, to recognise their own potential for progress, and to know the value of their own resources. (Fraser and Restrepo)
Over the years ACPO established objectives which included, other than literacy and arithmetic, improvements of family health, farming techniques, hygiene and environment, economic skills, development of critical capacity on social issues, community participation, human rights, ethical and religious principles, etc. To achieve the goals, an integrated multimedia and interpersonal approach was organised, comprised of textbooks, journals, records and participatory training.
Although Radio Sutatenza was the first ever community radio station and opened the path to thousands of participatory communication experiences, it was in fact a victim of its own success. The community participation components that once characterised Radio Sutatenza were sacrificed for the benefit of a larger influence in formal and informal countrywide education. The participatory approach couldn't be maintained as the project evolved towards an increasingly centralised model with headquarters in Bogotá, the capital of Colombia. The project gained in terms of educational outreach, but in terms of popular participation it lost its initial innovative ingredient.
The political context in the country also affected Radio Sutatenza over the years. In order to protect the organisation from government pressures and from a take-over attempt by an NGO (run by the daughter of President Rojas Pinilla), ACPO changed its status to that of an ecclesiastical body, which eventually exposed it to pressures from the Catholic Church, and this was to have far-reaching consequences (Fraser and Restrepo).
Not everyone was supportive of Radio Sutatenza concept of education. In 196 ,Camilo Torres the priest and sociologist who later became famous when he joined the guerrillas conducted an evaluation of the Escuelas Radiofónicas (ACPO-Radio Sutatenza and established that the programme was demagogic and harmful for the peasants. The controversy between Salcedo and Torres grew bitter. Torres accused Salcedo of being a blind and ridiculous anticommunist, arguing that the campaigns of Radio Sutatenza against communism incited hate and violence.
"The One that Radio Sutatenza and ACPO" by Colin Fraser and Sonia Restrepo-Estrada, in Communicating for Development: Human Changefor Survival I. NB. Tauris &Co.Ltd. 1998, New York (USA).
Sutatenza Bogota by Takayuki Inoue Nozaki, Radio Nuevo Mundo.
"Radio Sutatenza" by Jim Whitehead. In Speedx October 1973.
Jose Joaquin Salcedo:The Multimedia Quixote by Mauricio Salas. 1997. Film. 29 min. The film explores Salcedo's personality and ideology and features interviews, commentary, and rare archival footage of Salcedo and ACPO.
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