The I International Communication Congress was held in Caracas, Venezuela, between December 2 and 4. Encouraged by the motto “Now the people speak”, about 1700 communicators attended the event. Along with 150 international guests from 37 countries, a large number of militants belonging to the base communicational structure of the Bolivarian Revolution attended from the different states of Venezuela.
The conclave allowed the clarification on the modalities of manipulation and the strategy of aggression used by the hegemonic media and agencies in the service of the multimodal war carried out by imperialism against the emancipation projects. The application of psychological warfare operations, the installation of suspicion and accusation, the construction of an international media siege in combination with political and diplomatic action by the U.S. government were aspects revealed and discussed at various tables. In their most encouraging side, the presentations developed themes linked to liberatory communication, communication ethics, communication in decolonization consciousness and the possibility of building united communication networks from the struggles of the peoples.
Likewise, the Congress allowed the exchange of theoretical and tactical concepts to counteract political setbacks. The impact of the falsification of the common perceptions driven in a coordinated manner by the corporate media and its influence on the erosion of revolutionary and progressive processes emerged clearly from the panels, debates and workshops of the Congress.
They revealed how ruthless and daily criticism, artful editorials, mockery, omission, caricaturization or demonization of personal aspects of leaders constituted weapons of mass destruction aimed at preventing the attainment of better standards of living for marginalized populations.
At the same time, the Congress devoted ample space to the discussion on the harmful political use of the misnamed “social networks”, which ride on the back of social atomization and further deepen it. The lack of informative comparison, the rapid dissemination, together with mercantile management and individualized espionage, have rendered these fundamental parts of the modern arsenal of confusion and social control. Therefore, as pioneering initiatives such as Citizen’s Internet, Just Net Coalition and others had anticipated, one of the main challenges of the immediate future is to build networks and sovereign digital technology, away from the lurking of dependent architecture.
From the need to unite efforts to counter the conservative unitary offensive, which has recently taken on decisive fascist, racist, fundamentalist and misogynist traits, the Congress highlighted as a primary the construction of an international communication network to coordinate collective action.
Unity in the face of the retrograde onslaught
The enormous mass of informative content fired unilaterally and repeatedly on the human consciousness, the inserted codes of manipulation, the variety of formats and the omnipresence of the instrumental transmitter, make it difficult for the naïve gaze to perceive the unique message and its objectives.
Hence the decoding of the structure that underlies the apparent objectivity of the transmitters is paramount. In the context of the evident degradation and unsustainability of the capitalist model, they seek to rig reality and mask their own distorting role in order to deflect and stifle any transforming impetus. On the other hand, the once undisputed hegemon, the United States of America, seat and custodian of ultraliberalism, sees its pre-eminence now disputed by the dizzying rise of the economic and demographic might of Asian powers. In this fight for the control of natural, commercial and financial resources, communication then becomes a weapon of war. A war that demands the total submission of the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean to the neocolonial mandate.
This is the motivation of the unique project of the right, whose communicational arm is the transnational oligopolistic media. As Atilio Borón said at the closing ceremony of Congress at the Miraflores Palace, “only five conglomerates concentrate the world’s information,” information that is later replicated countless times and taken as true” .
The local tentacles rigorously serve the mainstream media, financed by the dominant economic groups, whose interest is to maintain their privileges and revenues.
Confronted with such concentration and dominance of the single discourse, and the multiple machinations of the anti-popular network, the participants of the Congress echoed the call for communicational unity. Thus, among the resolutions of the final document approved is the constitution of an International Communication Network, made up of political parties, social movements and organizations of popular power. At the same time, it aims to establish an international multiplatform for interaction, generation and dissemination of alternative content.
In order to give continuity to the initiative, the next Congress will be held in Nicaragua in 2020.
Unify, converge, articulate?
In today’s world there is a strong tendency towards disarticulation and destructuring. Centralism is resisted and the sentiments of the peoples demand greater autonomy and decentralization.
As is well known, capitalism exacerbates the cult of individualism and exclusivity, imposing as a rule the detachment from the collective.
Imperialism is mounted on that current to weaken popular organizations and governments, to promote secession, disintegration, in an attempt to destroy – thus Tania Díaz, 1ª. Vice-president of the National Constituent Assembly chiefly responsible for the organization of Congress – this is “an all-encompassing sense of identity”.
Progressive and left-wing forces face a challenge of coalition. The effort to overcome egocentric whims, centrifugal radicalisms, inconducive sectarianisms, indefinition as a program, but also the lack of popular protagonist participation, excessive centralism or uncritical dogmatism, must have a unity towards superior human horizons as its purpose.
Regarding communication, understood as dialogue, a return journey, a human right, this challenge presents different options. An excess of discursive unification runs the risk of producing a rebound, especially in the young, thirsty for creativity and free will and in certain segments of the middle class, less sensitive to the language of community.
On the other hand, it is necessary to avoid the “refractory chamber” effect, according to which meanings and language become comprehensible only to the convinced but cryptic and unattractive to other social sectors, thus risking an unadvisable isolation. Finally, for the message to connect with the deep feeling of the people, it must be coupled with culturally diverse forms, beyond reflecting the intimate concomitance of the problems.
Beyond these precautions, it is essential to unite criteria, agendas of action, to accumulate forces in the presence of a monster. Probably the way to travel in this era is the confluence in spaces of articulation of diverse origins and dissimilar codes. In this way, the diversity of semantics can act without censorship under similar flags and shared objectives.
To reinforce the direction of this flexible organization, it is essential to add a determined spirit of strategic international solidarity with the just causes of peoples, with organic initiatives tending towards sovereign regional integration and the manifest repudiation of neocolonial attempts to stifle the projects of the postponed majorities.
Popular university or nothing
As a relevant result of this first international congress, President Maduro ratified the Bolivarian government’s willingness to host and contribute to the foundation of the International University of Communication. This academic space will be dedicated to “political and technical training and the analysis of discourse to generate proposals capable of confronting the campaigns of companies and institutions at the service of miscommunication, disinformation and acculturation.
Among the foundational recitals, the accreditation of existing knowledge and capacities in popular communication and the reinforcement of the potential of community and alternative media are foreseen. The installation of multiple venues throughout the region was also proposed, as well as the possibility of itinerant and distance training programs.
These goals will be put to the test by the efforts of the sectors involved in facilitating popular participation in the design of this important integrating social project, a University of Communication at the service of the Peoples.
Integrating communication in the social struggle
In order for communication to be at the service of the improvement of life – as the Communication Forum for the Integration of Our America stated in its presentation – it is imperative that the social movements of the region integrate the demand to democratize communication as part of their struggles. This democratization, although traditionally including the creation of new media, the demand for licenses, frequencies, state financing and training, opens the doors to the idea of a permanent communication activism, in which peoples both communicate and interact. Ignacio Ramonet addressed the closing ceremony with a message, symbolically brandishing a cell phone as a weapon, calling for mass communication activism.
This activism, on the other hand, is essential when dictatorships, as in the most recent case of the coup regime in Bolivia, apply information blockades and order the persecution of journalists.
Globalised protest, globalised proposal
The International Communication Congress is the communicational response of the left nucleated in the Sao Paulo Forum to the multidimensional aggression of neocolonialism in the region. A response that will necessarily have to build bridges with other collectives and articulations of the progressive world to resist the death throes of a capitalist world dangerously wounded to death.
The people shout it in the street, the protest is globalized. Alongside it, the proposal must be made known and globalized. We, the popular communicators of the planet, are called to this task.
Javier Tolcachier is a researcher at the Center for Humanist Studies in Córdoba, Argentina and a communicator at the international news agency Pressenza.