Thank you Sergio for bringing us closer to this issues, and thank you also Clemencia and everyone else who contributed -- all through the years -- with their ideas and energy.

I believe that the tension that Sergio speaks about is a real one, but there are others and, I personally stand from my experience in citizens' radio and --since two years ago – articulated with ICTs.   We are part – as maybe many of you do – of several groups and networks where we can't seem to agree on how to group the alternative, how to add it (it has been over 50 years since the first community radio experience in Bolivia), how to purify it from the nonsense and vain entertainment hegemony, in such way that we can increase its value, so that we can go from being alternative, to ser alternatives to social, cultural, and economic conditions of our communities.

Regarding the structures, I believe there is a long way to go, on the good and the bad – why deny it.   Our networks have ended -- more than once -- entangled in the same vices that brought us together, and when we finally agreed, they started to detangle, to fragment y to start again.

This, I think, is one of the challenges –- not the only one though --, but when do we stop from starting?  When we start to gather what we've gone through and this requires greatness, tolerance, indifference, happiness for other's successes, and to nurture as Eduardo Galeano said in Bolivia when Evo Morales assumed presidency: "The courage of hope".  It requires us to acknowledge, recognize and see ourselves in the other, so on and so forth, as well as getting out of this circle, where we have been taught not to trust the other is easily said, and probably done, but it represents a twist to human nature, but hey, we are ultimately dealing with the future of the network, and that is what it is all about: to find new paths.  

Globalization has also given us some examples that we cannot let go without taking advantage, examples that 10 years ago we could not even dream of.   The possibility that things may not be going so well in one region, but that we are still able to recognize and contribute favorably in and from our media scenario of our own Latin-American reality is an opportunity of today, not tomorrow, to give you just one example.

The need for rotation mechanisms – regarding sustainability responsibilities and network dynamism, identification of short and mid-term objectives, as if to recognize our successes and failures, and the possibility to correct our course – is still an passionate task, and probably those passionate enough are more than the ones we have already identified or named.   To join or multiply are all possible if we take advantage of new technologies, the amassed knowledge, the things we have learnt, and which we know we should not repeat, they are all a good start.

Greetings,

Arturo

Arturo E. Bregaglio

Director FM Trinidad 90.1

Itapua and Rio Monday

Asunción – Paraguay

Tel. (595 - 21) 297 806 / 281950
Fax. (595 - 21) 297 806
e: [log in to unmask]
Web: www.fmtrinidad.org.