Women's Empowerment and Good Governance Through - amarc

Best Experiences for an Action Research Process 102
Chapter 20.
Women in Community Radio in Mexico:
Contributing to Women’s Empowerment
By María Eugenia Chávez (47)
In southern Mexico, in the state of Oaxaca, there is a Mixe indigenous community that
has been struggling for years to obtain its own communications medium. The inhabitants
of Tlahuitoltepec, Oaxaca, had the initiative of seeking permission to operate their own
media even before joining AMARC. They were certain that with their own media they would be
able to resolve a series of communication needs expressed by the community, among other
objectives:
1) Access to a media will allow them to communicate between themselves. In a community
where not even the telephone is a generalized medium of communication for the inhabitants
of the town and its surroundings, radio links them. Through radio broadcasting, messages are
sent concerning their daily life: the health status of someone who is sick, the arrival of a family
member from far away, the arrival of a newborn offspring, etc.
2) Information from community authorities about activities having to do with community governance,
decisions of the assembly, assignments to tequio (a kind of communal labour that
individuals are called upon to do for the good of the community).
3) A medium to announce town festivals and broadcast their activities. In other words, a me-