gisw13_chapters

the councils that the spaces alone do not guaranteevoice. “Despite their Constitutional guarantee,there is still the question of whether the most marginalisedgroups are able to articulate their voice inthese arenas, and a question of the alliances andinstitutional arrangements which help them to doso.” 18 In these “invited spaces” for participation,not everyone feels invited – or at least not everyonesees meaning in going to meetings where theyobserve in silence the decisions being made. AsCoelho, Andrade and Montoya propose, for the improvementof citizens’ participation (both womenand men) in the councils, “broader approaches areneeded, which recognise the diversity and identitiesof local actors and the ways in which they canbe pre-empted from claiming rights by forces of socialand economic exclusion.” 19 It is also importantto recognise that in Brazil, politics is a territory ofthe elites. Until 1930, political bosses and landownersimposed their voting choices on workers. Today,the practice of vote buying is widespread and common.Votes and voices have been a bargaining chipsince the inception of our republic.Action stepsThis analysis leads us to the reflection on how crucialit is to invest in initiatives that are built upon dynamicsinspired by what Freire proposed as a “pedagogyof the oppressed”, which consists of two stages:(1) The oppressed unveil the world of oppressionand through the praxis commit themselves to itstransformation, and (2) in the second stage, inwhich the reality of oppression has already beentransformed, this pedagogy ceases to belong tothe oppressed and becomes a pedagogy of allpeople in the process of permanent liberation.” 20The Yalodês have made it clear to our team how eagerthey are for information, skills and strategic thinking inorder to understand and reclaim the political language,to communicate better with local governance institutions,and to raise their voices to gain greater visibilityand legitimacy, especially among the local governanceplayers. Many of the project participants are feelingreassured, through the project implementation, of thelegitimate political influence they hold as religiousand spiritual leaders; they are slowly perceiving thepossibility of acting as role models, of harnessing communityknowledge while engaging their communitiesin the externalisation of issues through informationauthorship and alternative representations. ■18 Ibid.19 Ibid.20 Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Herder and Herder,New York.79 / Global Information Society Watch