Ollantay Itzamná

Mayan community communicator. Guatemala E.S.

There are about 50 million indigenous people in Abya Yala. We represent about 10% of the Latin American population. However, even in mostly indigenous countries, such as Guatemala, Bolivia, Peru, Mexico, indigenous peoples still “lack” a voice of their own. This is not because we are not assisted by the Logos (Word), but because in order to be a citizen in these “Creole” countries, the indigenous person must stop being an indigenous person and assume the Creole national identity.

And, if an indigenous person wants to be a journalist or communicator, he or she has to understand and learn to tell the lies of the bosses as “objective” truths. Otherwise, the indigenous person will never be a qualified journalist or communicator for the system.

What does it mean for an indigenous person to have a voice of their own?

Community communicator. Guatemala E.S.

Having one’s own voice does not necessarily mean reporting or speaking in our native languages. Our indigenous languages are useful for communicating inwardly, but what we need is to “announce our truths” outwardly.

In this sense, to communicate outwardly, and inwardly, indigenous communication must be:

Intercultural. In a multicultural Continent, such as Latin America, indigenous communication must be dialogical or polyllogical (various cultures conversing). Assume that all cultures are bearers of unfinished truths. Therefore, indigenous communicators must also listen to other truths in order to free ourselves from the cultural prejudices that surround us.

Intercultural communication, for us indigenous, implies being sure of our cultural identity, and going out into the “encounter” to enrich each other with our dialogue partners.

The indigenous communicator, being the bearer of two or more cultures (his/her maternal culture and the national “culture”) must simultaneously place himself/herself in the cultural situation of his/her audience in order to be sure that what he/she transmits is reproduced without further “distortion”.

Community. A nuclear imprint of the indigenous is the community. All that exists coexists by weaving community networks. No one exists outside the community. Therefore, indigenous communication does not respond to the interests of the individual who communicates. Moreover, these individual interests are subordinated to the community interest.

In this sense, indigenous communication is essentially a community communication. No indigenous communicator speaks or should speak in a personal capacity, or shielded solely by a professional name card. Indigenous people must strive to be “feathers”, “keyboards”, “prophets” of our peoples and communities. The community is to the indigenous communicator what ink is to the pen. A pen without ink makes no sense. Truths are built in communities, not only human, but cosmotheandric as well.

Indigenous community communicators. Guatemala E.S.

Ascending. Truths in indigenous peoples do not obey an individual author. Truths are constructed in assembly processes. From the bottom up. With the greatest and broadest possible participation, even beyond the walls of the public and the private.

Indigenous communication that does not speak from the communities, villages, neighbourhoods… cannot be communication. News created in the editing rooms, or taken only from Google… cannot be indigenous communication.

Situated. Indigenous communication is the voice, the tool, of subalternized peoples. Therefore, for the indigenous communicator, the “euphemism” of “objectivity” or “impartiality” does not exist.

We are feathers, keyboards, or voices, of dominated/emptied, colonized peoples. Consequently, indigenous communication is essentially political. Not only as a vehicle for denunciation, but also as a channel for proclaiming the socio-political and cultural proposals and agendas of peoples and communities.

An indigenous communicator who does not have political clarity, nor a clear ideological definition (beyond left-right binarism) for the integral liberation of our peoples does not qualify as an indigenous communicator.

Folklorism, whether it is academic or not, perverts indigenous communication. Even more lethal for our purposes is the “apolitical” indigenous communicator.

Indigenous communicators. Guatemala O.I

Transforming. Because the indigenous peoples are dispossessed and subaltern, indigenous communication cannot be reduced to just another “cultural adornment” to maintain the deadly system of hegemonic communication. All communication must be transformational.

In the various Latin American countries, under creole ethnophageal regimes, the realities are adverse for our peoples. Internal/external colonialism, patriarchy, mercantilism… are realities that we must transform through indigenous communication, and with socio-political proposals that contain the imprints of our peoples.

Biocentric. Because of the planetary conditions that have occurred, as a result of irresponsible modernity in its economic and cultural expression, the human being has entered into a global “intercivilization” struggle between the civilization of death and the civilization of Life. Life is understood as our Mother Earth and all the cosmic community that cohabits in Her. And indigenous communication must be on the side of the civilization of Life.

In this sense, indigenous communication must not only be intercultural, communitarian, decolonial and feminist, but it must also be eco communication for Buen Vivir (“Good Living”).