Courtesy Tecnópolis Argentina
BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA – The radio studio is small and has an artisanal feel. The walls are wood, and the worn table in the middle of the room tells of many years of use. Around it, three women prepare to go on the air in a working neighborhood in the suburbs surrounding Buenos Aires, Argentina’s capital.
One of the three women, Vanina Montes, prepares mate, an infusion traditional to Argentina that people share in a circle. Montes pours hot water in a container holding yerba mate, which is then drunk through a straw.
Accompanying her are Cinthia Esquivel and Mariana de Pinto, her colleagues on the radio show, “Sin Careta,” which means, “Without a Mask.” They broadcast from 6 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. every Saturday on a community radio station called FM La Mosca, which airs from a cultural center in the same neighborhood where Montes grew up.
Montes, 36, has deep eyes and long, dark hair. She says that her life has been difficult, but one of her existential engines keeps going: her passion for communication. Her other passion is her children.
“To me, the radio opened my head,” she says. “It confirmed for me what I intuited from my own life experience as a woman and as a human being. I realized that when you don’t get involved, the news and its protagonists are only words. Doing radio obliged me to accept that there were people behind the facts, people like me.”
In addition to being a mother and a radio broadcaster, Montes also works as a secretary for a union and volunteers in a home for at-risk youth. She grew up in the neighorbood of Piñeyro in a suburb south of greater Buenos Aires, a zone traditionally linked to the union workers’ struggle.
Montes is divorced and has two kids. Because she is from a humble neighborhood and struggles to scrape together money to afford a babysitter, she has had trouble obtaining full-time employment. She is also a survivor of domestic violence.
But Montes defines herself as a fighter by nature, a defender of human rights and an activist for gender equality. She talks of having discovered in her own life the search for equality, the power of communication in a community and the force of people united behind one objective.
“My pains made me realize that I had to defend my rights,” she says. “Radio is my passion and the air that I breathe. Many times I was on the verge of leaving it, but I continue here.”
Community radio is a growing phenomenon in Argentina that enables citizens to express themselves. The Sin Careta trio uses its program to promote gender equality, a topic that doesn’t always receive space in mainstream media. The program also strives to unite the community in a collective search for solutions to these challenges facing women. At the same time, the broadcasters say that participating in radio promotes their own development by offering them a platform to express themselves and confront issues they have faced. Listeners and community radio experts say programs like this can incite real change.
There are 3,000 radio stations registered in Argentina, according to the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters.
One of these is FM La Mosca. The community radio station aims to be a space of meeting and freedom, says director Javier Romero. Local citizens can broadcast their own programs on the station for 40 pesos ($9) an hour.
“The radio is available for whichever neighbor who wants to come and make use of the airwaves in order to exercise their right to the freedom of expression,” he says. “It’s a meeting place for students, professionals and workers around the reality of the neighborhood and the country.”
