Our Project: Regeneraciòn Radio
I
Regeneraciòn Radio is an independent community-based communication project in the Mexican National Autonomous University’s Humanities and Science College (CCH-UNAM), Vallejo Campus, located in the north of Mexico City. The project began in 1999 as part of the student strike that brought to a halt the planned privatisation of the UNAM. The collective’s objective has always been to provide the community with a space to communicate and to generate information in order to better comprehend local, national and international situations in these times in which capitalism uses the media to exercise its social, political and economic control over populations. The radio’s first steps were based on the concept of "radio bocina" or "speaker radio", which is a live program format heard through speakers by an audience in the immediate space where production occurs. Considering the current global climate, we believe that it is possible to open windows to freedom through constructing autonomy.
The university’s authorities have always responded to the radio project with repression. The radio has consistently offered its microphones to the community to freely express itself, speaking out against attempted evictions, attacks and expulsions, which have been constantly present in the history of the radio.
The collective makes decisions and organizes through a general assembly organisational model in which all of its members participate. In that sense, the assembly decides the form and content of the project’s political work, the projects finances, and the radio’s schedule and coordination. The structure is completely horizontal.
II
The name change from Radio Pacheco to Regeneraciòn Radio occurred in 2006. Our current name pays homage to the newspaper Regeneraciòn published by the Mexican Liberal Party during the 1910 Mexican Revolution.
Regeneraciòn Radio additionally runs a web page that provides information on grassroots Mexico, where one can find audios, photos and text about struggles such as those occurring in Atenco, Oaxaca, Guerrero, the Other Campaign and other resistance in other parts of Mexico and in the world.
In 2005 Regeneraciòn Radio adhered to the EZLN’s Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, which proposes building, together with all of dispossessed people, an alternative anticapitalist politics that constructs a different Mexico. In 2006 Regeneraciòn Radio accompanied the EZLN’s Sixth Commission’s journey around Mexico, communicating the struggles growing from widespread oppression and mass discontent, meeting and listening to their echoes in the Other Campaign. One finds all of the speeches made by comrades all over Mexico in audio archives on our web page.
III
Regeneraciòn Radio has always financed itself autonomously; we have never accepted financial support for any institution or political party. We used to sell products such as sweets or candies, crafts and handmade products on stalls organized collectively inside the college. This was our principal source of funding for many years.
In recent months Regeneraciòn Radio was forced to confront a new series of attacks by university authorities. The obvert intention of these attacks was to destroy the radio project and expel its members from the school. The university administration’s arguments were based on lies and defamation. Among tactics employed, members of the collective were accused of selling drugs inside school grounds and a vicious campaign in the mainstream media was launched against the collective.
It was possible to stop this repression thanks to the mobilization and the solidarity of comrades in Mexico and in various parts of the world. The collective has stopped the sale of products within school grounds in order to obtain a so-called guarantee that our work as a community radio will respected and the radio’s space, a booth which was constructed by its members in 2005, will not be threatened again.
Given our current situation, in which we find ourselves in transition between economic projects, we propose the following:
Concept: Supporters of RegeneraciÛn Radio
Regeneraciòn Radio will continue financing itself with the same principals of self-organization and will not accept any form of patronage from political parties, businesses or institutions.
Supporters of Regeneraciòn Radio opens the opportunity for comrades, organizations, groups and collectives in Mexico and in other parts of the world who wish to support Regeneraciòn Radio to do so, if they wish to, by each month donating a sum of money.
Regeneraciòn Radio will solely use this support for the project’s organization and maintenance, not for personal use or profit.
Donations can be sent to the following bank account in Mexico:
Account Number: 1581481
Name: Eduardo Hernandez Garay
Bank: Scotiabank Inverlat
International Transfer Code: MBCOMXMM
Or can be directly made in the radio’s booth in CCH Vallejo’s main quadrangle, Av. Cien Metros esquina Fortuna s/n C.P. 7760 colonia Magdalena de las Salinas, Delegaciòn Gustavo A. Madero, Distrito Federal, Mexico.
Or through direct coordination with the collective by email: regeneracionradio@hotmail.com.
Regeneraciòn Radio guarantees complete transparency with our supporters about the use of donations.
We, Regeneraciòn Radio remain firm in our leftwing anticapitalist politics and will continue fighting and constructing a world in which all worlds fit.
Regeneraciòn Radio.
Our weapon is communication.
