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Reader SurveyVideos of Resistance
Jul 1, 2003 12:00 PM, By Kristinha M. Anding
Chiapas Media Project puts video cameras—and power—into the hands of Mexico's indigenous people.
When Alexandra Halkin went to Chiapas, Mexico, in 1995 to make a documentary about the Zapatista movement, she found a plethora of video makers and press swarming the rural communities. She also found the indigenous people of Chiapas were interested in the video cameras and technologies the foreign producers were using.
 For more information on the Chiapas Media Project, visit www.promedios.org. |
“It was a time when there was a lot of international press,” she says of the period when the Zapatista National Liberation Army demanded that the Mexican government recognize indigenous rights in the nation's constitution. “The indigenous communities were really aware of the video cameras. I saw a group of people who were really organized and interested in talking to the world outside of Chiapas and felt they shouldn't have to depend on outside media to tell their story.”
In 1998, Halkin used a grant from the U.S.-Mexico Fund for Culture to bring inner-city Chicago youth with video skills and indigenous youth from Mexico City and Oaxaca to a Zapatista community, where they completed a series of video production and postproduction workshops. The cultural exchange marked the beginning of the Chicago-based Chiapas Media Project (CMP), which is also known as Promedios de Comunicacion Comunitaria at the nonprofit's Mexican headquarters in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas.
Those first video makers now lead CMP's introductory training workshops and bring Sony MiniDV cameras, Apple Macintosh computers, and Final Cut Pro editing systems to men and women of all ages in the rural communities of Chiapas and Guerrero. The San Cristobal facility also offers a full video library and advanced classes in editing and graphics. Halkin, the director of the organization, emphasizes that the training is serious and professional.
“We don't approach this as a hobby that they can do on weekends,” she says. “This is a professional skill they are learning that can benefit their communities.”
That professionalism can be seen in the organization's productions. Reclaiming Justice, directed by Oaxaca video maker Carlos Efrain Perez, reveals how communities in the notoriously dangerous state of Guerrero have successfully created their own police force and justice system, which emphasize education and rehabilitation.
Another recent video, Walking Towards the Dawn, directed by French video maker Nicolas De Fosse in collaboration with several indigenous video makers, focuses on the struggles of Chiapas' displaced native people. It reveals its subjects' desires to reclaim the homes and lives they have lost as a result of a forced relocation by the Mexican military and paramilitary groups.
“I think the military has looked at indigenous video makers and thought, ‘Who cares if they have a video camera?’” Halkin says. “But now I think they are realizing that if an indigenous person has a camera in his hand, it could actually get somewhere.”
CMP's productions have indeed gone places. The organization has approximately 16 productions available with English subtitles and numerous other videos available in Spanish. The productions have played at many film festivals and venues, including the Amnesty International Film Festival and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.
The U.S.-based MacArthur Foundation recently gave CMP a grant to establish a media center in Guerrero that will document human rights violations, which Halkin says are often perpetuated by the Mexican military.
“The idea is to create an archive and get video evidence, which when used in courts in Mexico has actually resulted in the Mexican military paying fines to communities and individuals,” she says.
Eventually, CMP will leave the productions and media centers in the hands of the indigenous video makers.
“This isn't about people from outside going to Mexico and administering a project for the communities — they really take it over,” she notes. “Marginalized people in Mexico — and all over the world — need to have access to this technology in order for there to be real democratic discourse.”
Kristinha M. Anding is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles. E-mail her at k_mccort@hotmail.com.
