Making Waves: TELEVISION SERRANA
Stories of Participatory Communication
for Social Change
TITLE: Televisión Serrana
COUNTRY: Cuba
MAIN FOCUS: Education, children, community development
PLACE: Buey Arriba Municipality (Sierra Maestra)
BENEFICIARIES: Children, general population
PARTNERS: Asociación Nacional de Agricultores Pequeños (ANAP), Instituto Cubano de Radio y Televisión (ICRT)
FUNDING: International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC)/UNESCO, UNICEF
MEDIA: Video
I will tell you how our Sierra Maestra is. Here we have very high mountains and clear rivers, we have plenty of fruits like mango and pineapple, and many animals such as cows, hens, ducks, mules, horses and birds of all kinds. Most of people here are peasants, they wake up very early to work on their fields... Thanks to them all of us get our food...
One by one the voices of children add to the description of their environment. These are children of 8 to 12 years old, sending a video carta (video-letter) from the remote hills of the Sierra Maestra to the children of Guatemala.
As they talk the camera shows the surrounding mountains, the forests, animals and flowers, the village, the school, the peasants at work... Children at play, children at work.
By the end of the video letter they also start asking questions. They want to know about how the children in Guatemala live, they would like to receive a reply:
"I want to know if you also have rivers, lakes and mountains", asks a small girl facing the camera.
"I want to know what kind of flowers do you grow, because I like flowers very much and often give some to my sister", adds a schoolboy.
"If you come and visit us, we will show you how we live in the Sierra Maestra", adds another.
Boys and girls face the camera very naturally as it is not their first time. They have learned to live with a video camera in their community every day. In the few years since the Televisión Serrana project started, the cameras have become familiar among the population and especially with the children, as most of the work is done with them and for them.
Video at Televisión Serrana is an educational tool, an instrument for strengthening cultural identity, and also a means of communicating with other communities in other parts of Cuba and the world.
Televisión Serrana is a community video and television project that operates in the heart of famous Sierra Maestra in Cuba. TVS is located at the small community of San Pablo de Yao, in Buey Arriba territory comprising a population of 32,000 people, of which the 63 percent are in rural areas, mostly coffee growers.
In January 1993 several institutions got together to sponsor the project. UNESCO provided some funding and technical support, the Cuban government through the ICRT contributed staff and training, the actual owner of this experience being the Asociación Nacional de Agricultores Pequeños (ANAP), a nongovernmental organisation. Currently, UNICEF also supports Televisión Serrana
A small team of videomakers with low cost equipment runs the project, which aims "to rescue the culture of peasant communities" in the region,and "to facilitate alternative communication for communities to reject their daily lives and participate in the search for solutions to the problems that affect them". Televisión Serrana is involved in a process of education for communication which promotes the social and educational use of video, and the development of a cultural environment within the difficult to access mountainous zones, as a contribution to strengthening the capacity of the communities to act on their reality.
This is mainly done through the production of video documentaries and reportage, though other formats are not excluded. Culture and identity, education, public health, environment, gender issues, and children's rights are among the main topics of these productions.
In an attempt to encourage self-sustaining activities, Televisión Serrana offers a number of services to the population mainly training workshops through the Centro de Estudios para la Comunicación Comunitaria (CECC), created in 1996. This institution provides training and advisory services and organises seminars for those willing to use video in their communities as a tool for participatory development and democratic communication. The building that houses Televisión Serrana has a meeting room, a library, and the capacity to lodge up to ten people.
Other services offered by TVS include transferring and copying video-cassettes from/to Beta VHS and S-VHS.
Although the project aims to become a television station, as the name suggests, it has only operated until now as a video production and distribution unit. Other than having produced about three hundred documentaries and reportage, the project has tried to establish a presence at the community level. Often an electricity generator, monitors and VCRs are taken to small communities in Sierra Maestrato exhibit recent video productions.
One of the main features of the project is the production of vídeo Cartas or video-letters, addressed by the children of the Sierra Maestra to other children of Cuba and the world. Children are the protagonists of these testimonial documentaries where they first tell about their daily life, the nature surrounding them, the school, their entertainment, their families, etc. And then they ask questions of the children who will "receive" or view the video carta in some other part of Cuba or the world. Some of these are specifically addressed to another group of children, for example "To the children of Guatemala". In that sense the communication tool has a built-in request for a reply.
Before the Cuban Revolution, in this region there was only silence, recalls Daniel Diez. Peasants were isolated from the rest of the island. A few doctors were only available at Bayamo, the provincial capital village, 80 kilometres away on a dirt road. Schools were also too far and too expensive for rural children who were excluded from receiving any education.
Things have changed since then. Cuban history features Sierra Maestra as the mountains where, in the late 1950s, Fidel Castro, Ché Guevara, Camilo Cienfuegos and other rebels planned their guerrilla actions against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Today, there isone doctor for every 800 rural people. Schools are free and have been developed in the most remote places of the Sierra Maestra, an area of 451 square kilometres has become a National Park. Two channels of national TV and one regional TV channel can be tuned in, though there are still blackout areas because of the topography of the zone.
"Television contributes to homogenisation of cultures". That concern was in the mind of Daniel Diez when he started Televisión Serrana: "In my country, television shows rural folks only as producers of staples, nothing is said about their dreams, their conflicts, their culture..." He adds: "We wanted to truthfully record the full reality of the daily lives of these men and women that live in the mountains and preserve this for our national culture, as well as improve their self-esteem".
UNESCO International Programme for the Development ofCommunication (IPDC) approved an initial project to purchase video cameras and editing equipment. The provincial government provided the land and the building, while the ICRT took in its hands the responsibility of training the staff. After the initial investment phase, the ANAP became the back-up organisation.
Televisión Serrana is important in many senses. First, it is a symbol for independent communication in a country where media is largely centralised by the government. It is only in recent years with the surfacing of NGOs and small private businesses that the shape of communication began to change. Secondly, it is a challenge for community participation in a very poor area of the island. Thirdly, it is indicative of the new generation of Cuban video makers who value alternative media and community ownership of communication tools, something unthinkable a few years ago.
About 32,000 people are in the area of influence of Television Serrana 10,000 live around the Buey Arriba Municipality and these are directly exposed to the activities of the project. Besides the direct impact of the daily activities of Televisión Serranaover its main area of influence, there is also the impact of its documentaries when aired through national television, something that has happened several times. Many people in Cuba are now aware of the life conditions of the peasants from Buey Arriba and other neighbouring communities.
The production of video cartas has been an instrument for this recognition. Just the fact of being filmed is meaningful for the people of Sierra Maestra. For if a video crew comes to their community and stays with them, it increases their self esteem. And if their voices and the images of their daily life and their culture are sent to other communities in Cuba and the world, it means their identity is recognised and respected.
The tools of Televisión Serrana are very basic: VHS, Super VHS and Beta nonprofessional cameras and editing equipment. The staff includes three cameramen, three directors, two editors, two producers, two sound assistants, and three drivers who also have the responsibility of setting the lights when needed.
Scripts proposed by individual members of the staff are discussed within the group, which includes all those related to production. There is no direct participation of the community at this stage.
The most innovative feature of TVS are the video letters, a loose type of reportage that captures people's reality and dreams through their own words, thus the editing is somehow guided and structured by their reactions in front of the camera. These video letters are wholesome expressions of people that have not yet been contaminated by mass media.
Showing the video productions in small villages of Sierra Maestra is an important aspect of the communication process that Televisión Serrana has sparked. TVS uses mules to carry TV monitors and VCRs. Once the show is over, a discussion follows. If a video-letter was shown, the audience may want to respond with a video-letter of their own: their need to say, "we are here" is enormous.
New topics for production usually emerge from debates. During one of the after-show discussions the crew discovered an 82-year-old man that had been writing poems on Sierra Maestra for 20 years; he became the subject of a video production. Likewise, the contamination of River Yao by a coffee processing plant was first mentioned after a video show; a critical video documentary followed and pushed for the implementation of corrective measures.
There were many difficulties that Televisión Serrana had to face in the beginning. The foremost had to do with the lack of experience of filmmakers in development work. The team had to win the confidence of the local communities, so these communities would realise that the newcomers had good intentions. Training local youth in video production and editing was facilitated by the fact that the average education level in Cuba, even in rural areas, is very high (12 grades).
At the beginning authorities didn't understand the value of setting up a cultural video project. This indifference was coupled with the emergency situation of Cuba. Right after the end of the Cold War the country entered what is known as the "Periodo Especial", characterised by a lack of transportation and fuel, equipment and spare parts, restrictions in energy and even food. Only education and health, the Cuban priority social areas, did not suffer as much.
Information for the chapter was gathered through interviews and e-mail exchanges with Daniel Diez Castrillo, Director and founder of Televisión Serrana
Several documentary videos and video-letters were reviewed to get a better idea of the contents and quality of productions.
TVS publishes El Colibrí, an electronic bulletin on alternative media.
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