Ricerc@Sapienza

The Argentinian Law 26.522 on Audiovisual Communication Services (2009) recognizes indigenous peoples as nonstate
public law persons authorized to provide communication services through their own media. Such an achievement
is due to the claims of indigenous communities and organizations that, during the discussion of the law,
fostered the inclusion of their “right to communication with identity”. In fact, only by self-representing themselves in
the media arena —i.e., by making their struggles and cultures visible— native peoples can decolonize the stigmatizing
discourses of dominant media and, at the same time, strengthen their ethnic identity. Therefore, media are not
only environments and tools accompanying the indigenous movement, but become objects and subjects of claim
because the dispute for the interpretive power is played in the mediatized public space. In this context, we analyze
the experience of two kollas radios in the Argentinian Northwest that are among the first broadcasters authorized
within the LSCA framework. From such case studies, we characterize the mediatized indigenous communication and
identify the main challenges faced by the indigenous media during the state policies implementation.