Radio & Library continue innovative broadcasting and language preservation

Radio staff member, Mariano Espinoza Guzmán, interviews a Tseltal woman for a fotohistoria.

Led by Professor Ricardo Gomez, the team on the SIET Project (Tseltal Information and Evaluation Systems, in Spanish) continued gathering Fotohistorias and adapting monitoring and evaluation tools to assess the success of our programs in ways that make sense to indigenous communities. In addition to Living Fully, Women’s Words, and Radio Ach’ Lequilc’op, the SIET team has now published a Fotohistoria collection with the Caretakers of Mother Earth. The four books are compiled in one volume and available for sale in printand Kindle versions; proceeds benefit One Equal Heart’s SIET Project.

One Equal Heart’s SIET team includes community radio expert Mauricio Beltrán who led a series of workshops and training at Radio Ach’Lequil’cop. Staff and radio volunteers (radialistas) learned skills for interviewing, news gathering and storytelling for change. They also worked with staff representatives from each of CEDIAC’s program areas to develop a comprehensive communications strategy designed to promote indigenous rights, women’s leadership, and community wellbeing through social justice-focused broadcasts in the Tseltal language. Amalia Hernandez Gomez, who serves on staff as coordinator at the radio station, has been integrating feedback from our MILPA and agroecology programs to get a head start on communications planning for the coming year.

The House of Wisdom (Tseltal library) has registered over 800 documents in Tseltal in their cataloging system. It now by far holds the largest collection of Tseltal texts in the region, and probably the world!

Thank you for supporting preserving indigenous language and culture in Chiapas in 2018!