Louis Edgar Esparza

I am a somewhat regular listener of Mario Murillo’s radio program, Wake Up Call, on Friday mornings (when I am up that early). It was especially interesting to see him and Tiokasin Ghosthorse recently at an SOA Watch Fundraiser. Mario showed an ACIN video documenting skirmishes between indigenous people and Colombian ESMAD (riot police) as the indigenous movement was trying to draw attention to social concerns in Cauca.

It was an excellent interchange at the Cinema Arts Centre, between the WBAI staff, CAC staff, and the audience containing activists, NGO workers, professors, graduate students, and the simply curious. Aside from fundraising for an ASIN transmitter that has been destroyed, one of the central themes of the discussion was a viable development strategy for Colombia. The indigenous communities in Colombia organize themselves economically and otherwise, but they do not have the level of political and economic power in Colombia that say, the indigenous people in Bolivia have. Colombia is still a country with a lot of poverty and the country’s gap between the rich and the poor ranks among the highest in the world.

Mario just got back from a Fulbright trip in Colombia and was there at the same time that I was there. I even sort of recognized him from a couple of events in Cali. He published a chapter in Global Indigenous Media, which is a good primer for anyone interested in the recent history of the ASIN communications strategy. There may be an engagement that brings him to Stony Brook later in the semester. He is currently working on writing up his experiences from his time in Cauca and Bogota and I very much look forward to reading more of his stuff!