La Radio Publico in La Boca

La Radio Publico de La Boca is one radio station of many within Argentia that has been created by factory workers. The stations bring new sorts of commerce and income into these factories. Along with the economic benifits of these stations, they also serve as a medium for public expresion and community inolvement. Most of these stations can reach an audience within the radius of a mile. The content of the majority of radio programs is therefore catered to the respective communities that each station exists within. The radio stations recieve a small amount of public support, but the majority of funding comes from the D.J.s themselves, who pay a fee of 100 pesos for a month-long set of weekly programs.

I think that this is a great program because these factory workers are able to bring money into their communities. Most of these communites are impoverished since their once thriving industrial base no longer exists. It is therefore important that new mediums of communication are available. To create an awareness and an identity within a culture that has otherwise been abandoned by companies which have moved their factories to other areas which are more economically benificial.

A few of my friends have a weekly radio spot at a station in La Boca. Their program generally consists in discussion, poetry readings, skits and music. When I was on the program with them they spent about a half of an hour talking about The International Porno Festival which took place in Buenos Aires. Blackman (on the right) was in attendence at the festival and he gave more than a lengthy account of his expieriences there. Not all of the conversation potions of their programs are this absurd but when 5 Argentinian men are conversating together is usually this sort of thing that they end up talking about. Manual (center) has a continuing radio skit which he writes for the program. Most simply, it is about a Grandfather (who by the looks of it is more than 400 years old) who tells storys of his past to his ¨little shit¨ grandchildren. When I was on the program, Manual was nice enough to write a spot for me within the skit which turned out to be a very bad idea. Since he told me this only five minutes before the program started, i was was unprepared and therefore stumbled over and basically butchered all of my lines. At the end of the skit, as a sort of appology to his audience, he assured them that my charictar was going to be killed off during the next episiode.