Tucked away behind a tall bush, a hundred meters from the center square of the small city of Victoria, Cabanas, just a stone's throw from the border of Honduras, stands the building that houses one of the region's most unstoppable voices: Radio Victoria. From it's humble beginnings in 1995 with a twenty Watt transmittor installed atop a bamboo pole, Radio Victoria was awarded last week with one of the most prestigious awards in Salvadoran radio broadcasting for its work in promoting local community voices.
The project was the brainchild of a congenial young fellow named Elvis (pictured above), who, along with a few of his friends from nearby Santa Marta, dreamt of creating their own radio station, where they would be able to bring to the public an alternative to the mass-media radio stations that routinely overlooked stories of local interest. With a single microphone and a correspondingly micro-transmitter, the small group of young people scoured the transmission signals to find a space to squeeze in their programming.
Inspired by Radio Venceremos, a clandestine station that operated during the civil war, Radio Victoria set about to bring to the attention of the local population the fact that their municipal governments were not serving them well. After a little wrangling and a lot of struggle - which included being shut down temporarily by the police - they were finally awarded a frequency: 92.1 FM, which is shared amongst all the community radio stations across the country.
Although the station had been mostly regarded as a nuisance to the municipal government, things only became dangerous for the broadcasters after Canadian mining company, Pacific Rim, came to town. The Cabanas region contains a vein of gold that runs through parts of Central America and Pacific Rim had its sights set on exploiting it. Touted by the local administration as a viable development project that would bring jobs and prosperity to the region, Radio Victoria assigned two investigative reporters to do an in-depth study of the experiences of communities in other nearby countries.
Their study revealed that communities in neighboring countries, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Honduras in fact suffered environmental degradation, heavy metal pollution, community displacement and increased violence with the arrival of mining companies into their communities. This matter was of particular significance to all of El Salvador as the Rio Lempa, the country's largest river, runs through the region and would be subjected to the deleterious environmental effects of the mine.
Environmental activist and community leader, Marcelo Rivera, had a spot at Radio Victoria where he would address the environmental issues of the region, much of which revolved around the mine and its potential negative impact on the region. One day, in June 2009, Marcelo disappeared. Complaints to the local police brought little in the way of response. By then Radio Victoria had a wide following, and members of surrounding communities searched for two weeks before they found Marcelo's tortured body at the bottom of a well. To date no one has been charged with his murder.
After that, things started to get ugly for the volunteers at Radio Victoria, including for Elvis. Death threats were issued via emails, texts, hand-delivered messages and telephone calls. One night, on his way to the latrine behind his rural home in Victoria, Elvis came face-to-face with a heavily armed and masked man lurking outside his home who quickly retreated. Neighbors reported to him that they had seen men in similar attire hiding outside his house on at least two other occasions. Elvis and his family went into hiding.
Things came to a roiling boil in 2011, when a German volunteer was alone at the radio station while the other members of the collective were out playing soccer. The woman received a call where she was told that the radio station was about to be burned down with her in it. When police didn't respond to the distress call, the radio soccer team called up their friends and neighbors, who, in the middle of the night, descended on the radio station and completely surrounded it.
For five months, community members held a nightly vigil outside the station, protecting it from potential attackers. Finally succumbing to public and international pressure, the Attorney General ordered the local police to set up special protection for the station. Elvis, his family and others involved with Radio Victoria still take special precautions when travelling in the region. And they still broadcast programming 7 days a week, from 4am until 10pm.
Radio Victoria has been recognised for its accomplishments by Reporters Without Borders and is sistered with Radio WURT in Madison, Wisconsin.
