The “Position War” that is to come: the political-media of the Farc | PACIFIST!

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The “Position War” that is to come: the
political-media of the Farc
Staff Pacifist!
- August 9, 2016
The transformation of the guerrillas does not happen just by
abandoning the ri>es, they also want to change their way of
talking with Colombians.
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Sergio Marín, member of the propaganda commission of the Farc.
Photo: Taken from YouTube. NC Channel - New Colombia
By Alex Fattal *
“We understood, a long time ago, that the media was a weapon of
war. What happens is that it took us a little to understand that it was
no longer a subsidiary weapon of war, but that it even became the
main weapon of war in modern times. ”
- aka Sergio Marín, head of the propaganda commission of the Farc
[1]
“We are preparing for a new battle. We are going to leave the weapons
and take the cameras ”
- aka Boris Guevara, member of the propaganda commission of the
Farc [2]
During his decade of imprisonment, between 1926 and 1936, under
the Italian fascist regime of Mussolini, Antonio Gramsci, the Italian
Marxist, wrote more than 30 notebooks. These notebooks, known as
the Cuadernos de la Jail, are an important contribution to Western
political philosophy and contain a concept that can illuminate the
transition faced by the FARC from being an armed actor to being one
more on the political stage: “ the war of position ”.
For Gramsci, this concept was de[ned in opposition to “the maneuver
war”, that is, the vanguard that seeks to lead a revolution - in the
Russian or Cuban style - that triggers a coup d'etat through the use of
force . The war of position, on the contrary, is a struggle of ideas
among intellectuals; The battle[eld is intellectual and cultural
production. Today, this [eld is intertwined with an ecology of media
and, therefore, the contemporary position war is fought through
tweets, television news, radio advertising, music industry and
alternative media projects, to name a few paradigmatic spaces.
It is not free that the FARC are making a great effort to transform their
propaganda apparatus. The largest commission in its peace
delegation, made up of 18 people, is "propaganda and dissemination."
In March I spoke with alias Sergio Marín in Havana, head of that
commission and member of the staff of the Eastern Bloc. The
interview (which can be read in full on this link) may shed light on the
guerrilla's intention to transform itself into a political-media
organization.
As Marín said, "[We] are absolutely sure that in the 21st century,
politics is not done without impacting the mainstream media and
social networks." Below I highlight the central points of the FARC's
media vision for the post-agreement, highlighting parts of the
interview with Marín.
A communication guerrilla
Inspired by a strategy of Chavismo , the FARC seeks to create "a
communication guerrilla" to counterbalance the vision of the great
media that, they consider, have been one of their strongest enemies in
the political struggle.
The guerrillas are aware that they cannot compete with RCN and
Caracol. Explaining the term "a communication guerrilla," Marín said:
"If I cannot have a great channel, I can have 10,000 small channels; If I
cannot have a large radio station, I can have 10,000 radio stations. ”
He also spoke of promoting radio networks in schools and a culture
of communication in social movements, based on that vision.
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The Farc want to change the narrative they developed during the
worst years of the con>ict. Photo: Taken from YouTube-Report from
the guerrilla station; "Voice of the Resistance", CRB
Internal communication difculties reduced their ability to respond to
real-time news development. But since he has concentrated his
political leadership and propaganda commission in Havana, Cuba,
that problem has been overcome, he says. As Marín says, if he has to
consult something with the secretariat, he only has to knock on the
door next to his residence.
Now the FARC are looking to strengthen themselves in the
propaganda [eld, tweeting in real time, for example. Marín gets up
early at three in the morning to watch the trends on Twitter and to
design a media strategy with his team before breakfast. Although
many of its leaders ignored the dimensions of the internet for walking
all these decades in the jungle, the organization is better appreciating
the reach of the internet and social networks.
In this process of reorienting and deepening the digital world, its
urban militias have played a key role. They take their news to
publicists in the north of Bogotá, to ask for feedback; or support
students to specialize in communication and social networks in
private universities. Promoting a communication guerrilla will depend
on its ability to nurture the expertise that is concentrated in the cities
and articulate it with audiences closer to its message, which are
usually in the rural territories.
The target audience of the Farc
Despite their reputation as 'mamertos', the Farc are targeting general
audiences, far beyond the extreme left. This is very clear in the news
they produce, "New Colombia News." "It is a product," says Marín, who
"tries to impact sectors of public opinion that have never had anything
to do with the FARC." The new target audience is young people
between 25 and 35, middle class, who live in the cities. “Only by
impacting youth opinion in Colombia, can we organize it later,” says
Marín, who developed this idea:
“If you put middle class urban youth in your pocket, you have half of
the revolution resolved, at least at the level of the cadres that will lead
that process. That is, you give this popular movement a group of men
and women who have enough technical-scienti[c training to shoulder
a historical process. It is one thing to make a revolution based on
those who arrived without knowing how to read and write, and
another thing is to speak to the urban public through the people who
are from there. No one better to speak to them in their words, with
their terms, with their categories, with their aesthetics. ”
The Farc have transformed the format of their news online. Photo:
Taken from YouTube. NC Channel - New Colombia
The Farc have been thinking strategically about how to win a court in
the cities, and how to manage the abysmal gaps between the city and
the countryside, linking the two through their urban structures. When I
made the observation that the M-19 had somehow achieved it many
years ago, Marin responded with his historical review:
“It is not that Jacobo and Marulanda were obtuse, but because of
their party formation they considered that these changes had to be
made in an organized way - that propaganda must obey the
organizational reality, say, the accumulated force. The M made a
noise in the 70's and 80's. He made a bullaranga that made people
believe that that was a big thing. The practice did show that
propaganda can do a lot for politics, because indeed they did politics
for a long time without being equally strong to us. By making a bold
propaganda, at the time, they managed to generate an impact on
Colombian opinion very important, especially at the urban level. We
always recognize it. The M managed to reach the cities at a speed
and in some dimensions, at least in terms of impact of opinion, that
we took a few years. ”
Scale the speech
Part of his commitment to win a wider audience has been to 'scaling'
the speech. They changed the name of their internet news from “El
Informativo Insurgente” to “Nueva Colombia Noticias,” for example. In
the same news, there are almost no guerrillas dressed in camou>ages
and much less [ghting. “Let us always try to get images where the
guerrillas are happy, many women come out. It doesn't matter if the
image lasts only [ve seconds, it can't be [ve seconds where the
guerrilla is with the M-60 and throwing a cylinder, ”said Marin.
The impulse to humanize their ranks is seen in the prominence they
have given to women. The many journalists and photographers who
have traveled to the Farc camps have helped to promote this image of
the cheerful guerrilla and the beautiful guerrilla. As I explore in my
manuscript , the feminine image became a propaganda battle[eld.
The Farc are already thinking about how to undo their perception as
monsters. For more than [fty years they have been represented as the
internal public enemy in the propaganda of the State and in the media
coverage of the con>ict, today it is their turn - with the help of the
same State - to undo that imaginary. They are looking to get their
human side and use language that does not provoke rejection.
Part of the analysis they do to produce this change is how to get more
shares in social networks. Scaling his speech is part of his strategy to
reach a wider audience, especially among urban youth and social
movements, as they are considered the most receptive to their
messages, and key allies in the post-agreement.
Photo: Taken from YouTube. NC Channel - New Colombia
Attention to the form
In the [eld of media studies there is a long discussion about the
relationship between the form and format of a story and its contents.
The Farc are fully aware that the form of their news and their
aesthetics has consequences on how it is consumed, and the four
years of negotiation in Havana have given them the time and space to
rehearse different styles. They have generally bet on a high-tech
aesthetic, imitating the style of RCN and Caracol. The exchange I had
during the interview with Marín is illustrative.
S: We start from a format that is very classic in Colombia and in the
world, but that is hardly used anymore, and is the presentation of
news by a couple, a man and a woman. The man speaks, the woman
speaks, the journalist comes out, the man returns. That format that
you no longer [nd easily on CNN, on the BBC, or on Telesur ...
A: You criticize RCN and Caracol a lot in their communiqués, but in the
end they are still the referent when building their news.
S: One thing is the form and another thing is the content. I must admit
that, compared to news from other Latin American countries, it seems
to me that in terms of production quality, Colombian news is much
better. It may be a subjective assessment because I grew up watching
that kind of news.
A: They are more high-tech, right?
S: Yes, of course, very much. Suddenly one would have to go to
international chains to [nd a quality similar to that of Colombian
news. They have in their production the quality of the chains that
transmit from the United States to Latin America: CNN, Univisión, or
even sports, such as Fox.
...
A: It is still contradictory that, in the end, you are inspired by chains
like CNN ...
S: Look, that is an ideological discussion that we can face in the
media and anything else. It is an old discussion of the left, of the
revolutionary parties and, obviously, of those who are not
revolutionaries and look at us. I don't know if you found out, for
example, that recently there was a greeting from Timochenko to a
congress of young communists in Argentina, and he came out with
some Nike shoes. It was national news thanks to Caracol, with a
characteristic headline, loaded with poison. He said: "Timochenko
talks about communism using a capitalist product," because Nike
tennis is supposed to be produced by capitalism. We have said no,
Nike tennis is not produced by capitalism, but by Nike factory
workers.
It is not that something that capitalism has done cannot be seen, nor
touched, that is a demon. Unlike. If it is about moving towards
socialism, which is our struggle, it is about taking the best of what is
already there. Look at the case of Telesur. Traditionally in Latin
America, by popular and alternative communication it was
understood that they were things made of zeal, aesthetically not very
well achieved, because it is assumed that if we are alternative then we
have to work with the nails, right? (...) The success of Telesur was
that it managed to produce a television that in its content collides
head-on with its immediate competitor, which is CNN, and managed
to steal audience. It is supposed that in this sea of ​audiovisual
products, I have to try to capture the viewer's attention. If I only have
content, but I don't give that an attractive form, I will have a very small
audience - the group of lifelong militant revolutionaries.
The guerrillas want to use artistic expressions that link them with the
audiences of the big cities. Photo: Taken from YouTube. FARC-EP
channel
What I would like to highlight from this exchange is the phrase “It is
about taking the best of what is already there”. The discourse that has
been built on the Farc, which are dinosaurs, an anachronistic
organization, underestimates their ability to observe and analyze the
contemporary world and their ability to dialogue with it. They have
more than 50 years of practicing their famous strategy of "the
combination of all forms of struggle" and thus adapt it to the world of
media. They understand very clearly that we are in what media
studies academics call "an attention economy," where competition in
the market is completely crossed by the attention of audiences increasingly fragmented. It is not for nothing that the graphics of the
Farc news have evolved to have more and more >ash .
Here a contradiction arises with his vision of forming "a
communication guerrilla", a network of media projects from youth and
social movements - projects that are done with nails. Lately, the Farc
have opted to take away the brightness of their news aesthetics a bit,
responding to disappointed militants because their news is too much
like RCN. This has been another step in his trial and error experience
to [nd his media voice.
Between the Farc and Zapatismo, the coming war of position
In the Latin American guerrilla landscape, the Farc and the Zapatistas
(in Mexico) are usually positioned in two poles of the same spectrum.
The Farc as the old Marxist-Leninist guard, a classical warrior
insurgency; and the Zapatistas as a postmodern insurgency that uses
the Internet and creative modes of communication to achieve
sympathies at the national and international levels. For the
Zapatistas, the role of weapons is more theatrical than anything.
What I would like to argue is that with the transition of the FARC to a
fully political movement, they will become more like the Zapatistas,
who in practice do not intend to take power by force but win a battle
of ideas. The sociologist Josée Johston has used the Gramscian term
"position war" to describe the Zapatistas. She writes, "In a war of
position, counter-hegemonic organizations come together to create a
new historical bloc and create the social foundation of a new state."
"We are absolutely sure that in the 21st century, politics is not done
without impacting the mainstream media and social networks."
Although the Farc, at this time, are competing for a very small piece of
Colombia's political cake, it should be remembered that leaders of
insurgent movements have reached the presidential palaces in El
Salvador, Uruguay and Brazil (on average about 25 years after leaving
the arms) thanks to its ability to reconstitute itself as part of a wider
political movement. Deepening democracy through the peace
process, in some way, implies that the intensity of the armed con>ict
will be absorbed by politics.
Although the FARC have not achieved a massive impact with their
news and other media products - lack that is noticed through
quantitative expression in social networks - the emphasis they are
putting on the issue, the sub-points of the agreement # 2 on the
political participation that aims to democratize the media, and digital
transformations, imply that the FARC will gradually strengthen in the
media [eld. While some look at this possibility with concern, it must
be recognized that this will be an indicator of the success of their
political reintegration and transformation towards a group that
de[nitely put down their arms.
If the FARC intends to survive in the concrete jungle that are the cities,
political axes of the country, they will have to continue re[ning their
media strategies. To understand the political horizon of the postagreement, we must look at the war of position that is yet to come.
[1] Interview with author, March 11, 2016
[2] www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/in side-colombias-jungles-how-far crebels-are-preparing-for-pea ce /
* Professor of the Department of Film-Video and Media Studies at
Penn State University. He has a PhD from Harvard University and
specializes in the role of the media in the Colombian armed con>ict
and in the construction of peace. Since 2001, he has been advancing
creative and academic projects on these issues in Colombia. You can
learn more about their projects at www.alexfattal.net .
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