Julián López García is an Americanist anthropologist and chair in the Social Anthropology Department at the UNED. He is also director of the Study Centre for Social Memory and Human Rights at that university and of the Native American Study Group at the Fundación Xavier de Salas. He has worked in several native American contexts, especially Guatemala (the Maya Ch’orti’ people) and Colombia (the Emberá and Mokaná peoples) on native American cognitions surrounding the body and the person, violence and the memory of hunger and the symbols of food and cookery. He is also interested in political matters relating to human rights in native American populations, the logics of development and the involvement of indigenous populations in Latin American peace processes. His latest publications include: “Los pueblos indígenas de Colombia y un nuevo paradigna para el desarrollo” (in Mariano Juárez, L. (ed.), Cooperación al desarrollo: debates contemporáneos. (Anthropos, 2018); “Utopía y planes de vida indígena” (in López García y Muñoz Morán, Utopismos circulares. Contextos amerindios de la modernidad”. Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2018) and Xiximai. El regalo y la mezquindad en la mitologái y el ritual maya-ch’orti’ (Cholsamaj, 2018).
He is also director of the Study Centre for Social Memory and Human Rights at that university and of the American Indian Study Group at the Fundación Xavier de Salas. He has worked in several native American contexts, especially Guatemala (the Maya Ch’orti’ people) and Colombia (the Emberá and Mokaná peoples) on native American cognitions surrounding the body and the person, violence and the memory of hunger and the symbols of food and cookery. He is also interested in political matters relating to human rights in native American populations, the logics of development and the involvement of indigenous populations in Latin American peace processes. His latest publications include: “Los pueblos indígenas de Colombia y un nuevo paradigna para el desarrollo” (in Mariano Juárez, L. (ed.), Cooperación al desarrollo: debates contemporáneos. Anthropos, 2018); “Utopía y planes de vida indígena” (in López García and Muñoz Morán, Utopismos circulares. Contextos amerindios de la modernidad”. Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2018) and Xiximai. El regalo y la mezquindad en la mitologái y el ritual maya-ch’orti’ (Cholsamaj, 2018).
Participation in MEDIOS
The aim of my particular research in the project is to discover and evaluate the importance (both historically and in the present) of indigenous radios, particularly the Guatemalan stations from a study of the case of Ch’orti’ radio. I aim to determine the importance of radio both in forming indigenous sentimentality and in generating knowledge, values and capabilities of agency for the community and for new political positions in global contexts.
I explore some of the history of indigenous and community radios in Guatemala. I will describe how these radios have been constructed in relation to initiatives in post-conciliatory Catholicism and how they are changing in the twenty-first century. I suggest various current debates for Guatemala’s case: To what degree are indigenous radios truly indigenous and community-based? How does the radio dialogue with the religious directives that sustain them? In what way do they contribute to sustaining or negating new forms of indigenous identity?
These debates lead me to define the aspects that I cover in the field work: 1) political and emotional memories of programme reception based on interviews with listeners; 2) memories of the radio based on interviews with directors, programmers, conductors and technicians; 3) analysis of programme guides and programmes based on recordings and documents on scripts, and 4) a study of the interactions of indigenous peoples with the radio, above all based on studies of documentation and recordings of programmes of warnings and greetings.
