LuzRuiz-Indymedia Cancun

LU Z A .
R U I Z M A R T I N E Z
Indymedia Cancún, Radio Hurakán, and the Sounding of

Altermundos Sonoros
ABSTRACT This paper explores the sonic engagements and possibilities brought forward at Radio
Hurakán and the Indymedia Cancún audio space, temporarily set up in 2003 during the mobilizations
against the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) fifth Ministerial Meeting in Cancún, Mexico, where close to
300 media activists from Latin America, the United States, and Europe converged to provide independent
coverage of alternative actions, forums, and events. It reconstructs and (re)sounds this experience by
examining a variety of Indymedia Cancún and Radio Hurakán artifacts and materials, including Indymedia
Cancún audio productions found in online audio archives and websites, and interviews highlighting the
audio and radio collectives from the Global South that participated in Radio Hurakán, particularly focusing
on community radio activists from Mexico. In this way, this paper poses that audio and radio activists were
engaged in the making of altermundos sonoros, or sonic alterworlds, through skill-sharing efforts,
collaborative organizing and production practices, and autonomously developed tech, generating
a bottom-up sonic infrastructure to make audible a variety of sounds, textures, tonalities, and stories
that resonated near and far, making possible the sounding of radical imaginaries and the opening of
pathways for different ways of listening. KEYWORDS Indymedia, community radio, free radio, global
social justice movements
In September of 2003 the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) fifth Ministerial Meet-
ing1 took place in the Mexican Riviera town of Cancún, resulting in thousands of social
justice advocates from a wide set of sectors rallying together to protest the economic
policies posed by the financial institution. Indigenous, farmer, labor, student, feminist,
and environmental organizations, along with artivists and alternative media activists from
different corners of the world, organized protest actions, grassroots events, and alternative
news coverage of the mobilizations through the incorporation of an Independent Media
Center (IMC, Indymedia). Born during the Seattle 1999 protests, the Indymedia model
was created to provide information with a social and economic justice perspective.2 In
a couple of years, more than 150 Indymedia centers3 had opened across the world,
including Chiapas4 and Mexico City.5 Considering an IMC would be crucial in Cancún,
the Chiapas IMC spearheaded organizing and networking to temporarily set up the
Cancún Independent Media Center (Cancún-IMC, Cancún Indymedia),6 which drew
close to 300 media activists,7 including a significant number of community radio projects
and activists from across the globe.
As a radio and media activist involved in the organizing of Cancún Indymedia, to
recall Cancún with the sonorous at the fore is to hear the raucous polyphony of protest,
Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture, Vol. 2, Number 3, pp. 433–452. Electronic ISSN: 2688-0113
© 2021 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for
permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Reprints
and Permissions web page, https://www.ucpress.edu/journals/reprints-permissions. DOI: https://doi.org/
10.1525/res.2021.2.3.433
433
with its soundscape of multilingual chants; rallying cries; speeches delivered through
megaphones and loudspeakers;8 police sirens; metal barricades being hammered down,
wobbled, and tossed; and of course, the steps and bodies moving to the sounds of the
radical marching band Infernal Noise Brigade;9 Latin American and Spanish language
protest songs; marimba music; and the occasional pop, ranchera, or salsa hit. It is also
recalling the vivid and compelling testimonies, discussions, analysis, and declarations
being shared in forums, teach-ins, workshops, and cultural events, and the efforts of
seasoned and emerging radio producers working to collect these sounds and voices to
give life to Radio Hurakán,10 the FM and online stream set up by the Cancún-IMC and
rebroadcasted and simulcasted by a multitude of audio and radio projects in different
localities.11
For some involved in similar Indymedia spaces, Indymedia Cancún stood out as “an
audiophile’s dream,”12 where audio was given a role, space, and importance equal to other
media formats like text, photo, or video. While particularly for young radio activists from
Mexico, the experience “inspired and fostered a new generation of media activists.”13
Indeed, the audio space created at Indymedia Cancún was a site for radio activists and
practitioners, from the northern radio pirates and LPFMers to the south’s radialistas
comunitarios and libres,14 to meet, share, create, dream, and sonically conspire, serving as
a radiophonic seedbed where collaborative organizing, production practices, and skill
sharing models were deployed and further expanded. It was also a moment that galvanized
discussions about the role and direction of radio and audio within movements, helping to
confirm, advance, and shape what Latin American media scholars Villamayor and Lamas
call “the political-communicational project” of radio stations,15 referring to the distinct
principles and political postures of each radio collective.
Additionally, when tuning in and exploring the sonic dimensions of the experience,
I suggest that radio and sound were used to generate a bottom-up sonic infrastructure to
make audible a multiplicity of stories, music, textures, tonalities, and sounds of protest
and resistance to resonate near and far. In this way, it made possible the sounding of
radical imaginaries and the opening of pathways for different ways of listening amid what
Latin American scholar Mayra Estevez Trujillo terms “capitalism’s noise.”16 For Estevez,
sound in the context of global capitalism is related to human-centered actions based on
invasive and harmful growth and development, predicated on a logic of power and
dominance. Radio Hurakán and the many radio and audio projects involved in Indyme-
dia Cancún resonated instead with a different logic based on “a world where many worlds
fit,”17 as called upon by the Zapatistas and embraced by the global justice movement18 and
particularly by Indymedia.19 This sonic complex of audio-related actions, practices, and
principles meant to deliver the voices and sounds that carry important testimonies,
stories, messages, postures, and declarations of social justice are what I call altermundos
sonoros, or sonic alterworlds.
I draw on Altermundismo (alter world), the term adopted by the Spanish-speaking
global social justice movement conveying the vision and possibility of another world
through the creation of alternatives, along with the need to resist and mobilize against
economic predatory globalization.20 Known by many names, including anti-globalization
434 R E S O N A N C E : T H E J O U R N A L O F S O U N D A N D C U LT U R E FA L L 2 0 2 1
movement,21 the term Altermundismo began to be used by movement participants in
response to the derogatory label “globalphobes” coined by Mexican President Ernesto
Zedillo during the 1999 World Economic Forum22 and rapidly adopted by governments
and mainstream media.23Altermundismo referenced instead what Guiomar Rovira de-
scribes as “the global flow of indignation”24 made possible through digital and physical
networks of solidarity. In this vein, “sonic alterworlds” highlights that communities and
social movements protest, but they also imagine and build—with sound, acknowledging
that practices of sound making and listening are important components linked to media
activism, community radio, and social movements.
Almost 20 years later, this activist radio and audio experience merits being remem-
bered, documented, and (re)sounded, as it fueled vibrant community radio communities
and movement media projects of that period and beyond and now forms part of the long
legacy of radio use within struggles and social movements that continues well into current
times.25 From the stations that sought independence from colonial states like the Voice of
Free and Combatant Algeria examined by Fanon26 to the Bolivian miners stations,27 the
Central American revolutionary radios like Radio Venceremos28 and the rebel Zapatistas
Radio Insurgente,29 to the grassroots radios led by students, workers, feminists, Indige-
nous communities, and those involved in social struggles across the globe, radio has been
used to inform, educate, mobilize, and strengthen communities and movements.30 Con-
testing state or corporate media institutions by opening access to the tools of represen-
tation and creating a space to voice and use the media for very different purposes than
those held by the state, corporations, or formal education institutions, and oftentimes
operating against the backdrop of hostile broadcasting legislation,31 these radio experi-
ences have generated a rich collection of knowledge, tactics, and approaches that favor
collectivity and local engagement, which activists draw and build from. Moreover, this
lineage has garnered a rebel and radical imaginary tied to the medium, making it partic-
ularly appealing to activists involved in emancipatory and social justice efforts, even in
times of digital technology expansion.
In this regard, while important scholarly work exploring radio broadcasting experi-
ences in connection to social movements and media activism in the networked age
exists,32 this subject has been overshadowed by an increased focus on the Internet and
social media.33 Radio Hurakán and the many radio projects participating in and around
the station and stream highlight that radio continued to be a valued and relied-upon
medium by media activists who were simultaneously fully embracing the digital and
networked access provided by Indymedia while activating and extending virtual and in-
person networks, nurturing radio activist imaginaries, and using radio and sound to build
and contest in the realm of the sonic. Thus, this experience reminds us that even in the
age of social media, media activism scholarship should continue to pay attention to and
examine radio and its sonic dimensions.
With this in mind, I reconstruct and (re)sound this experience by examining a variety
of Indymedia Cancún and Radio Hurakán artifacts and materials, including Indymedia
Cancún audio productions found in online audio archives and websites and documen-
tation found on public listservs as well as flyers, pictures, and graphics. I also draw from
Ruiz Martinez | Indymedia Cancún, Radio Hurakán, and the Sounding of Altermundos Sonoros 435
my own experiences as a Chiapas Indymedia participant, radio activist, and radio pro-
ducer, along with conversations with fellow radio activists who participated at the In-
dymedia Cancún audio space and continue to be involved in the community radio world,
seeking to learn about the significance of these events in relation to their media and audio
activism and the media landscape of the time. Moreover, I particularly highlight the audio
and radio collectives from the Global South that participated in Radio Hurakán, focusing
on radio activists from Mexico City and Chiapas, in order to assemble a critical genealogy
of Indymedia that brings to the fore the breadth of knowledge and radio activist experi-
ences brought into the space by these practitioners, and specifically addressing the sonic
engagements and possibilities brought forward at Radio Hurakán and the Indymedia
Cancún audio space.
In the sections that follow I provide a brief overview of the Indymedia audio and radio
model, followed by an examination of Chiapas Indymedia and the free radio stations
from Mexico, particularly Radio Zapote and Frecuencia Libre, and their incursion into
radio and the Cancún mobilizations. I then consider the activist sound developed by these
projects in the context of Radio Hurakán and conclude with a discussion of the ramifica-
tions of this particular radiophonic experience.
THE INDYMEDIA MODEL, GLOBAL REVOLTS, AND RADIO
Indymedia emerged in the context of mobilizations and protests against corporate cap-
italism, and the neoliberal policies pushed through by multilateral financial institutions,
that took place globally in the 1990s and 2000s. Raising awareness of the devastating
effects of economic policies set forward by multilateral financial institutions like the
WTO, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank through major
demonstrations—while also organizing and solidifying coalitions, campaigns, and actions
to advance and promote on-the-ground alternatives to neoliberal corporate capitalism—
was a major aspect of the global justice movement at the time.34 The 1999 anti-WTO
Seattle demonstration is considered one of the most prominent of these protests, as it
drew tens of thousands of people who managed to significantly disrupt the city and forced
media coverage of the corporate capitalism critiques raised by demonstrators, activists and
movements. The Seattle protests are also significant because they catalyzed the creation of
the Independent Media Center by a coalition of community activists, alternative and
activist media producers, and open-source tech people. Working through a collaborative
model, they covered the mobilization from a social and economic justice perspective and
distributed their productions via newspapers, FM radio, video documentaries, and cul-
tural activities and through the use of the cutting-edge open-publishing website developed
by a crew of radical techies, allowing anyone connected to the Internet to post written,
video, photo, and audio materials.35 The fusion of the technology with the media exper-
tise of alternative media makers and movement participants resulted in a model that
reflected collaborative, nonhierarchical organizing and media making, and the creation of
a noncommercial platform for information to be shared, disseminated, and engaged with
at local and global scales. The principles and model of Indymedia were rapidly adopted
worldwide, where each local collective worked autonomously and in accordance with
local needs.
Radio and audio were integral components of the Indymedia project and website,
beginning with the concerted efforts to broadcast in FM signal and online during the
1999 Seattle demonstrations, in what was named Studio X.36 From then onward the
audio and radio work at Indymedia grew to include radio shows produced by local
Indymedia collectives, online streams, and sharing of locally produced audio relevant to
local issues.37 To coordinate all this audio activity taking place across the Indymedia
collectives, a dedicated global Indymedia radio website38 was developed, providing a space
to store, access, and share audio productions and content, streams, and links not only
from Indymedia but from other community radio projects as well. In this sense, the broad
range of audio and radio activity that took place throughout Indymedia collectives was
reflective of and contributed to a larger global media democratization movement that
opposed the increasing consolidation of corporate media initiatives, where community
and pirate radio projects had a long history and practice of engaging in noncommercial
social change–oriented initiatives.39 At the same time, Indymedia radio and audio pro-
jects were beginning to shape what Michele Hilmes has described as “the new materiality
of sound” by making use of digital technology available at the time and creating different
ways of using sound and making radio, while continuing to draw from and expand their
social change orientation.40 In this way, the radio and audio developed by Indymedia
reminds us of the political dimension underpinning soundwork, where digital media and
technology are indeed sites of struggle embedded in power relations, and where the aural
is also being disputed.
COMMUNICATION FROM BELOW: CHIAPAS INDYMEDIA, MEXICO CITY FREE

RADIO, AND LATIN AMERICAN COMMUNITY RADIO
When organizing to create an Indymedia space for the 2003 Cancún mobilizations, the
audio component and inclusion of radio began to be considered by the Chiapas IMC. In
Mexico, the Chiapas IMC was established in 2001 by activists located in San Cristobal de
las Casas, Chiapas, to produce alternative information that challenged the corporate
media blackout related to the Zapatista movement and similar struggles. The Zapatista
National Liberation Army (EZLN), an insurgent Mayan Indigenous movement, rose up
in arms the day the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect on January 1,
1994, in a rebellion against neoliberalism and the further oppression it would bring to
Indigenous peoples and marginalized communities globally.41 Their calls for humanity
and solidarity generated a broad civil society movement in solidarity with Zapatismo that
brought people from diverse movements together around Indigenous rights and auton-
omy, coalescing in what has been called the anti-globalization or alterglobalization move-
ment. The Chiapas IMC was born in this context and amid the Zapatistas’ “Color of the
Earth” mobilization, when 24 Indigenous rebel commanders traveled across south and
central Mexico to speak to the Mexican Congress, pushing for the recognition of Indig-
enous rights.42 The independent and open-publishing platform was ideal, allowing
alternative journalists and people from diverse movements and organizations to become
involved in the production and dissemination of information. Along with the other
formats, audio was integral. Starting off with cassette recorders, the audio team covered
Zapatista- and Indigenous-related events, mobilizations, and topics and recorded songs,
chants, interviews, communiqués, and a variety of sounds.43 In this vein, contact and
engagement with diverse realities and organizations in the state as well as regionally were
developed by the collective in the following years.
The coverage of actions, mobilizations, forums, encuentros or gatherings, and activities
set forth by a mix of coalitions organized transnationally across Mesoamerica in relation
to the negative impact on communities by mining, water dams, militarization, bio-
prospecting, and a wide array of state-driven “development” projects, like the Plan Puebla
Panamá,44 provided fertile ground for conversations about the role of communication
and media in those processes. In particular, reflection about the increasingly commercial-
ized and commodified media landscape, and the importance of generating media practices
operating from a grassroots logic that served community needs and supported community
autonomy processes, was being taken up by movement leaders and communities. Relat-
edly, the Chiapas Indymedia website was an important tool, especially at a time when
Internet use and availability was limited; however, in areas where resources and access to
infrastructure were scarce, other media, such as community radio, needed to be consid-
ered. This led some in the collective to engage more fully with radio, giving it special
attention and becoming more involved with the community radio world, learning about
the rich legacy and history of radio used in Latin American social struggles—in both rural
and urban settings—and how it continued to have a strong tradition in Mexico and
Central America.45
By the time the organizing for the Cancún mobilizations began, inclusion of a radio
component was being discussed in the collective. During an organizing meeting a proposal
was circulated that read: “Along with the Internet and all the equipment for writing,
video, audio, and photos, we should work in an hour of pirate radio. Doing a radio show
and live broadcasting would be excellent for the conditions we anticipate in Cancún.”46
From then on, the radio initiatives rapidly caught on and became an important signpost
among activist and community radio networks.
Mexico City Free Radio Stations

A large contingent of Mexico City free radio stations was drawn to both the workshops
and radio coverage of the event. Unlicensed urban stations created by grassroots move-
ments had been appearing in Mexico City since the late 1960s,47 catalyzing what was
then known as “pirate radios,” primarily alluding to their illegal nature. Then, sprouting
up in the late 1980s, a new generation of radio stations appeared, tied to the student
movement and countercultural groups,48 and post-1994 to Zapatista solidarity collectives.
In 1999 Radio Ke Huelga was born, managed by students involved in the general strike at
the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).49 In 2001 Radio Zapote,
housed in the National School of Anthropology and History—although independently
created and managed by the students—began broadcasting transmissions of the Zapatista
delegates and the Indigenous Council members participating in the Color of the Earth
delegation.50 Sergio Soto from Radio Zapote recalls the free radio movement in Mexico
City at the time as a burgeoning force: “When we took over the lab that would become
the station’s studio, people from other radios, and from other sectors who wanted to do
radio, started to participate and join discussions about the free radio movement. Ke
Huelga, people from Xochimilico, from Neza, were doing radio as well; it was irruption
of the airwaves.”51
Also during this time of radio resurgence, a distinction began to be drawn between
pirate, community, and free radio projects. In the early 2000s, the Mexican media
environment consisted of two families managing 96 percent of television frequencies
and 13 broadcasting groups managing 86 percent of the radio spectrum.52 In this context,
due to pressure from the media companies, community radio stations were persecuted by
the military. With the change of power in the year 2000,53 a movement demanding the
recognition and licensing of community radios, and the halt to their persecution, began to
take place.54 Organizations like the World Association of Community Broadcasters in
Mexico (AMARC-MX), human rights organizations, and lawyers began to push for
a change in legislation and the recognition of community media.55 Pirate radio was
understood to be those unlicensed stations with a commercial bent and managed by
individuals or commercial enterprises, while community radios had a not-for-profit and
community-serving nature, had community ownership, and believed in their right to seek
legal recognition.56 Another set of radio stations distinguished themselves as Free radios,
emphasizing their right to broadcast without state recognition and in line with noncom-
mercial and autonomic principles.57
When the call was made for the Cancún Tidal Wave Alternative Media-Tech Con-
vergence (Tidal Wave Cancún),58 a media training and skill-sharing event organized prior
to the mobilization in Cancún, it began to circulate and reached wide attention in the
alternative radio circuits. Months before Indymedia Cancún was set up, Chiapas Indy-
media members were interviewed on Indymedia on Air,59 the Los Angeles 90.7 FM
KPFK Indymedia radio show, to talk about independent media in the region and the
lead-up to Cancún, propelling a widening of support, activity, and collaboration, partic-
ularly among radio collectives. And closer to the mobilization, an article from the Mex-
ican national newspaper La Jornada referenced the Indymedia Cancún website as a site
that published the calendar of altermundista events, including the alternative media
convergence, announcing that “technology and knowledge exchanges will take place
among media makers, including radio pirates who will teach about how to use the
airwaves and build radio stations, antennas, and electronic components.”60 Radio Zapote
and other free radios like H Ruido, Radio Tormenta, suuAuu Manifiesto, and La Vola-
dora—including radio projects from different parts of the world—joined in, both on site
and virtually. This included projects like Radio Cancún,61 an online radio station project
set up by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy; Greenpeace Radio,62 providing
audio coverage with a focus on the environment; a collaboration between the Latin
American Association of Radio Education (ALER), AMARC-MX, and Real World
Radio (Radio Mundo Real);63 along with many Indymedia sites and community radios
from different parts of the world that had organized streaming radio projects and were
linked to both the Cancún IMC radio and Indymedia’s audio site.
I N D Y M E D I A C A N C Ú N A N D R A D I O H U R A K Á N : T U N I N G I N T O T H E S O N O R O U S
Throughout the days of actions and protests, a variety of audio was produced for posting
on the Indymedia websites, and efforts were made to give life to Radio Hurakán64 and the
online stream. All this was made possible by audio techies on site and online, working the
backend aspects of circuits and code, enabling “the rebel voices, the alternative voices, the
voices of the community”65 to be heard. This sonic infrastructure was built up inten-
tionally a week prior to the mobilizations through the Tidal Wave Cancún event, which
included a hands-on space dedicated to the tech setup of the overall media center, media
production workshops, organization of coverage teams, and discussions related to com-
munication rights66 with an emphasis on radio broadcasting. A call to reclaim the
airwaves as a form of direct action was made, stating that “for new forms of control,
there are new forms of resistance. With the force of a hurricane, radio claims the space,”67
inviting people to mobilize through the amplification of the Cancún Indymedia stream
and FM signal. In this vein, the radio team’s first public announcement on the Cancún
Indymedia website declared that Radio Hurakán, named in honor of the Mayan deity—
bearer of storms, wind, water, and fire—originated from “the storm of resistance” to the
WTO’s policies, and importantly the organizing was intended “to form agreements,
discuss and dialogue, and bring communities together to create a more dignified and just
world for all.”68 Relatedly, the graphics used for the flyers announcing the radio station
and stream depicted the principles of people power through the airwaves and the derailing
of the WTO by integrating an illustration of Kukulkán, the supreme Mayan deity of
creation, carrying a large group of demonstrators holding banners reading “Dignity” and
“Liberty,” crushing the Spanish acronym for the WTO with their weight, while Kukulkán
holds a speech scroll with an antenna and transmission signals, as if amplifying people’s
outrage and hope for a different world.69
Building a Bottom-Up Sonic Structure

Reporting from Cancún, Daniel Iván from La Voladora radio (and member of the
AMARC-MX/ALER/Radio Mundo Real collaboration team) summed up the media
activists’ ethos: “This convergence proposes ‘Don’t hate the media, be the media’ and
invites a tactical use of the media for community organizing and social justice struggles.”70
In this sense, the media and communication envisioned by participating media and radio
activists entailed an alternative to media encroachment, particularly in the increasing
global capitalist economy. This vision was enacted at levels that not only included
reporting on the issues but also involved aspects of technological design and control,
decision-making processes, and capacity building through skill sharing, training, and
reflection spaces to effectively access and participate in the media landscape, centering
community and movement needs.71 In this regard, it is important to state that audio and
radio were not the only media or tactics used within the Indymedia space, and the
broader mobilizations. A print newspaper, La Boca del Hurakan, and photographs,
videos, and articles posted on the Cancún IMC website were consistently generated,
while the Indy Cancún media center was adjacent to the art-making space, where banners,
posters, puppets, and all kinds of artwork were being prepared for the days of action. This
environment is consistent with research from a growing number of media scholars that
emphasizes that activist communication and media practices are inserted in complex
media ecologies where diverse actors use a variety of media, simultaneously, according
to the communication needs they are faced with.72
These practices, along with the audio-related activities and productions covering the
issues brought forward by the social justice movement, including media democratization,
facilitated and enhanced the sounding of a diversity of voices with a plethora of sounds,
textures, and tonalities along with places, experiences, and stories often left out and erased
by commercial or state communication media initiatives. In this way, the sounding of
radical imaginaries and the opening of pathways for different ways of listening were made
possible.
Collaborative Organizing and Production Practices

Along with the streams and live transmissions, raw audio was uploaded and shared to be
used, edited, or included in the local broadcasts, and 24 hours of programming was able
to be maintained by a variety of radios that included the free radio stations from Mexico
City and Chiapas, Radio Tupa from Oaxaca,73 Global Radio, Shockwave Radio, and
Radio Gap from Italy, Canon Radio from France, CJSF FM from Vancouver, AMARC,
ALER, Greenpeace, OneWorldRadio, WORT-Madison, Free Speech Radio News,
WBAI-New York, KPFK-Los Angeles, Indymedia London, Indymedia Uruguay, Indy-
media Houston, DOST JE! (Enough!) Radio from Slovenia, and Radio Indymedia.74
Having a space with so many different people from different places created a sense of
solidarity and empathy, from the urban university radios to the Indigenous rural com-
munity radio stations, particularly learning “that there were many different ways to make
radio, and many forms of resistance.”75 Mutual support, participation, and collaboration
were encouraged and in a sense were required for comprehensive coverage. Yet this was
also messy and complicated to achieve, as technological, language, gender, and ethnic
disparities continued to be a challenge. Mexico City radio activist Ana Martina recalls
that “language was a barrier and I remember that in many independent media spaces the
foreigners would be the ones to come with the computers, the transmitters, and the tech,
and it was always the guys that would hoard the tech spaces.”76 Despite this and even
amid differences in political postures (for example, some radios were working toward
legalization while others purposefully were not), collaboration took place because there
was a sense of urgency that compelled participants to join forces. Sergio Soto of Radio
Zapote explained that “what was important was to break the information blackout, and
we felt we needed to go out there and record in order to reveal realities on the ground.”77
While there are no known statistics on how many people, communities, or projects
were reached, a variety of Indymedia sites posted announcements of the streams and
shortwave rebroadcasts. These off-site collaborations are examples of the ripple effect
generated in the context of mobilizations, where collaboration extends beyond on-site
locations through the use of technology and membership in Indymedia and akin orga-
nizations as well as previously established connections and relationships. In particular,
some radiophonic projects reported to each of their local stations, providing a sonic
linking function that connected and shared the audibility of the protests. In the case
of Radio Zapote, their audio productions and radio work fed not only Radio Hurakán
but their local station as well. “I did a lot of calls to the main studio to report on what was
happening, and it was livestreamed. For Radio Zapote this was important because the
people at the radio station in Mexico City would call us and let us know they were
listening and that they had even set up speakers so people could listen outside of the radio
station. This gave us a lot of motivation to continue reporting.”78 Similarly, Radio
Frecuencia Libre in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, received reports from their
members, but through phone calls and not through the stream.
Skill Sharing
Structured and spontaneous forms of skill sharing took place at Indymedia Cancún. In
more structured fashion, the Tidal Wave Cancún attracted 100 participants79 to discuss
and join conversations and exchanges focused on alternative media and topics like pirate
radio, digital security, and successful tech and media initiatives, along with workshops
intended to train people on how to provide coverage using diverse media tools, including
the Indymedia website. The other crucial aspect of the convergence was to prepare the
space with the gear and equipment necessary for each working group. Topping off the
week was the Forum on Communication Rights vs. Free Trade, where a presentation of
the WTO’s significance for media and communication rights took place.80 While the
training space was rather fluid, it provided ample opportunity for people to meet, prepare,
and become acquainted with the city, the events, the organizations, and most of all the
sharing of Indymedia’s model.
Once the meeting started and the coverage of the events was in full swing, other
opportunities to share skills and learn new ones began. Ana Martina explained that part
of her radio work prior to arriving in Cancún was to make the learning of audio editing
software accessible to everyone: “I had already learned to use Audacity and I loved how
easy it was. I remember thinking anyone can do this, and I began to make one-page
manuals with easy step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4 instructions on editing with Audacity, to
teach and share with other people how to use the tools.”81 When audio pieces needed
editing at Radio Hurakán, Ana Martina put her knowledge to work by specifically
teaching compañeras, women media activists, to use the editing software. For Juan from
Chiapas Indymedia and Frecuencia Libre, the learning came from observing different
radio activists and listening to different ways they worked with sound: “The creativity
used to mix the sounds from the marches and the streets, with music, and all sorts of
editing—I thought it was incredible and made me fall deeper in love with radio.”82
Another important aspect of this event was the participation of Indigenous, farm, and
movement representatives who were interested in alternative media and saw this popular
education preparation as a crucial aspect of their self-determination efforts and the
creation of alternatives. Securing the participation of these organizations was made
a priority in an attempt to avoid neglecting people from movements in the Global South
by alternative journalists, techies, and people from urban centers and the Global North
who tended to participate in Indymedia spaces.
For Sasha Costanza-Shock, the kind of knowledge and skill sharing that takes place in
mobilizations, as well as in activist sites and spaces, is tied to “horizontal communication,”
where tools circulate widely and are accessible, communication flows are between many
people and not concentrated on one person, and decision making and editorial choices
are shared or transparently delegated.83 Horizontal communication resonates with Latin
American community radio practices that integrate popular education, stressing horizon-
tal and reciprocal relationships among group members and developing a process of
awareness through consciousness-action-involvement-mobilization geared toward social
transformation.84 For Argentinian feminist Claudia Korol, these pedagogical practices are
tied to lived experiences of resistance. Korol argues that to break away from dominant and
oppressive cultural systems, people need to tap into the cultural knowledge and reserves
afforded by the resistance to those systems of domination. “The rebel imaginary” is
achieved by deconstructing the notions embedded in systems of oppression along with
the integration of practices of solidarity, and for Korol, this constitutes a pedagogical
dimension she calls “emancipatory pedagogy.” An emancipatory pedagogy is a “space of
collective knowledge construction born from historical, social practices within struggles
for life, liberty, justice, and autonomy.”85 It is a theory-practice integration that creates
values and feelings that provide examples of new ways of understanding and transforming
the world. In this sense, emancipatory pedagogical practices were being deployed by the
radio activists and their community radio projects while amplifying the sounding of sonic
alterworlds and their rebel imaginaries.
Autonomous Audio Technology

Appropriating, tinkering, and creating the technology needed to broadcast has been
a practice at the heart of the pirate, free, and community radio movement. Here I do
not engage in depth with this important aspect, as there are several analyses that provide
great insights to this particular area.86 Instead, I provide reflections on the technological
context of the time, and how radio activists interacted with emerging technologies and
increased accessibility to previously exclusive media tools.
In Mexico, the Internet had begun to be more widely available, and cable Internet was
starting to replace landline access. Cyber or Internet cafes were common, as homes and
businesses were just starting to access the service; however, the Cancún Indymedia space
was able to secure Internet through cable in order to connect a large number of compu-
ters. The tech was set up during the alternative tech convergence where many people
helped with installation, from cabling, to putting together donated computers, to install-
ing the software. A livestream test was conducted between the alternative tech media
convergence and an open-source, free software camp in the Vis island of Croatia where
“the streamers used 100% free software on a bootable GNU/Linux CD distribution
called dyne:bolic, which is specifically designed for multimedia application.”87
Another very important aspect was the radio broadcasting workshops aimed at orga-
nizations and groups that wanted to work on assembling a low-watt transmitter to take
home to their communities and learn how to make antennas and tech-related audio
gear.88 While a noble goal, in the end the result was, according to Timo Russo, “probably
half-a-transmitter”89 and a blocked radio spectrum that Juan from Frecuencia Libre90
believes was a targeted effort by Mexican national security forces. The situation left many
involved in that project frustrated but somehow inspired at the same time. With the
change of conditions, many then set their efforts to using the next technology on site,
which was the Internet and the stream to accompany Radio Hurakán. Sergio Soto from
Radio Zapote saw this transformation as an opportunity: “When the FM radio project
didn’t work because of the blocked signal, we initially felt we were being limited, however
in a sense we were also liberated. We refocused and began to work on the content to be
streamed and retransmitted by our radio collectives.”91
These experiences remind us that many tools were combined and used; however, an
underlying aspect of these initiatives was the creation of an autonomous tech infrastruc-
ture that aimed to reflect the social justice and political change these media projects were
trying to achieve. At the time there was less access to media technologies, as only official
and professional institutions were able to access them. But when ordinary people began to
acquire media gear, they started to more prominently shift the terms of who was autho-
rized to engage in news and media production. As Sergio Soto recalls: “What we were
doing was very defiant. We acquired our gear by raising money through parties, and
concerts, and in that way, we had the tools to produce our own media.”92 In the case of
radio, while having full control of the technology enables and strengthens autonomy and
self-determination, what underpins its force is the ability to amplify realities. According to
Soto, “Ultimately I think this wasn’t about the technology; from the start we did use
open-source software like Linux, but I think what was important for people, what was
stimulating about radio, was the excitement of being able to talk, to say something about
your reality that you know others are not even mentioning.”93
RADIO ACTIVISM’S SOUND
Examining how the everyday soundscapes of people, places, and environments are diverse
and culturally marked, and that “acoustic environments” need further engagement, has
been a concern of a range of fields, particularly since Murray Schafer’s studies on acoustic
environments and his development of the concept of “soundscapes” and Steven Feld’s
“acoustemology,” or the knowing of the world through sound.94 Paying special attention
to how sound operated, was being built, and was made audible by radio activists—while
noticing the sounds generated at the mobilizations—foregrounds how along with the
dispute over the airwaves and media enclosures, practices, norms, and configurations of
sound were being contested. Listening to the audio productions stored in the Cancún
Indymedia website, we find a variety of interviews with organization representatives,
movement leaders and intellectuals, and ordinary Cancún residents. Figures like Vandana
Shiva, Starhawk, and John Ross as well as Greenpeace representatives, human-rights
organization members, Indigenous and Native organization representatives from the US
and Mexico, and delegates with access to the Ministerial Meeting events are featured
either as stand-alone recorded interviews, as part of short feature stories, or in the Radio
Hurakán livestream. These productions are mostly in English and Spanish, but Korean,
French, Italian, Portuguese, and Tsotsil (a Mayan indigenous language commonly spoken
in the Chiapas highlands) were also posted on the audio section of the website, sometimes
with simultaneous translation.
Other types of content included live reports from marches and events made by
Indymedia participants as well as recordings of speeches, music, songs, and the general
sounds of the marches, along with several PSAs and short audio productions in Spanish
produced collaboratively by the audio team from the Mexican community radio stations.
Examining these PSAs and audio productions, two main topics can be found: general
information about the WTO, and information about alternative, independent media,
particularly community radio. Following Hilmes’s approach to radio as text, I pay par-
ticular attention to the “genres, techniques, styles, narrative structures, representational
conventions, and modes of address”95 found in the productions and have selected one
audio production illustrating common features found across each one of the topics.
The WTO in Cancún is an audio production that represents an eclectic style mixing
a male voice narrating what the WTO is, information about the city of Cancún and the
history of the town and people who live in the town, and what corporate globalization
represents for everyday people and communities. The narration is followed by sound
bridges with music remixed with actuality or sound effect, followed by interview clips
either in English and Spanish and live reports from the Hurakán Radio stream. The
voices and accents are diverse even if in the same language, and people sound as if
engaging in regular everyday conversation. Short remixes with sound bites are included,
playing with the rhythm to provide an energetic, upbeat tone between the information
and the interviews. This piece was heavily edited; however, it is interesting in how it
attempts to play with the sound and music to provide a different take on a formal and
serious topic that is usually presented in a serious broadcast voice, mostly with actuality
but with no music, in professional news outlets. While it is mostly in Spanish, it also
allows the inclusion of an English interview clip without adding translation, addressing
the global audience it aims to reach while providing space to present the voice as is.
Storytellers and Communicators is an audio production that delivers a creative and
playful approach to the topic of free radio by blurring the lines between fact and fiction.
Starting the piece with a high beat Euro-Afro-Latin fusion musical bed and a natural-
sounding woman’s voice saying, “Storytellers and communicators presentes in the free
frequencies, resisting,” the piece moves to include a clip from an interview with Mexico
City free radio, Radio Pacheco, telling their story of how they were robbed and lost their
equipment, the community raised funds to replace the gear, and they were able to
continue transmitting. The musical bed continues, and another man’s voice says, “Radio
frequencies for those who labor them,” rephrasing Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Za-
pata’s famous phrase, “The Land belongs to those who work it,” followed by a woman’s
voice saying, “Listen,” remixed with the music, and repeating several times, until the
section ends with the phrase, “Cancún, Oventic, the world united by free radio.” This last
phrase is significant, as it links the free radio movement to Zapatista ideals by specifically
referencing Oventic, the autonomous Zapatista town located in the Chiapas highlands
where the Zapatistas established one of their Good Government administrative centers.
Including many different brief sound designs interspersed with the sound beds and the
voices, the production borders on a musical piece, providing an overall inviting and
inspirational feeling.
Ultimately, the two pieces are representative of the sonic alterworlds approach and
principles underpinning the radio and audio work, and in tune with what a member of
the H Ruido community radio explained in an interview found on the Indy Cancún
archive: “H Ruido aims at re-appropriation, that as people we re-appropriate our palabra,
and our sounds, and in that way, collaborate in the creation of our own world. If we
continue to be narrated by the mass media, we don’t even exist.”96
THE SONIC ALTERWORLDS IRRUPT THE AIRWAVES
The audio project developed at Indymedia Cancún is significant because it provided

a structure for different kinds of sounds to be shared. From voices to raw sounds and
information, audible events were being created, recorded, and made available. For exam-
ple, chants or the sounds of crowds and music could be used as ambient and actuality,
remixed or played as is, while producing new messages and playing with the design of
sounds and voices to deliver both a sonic and informational message. In this sense, by
having an audio-format publishing option, the Indymedia website was open to not only
posting a conventional radio piece such as a radio report, either narrated or produced, but
it was also allowing the inclusion of any type of audible event. All this within what was
considered a global justice and noncommercial commitment.
Sound embedded in power relations, where what is allowed to be present, to be heard
by others and in what spaces, comes to the fore when we take sound seriously. As voice
urges us to contend with who is able to speak and exercise their right to be silent, sound
helps us to engage the question of listening. Protest and activist sound functions through
politics of voice and politics of listening, foregrounding the need to pay attention to the
ways we learn and enact our sonic expressions and listening, the ways society is designed
for certain voices and sounds to be made audible, muted, and even eradicated. Activist
sound practices, in the context of radio for social change, call attention to the political
dimension of sound, be it through the reclamation of airwaves, the seeking of aesthetic
expression, and/or the generation of practices that build sound from a social justice based
logic.
For Mayra Estévez, the sonorous involves a multiplicity of practices related to what is
audible and what is inaudible, acts of listening and being listened to that are related to the
social, the political, the cultural, and the economic, that shape power relationships,
configuring what she describes as “sonority.”97 Furthermore, she explains that a particular
way of deploying the sonorous as an instrument of domination and control is tied to
capitalism and its creation of harmful and destructive noise. Considering global capitalism
in its sonorous dimensions, we can envision the stakes present in the social justice
mobilizations at a global scale, and in the Cancún protests in particular. By generating
sounds connected to social and political projects embracing participatory, collaborative,
and emancipatory practices and tied to solidarity and the construction of a “world where
many worlds fit,” the audio and radio projects involved in Radio Hurakán and Indymedia
generated a sound different from that of capitalism’s noise, making possible the sounding
of realities and experiences often muted or sounded over. In this vein, as media activists
were particularly making use of audio and radio to protest and build through both loud-
and low-volume practices, they were opening spaces to make audible the sonic alterworlds
of those mobilizing toward social justice. n
L UZ A. R UIZ M ARTINEZ is a media studies PhD candidate at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is a Mexican-
born bilingual and bicultural scholar, media activist, and professional radio journalist, with nearly two decades of
involvement in community media projects. These experiences have drawn her to questions related to community
media as a tool for creating greater autonomy, cultural recognition, resurgence, and social justice through media
ownership and empowerment. Her current research explores the use of media by social justice and Indigenous
movements, focusing on community radio practices through a decolonial feminist theoretical and methodological
approach.
N OT ES
1. Vanesa Hradsky, “WTO Fractures Every Which Way,” The Indypendent (NYC Independent
Media Center), no. 38 (October 1–14, 2003): 8.
2. Dee Dee Halleck, “Gathering Storm: The Open Cyber Forum of Indymedia” (presentation,
OurMedia II Conference, Barcelona, 2002).
3. Dorothy Kidd, “Indymedia (the independent media center),” in Encyclopedia of Social Move-
ment Media, ed. John D. H. Downing (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2011).
4. Chiapas Indymedia website, https://web.archive.org/web/20010721161647/http://chiapas.
indymedia.org/.
5. Mexico Indymedia website, https://web.archive.org/web/2 0 0 0 0 8 1 5 0 8 3 8 2 3 /http://
mexico.indymedia.org/.
6. Cancún Indymedia website, https://web.archive.org/web/20031011144808/http://cancun
.mediosindependientes.org/.
7. Teo Ballvé, “Another Media Is Possible,” NACLA Report on the Americas 37, no. 4 (January–
February 2004): 29–31.
8. Hickie was part of the Greenpeace media team and contributed substantial audio material to
the Cancún IMC. Her September 13, 2003, Greenpeace WTO blog entry describes one of the
marches and her impressions of the sounds: “What a noise! What a display of colour! The
sounds from the march were overwhelming and varied,” https://web.archive.org/web/
20040617014123/http://weblog.greenpeace.org/wto/archives/2003_09_13.html. Also listen
to Danielle Hickie, “sounds_protest_final” (MP3 file, created September 11, 2003), https://
web.archive.org/web/20031019004721/http://cancun.mediosindependientes.org/media/all/
display/857.
9. Their presence in the mobilization and the sonic moment, including audio produced at
Cancún IMC, was captured in their live recorded album Vamos a la Playa. Infernal Noise
Brigade, Vamos a la Playa, La Banda Sonora para la Destrucción de las Vallas, Postworld
Industries, 2 0 0 4 . See also http://www.infernalnoise.org/audio.html and https://
postworldindustries.bandcamp.com/album/la-banda-sonora-para-la-destrucci-n-de-las-vallas.
10. “Emisión de Radio,” Radio Hurakán, Centro de Medios Independientes Cancún, September
2003, https://web.archive.org/web/20031002230722/http://cancun.mediosindependientes.
org/info/display/radio/index.php.
11. “Streaming Radio,” Independent Media Center Radio Network, September 2003, https://
web.archive.org/web/2 0 0 3 1 2 0 2 2 0 5 5 2 5 /http://radio.indymedia.org/cancun/index.cgi?
StreamingRadio.
12. Kate Coyer and Luz Ruiz, “Radio and Indy Media Cancún,” Our Media/Nuestros Medios,
January 2004, https://web.archive.org/web/20051031002708/http://ourmedianet.org/
reports/Coyer_Ruiz.TidalWave_2003.pdf.
13. CML, “Hasta luego al Indymedia Chiapas y saludos al movimiento de medios libres en
!
Chiapas: A tomar los medios!” Centro de Medios Libres Ciudad de México, January 4,
2012 , https://web.archive.org/web/20120 108085216 /http://cmldf.lunasexta.org/node/
19396.
14. Spanish-language terms for community radio and free radio broadcasters.
15. This term is widely used within the Latin American community radio sector and was popu-
larized by the Latin American and Caribbean branch of the World Association of Community
Broadcasters, and ALER, the Latin American Association of Radio Education. See Claudia
Villamayor and Ernesto Lamas, “Management of Community and Citizen Radio,” AMARC
and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 1998. Also see AMARC ALC, “La revolución es un sueño
eterno,” Revista Cara y señal, no. 3 (Buenos Aires, August 2005); ALER, “La vuelta y media:
Reflexiones alrededor del Proyecto Polı́tico Comunicativo” (Quito, 2007).
16. Mayra Estévez Trujillo, “Suena el Capitalismo en el Corazón de la Selva” / “Capitalism
Resounds in the Heart of the Jungle,” Nómadas 45 (December 2016): 13–25.
17. Subcomandante Marcos, “Fourth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle,” in Our Word Is Our
Weapon, ed. Juana Ponce de León (New York: Seven Stories, 2001), 78–81.
18. Naomi Klein, “Farewell to the ‘End of History’: Organisation and Vision in Anti-Corporate
Movements,” in A World of Contradictions: Socialist Register 2002, eds. Leo Panitch and Colin
Leys (Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2002), 3–14.
19. Dorothy Kidd, “Which Would You Rather: Seattle or Porto Alegre?” (presentation, Our
Media, Not Theirs pre-conference of the International Association for Media and Commu-
nication Research, organized by OUR Media/NUESTROS Medios network, Barcelona, July
2002).
20. Guiomar Rovira Sancho, “Zapatistas sin fronteras: Las redes de solidaridad con Chiapas y el
altermundismo” (México City, Ediciones Era, 2003).
21. Donatella Della Porta, The Global Justice Movement: Cross-National and Transnational Per-
spectives (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2007), 7.
22. John Ross, “The Pesadilla of Ernesto Zedillo,” San Antonio Current, October 3, 2002, https://
www.sacurrent.com/sanantonio/the-pesadilla-of-ernesto-zedillo/Content?oid¼2266262.
23. Sally Burch, Osvaldo León, and Eduardo Tamayo, “The Networked Society,” in Social Move-
ments on the Net (Quito: ALAI, 2001).
24. Guiomar Rovira Sancho, “Networks, Insurgencies, and Prefigurative Politics: A Cycle of
Global Indignation,” Convergence 20, no. 4 (2014): 387–401.
25. For a global overview that includes experiences beyond the 1990s and into the 2000s see
Gretchen King, “History of Struggle: The Global Story of Community Broadcasting Practices,
or a Brief History of Community Radio,” Westminster Papers in Communication & Culture 12,
no. 2 (2017): 18–36.
26. Frantz Fanon, “This Is the Voice of Algeria,” in A Dying Colonialism (New York: Grove Press,
1965), 69–98.
27. Alan O’Connor, “The Miners’ Radio Stations in Bolivia: A Culture of Resistance,” Journal of
Communication 40, no. 1 (1990): 102–10.
28. Carlos Henrı́quez Consalvi, Broadcasting the Civil War in El Salvador: A Memoir of Guerrilla
Radio (Austin: University of Texas Press, Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American
Studies, 2010).
29. Claudia Magallanes-Blanco, “Zapatista Media (México),” in Encyclopedia of Social Movement
Media, ed, John D. H. Downing (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2011), 563–65.
30. For a compilation covering a comprehensive overview of movement-related radio experiences
from across the world see John D. H. Downing, ed., Encyclopedia of Social Movement Media
(Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2011).
31. Kate Coyer, “Community Media in a Globalized World: The Relevance and Resilience of
Local Radio,” in Global Media and Communication Handbook Series (IAMCR): The Handbook
of Global Media and Communication Policy (Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011).
32. See Tiziano Bonini, “Twitter or Radio Revolutions? The Central Role of Açık Radyo in the
Gezi Protests of 2013,” Westminster Papers in Communication & Culture 12, no. 2, (June
2017): 1–17; Sasha Costanza-Chock, Out of the Shadows, into the Streets: Transmedia Orga-
nizing and the Immigrant Rights Movement (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014); Christina
Dunbar-Hester, Low Power to the People: Pirates, Protest, and Politics in FM Radio Activism
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014); Stefania Milan, Social Movements and their Technologies:
Wiring Social Change (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
Also see Inés Binder and Santiago Garcı́a Gago, Politizar la tecnologı́a: Radios comunitarias y
derecho a la comunicación en los territorios digitales (Buenos Aires: Ediciones del Jinete Insomne,
2020); Claudia Villamayor, “Las radios comunitarias, gestoras de procesos comunicacionales,”
Mediaciones 10, no.12 (January–June 2014): 88–105, doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.26620/
uniminuto.mediaciones.10.12.2014.88-105.
33. Bonini, “Twitter or Radio Revolutions?”, 3.
34. Della Porta, The Global Justice Movement.
35. Kidd, “Indymedia.”
36. Miss Kreant, “Aural Assault! Free Radio vs. Free Trade in the Battle of Seattle,” in Three Meter
Revolt! A Pirate Radio Zine (Eugene, OR: Radio Free Cascadia, 2000). Also see “Five Days
over Seattle, an Audio Document of Free Radio Station Y2WTKO,” Y2WTKO / Free Radio
Cascadia, booklet accompanying compact disc, 2000.
37. Kate Coyer, “Where the ‘Hyper Local’ and ‘Hyper Global’ Meet: Case Study of Indymedia
Radio,” Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 2, no. 1 (2005).
38. Independent Media Center Radio Network website, https://web.archive.org/web/
20010517012755/http://radio.indymedia.org/.
39. Jeffrey Juris, Networking Futures: The Movements against Corporate Globalization (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 2008).
40. Michele Hilmes, “The New Materiality of Radio: Sounds on Screens,” in Radio’s New Wave,
eds. Michele Hilmes and Jason Loviglio (London: Taylor & Francis, 2013).
41. Tom Hayden, ed., The Zapatista Reader (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press / Nation Books,
2002).
42. Chiapas Indymedia, “First Editorial,” February 9, 2001, https://web.archive.org/web/
20010629201707/http://chiapas.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id¼11.
43. Audio section, Chiapas Indymedia website, https://web.archive.org/web/20010406061056/
http://chiapas.indymedia.org/search-process.php3?medium¼audio.
44. Brendan O’Neill, Adrián Boutureira, Stephen Bartlett, and Sarah Aird, eds, Plan Puebla
Panama, Battle over the Future of Mesoamerica, 2nd ed. (Burlington, VT: Action for Social
and Ecological Justice/Action for Community and Ecology in the Region of Central America
(ASEJ/ACERCA), 2004).
45. Alfonso Gumucio, Making Waves: Stories of Participatory Communication for Social Change
(New York: Rockefeller Foundation, 2001).
46. Chiapas Indymedia, “Qué puede lograr Indymedia en Cancún,” Propuesta al colectivo, Abril
2003.
47. Radio Unidad Independencia and Radio Interferencia were some of the stations operated by
housing, student, and human rights advocates. See Silva Contreras and Marı́a de la Paz,
“Community Radio, Mexico: Integrating Community Radio and ICTs for Development in
Rural Mexico,” in Revisiting the “ Magic Box”: Case Studies in Local Appropriation of Informa-
tion and Communication Technologies (ICTs) (Rome: Food And Agriculture Organization of
the United Nations, 2003).
48. Stations included Televerdad, Radio Pirata, Radio Vampiro, La Voladora, and H Ruido,
among others. See Taniel Morales, “Microhistoria de la radio pirata, (reconstrucción desde
el 2015), 1era Parte,” Rúbrica, Subdirección de Extensión Cultural de Radio UNAM, México, no.
68 (April 2015). Also see Monica Palomino González, “Nuevas Experiencias de Comunicación
Masiva: Las Radios “Piratas” Del D.F.: Una Historia Hacia La Democracia,” Razón y Palabra,
no.12 (October 1998–January 1999), http://www.razonypalabra.org.mx/anteriores/n12/
pirat12.html.
49. See Jeffrey S. Juris, “‘Frequencies of Transgression’: Notes on the Politics of Excess and
Constraint among Mexican Free Radio Stations,” in Radio Fields: Anthropology and Wireless
Sound in the 21st Century, eds. Lucas Bessire and Daniel Fisher (New York: New York
University Press, 2012).
50. Gloria Muñoz Ramı́rez, “Radio Zapote 14 años de Independencia al Aire,” Ojarasca, La
Jornada, no. 216 (April 2015), https://www.jornada.com.mx/2015/04/11/ojaportada.html.
51. Sergio Soto, personal interview, June 2020.
52. See Aleida Calleja, “Prácticas normativas en materia de medios de comunicación comunitarios:
El caso mexicano,” in Polı́ticas y legislación para la radio local en América Latina (La Paz: Plural,
2010), 317–23.
53. Scholars and political analysts point to a long history of collusion between state and media
enterprises that is particularly engrained due to a history in which one political party had been
in power for 80 years (1929 to 2000).
54. Aleida Calleja and Beatriz Solı́s, Con permiso: La radio comunitaria en México (Mexico City:
AMARC, Fundación Friedrich Ebert-México, 2005).
55. These efforts resulted in the initial licensing of 11 radio stations by the year 2007. See M. S. R.
Gonzalez and J. D. R. Montaño, “Apuntes para la Historia de la Radio Comunitaria en
México,” Revista Latinoamericana de Ciencias de la Comunicación 18, no. 32 (2019).
56. Calleja and Solı́s, Con permiso, 87.
57. Juris, “Frequencies of Transgression,” 163.
58. https://web.archive.org/web/20040 423070924 /http://espora.org/cancun03/index.pl?
CancunAlternativeMediaTechConvergence
59. Alan Minsky, “Discussion with Chiapas IMC members in Honduras,” Indymedia on Air, A-
Infos Radio Project, July 14, 2003, http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/7409.
60. Victor Zendejas, “Reunión de la OMC: En Internet, el calendario de actividades alternas,” La
Jornada, August 24, 2003, https://www.jornada.com.mx/2003/08/24/021n1 eco.php?
origen¼economia.php&fly¼.
61. Radio Cancún, Institute for Agricultural and Trade Policy, 2003, https://web.archive.org/
web/20040630083459/http://www.radiocancun.org/.
62. Greenpeace Radio, Independent Media Center Radio Network website, 2003, https://
web.archive.org/web/20031018235650/http://radio.indymedia.org/cancun/index.cgi?
GreenpeaceRadio.
63. AMARC and ALER, “Cobertura en Cancún,” Biodiversidad en América Latina, Acción por la
Diversidad, Buenos Aires, August 22, 2003, http://www.biodiversidadla.org/Noticias/
Cobertura_en_Cancun.
64. https://web.archive.org/web/20031002230722/http://cancun.mediosindependientes.org/
info/display/radio/index.php
65. Indymedia Cancún, “Emisiones de Radio,” Internet Archive, April 2004, https://
web.archive.org/web/20040401170252/http://cancun.mediosindependientes.org/info/
display/radio/index.php.
66. Sean and Sasha, “Cancún Is Abuzz.” Cancún Indymedia website, September 2, 2003, https://
web.archive.org/web/20031008081642/http://cancun.mediosindependientes.org/newswire/
display/90/index.php.
67. Indymedia Cancún, “Emisiones de Radio.”
68. Luz Ruiz, Kate Coyer, and Rene Crespo, “Radio Hurakan Now Streaming Live,” Cancun
Indymedia, September 12, 2003, https://web.archive.org/web/20040225005454/http://
cancun.mediosindependientes.org/feature/display/504/index.php.
69. “Radio Hurakan, Streaming during the WTO Mobilizations,” La Boka del Hurakan (Cancún
Indymedia Center newspaper), no. 1, September 10, 2003.
70. Daniel Ivan, “Hurakán: Un Encuentro ante el Desencuentro con los Medios,” Radio
Mundo Real, September 6 , 2 00 3 , https://web.archive.org/web/2 0 0 30 9 0 7 0 6 5 5 2 7 /
http://www.radiomundoreal.fm/cancunenvivo.htm.
71. “Radio Hurakan, Streaming during the WTO Mobilizations.”
72. See Emiliano Treré and Alice Mattoni, “Media Ecologies and Protest Movements: Main
Perspectives and Key Lessons,” Information, Communication & Society: Protest Communication
Ecologies 19, no. 3 (March 2016): 290–306; Clemencia Rodriguez, “Studying Media at the
Margins: Learning from the Field,” in Media Activism in the Digital Age, eds. Victor Pickard
and Guobin Yang (New York: Routledge, 2017): 49–61.
73. “Ruben Gonzalez Comunidad de Cosoltepec de Oaxaca, Radio Tupa,” Cancún Interviews:
Radio Tupa, https://radiotupa.org/documents.html.
74. “Emisión de Radio,” Indymedia Cancún.
75. Timo Russo, personal interview, June 2020.
76. Ana Martina, personal interview, June 2020. For a discussion on gender and radio tech see
Christina Dunbar-Hester, “Geeks, Meta-Geeks, and Gender Trouble: Activism, Identity,
and Low-Power FM Radio,” Social Studies of Science 38, no. 2 (April 2008): 201–32,
https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312707082954.
79. Sean and Sasha, “Alternative Media-Tech Convergence ‘Tidal Wave Cancún’ comes to a close
in las Palapas,” Cancún Indymedia website, September 8, 2003, https://web.archive.org/web/
20040223230013/http://cancun.mediosindependientes.org/feature/display/214/index.php.
80. Ana Martina, personal interview, June 2020.
81. Ana Martina, personal interview, June 2020.
82. José Juan Cárdenas, personal interview, June 2020.
83. Sasha Costanza-Chock, “Analytical Note: Horizontal Communication and Social Move-
ments,” (research report for Manuel Castells, “Communication, Power, and Counter-power
in the Network Society”), Los Angeles: Annenberg School of Communication, 2006, http://
web.mit.edu/schock/www/docs/
horizonal%20communication%20and%20social%20movements.pdf.
84. See Marı́a C. Mata, “Comunicación popular: Continuidades, transformaciones y desafı́os
(Popular communication: Continuities, transformations and challenges)” Revista Oficios Ter-
restres (Buenos Aires) 1, no. 26 (211): 1–22.
85. Claudia Korol, “La subversión del sentido común y los saberes de la resistencia (The subversion
of common sense and the knowledges of the resistance),” in De los saberes de la emancipación y
de la dominación, ed. Ana Esther Ceceña (Buenos Aires: Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias
Sociales, CLACSO, 2008).
86. See Dorothy Kidd, “Talking the Walk, the Communication Commons Amidst the Media
Enclosures” (PhD diss., Simon Fraser University, 1998); Coyer, “Where the ‘Hyper Local’ and
‘Hyper Global’ Meet”; Dunbar-Hester, Low Power to the People; Milan, Social Movements and
Their Technologies.
87. Los Angeles Indymedia, “Audio Recording: Cancún-Vis Livestream,” https://la.indymedia.org/
news/2003/10/89294.php.
88. See Kate Coyer, “I Broadcast Therefore I Am: Radio Adventures at Indymedia Cancún,”
Journal of Aesthetics and Protest 1, no. 3 (2004).
89. Timo Russo, personal interview, June 2020.
90. José Juan Cárdenas, personal interview, June 2020.
91. Sergio Soto, Personal interview, June 2020.
94. [1] Steven Feld, “Waterfalls of Song: An Acoustemology of Place Resounding in Bosavi, Papua
New Guinea,” in Senses of Place, eds. Steven Feld and Keith H. Basso (Santa Fe, NM: School of
American Research Press, 1996): 91–135; Murray Schafer, The Soundscape: Our Sonic Envi-
ronment and the Tuning of the World (Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 1993).
95. Michele Hilmes, “Interpreting Radio: Culture in Sound and the Role of Media Studies,” New
Review of Film and Television Studies 16, no. 4 (2018): 420–25.
96. [1] Interview with Rene, Honorable Ruido Radio (H Ruido), conducted by Luz Ruiz for
Indymedia Cancún, Global Indymedia Radio, https://radio.indymedia.org/node/1172.
97. Mayra Estévez Trujillo, Sonic Studies from the Andean Region (Quito and Bogotá: Centro
Experimental Oı́do Salvaje, 2008).

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LU Z A .

Indymedia Cancún, Radio Hurakán, and the Sounding of

THE INDYMEDIA MODEL, GLOBAL REVOLTS, AND RADIO

COMMUNICATION FROM BELOW: CHIAPAS INDYMEDIA, MEXICO CITY FREE

Mexico City Free Radio Stations

Building a Bottom-Up Sonic Structure

Collaborative Organizing and Production Practices

Autonomous Audio Technology

RADIO ACTIVISM’S SOUND

THE SONIC ALTERWORLDS IRRUPT THE AIRWAVES

The audio project developed at Indymedia Cancún is signiﬁcant because it provided

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