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Overview
Rick Rockwell and Noreene Janus examine the region country by country and deal with the specific conditions of government-sponsored media repression, economic censorship, corruption, and consumer trends that shape the political landscape. Challenging the notion of the media as a democratizing force, Media Power in Central America shows how governments use the media to block democratic reforms and outlines the difficulties of playing watchdog to rulers who use the media as a tool of power.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780252092282 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Illinois Press |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2010 |
| Series: | The History of Media and Communication |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 296 |
| File size: | 513 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Media Power in Central America
By RICK ROCKWELL, NOREENE JANUS
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS
Copyright © 2003 Board of Trustees of the University of IllinoisAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-252-09228-2
Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Honduras and the Media Oligarchy
In Honduras Rafael Nodarse is known impolitely as "the pirate." This is just one of the nicknames that the Honduran establishment hung on this media owner, but it is telling, because it reveals what many think about the methods Nodarse used to obtain his media properties and to keep them afloat. The nickname is revealing also because it casts Nodarse as someone operating beyond the accepted rules of commerce in Honduras.
Nodarse owns broadcast and cable television operations based in San Pedro Sula, a commercial center and the nation's second-largest city. Nodarse's Canales 6 and 69 (operating on VHF and UHF, respectively) and his cable company began operations with the help of the Honduran military, until recently an unchecked force in the country's political, commercial, and even social development. One of the ways Nodarse earned his nickname was by using his political connections with the military to obtain the operating permits for his television properties, much to the disapproval of his competition. In Honduras, a country regarded as the prototypical banana republic, the shady backroom political dealings of an earlier era often continue to shape the landscape.
Mountainous and rugged, Honduras is a developing nation about the size of Louisiana. The country is struggling to overcome major setbacks during the 1990s. In 1998 Hurricane Mitch rampaged across Central America, and Honduras bore the brunt of its destruction: many experts said roads, bridges, and other important infrastructure in the country would not be replaced for a generation. Entire villages and towns were wiped out. Even before the hurricane, the country was struggling with an economic depression that had hit in 1994. The country's boom-and-bust economy is often tied to its chief exports, bananas and coffee. With those exports drawing lower prices on the world market in the late 1990s, the nation struggled just to replace what it had lost in the devastating storm.
As is common across Central America, a small group of families and a few giant companies have historically dominated the economic landscape of Honduras. During the twentieth century the United Fruit Company controlled more than vast plantations of bananas, the country's largest crop. United Fruit had built the nation's railroads and retained control of that transportation system, along with a string of diversified businesses. In the 1950s United Fruit and the Standard Fruit Company accounted for more than 90 percent of the government's tax revenues, showing their central importance to the nation.
United Fruit had backed the electoral success of the National Party and Tiburcio Carías Andino in 1933. A typical Latin American caudillo, Carías managed to rewrite the constitution to allow his reelection, guaranteeing sixteen years of continuous rule. United Fruit was happy to see its hand-picked candidate evolve into a dictator. Before his rise to the presidency, Carías had gained notoriety as a general who used ruthless means to quell dissent. In 1923 he became one of the first military leaders ever to order the aerial bombing of civilian areas to snuff out support for rebels allied with the Liberal Party.
For most of the twentieth century, the country was ruled by military dictators, military juntas, or generals who wielded power from behind the facade of presidents and popularly elected representatives. In 1957, after the National Party had used congressional maneuvers and questionable constitutional rules to keep itself in power despite losing the popular vote in the 1954 elections, the military took control of election oversight. By 1963 the military was ruling the country directly. Many Hondurans mark the true beginnings of their democracy from the 1986 elections, when the military oversaw the peaceful transfer of presidential power from the National Party to the Liberal Party, the first such peaceful transition of civilian rule in thirty years. In reality, however, the Honduran military was still running the country.
During the 1980s the military controlled the national police and large portions of the country's economic infrastructure. In the United States, under the Reagan administration, U.S. policy called for supporting Honduras's military as a way to help the Nicaraguan Contras, who were active in the southern border regions, and as a way to provide a backstop for U.S. military advisers operating in El Salvador during that country's long civil war. At the midpoint of the Reagan administration, American military aid to Honduras hit $77.5 million.
The 1980s may have marked the height of military power, with Honduras playing the important role of bulwark for U.S. Central American policy. The 1990s, however, saw evolution toward civilian control of the central government. With the demise of the Sandinista regime in neighboring Nicaragua and the end to the Salvadoran civil war, U.S. policy sought nonmilitary means to support democratic development in the region. By the end of Honduran president Carlos Reina's administration, U.S. military aid had shrunk to $400,000. Reina terminated military control of the Honduran telecommunications system, the immigration department, the national police force's investigatory arm, and the merchant marine. The military still controls a bank, insurance companies, and one of the country's two large cement companies.
With civilian control of telecommunications came a new interest in the operations of Rafael Nodarse, in part because one of his stations caused broadcast interference for two television channels based in Tegucigalpa, the capital. These stations, Canales 5 and 7, are owned by José Rafael Ferrari, a member of the country's powerful media establishment.
The new Honduran Communications Commission (known as CONATEL) began a review of Nodarse's broadcast license once the primacy of the civilian government was established in the late 1990s, but no one in the central government was daring enough to criticize the way Nodarse used military influence to cut through government red tape and avoid oversight mechanisms. Asked about the matter, Norman Roy Hernandez, CONATEL's chairman, responded with the following oblique comment: "Frankly that came at a time when communication oversight was not taken seriously and when there may have been other priorities."
CONATEL and Nodarse had been at odds almost since civilian control of the broadcast airwaves began. Thumbing his nose at any controls, Nodarse opened television operations in Tegucigalpa and the southern city of Comayagua in 1997 without approval from the government. These so-called pirate television stations not only reinforced Nodarse's image as an owner beyond the control of the law but also spread the use of his nickname in the media. CONATEL asked a judge to have Nodarse arrested and sought to fine him $250,000. Nodarse successfully blocked the government's move to regulate him in the nation's Supreme Court for many months, but ultimately he was fined and forced to shut down his nonlicensed operations.
The civilian authorities in Honduras were not the only ones concerned with Nodarse's television operations. The U.S. government pressured Honduras to rein in the rogue television owner. It was concerned that Nodarse was using copyrighted material from the United States without paying the proper royalties. The State Department wanted Nodarse to stop using illegal means to obtain programming. It was concerned that he was stripping satellite signals to provide his stations with Hollywood movies and even English-language news. News programs from Denver's KUSA-TV were often shown on Nodarse's stations.
During a trip to Honduras in 1998, Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Davidow pressed the Honduran government on the issue. Such bilateral issues as immigration, the drug trade, and the United States' military presence in Honduras captured the headlines during Davidow's visit. The popular anchorman and commentator Rodrigo Wong Arévalo, however, who is known in Honduras for his stands against U.S. interference in regional affairs, openly discussed the pressure Davidow and the United States were placing on the Honduran government to curtail Nodarse's practices. Importantly, Wong Arévalo made his comments on his news program, "Abriendo Brecha," which is broadcast by Nodarse's main competitor, Centroamericana de Television, owned by José Rafael Ferrari. Such uncommon support of Nodarse resulted mainly from Wong Arévalo's long-held beliefs that the United States exerts too much influence inside the Honduran political system and that Hondurans should work out their problems free from such outside influences.
Wong Arévalo's comments also opened up discussion about Nodarse's background and the way he had obtained his broadcast licenses. Nodarse fled Cuba in 1962 in the wake of Fidel Castro's revolution. He obtained U.S. citizenship and moved to Honduras in the late 1960s. This is why he is often called "the Cuban" as well as "the pirate." Honduran commentators such as Wong Arévalo have often mentioned Nodarse's anti-Castro sentiments and his strong ties with the Honduran military as a way to link him to the U.S. security apparatus. Nodarse's ability to run roughshod over the weak Honduran regulatory environment for broadcasting and the long delays in getting him to comply with the edicts of CONATEL also fueled speculation about the Cuban broadcaster's special connections.
Whatever Nodarse's connections to the United States had been, the State Department decided it would no longer ignore the blatant disregard for copyright law and moved to stop the Cuban American media owner. A month after Davidow's visit, the United States suspended $5 million in Honduran tariff benefits and threatened to impose further economic sanctions unless Nodarse was stopped or began paying for retransmission rights for U.S. programs. Quickly responding to the economic pressure, CONATEL fined Nodarse $37,000 for his practices and ordered his broadcast operations closed for a week.
As a subtext for CONATEL's intervention, one of his competitors had to file a complaint against the controversial station owner. Samir Kawas, the owner of Canal 21 in San Pedro Sula, officially sought the legal action against Nodarse, alleging that his use of unlicensed films and other programming gave him an illegal competitive edge. CONATEL ruled that Nodarse should pay his fine directly to Kawas.
On its face this action appears to be strictly a matter of Honduras's justice and regulatory bodies acting against a media owner who has defied legal mechanisms established to oversee commerce. In addition, because the United States has a long history of intervening in Honduras and other parts of the region to protect its commercial interests, the request for action and subsequent economic pressure seem to be in character. Beyond the historical context, however, it can be argued that the request was justified: Honduras's legal and regulatory systems ruled that Nodarse's stations were in fact pilfering satellite signals and rebroadcasting programming in clear violation of international copyright law. Nevertheless, the system had done little to rein in the Cuban media owner before outside pressure was applied.
Nodarse's clever response to this pressure was to use his broadcast properties to rally support for his cause and brand the government as a puppet of the United States. Although many in intellectual and media circles realized that Nodarse was ignoring his own image as someone who had benefited from the past interventionist policies of the United States, this tactic allowed him to generate some populist support for his cause. Relying on the fact that few people would know how he had used his own influence and connections to obtain broadcast licenses, Nodarse portrayed the government as a giant force aligned with the country's business elites to crush his independent voice.
Before the government could fine him and close his stations, Nodarse organized protests against its actions. In March 1998 Nodarse staged a rally in San Pedro Sula's main square, where protesters chanted slogans against the United States and the Honduran government. Speakers at the rally said the Honduran government responded to Washington as if it were connected by remote control. President Carlos Flores Facussé and Rafael Ferrari, who had lodged the interference complaints against Nodarse, were portrayed as willing stooges of the United States. Speakers also portrayed the United States as using imperialist policies to muzzle Nodarse and his station, the sort of theme that often excites crowds in Latin America.
Nodarse's national outlets broadcast live coverage of the rally and subsequent march for several hours, repeating the coverage in its entirety during the next few days. The rally was also expertly photographed, so that three hundred people who blocked one street and filled up one corner of the city's central square appeared to fill the entire square. With a flourish, the event was capped with a march to the statue of Francisco Morazán, Honduras's national hero.
Although Nodarse's stations used propaganda techniques in an attempt to amplify their owner's complaints, the message resonated with some in the audience. Nodarse's advocates portrayed him as a rebel standing up for free speech against controlling elements in the Honduran government. Typical Hondurans saw the government and Nodarse's competitors as trying to strip them of the ability to see popular movies and other programs supplied by Nodarse's stations. Often Nodarse's advocates portrayed President Flores and the media mogul Ferrari as representing a media monopoly.
In this way Nodarse's fight, which centered on his need for economic survival and thus his illegal practices, struck a chord with some Hondurans. Although Nodarse and his advocates warped the fight for free expression to fit their propaganda protests and oversimplified the full situation in their portrayals, they were not far from a reality that most Hondurans understand: a handful of powerful people control the media system in this small country, and those who do not conform to the limits and messages cleared by this small group either have no way to communicate or are relegated to the fringes. Nodarse, with his colorful nicknames, is branded as an outsider in the Honduran system: not only a media owner who clearly sided with the military authorities for decades but also someone from another part of Latin America who is not accepted by the dominant culture of media owners in Honduras.
Five families control most of the media outlets in Honduras. These powerful media moguls—the Canahuatis, Sikaffys, Rosenthals, Ferrari, and President Flores's family, the Facussés—have managed to combine control of communications media with political and economic might. Most, if not all, of these families have large stakes in other Honduran industries.
For instance, the Canahuati family owns the newspaper with the largest circulation, La Prensa (this is a popular name for newspapers in Latin America and should not be confused with the Panamanian or Nicaraguan papers of the same name), based in San Pedro Sula. They also own El Heraldo, in Tegucigalpa. (Again, this is a popular name for newspapers in the region. This publication should not be confused with El Heraldo of San José, Costa Rica.) The family owns businesses outside of the media as well, including a home furnishings company. Because lumber and wood products are among the country's leading exports, the newsprint and furniture that the Canahuatis use and sell show that they have carved out an important niche in the Honduran economy. The Canahuati family also owns companies that sell insurance, bottled water, and soft drinks.
These families with major media holdings seem to have intertwining interests. For instance, in 1998 Jorge Canahuati III, who had been in charge of his family's home furnishings business, was being trained in the intricacies of media operations at VICA Television, the property of another prominent family with media holdings, the Sikaffys. The Canahuatis and Sikaffys do not compete directly in the Honduran system because the Canahuatis do not own electronic media properties and the Sikaffys do not own newspapers. In the 1970s the Sikaffy family had diversified beyond its mercantile holdings, investing in a cement factory and construction firms. The Sikaffy family also controls Tegucigalpa's Canal 9 and an AM-FM radio combo in San Pedro Sula called La Voz de Centroamérica.
The chummy climate among most of the media owners in Honduras, exemplified by the Sikaffy-Canahuati alliance, may result from their generally shared political beliefs and cultural backgrounds. Many of the media owners belong to successful Arab Honduran families called turcos in the local slang. Many of these families immigrated from Lebanon and Syria to Honduras at the beginning of the twentieth century. These immigrant families intermarried, helped one another prosper in their new homeland, and became proponents of the country's Liberal Party.
Unlike El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala, where elite families rose to prominence on the strength of agro-exports, mainly coffee, Honduras followed a different path of development. In the 1890s banana farms were held mainly by small middle-class ranchers, and bananas constituted only 11 percent of the nation's exports. By 1930 that had changed. In the intervening years United Fruit and Standard Fruit had bought banana plantations, and millions of other acres were transferred to banana production. By 1930 bananas constituted 84 percent of Honduras's exports, and the country produced one-third of the world's banana supply. More than 75 percent of the nation's banana-producing land, however, was owned by three companies from the United States. The benefits of the banana boom did not create a banana oligarchy but instead reinforced U.S. firms' abilities to dabble in Honduran politics. For decades Honduras had a one-crop economy. Coffee was introduced as an export crop in the mid-twentieth century, but this happened much later than it did in the rest of Central America and was not accompanied by the rise of a coffee elite.
The lack of an agricultural elite left the way clear for the turco immigrants to vault to prominence based on the success of their investments. By the 1960s the Adonie, Kafie, and Facussé families provided the leaders of Honduras's mercantile class, skilled entrepreneurs who began investing in the nation's incipient manufacturing projects. When these prominent immigrant families prospered, they invested heavily in the country's media as a way to promote their products, businesses, and ideas.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Media Power in Central America by RICK ROCKWELL. Copyright © 2003 by Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS.
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