Transcripts
"A Brazilian Affair"
by Antonio Martins
In Brazil, inspired by Porto Alegre, there is an edition of Le Monde Diplomatique taking its place in the struggle to re-build an independent press in the country and to promote the international debate on finding alternatives to neo-liberalism.
A well known saying in Brazil goes “What’s difficult is not impossible”. The success to date of the Brazilian edition of Le Monde Diplomatique suggests that this may be true.
The first issue appeared in December 1999, the idea of a group of journalists who themselves were involved in the struggle against “la pensée unique” and searching for viable alternatives. From the outset a shortage of material resources made the task all the more difficult but there was a great desire to make of the newspaper an instrument to create a new type of citizenship, a voice for the social movement and a voice for political change in the country. Less than 3 years later the positive changes and steps taken toward achieving these goals are there for all to see.
Financially, “Diplo Brazil” was born out of almost nothing. In the beginning it was basically a translation of the French edition, distributed via the internet. Although limited to the Internet, the work was dedicated. A group of professional translators were taken on, articles were carefully edited and an instructive web site ( www.diplo.com.br ) created.
Come mid-2000, we began to reap the rewards of all our hard work. Several papers with connections to unions and other social movements began to re-print our work. A total of 10 publications including the “movimento dos sem-tera” (The Landless Movement), the Union of University Lecturers, the Training School of “Central unica dos Trabalhadores” (Workers’ Central) publish an article from the paper every month.
Producing a Brazilian edition has brought Le Monde Diplomatique to those ready to act on ideas and transform them into social action but it has also delivered those ideas to a much wider audience through connections with the large national newspapers.
One of the most important in the field is “Correio Braziliense” which now publishes one of our articles every Sunday. 200,000 copies are sold in the capital Brazilia alone.
In September 2000 the task of launching a printed edition began. The method chosen was first to publish a limited number of editions on a trial basis. This was done in order to introduce the paper to the public, to attract supporters and to create an opportunity for a merger with a powerful printing house. So far we have printed 3 issues, one of 40,000 copies.
In September 2001 “Diplo Brazil” entered a new phase. Since the paper was being produced in the country where the World Social Forum (WSF) was going to take place, it need to make its contribution to that struggle to build alternatives to neo-liberalism.
Diplo Brazil created a new space on its web site dedicated to Criticism of Capitalist Globalisation to search for alternatives and to provide information about the WSF. This space has since been re-inaugurated for the 2003 WSF (www.Portoalegre2003.net). Here you will be able to find 6 independent detailed sites, updated on a weekly basis, examining international affairs and containing 100s of published texts. These texts are part of the new independent press which re-emerged at the same time as the movement for Another World.
We managed this in a country where strong monopolistic control over the media is maintained. Of 6 sites already under construction, 1 is already available. It is called “Outro Olhar” (another look) It is dedicated to examining globalisation and its consequences, to debates about subjects such as financial crises, the lack of success of the latest convention on the eradication of world hunger, on the readiness of the US to embark on yet another imperial style war, on the WTO and with a discussion of the risks journalists of today take to tackle these issues properly. Contributors include Ignacio Ramonet, Bernard Cassen, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Noam Chomsky, Chico de Oliviera, Eduardo Galeano, Marcos Arruda, Jorge Bernstein, Norman Solomon, Marta Hannecker and Fidel Castro. The site also highlights papers written by members of social movements such as Greenpeace, IndyMedia, ATTAC and CorpWatch.
In coming weeks 3 more sites come on-line:
“Outro Mondo” (Another World), “Outro Movimento” (Another Movement) Outro Noticas (Another News).
Porto Alegre 2003 is really a “bet” on the collective will to build a new press. The portal is sponsored by the Belem Council and by the Institute Rosa Luxemburgo from Germany. In this way the internet has provided a space for journalism that does not need to reduce itself to the level of saleable merchandise.
The site circulates information and analyses of profound interest, produced by writers not interested in financial gain. They instead associate their profession with the attempt to create another world or they simply write to help you and me learn about the world in which we currently find ourselves.
This entire phenomenon has taken place to some small degree at least thanks to the example of Le Monde Diplomatique. There are now hundreds of independent publications that using the paper , PortoAlegre2003 being just one, focussing as it does on the WSF.
It would not have been possible to create our story without the paper of Ramonet and Cassen. It provides a new opportunity for the construction of a new press, one capable of seeing the world through the eyes of those who want to change it.
Atonio writes for Diplo Brazil
(Translated by Dina from beautiful Cape Verde)
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