Convening on Land Defense Communications Across the Americas

This week WITNESS teams are joining forces in Brazil and Mexico for the in-person gatherings of the Latin America School for Communication for Land Defense and Tejemedios. These events, co-organized by WITNESS, CORAL (Colectivos Reunidos de America Látina), and others will bring together a network of media collectives and movements using communications and supporting others to use these strategies for defending their lands and territories. WITNESS teams from Latin America and the Caribbean, Brazil and the United States will be present to facilitate and lead workshops, document the gathering and connect with groups from across the continent. 

These in-person gatherings are the final modules of ‘CORAL’, which started in September as an online school and has been meeting to cover topics on narratives, strategic communication, and more. The objectives of the gathering are to strengthen the strategic vision of groups and collectives working in communications, in particular audiovisual media, to advance their skills around advocacy and documentation, and to provide tools to help them train others in their communities.

This work builds off WITNESS’s long-standing partnerships and projects with collectives, communities and movements working to respond to violence and aggression against their lives and the land. Through this work we’ve had the opportunity to provide documentation workshops at large gatherings of Indigenous Peoples’ in Brazil and co-created guides such as the Guide to Strategic Communication in Defense of the Territory in Mexico.

Follow our social media channels (@WITNESS_USA, @WITNESS_es and @witness_Brasil) and visit https://redcoral.la to learn more about the work. Continue reading for additional information about CORAL. 

MORE ABOUT CORAL:

#CORAL is a network of #audiovisual groups from different places, that support movements defending their land, territory and #commons. It seeks to strengthen community #communication for the #defense of the territory and the construction of its own #narratives✊🏾🌿

🔉 Faced with the excessive advance of the borders of capital and extractivism, communities, populations, social movements, civil and collective organizations need to organize themselves to respond to the violence and aggression that threaten their lives, bodies and territories.

Therefore, our focus is the training of trainers to support the continuity of processes in popular education, especially the #communication strategy for the development of the different territories and communities.

🌿Do you want to know more? Visit: https://redcoral.la

CORAL is a network of audiovisual groups in Abya Yala (an Indigenous term used to refer to the “Americas”) that from different geographies accompany struggles for the defense of the land, territory and common goods. This articulation of regional scope seeks to share tools to strengthen community communication, with an emphasis on the use of audiovisuals for defense and the construction of their own narratives.

Thus, in the face of the advance of the borders of capital and extractivism, communities, peoples, movements, organizations, collectives self-organize to respond to the onslaught of violence and dispossession that threaten their lives, bodies and territories.

The criminalization, repression, judicial harassment and harassment of human rights defenders is on the rise. This is accompanied by different media strategies to stigmatize and invalidate any alternative that challenges the progress of the so-called “development”.

For this reason, we see it necessary to add to the strengthening of the audiovisual fronts that are formed from different latitudes to give dispute in the symbolic and narrative field in the struggles for the defense of the land, the territory and the common goods. Our commitment in this area is the training of trainers that allows us to support the continuity of processes in popular education in the communication strategy to develop from different territories and communities.

Follow #CORALTerritorioAudiovisual for more updates!