The Awasqa scholarship program has highlighted and made tangible the importance of supporting community communicators from underrepresented communities. Awasqa invited a group of young students and professionals from Abya Yala, between the ages of 18 and 28, with some experience in communication and journalism, to develop and share their work. The program’s purpose has been to provide them with the means to research and write three articles.
Media communication often requires privileged access to media and platforms. In response to this problem, Awasqa chose 8 young people from Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Mexico to support them research, write, and produce communicational products, from their own perspectives and ways of life. All of these products were carefully reviewed and edited, in collaboration with our scholars, before publication on our platform.
The Awasqa scholar program values the importance of opening spaces to support the individual career of young communicators, particularly from Indigenous and Black communities. We believe that one of the most important challenges for young communicators is having enough economic support and mentoring to develop and launch their products.
Awasqa scholars explained that this award has allowed them to grow professionally by getting closer to the realities in their communities, while opening their hearts and reflections with other people. They did so with encouraging support from the Awasqa’s team, which allowed them to strengthen their writing, develop journalistic genres and critical analysis, learn how to conduct interviews, reflect on language justice and inclusion, and implement their personal initiatives as they sought to contribute to their territories.
María de la Luz Delgado Gomez from Xiquipilli, Mexico, said: “This collaboration with AWASQA has allowed me to visualize greater possibilities for documenting and transmitting some of the experiences and community knowledge of my people. It allowed me to understand this task as a profession that is little recognized but necessary in the construction of local narratives, which are indispensable for strengthening community identities and the conservation of biocultural knowledge.”
Her photographic essays included a reflection on the ancestral tradition of mushroom gathering in her community and the problems they face. She also explored adobe houses construction as a dignified form of habitation and resistance to technological development. Luchita, as we tenderly call her, left us this beautiful poem inspired by one of her trips:
Maholy Gabriela Garcés Guatatuca, from the Ecuadorian Amazon, helped us better understand the huge challenges her community faces when the climate crisis and pollution from mining companies converge. The struggle and resistance of her people, particularly the youth, is a call for solidarity.
Photo: March in defense of the rivers April 30, 2024.
“The collaboration with Awasqa allowed me to tell part of the struggle and problems that Indigenous peoples in the Ecuadorian Amazon face, which have not been made visible by traditional media. It has also given us the chance to reconnect with our ancestral customs and languages, so that we can continue writing and researching with this knowledge. For us, as young Indigenous people, it is very important that we can continue learning and acquiring experiences as community media journalists and continue working on written stories so that the world can learn about the untold and struggled stories of our nations,” said Gaby.
These narratives are committed to defend Indigenous and Black communities, but above all, question, discomfort, and share their inner sensibilities within a specific social context. The creative work of Awasqa scholars stem from this point of view, as they combine latent questions of the heart with communication, to create a language that transcends frontiers.
Photo: Cinthya Lizbeth Toledo Cabrera.
Cinthya Lizbeth Toledo Cabrera, from the Binniza’ (Zapotec) community in Mexico, makes a deep self-reflection on identity, by exploring important questions such as: What kind of Binniza’ woman am I? and How do Binniza’ women inhabit spaces? This way she constructs new spaces for the inherent views and perspectives of her generation. Cynthia shared with us:
“Given the opportunity to write about my feelings, benefited me in a very personal way. I was able to write about my own discomfort and issues within my community that probably a more academic writing environment would not have allowed me to do so, particularly in such a colloquial way. I appreciate the team’s openness in that sense.”
In the same way, Theo Valenzuela Quiñeñir, a Mapuche trans nonbinary journalist, has shared with us their strong and resilient voice in defense of the rights of ancestral diversities. Through personal interviews, their article Refugio Bosque Baucis shows how an animal rescue project became a safe space of resistance for ancestral diversities’ right to exist. We also recommend their vital research on the discrimination and historical erasure of ancestral diversities (an Indigenous term for a wider ancestral meaning for LGBTQ+ identities, in the Western sense), and how that colonial past affects identities today.
Photo: Theo Valenzuela.
“The scholarship has been a tremendous support for my personal and professional learning. On the one hand, it has allowed me to write from another paradigm, where collaboration and support are key. In this way, it has not only been an economic and professional support, but also a source of companionship and guidance in this process that sometimes is difficult, especially when addressing issues that concern one’s own experience,” said Theo.
The scholars value the creative freedom that the Awasqa scholarship program has provided, seeing themselves more than communicators, but also as storytellers. For Ashanty Lawhier, cultural manager, musician, and community storyteller from Palenque, Colombia, his leadership in the community has led him to share the cultural and spiritual relationship between the river and his community as well as the importance of the Palenque cosmovision through rituals, music, and dance. Ashanty stated:
“The scholarship has had a significant impact on my career trajectory. It allowed me to explore topics that are essential to my community in greater depth, and that I had not previously been able to address from such a structured approach. This process not only helped me strengthen my writing and analytical skills, but it also increased my confidence to be able to engage in academic and creative spaces.”
Photo: Ashanty Lawhier
The scholarship recipients recognize the importance of having the freedom to tell their stories in a space that provides them with the support and time needed for the production of their articles, as well as an editorial support during this process.
Evelyn Zerpa, a member of the native peoples of the Salta region bordering Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Bolivia, dedicated her time for writing academic essays on the Indigenous peoples’ legacy in the region. Through ancestral cartography and interviews, she led us into an archaeological and present encounter with the Tastil people and their struggle until for recognition and the right to communal property. Likewise, she explored indigenous genealogies in the Salta region, representing six nations and where as many as nine Indigenous languages are spoken, which is often ignored in the southern continent.
Diorama, Santa Rosa of Tastil. Photo: Evelyn Zerpa.
“The scholarship was an incentive to encourage me to present, together with other friends, a project in the Salta province and an archival sound project about the experience of the people during the last military dictatorship in the country. During the interviews I conducted, I took the ‘license’ to ask a question about what our brothers and sisters remembered from those years of political violence. I gathered very important information, which was the starting point for that other project,” says Evelyn.
These narratives have been like letters of introduction to other platforms and interest groups about the issues presented. The articles written by Awasqa scholars are in fact seeds to reach new areas and spaces of visibility.
Both in her photo essay about an agro-community space for the elderly in El Alto, Bolivia, and in her vision of the climate and water crisis from a mythical-spiritual perspective in Santa Cruz, Paola Gabriela Quispe Quispe has helped see what is commonly made invisible. Her contribution to Awasqa is just one of many communication projects that keep her busy.
Photo: Paola Quispe. Man with potatoes on a vicuña blanket, Choritotora community, Camacho province, La Paz, Bolivia.
Thanks to the scholarship she was able to participate as a journalist in the XI Pan-Amazonian Forum in Rurrenabaque, Bolivia, and also to win the Zarelia scholarship on feminist and anti-racist journalism.
The process of accompanying the scholars also allowed Awasqa to contextualize our project and bring us closer to the Latin American realities, giving way to create a network of collaborations and exchanges with shared perspectives and commitment regarding the narratives of Black and Indigenous peoples.
Karla Vanesa Ordoñez Sánchez, from Guatemala, took advantage of the scholarship and her journalistic experience to explore the use of audiovisual media and highlight the work of indigenous women, both those who defend ancestral ceramic practices as well as those who practice ancestral medicine.
The work of our Awasqa scholars has not followed a strict linear work, since part of our goal has been to give them the time and space necessary for them to produce their work. As Luchita tells us, the scholarship “made me recognize a key, which is the decolonization of time… that the written work is one more tool to get to know and heal oneself, not to get sick too from overworking. I am deeply grateful for the patience and calm with which the articles have been woven, always respectful of our internal processes.”
We are deeply thankful to them for sharing their perspectives and wisdom with us.
